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Would you like to know about the best wealth you can have? A wealth that you literally can keep for eternity? We continue our studies in Luke by considering 12:12-21. Along the way we discover six axioms of wealth God’s way! Open up your Bibles along with your heavenly bank accounts!
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play or Download in new window.
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Would you like to know about the best wealth you can have? A wealth that you literally can keep for eternity? We continue our studies in Luke by considering 12:12-21. Along the way we discover six axioms of wealth God’s way! Open up your Bibles along with your heavenly bank accounts!
How To Be Rich Towards God from Mark Pierce on Vimeo.
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
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Good Friday morning Church Requel!
Or should I say good "Black Friday" morning to you? Anyone out shopping the deals today? I've never been much of a Black Friday shopper myself, preferring to let my fingers do the walking! Ha!
But I know that some of you love this shopping day. How about it? Do you have story to tell about your shopping experience? Write me back and let me know. I just may be able to use your story in Sunday's talk!
What is the the talk about? We return to our Luke series, with a focus on the next passage - Luke 12:13-21. I'm calling the sermon, "Rich To God." I'm really looking forward to being back in the pulpit. Speaking of which, I really am going to be "in the pulpit" this Sunday. Brandi has designed this Sunday's worship event around the communion table. She has moved the big communion table up front for this Sunday's service - which means I have the opportunity to preach from the beautiful, wood carved pulpit. This should be really special. I love Brandi's creativity. You won't want to miss this Sunday morning!
Padding The Pews! I understand that the work has begun on the new pew covers. So far we have refurbished a total of (and I know this is accurate because I counted) ONE pew. Ha!
Seriously though, many thanks go out to Tamara Engstrom for figuring out the best way to do it. She and Paul figured that the best way to do this was to add one of the new foam pads right on top of the existing padded pew and then use a staple gun to affix the new material over the entire pew pad. The end effect is to have a pew that is twice as cushiony! I guess that means my sermons will have to be twice as interesting!
We have plenty of foam fillers and plenty of new material. What we need are some willing hands to staple the new pew pads together. Would you be willing to help? Talk to Tamara this Sunday. Maybe we could get a pew pad party going?!
Christmas Decorating Party! Speaking of parties, don't miss this Sunday's decorating party after church. This should be more fun than ever! We've done this for 4 years now. (Can you believe it's been 4 years?) Our first worship service at The Point Of Grace was Christmas Eve 2012!
When we first decorated the church with all the nativity sets, Paul had collected just under 100 nativity scenes. This year that number has doubled!! We have so many nativity sets to display this year that we cannot fit them all on the windows and tables around the sanctuary. So this year we are doing something new. We are adding boards on the outsides of the pews on the outer sides under the windows as well as on the inside pews from the communion tables back to the tech booth. The result will be a church that can be more decorated than ever!
So plan to stick around after church to set up all the decorations. I will go out and buy enough pizzas for everyone who participates. This is an extra special time for families with children, who really enjoy setting up the nativity sets.
Children's Christmas Program. Speaking of children and Christmas - we are only two weeks away from this year's special Christmas program. We appreciate Tamira and all her helpers and all you parents, who have been working with our kiddos. Just a reminder - this year's Christmas extravaganza will take place Sunday morning, December 11th at 11am. That means our children only have three rehearsals left to prepare - the next two Sundays and then a special Saturday morning rehearsal on December 10th at 10:30 am. Parents, do your best to get your children to these rehearsals AND encourage them to practice their songs and lines at home.
“Home For The Holidays” Concert Sunday Night. Come and enjoy an evening of Christmas favorites and songs of the stage and screen with Brianna Barnes Sunday evening at 7:00 at Church Requel. Brianna is now pursuing her musical theater career in New York City. She is home and ready to start our holidays with music! Admission is free with donations appreciated.
Benefit Spaghetti Dinner and Nativity Open House. Next Saturday, December 3rd, come to St. Luke’s Point of Grace from 4-6 pm for a Spaghetti Dinner and Open House. Donations for the meal will benefit the St. Luke’s neighborhood meal program. The church will be open so you can enjoy the more than 200 nativity sets. This is a great opportunity to bring guests to see the church at its best. And they will have the opportunity to give to support the neighborhood meals. Many people actually appreciate the opportunity to support the ministry of feeding the hungry during this holiday time of year.
Christmas / New Years Schedule. We want to make sure that everyone knows the Holiday church schedule since Christmas and New Years both fall on Sunday this year:
Wow! Can you believe all the great things going on at Church Requel these days!? Mark your calendar right now with all of these dates and events so you don't miss a thing! I love being a part of the Church Requel family - especially during the holidays. I can't wait to see you this Sunday morning at 11am. Love you all much! Pastor Mark
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Good Friday morning Church Requel!
Do I have some special news for you! This coming Sunday morning, our own Ken Jacob will bring God's Word to you from 1 Corinthians 10:13. Ken and I have worked together on this sermon project for the past 3 months. I have watched God work so powerfully in Ken's life as Ken worked so hard on writing this teaching for you.
Let me take a few moments to tell you the story behind the story of this sermon.
Some of you may recall that Ken and Karen spoke to our congregation last Christmas Eve - and they did a beautiful job. I thought to myself at the time that I really needed to speak to Ken about the possibility of preaching a full sermon some at CR some day. Fast forward to last July. Ken and I met for lunch and picked out November 20th as his big day. For two months Ken and I met every other week to talk through the sermon that you are going to hear this Sunday morning.
As you can tell from the sermon title, Ken is going to talk about how we face some of the big giants in our own lives. What many of you don't know, because you don't know Ken well, is that he has faced (and continues to face) some huge obstacles in his life. I won't spoil his story that he will tell so much better than me anyway.
I will share this much. As happens so often to pastors as they prepare to speak on a topic, Ken was particularly challenged with the very challenge he struggles with the most. As he recently shared with me - he just couldn't believe how helpful this talk had been in his own life as he faced his own giant problem. So it is with great confidence that I recommend Sunday's worship service to you all. Put another way, this will be a sermon that is tried and tested true!
We have another huge treat for you on Sunday. Dave Johnson has agreed to play his guitar and lead our worship time together Sunday morning. He will be leading you in singing "Because He Lives" and "Open Up The Sky." Before Ken comes up to preach Dave will sing a special song, "Giants," by Evan Craft. After Ken speaks Brandi will come up and sing "Giants Fall" by Francesca Battistelli. So you can see we have some special and thematic moments created for you to worship Christ this Sunday.
Christmas Decorating - November 27th. After the morning worship service a week from Sunday, plan to stick around to help decorate. Pastor Paul will set out his many manger scenes. We'll also open up the Christmas closet and bring out all the decorations. While you decorate, I will make a pizza run so we can enjoy some food and fellowship afterward. This is also a great family event. The children LOVE setting out the nativity scenes underneath the windows.
Christmas / New Years Schedule. We want to make sure that everyone knows the Holiday church schedule since Christmas and New Years both fall on Sunday this year:
Sanctuary Refresh. I shared the details last week with you. Over the next few months you should see some improvements in the sanctuary. We will not be able to make a financial contribution, so we are hoping that many of you will step forward with your helpful labor. The plan is to combine the donation of pew pads from another church, with our labor, and with funding from Paul for the eventual new carpeting. We actually would like to start working on the pew cushions now, since we received the pads and fabric last week. If you have the willingness and time to help to figure this out, please call Paul directly at 419.571.9920.
Mary Kay and I are enjoying our romantic getaway. We look forward to seeing you all again next week. Love you all much! Pastor Mark
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Good Friday morning Church Requel!
Mary Kay and I have been talking all week about last Sunday morning. What a loving church family you are! How caring! How involved! How helpful!
We watched some of you taking pictures. We watched some of you singing with our children. We watched some of you fixing the men's toilet and the women's stall door. We watched some of you bringing in food to celebrate. We watched some of you sitting with a new guest when she was all alone at a table. We watched almost all of you hug a newly baptized young lady. How special it is for us to be your pastor!
Saturday: Feed The Hungry! Tomorrow evening we have the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We are asking for some of you to step up your serve this weekend. Four different leadership couples, who are almost always serving at the community meals, cannot be here on Saturday. We know that you can do this! Show up around 4pm to help set up tables and chairs and prep the room. Serve people coming to eat starting at 5pm. Usually we are finished cleaning up by 6:30 pm. Thanks!
Dr. John Byron Sunday morning. We welcome Dr. Byron as our guest teacher Sunday morning. John was my New Testament professor when I attended Ashland Theological Seminary. Every class was an aha moment for me.
Many of you now know how special your time with Dr. Byron will be this Sunday, not because of my past aha moments, but because of your own. John spoke at Church Requel back in April 2015. In June of last year he gave many of you a tour of the Bible museum at ATS.
We've invited Dr. Byron back to speak this Sunday morning. The title of his talk will be "Remembering The Past, Practicing In The Present, Looking Forward To The Future." His Bible text will be 2 Thessalonians 2:13 - 3:5. I'm sure this will be a great opportunity for spiritual growth for all of us!
Christmas Program Practices. We cannot believe how fast this year is flying by. We only have 4 more weeks (and therefore 4 more practices) for our children to prepare for the Christmas program on December 11th.
Tamira asks that parents encourage their children to be at every rehearsal possible between now and then. We've tried to keep the rehearsal schedule aligned with Sunday mornings to reduce the extra trips on families during this busy time of the year. But that means each Sunday morning is really important for each of our children.
I really enjoyed working with Tamira on Tuesday afternoon, editing the special Christmas music video our kiddos have recorded. You are in for a special treat! As you can see from the picture above right, our children are pretty pumped too!
Christmas Decorating - November 27th. The season of Lent is right around the corner. Over these last 4 years we have established a great tradition of decorating the church on the Sunday following Thanksgiving. We will do this again this year. After the morning worship service on the last Sunday of this month, plan to stick around to help decorate. Pastor Paul will set out his many manger scenes. We'll also open up the Christmas closet and bring out all the decorations. While you decorate, I will make a pizza run so we can enjoy some food and fellowship afterward. This is also a great family event. The children LOVE setting out the nativity scenes underneath the windows.
Christmas / New Years Schedule. Has anyone noticed that both Christmas and New Years falls on a Sunday this year? Our leadership team noticed and talked it through back in September. Here is what we have decided for our church holiday schedule.
We WILL have a full Christmas Eve worship service at 5pm on Saturday evening, December 24th. This service will include all the elements of our normal Sunday service, including worship singing, prayer, sermon, and communion. We will close with our traditional candle lighting Christmas Eve event.
We WILL NOT conduct a Sunday Christmas morning worship service on December 25th. We know this is a special time for our members to enjoy their families on Christmas morning. So make sure you attend the Christmas Eve worship event the night before.
We WILL conduct as Sunday New Years morning worship service on January 1st at our normal time of 11am. This will be a great opportunity to start the new year off right!
Sanctuary Refresh. For those who read all the way through to the end of last Friday's newsletter, I told you that good things were coming in 2017. Let me share some specifics with you this week. We would like to spruce up the sanctuary carpet and pew pads in the first quarter of next year. We could tell by looking that the carpet is worn - almost thread bare in some places. But we knew for sure that the carpeting had been in place way too long when Dave Repp told us that the same carpet had been in place when he and Jen were married!!!
We have some great news! We have plans to install new fabric on the seat cushions, install new carpeting, and (those who participate up front are going to love this) install a new three-tier platform. This will give us the opportunity to also install electric and mic outlets in more strategic locations. This will also reduce our need to use the black platform risers as often. And this will help us get rid of the dangerous dropping front lip on the existing platform.
So how are we going to pay for all this - especially with tough finances this year? I'm thrilled to report that God is not limited by our own limits! (Good news, yes?) Specifically - another church is replacing their pew cushions. They are donating the fabric to us. This church is much larger than we are, with lots more pews. So we will take the best of their fabric and re-work it to fit our cushions.
We are hoping that many of you will step forward and volunteer your labor to help us fit the fabric to the cushions. We are hoping that some of you will volunteer to take up the existing carpet. We are hoping that some of you will volunteer to frame in a new platform once the carpeting is up. Then, Pastor Paul Lintern will work to provide the funding for the new carpeting to be installed.
So the plan is to combine the donation from another church, our labor, with funding from Paul for the eventual new carpeting. We actually would like to start figuring out the pew cushions now, since we are receiving the fabric this week. If you have the willingness and time to help to figure this out, please call Paul directly at 419.571.9920.
How God Has Blessed Us! I don't know about you, but I feel especially blessed this time of year. I am reminded of the sermon I wrote 4 years ago, "Failing Forward." At the time we were meeting on Sunday evenings at another location, and it just wasn't working - despite the generous efforts of so many good people. We made the decision to stop meeting on Sunday evenings and were praying for a Sunday morning location. God answered our prayers so beautifully! Let's never take our church for granted. I know I never will. Love you all much! Pastor Mark
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In all of our lives, there come moments of truth for our Christianity. Times when it does not appear advantageous for us to stand up and be counted as a Christ-follower. When those moments come, will our faith wither away in fear and timidity? Or will we acknowledge Christ at all times and in all situations? Jesus had much to say about these tests of courage in Luke 12:1-12.
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play or Download in new window.
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In all of our lives, there come moments of truth for our Christianity. Times when it does not appear advantageous for us to stand up and be counted as a Christ-follower. When those moments come, will our faith wither away in fear and timidity? Or will we acknowledge Christ at all times and in all situations? Jesus had much to say about these tests of courage in Luke 12:1-12.
The Public Christian from Mark Pierce on Vimeo.
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
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Good Friday morning Church Requel!
It is an especially good Friday morning today because this is the Friday of the Chili Cook-off party tonight! Woo-hoo! So what exactly do we think is going to happen at the party?
The party begins at 6pm at the church. If you want to be in the chili contest, then make sure you bring your chili! We will assign a number to each chili and give each party goer a chili ballot (and lots of sample cups!) The chili with the most votes wins!
If you're not bringing chili then bring a side dish or a dessert to share. The church will also provide hot dogs for the kiddos, who may not prefer chili. We also will provide drinks.
Tamira is also putting together some games for kids of ALL ages to play - along with some door prizes. So we envision some fun gathering, catching up with one another, lots of eating, and some game-playing all before... MOVIE NIGHT!
Two movies will be shown tonight - one for the adults upstairs in the sanctuary and a second movie for the youngsters downstairs.
The upstairs movie with be the 2003 Luther, starring Joseph Fiennes in the lead role. This 2-hour biopic tells the story of the 16th century Martin Luther, who was a seminal leader of the Protestant Reformation. The timing of this film couldn't be better for us! We worship in a building designed originally as a Lutheran church. Also - our sermon Sunday morning will be about taking a stand for our Christian faith. Hmmm... what a coincidence!
The downstairs movie will be this year's Disney hit, Zootopia, which shares the story of young Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco. Her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness - conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school. Our children have been talking about these very topics in KidsMin over the last few months. Hmmm... what a coincidence!
Tonight will be a lot of fun. We hope many of you come and that you will also bring guests with you. This is a great way to share our joy with our greater community.
Sunday Morning - Baptism Celebration! Even as I write these words, some of our men are over at the church setting up the baptismal pool for Sunday morning's baptism of Makayla. I have some new news here so read carefully!
First off, we have a very large KidsMin praise team led by Tamira and Jeff. This is not our typical team of Junior High youngsters. These are all the younger K - 4th graders, including Tre & Leia, Sicily (and her mom, Stephenie), Sivon, Amya, Lila, Lincoln & Cohen, Violet, Charlee and Samatha. They will be leading us in the songs they often sing downstairs - songs like "Higher Than The Sky," "Happy & You Know It," and "Put Your Hands Up." These are all high energy songs so be prepared to move as you sing!
Then Makayla Brown will come forward to sing a special song before she is baptized. She wants to sing "Set Me Free," a song by Casting Crowns that means a lot to her. You will want to hear her tell you why! After she sings her song, she'll join me in the baptismal pool. After that you'll have lots of time to greet Makayla and congratulate her.
After we celebrate with Makayla, our little ones will come back up to sing a special song they have picked out to join the celebration. Your heart will be touched as they sing, "Grow Up Like Jesus."
Celebration Sunday Meal. Sheri and several of the ladies of the church thought we should have a celebration meal for Makayla after church. They are providing this for us! No potluck! Just stick around after church to enjoy a meal provided for you and Makayla. How wonderful! I don't know about you, but it would seem an awful shame to miss any of this celebration on Sunday!
Christmas Preparations. Our children will continue to work on their Christmas program during church on Sunday. They are preparing a terrific Christmas program for December 11th. Last week and this week, they are actually creating a Christmas Carol Video. So much fun! So make sure all your children are at church this Sunday. And so many thank-you's go out to Tamira (and Jeff) for making this all happen.
Photo Directory. Did you think we were done talking about Sunday? NO WAY! On top of everything else going on - Ron and Roger will be taking pictures of everyone both before and after the church service. They will be providing a printed church directory for everyone in the church. This way you can more easily match a name with a face. And it will be a lot easier for new folks to be assimilated in the future. You can thank Ron and Roger by cooperating with them as much as possible on a very busy Sunday.
Community Meal November 12th. One last opportunity for me to share with you in today's newsletter - We will serve our community a free warm meal on Saturday, November 12th. We will need everyone in the church to step us as much as possible. Neither Sheri nor I can be here that particular evening, but we know that you can do this without us. Volunteers should show up by 4pm. Bring desserts if you can. We begin serving the meal at 5pm. We are usually finished by 6:30pm.
Good Things Coming. Our leadership team met together with Paul Lintern this past Wednesday night. I am pleased to tell you that our partnership with Paul Lintern and St. Luke's Point Of Grace is better than ever. We shared some dreams together of some good things we would love to see happen in the first half of 2017. We have come to the end of this week's newsletter, but look for me to share some of these dreams with you in future writings.
Love you all much! Hope to see you tonight! Pastor Mark
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When you are working for a wage, it’s helpful to know what to avoid with your boss. We name Jesus our Lord, which is another way of saying we submit to His authority and leadership. It sure would be helpful to know “what really ticks Jesus off!” We come to the section of Luke known as the “woes” passage in Luke 11:37-53. If a woe applies to us, then we’d better say “woah” to what we’re doing!
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play or Download in new window.
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When you are working for a wage, it’s helpful to know what to avoid with your boss. We name Jesus our Lord, which is another way of saying we submit to His authority and leadership. It sure would be helpful to know “what really ticks Jesus off!” We come to the section of Luke known as the “woes” passage in Luke 11:37-53. If a woe applies to us, then we’d better say “woah” to what we’re doing!
What Really Ticks Jesus Off from Mark Pierce on Vimeo.
Follow along with the online sermon notes or download the PDF fill-in-the-blanks sermon outline.
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