Brian's Sermons

I used to belong to the YMCA, and there was one thing that really bothered me. No, not the people who were obviously there to be seen, not to work out (“really, you’re going to walk on the treadmill in flip flops?” Or “you chose to wear that to work out in?” or “Not so much perfume next time, please!”). The one thing that really bothered me was the lack of attention to the rules. The track was the big place where some people constantly chose to disregard the rules, especially regarding the direction traffic was flowing. I don’t know how many times I had to dodge people who were going the wrong way! My mom would laugh at me for saying this, but I am a rule follower. I like to know exactly what the rules are, and honestly I can tend toward a Pharisaical attitude toward the rules. I can find myself thinking, “Well, I would never do that, ” when there are other rules I obviously would break. That reminds me of a parable Jesus told: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee ...

On the Journey: Sanctification As we continue in week 3 of “The Journey” I want to share with you something that happens every year at Annual Conference. In the course of Ordination in the United Methodist Church, every candidate must go before the assembled Annual Conference and answer what are known as “The Historical Questions.” There’s always a nervous laugh at one of the questions: “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” But the first four questions we are asked are as follows: 1.       Have you faith in Christ? 2.       Are you going on to perfection? 3.       Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? 4.       Are you honestly striving after perfection in love? The first one is an obvious but unfortunately necessary question; faith in Christ is necessary for new birth; as we discussed last week, it’s the one condition of justification, which is when Go...

In college, some students came up with a fundraising concept: the “suitcase party.” The idea was that everyone paid a cover charge to get into the party, and once you were there, they gave out some prizes, the biggest of which was a fantastic trip. The only rub was that you had to come to the party with a packed suitcase, ready to leave immediately if you won. Preparation for a journey is sometimes harder than the trip itself. What do you bring? What do you leave at home? But before you can pack, you have to know where you’re going and where you’re coming from. Today we are starting a new series on United Methodist Theology. We will be looking at the Way of Salvation, and we’re calling this series: The Journey . To know where we’re coming from, we have to look back to the beginning. In Genesis 1, we read: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. ” (Genesis 1:26a) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he create...

I don’t like shopping.  When it comes to clothes, I’m generally hard to fit, which, coupled with the fact that I usually balk at paying full price on anything, means it takes a long time.  The kids don’t enjoy it either, even when they get to go to the toy section, because they don’t like waiting while we try to find the exact right thing.  And babysitters cost enough that we don’t like to “waste” our date nights on shopping. Sometimes we still shop, but mostly we shop online.  Anyone else caught this bug?  My mom loves Christmas shopping online – she said it’s like she gets two Christmases. One is when the packages come in the mail, and the other is when she gets to give them out. Unfortunately, sometimes when you receive your package, you open it up, just to find that the product doesn’t fit, or worse, is broken.  Once I received a CD that was shattered into about 1000 pieces.  When that happened, I immediately e-mailed and asked for a replacement....

Galatians 5:16-26 Last week we took a critical look at the prevailing religion among American teenagers, MTD – Moralistic Therapeutic Deism , which at its heart, tells its followers to be good: don’t do bad things. Last week we looked at Jesus’ words where he boiled it down to this: avoiding sin isn’t good enough. Instead of simply stopping doing bad things, we have been called to turn 180 degrees and to do good. On our own, we aren’t capable of it; we keep on doing bad things. But we’re not called to do it on our own. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 tells us Avoid every kind of evil . But Paul continues: May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. Our calling is by a God who fills us with His Spirit. We cannot get to today’s scripture without understanding this. We are told to live by the Spirit – we can’t live by th...

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 ...