Sermon Real Life - July 17, 2010

This week I preached about how the church should serve the community. In Matthew 20:26-27 Jesus set the standard of greatness in his Kingdom as those who lower themselves and serve. Christ came to list up those who are the least in the world, when we as kingdom people serve the community we come under people and lift them up through the love of Christ.

To listen to the sermon or download the notes, click here.

Japan Debrief 1

In this 6 min video I talk about the top three learning points I came away with in this trip to Japan. The value of teamwork, earning respect, and never underestimating the power of service. Keep a lookout for more information on what I learned while in Japan, and whether or not there will be another trip in the future. I thank you all for your support and making this service project a reality!

Understanding the Whole Sweep of Scripture

I found this video on Alter Video Magazine it is a video by NT Wright. He gives his suggestions to reading the bible and the importance of reading larger portions of scripture in order to understand the magnitude and unity of theme in the scriptures. My favorite line in this video is when Wright was asked how people should read scripture he said, "Frequently and Thoroughly."

Japan Update 11 - Tokyo

We have been visiting Tokyo today, and it was a blast. We are staying in a tiny room shown in the video below and we got to see a few cool sites. I wish we had the time to see more.

On the metro to our hotel

At our hotel/walk in closet

A garden we visited

The gate to the Emperors Palace 

Second gate to the Emperors Palace

The Emperors Palace in the Background

Rob pretending to guard the gate

Japan Update 10

A little clip about our crew in Ishinomaki. I must have been really tired because it looks like I have a lazy eye.

Japan Update 9

We are currently in the Tokyo Narita Airport, we just arrived from Sendai on an overnight bus. We will spend the day here today and leave tomorrow to fly back home. Here is a short video I shot from the Takiama guest house yesterday morning. It was hard to leave our team in Ishinomaki, we formed several close relationships despite the language barrier. The hardest part was leaving without saying goodbye to half of the team. Our bus left before they made it back, the picture below is of the part of the team that was there.

Japan Update 8

Hey everyone, today we went to a Japanese Church in Ishinomaki. It was a bunch of fun, every time I go to church in another country I am reminded how great our God really is that there are people worshipping Him on the opposite side of the world. We didn't understand a single word they said, but we were encouraged by the presence of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Today we also helped clean out a recycling yard. It has been a great day, we were on a team with other english speakers today, but we missed our usual team. We weren't able to go make snow cones today with our team, nonetheless it was fantastic.