Church Requel Blog - Writings of Mark Pierce

I'll Fly Away

Good Friday morning Church Requel!

I'm really looking forward to our gathering Sunday morning. Each Sunday this summer we are focusing our sermon time on a different hymn. This week is "I'll Fly Away." I can't wait to share this one with you.

As you will learn Sunday morning, this one is pretty special and personal to me. When I was nine years old my dad bought a used banjo. One of the first songs he learned on it was this one: I'll Fly Away. But Dad needed someone to sing the song while he played. Often he grabbed me or all us kids and we would sing it again and again.

This one is not just special to me. According to the I'll Fly Away Foundation (yes indeed there is such a foundation) this song has been recorded over 5,000 times! It's also one of the hit songs from one of my very favorite movie, O Brother Where Art Thou?

Sunday I'll tell you the story of how this song came to be. And as always in our Hymns 4 Him summer series, we'll walk away with 4 life lessons from the song. Don't miss it!

Want a sneak preview? The sermon is already written and the text is uploaded. You can check it out here: http://bible.com/events/48929856.

The Songs We'll Sing. Of course, "I'll Fly Away" isn't the only song we'll sing. This week will be pretty special too because our students will help lead our worship time together as they do whenever we have a 5th Sunday in the month. Here are the songs we hope to sing: "Mercy House" by Wendy Diedre; "Your Name Is Power" by Rend Collective; "Raise A Hallelujah" by Bethel; "You Are Good" by Israel Houghton; "More To Come" by Passion and "Glorious Day" by Passion. Is SOUNDS like it will be an awesome morning of worship!

For those of you who will be watching the online stream, you can join us on our Facebook Page or you can worship with us on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/39w1D6ggcv4.

Neighborhood Meal Planned For August 13th. On the second Saturday in August we will serve a healthy meal to those in our neighborhood who are hungry. We so appreciate your support of this meal ministry. Get this date on your calendar now before we flip the page to August. Don and Stephenie will lead the charge but they would love your help. Volunteers should show up by 4pm. We are usually finished with the cleanup by 6pm.

Outdoor Concert Planned for August 27th. We have planned for a two-hour outdoor concert in front of the church on Saturday, August 27th, from 6pm to 8pm. Our own worship band will be singing and playing! The concert will be totally free, so invite all your family and friends to come.

Like last year, we will offer a tip jar. All proceeds will go to St. Luke's Point Of Grace. This is Paul Lintern's non-profit organization that provides the place where we worship. While we do pay a monthly rent to St. Luke's, we know it doesn't cover all the costs of maintaining the property. So we thought it would be a great way to say "thank-you" to Paul and St. Luke's by playing a benefit concert.

I can now confirm that there will be food offered as well! So get this date on your calendar and start telling everyone you know! It should be a grand time together.

Blessings! Love you much! Pastor  Mark

Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus

Good Friday morning Church Requel!

How are you liking our summer sermon series, Hymns 4 Him? I have been pleasantly surprised by how many of you have written to me and told me that you are really enjoying these talks.

This Sunday we talk about the hymn, "Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus" by Louisa Stead. This will be our 7th sermon in the series. We are halfway through summer and this sermon marks our halfway point in the series.

I really love this hymn. I learned it back in the early days of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. It has also come to mind many times since. One of the reasons I love it so much is because I also learned the story by the hymn and the hymn writer, Louisa Stead. This is a story that harkens back to 1879 and has its roots in Ohio. I can't wait to share it with you.

For those of you who don't want to wait until Sunday, you can read the sermon text in your Bible app or here: http://bible.com/events/48926524.

Our Plans For Sunday morning. As far as I know, we will have the full praise team leading our worship Sunday morning. Yay! Thank you all so much for your sacrifice of preparation.

Here are the songs we are planning to sing: "The Throne Room Song" by People & Songs; "Oceans" by Hillsong; "Do It Again" by Elevation Worship; "Jesus Friend of Sinners" by Casting Crowns; and "I Am A Friend Of God" by Israel Houghton.

For those of you who cannot be with us physically in church this Sunday, you can stream the worship service live by going to our Facebook Page OR our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1GuxWB88YTM.

Our condolences to the Walker Family. Eddie lost his mom, Carol, this past week. Our deepest sympathies go out to Eddie, Brandi, Kailey, Paityn, Leia and Tre. Of all the tributes and photos that have been posted this week, the one that touches my heart the most is when Eddie had the privilege to baptize his mom. As Eddie shared this week about his mom: "Can’t wait to see you up there in the front row worshipping our Jesus!!!" Now THAT'S a testimony of faith!

Neighborhood Meal Planned For August 13th. On the second Saturday in August we will serve a healthy meal to those in our neighborhood who are hungry. We so appreciate your support of this meal ministry. Get this date on your calendar now before we flip the page to August. Don and Stephenie will lead the charge but they would love your help. Volunteers should show up by 4pm. We are usually finished with the cleanup by 6pm.

Outdoor Concert Planned for August 27th. We have planned for a two-hour outdoor concert in front of the church on Saturday, August 27th, from 6pm to 8pm. Our own worship band will be singing and playing! The concert will be totally free, so invite all your family and friends to come.

Like last year, we will offer a tip jar. All proceeds will go to St. Luke's Point Of Grace. This is Paul Lintern's non-profit organization that provides the place where we worship. While we do pay a monthly rent to St. Luke's, we know it doesn't cover all the costs of maintaining the property. So we thought it would be a great way to say "thank-you" to Paul and St. Luke's by playing a benefit concert.

I don't know all the details yet, so stay tuned. Maybe there will be food offered as well! The important thing now is to get this date on your calendar and to start telling everyone you know! It should be a grand time together.

Blessings! Love you much! Pastor  Mark

I Need Thee Every Hour

Good Friday morning Church Requel!

This Sunday morning I plan to ask you a question that I, personally, have found to be most profound.

When is the time OR what is the occasion that I have no need of our Lord God?

If you are like me (and I think in this regard most of you are), then your reflexive answer will be, "Never!" There will never be a time... there will never be an occasion when I don't need our Lord.

And yet, if you are like me (and I also think that in this regard most of you are), the action of our lives are different than the reflexive answer we give. We say we need the Lord God every hour, but we live our lives as if we don't need the Lord most of the time.

We will consider our sixth hymn in this summer series and in doing so we will consider those many needs and those many times when we should be leaning upon our Lord more heavily than we do. I hope you will come or tune in Sunday if you are far away. 

Here are the links you may want for this Sunday. To read Sunday sermon click here: http://bible.com/events/48923173.

To watch the worship service live, you can go to our Facebook Page OR you can select our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/RA6sl55rPe4.

Here are the songs we plan to sing this Sunday: "Might Get Loud," by Elevation Worship; "Draw Me Close" by Michael W. Smith; "Need You Now" by Plumb; "Lord I need You" by Matt Maher; "He Is" by Crowder; "How Great Is Our God" by Chris Tomlin; "Believe For It" by CeCe Winans.

You may notice that the number of songs we sing each Sunday is growing longer. This is not accidental. We love that our Praise Team has learned so many different songs and we would like to sing more of them each week. Our leadership team met this past Sunday and we officially extended the planned length of our service to 12:30 pm. In case you're wondering, that's fifteen minutes longer. 

The truth is that we aren't really locked in to a particular time anyway. We plan our worship services three weeks in advance, each week honing and focusing more on whatever the theme will be for a particular Sunday. But then when Sunday actually comes, we turn the entire worship experience over to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Most of you have told us you love it when we gather and you're in no hurry to leave. We also hope that as our students finish up their lessons, they will have time to join us up in the sanctuary for some concluding worship together with the adults.

Outdoor Concert Planned for August 27th. We have planned for a two-hour outdoor concert in front of the church on Saturday, August 27th, from 6pm to 8pm. Our own worship band will be singing and playing! The concert will be totally free, so invite all your family and friends to come.

Like last year, we will offer a tip jar. All proceeds will go to St. Luke's Point Of Grace. This is Paul Lintern's non-profit organization that provides the place where we worship. While we do pay a monthly rent to St. Luke's, we know it doesn't cover all the costs of maintaining the property. So we thought it would be a great way to say "thank-you" to Paul and St. Luke's by playing a benefit concert.

I don't know all the details yet, so stay tuned. Maybe there will be food offered as well! The important thing now is to get this date on your calendar and to start telling everyone you know! It should be a grand time together.

That's all I have for you today. Thanks so much for your ongoing prayers for my dad. Mary Kay and I are planning on visiting again this afternoon. He has lost a great deal of mobility, but we are thankful that he is not in great pain. We credit your prayers for that grace.

Blessings! Love you much! Pastor  Mark

Our Oldest Hymn - "Be Thou My Vision"

Good Friday morning Church Requel!

I am SO EXCITED to bring Sunday's sermon to you! I've been looking forward to July 10th for a long time. The hymn, "Be Thou My Vision," is perhaps the oldest hymn we know and sing today. Some say it goes back to the 5th century. Even more miraculously, what began many centuries ago was not finally completed until the beginning of the 1900s.

I can't wait to tell you the whole story. The hymn's lyrics have inspired the Christian church for more than a millennium. But when you know how the hymn we sing today came together, you will be inspired even more. This is one of those stories that only God could have brought together from beginning to end.

You'll hear the real story of what we now celebrate as St. Patty's Day. You'll hear the story of the priest and musician centuries later encouraged by St. Patrick. When this musician/priest discovered he was losing his eyesight, he wrote down the ancient Irish lyrics. Then a millennium later two unconnected female academics put together the ancient Irish hymn and lyrics into the English we know today. It's truly a remarkable story. Don't miss it this Sunday!

For those of you who can't wait, you can read Sunday's sermon here: http://bible.com/events/48919574.

The songs we will sing Sunday morning include: "Only A God Like You" by Tommy Walker; "A Thousand Hallelujahs" by Brooke Ligertwood; "O Praise The Name by Hillsong; "In The Light" by DC Talk; "Hurry" by Jesus Culture; and "Christ Our Glory" by Sovereign Grace Music.

The whole praise team will be back from their 4th of July holidays, so expect a rocking good worship time together!

For those of you who can't make it to our Mansfield downtown church location on Sunday, you can watch online with either our Facebook page or on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/v5TJrfp9aUU.

Finally, I leave you with this photo taken last night at Clearfork Reservoir. As Mary Kay told me last night, "God was doing His artwork!" It truly was stunning. I love these summer evenings!

I'm heading up to Barberton to visit my dad this afternoon. Thank you all for your continued prayers on his behalf. Our family appreciates it more than you'll ever know.

Blessings! Hope to see you Sunday! Love you all! Pastor Mark

Happy 4th of July Weekend!

Good Friday morning Church Requel!

First off - both the pastor and his wife wish each one of you a most joyous 4th of July weekend. We know that many of you will be traveling and celebrating this weekend. We wish you safe travels and a most happy time spent with friends and relatives.

This is my favorite time of the year, long warm, sunny days. The other night Mary Kay and I drove down to Clearfork Reservoir just to take in the sunset. Fireworks are wonderful, but nothing replaces God's daily sunset show - in my humble estimation.

Glorious Freedom - Sermon! Because it is Independence Day weekend, we will continue our Hymns 4 Him summer sermon series with "Glorious Freedom" by Haldor Lillenas. Many of you may not know this hymn as well as I do. Lillenas became a publisher later in his life and for those with a Church of the Nazarene background - Lillenas was THE publisher of record for the church. His hymn, "Glorious Freedom" was one I sang in church at least once a month for ten years when I was a kiddo growing up.

In writing this Sunday's sermon, I spent a great deal of time in Galatians 5. I thought through the reason for our ongoing sin struggles. Why do we continue to sin when we are told that Jesus has freed us from our sins? Two words came to my mind: selfishness and emptiness. Of the two, I'm not at all sure that the latter - emptiness inside - isn't the stronger of the two. I look forward to sharing my discoveries with you on Sunday.

For those of you who would like a head start, you can check out my sermon in your Bible app OR just use this link - http://bible.com/events/48916272.

Because many of our praise team will be traveling this weekend, our worship leaders will be fewer but every bit as enthusiastic! Here are the songs we are planning to sing this Sunday: "Dwell In The House," by yours truly; "All Things New" by KXC Worship; "Graves Into Gardens" by Elevation Worship; and "Freedom" by Hillsong.

For those of you want to watch online (and I hope all of you traveling will do so!) you can link up with us on our Facebook page or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/o_FH6b9gu30.

Training for our new in-ear monitors went extremely well this past Sunday. We enjoyed eating lunch together first. Fellowship together is always such an important part of any team!

Then we gathered up front - each one of us with our own mixer in front of us. I put a camera over my own mixer so everyone on the team could see what I was doing. We talked about how to mix, how to make sure we could hear our fellow team members, how to pan each of our channels to one side or the other, and how to mute the channels. At one point Brandi muted her entire mixer and it took us a while to figure out how to get it working again. We were so glad that happened during our training session and not during church!

Then we took our classroom training and put it to work - we sang several songs together. This gave us plenty of time in between each song to make adjustments and to ask questions. We finally finished up around 4pm. So it was a very full day for your worship team, who also showed up 2 hours early before church began! To all of you who gave sacrificially on Sunday to learn this new sound system: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! 

And to all of you who gave your money so sacrificially so we could purchase this new gear: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

One of the cool new things that has also happened is that we have replaced the two old and very large speakers that face the congregation with two much smaller and much newer speakers. We think it looks and sounds so much better. What do you think? Let us know!

That wraps up this week's pastoral newsletter. I pray that each one of you continues to enjoy both your political freedoms as well as your spiritual freedoms. And I thank each one of you for continuing to pray for my dad. We continue to be amazed at how well he is doing with his very serious illness. God has been good to our family! Blessings! My love to each of you! Pastor Mark