Brian's Sermons

For the last two weeks, we’ve been talking about discipleship – the mission of the church is making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world . We recognized that to make disciples of Jesus Christ, we must first be his disciples. We have to count the cost and commit ourselves fully to being his disciples. Last week we acknowledged that discipleship is messy, that it’s not linear, and that it doesn’t look all that "churchy." The end goal of discipleship is for the disciple to look, think, and behave like his rabbi. If we are following Jesus, our goal is to look like Jesus: we call that process sanctification. But here’s what we believe: we believe that if we each become more and more like Jesus, the result will be the transformation of the world. Paul wrote to the Romans (12:1-2) Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform...

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired me and followed him. Mark 1:16-20 In our effort to understand our mission: Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world , last week we talked about discipleship – how being a true follower of Jesus requires us to count the cost and to commit ourselves completely to Him. Simon, Andrew, James, and John left their profession – left everything – to follow Jesus in this new endeavor. Now they were going to give their lives to catch people rather than fish. If you were all-powerful and you wanted everyone on earth to ...

Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world Through October and November, we studied the armor of God and were reminded of the constant reality of spiritual warfare. Even if you’d rather not fight, as Aragorn said, "Open war is upon us, whether you would risk it or not." Now, can you imagine going into war without a strategy? Can you imagine setting an army loose without giving them a mission? Unfortunately this is exactly what we (the church in general) has often done. The United Methodist Church is a church in decline. I don’t want to pull any punches here; we have lost members and as we have gotten older, we have failed to attract young people to the denomination. We have failed to do what Jesus told us to when he said, "Go and make disciples of all nations." The UMC has realized that we have to do some things differently than before in order to reach new people, in order for our denomination to survive, in order to take the fight to the ...