Pumpkin Killing 2013 Recap
- by Element Christian Church
Watch what happened at Element Pumpkin Killing '13!
Watch what happened at Element Pumpkin Killing '13!
An update on what's happening at Element and what lies in our future. There will be much more to come, but for now we ask for your prayers. If you attend Element, you can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for any questions you have.
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
1. Give out the best Candy.
2. Think of the Parents.
3. Be Present.
4. Be Encouraging.
5. Party.
6. Learn The Stories <- Very important!
7. Attend the party.
8. Join the community.
9. Head to the “Watering Holes”
10. Pay Attention.
11. Stay Dependent.
12. Open Doors.
Remember, in the midst of having fun, herding your children, trying to stay warm or simply not wanting to participate at all: Jesus has all authority and we don’t have anything to be fear!
At Element we are all about one thing, we beat one drum, it may get old, but it is the only hope the world has ever had…His name is Jesus. Jesus is King of kings, Lord of lords, hope of the world, light to mankind, savior of rich and poor, men and women, and everyone and everything else.
Every message at Element is about Jesus, but this fall…all the way through Christmas, we will be taking an even more in depth look at the amazing-ness of who He is. Jesus has inspired people for ages, He continues to inspire, and this series is part of that inspiration.
In the last blog I talked about how we are too often defined by what we consume and not our legacy that we are to leave behind us. This misunderstanding of our calling has led ultimately to our misunderstanding of everything including love.
It is why today fathers don’t understand how to love their children, because we have made love a self-serving endeavor. We convince ourselves that love is simply being nice because being nice is simply a way to make our lives easier. Too many fathers will tell their children when something is wrong, but will not lead them to what is right. Too many fathers will not lead their homes, but only point out what is wrong in their homes to others. When asked they will say it is out of love (I know, I have heard it many times).
But God has called Himself: Father. What does love look like when our heavenly father talks about it?
Through the scriptures we read what God’s love is and does…God’s love changes us, it makes us become different people. If our lives are not changing in light of God’s love for us, then we either do not understand God’s love, or are not truly living in it.
Back to earthly fathers today… If the way you love your wife and your children is not changing them for the better, then your love is not like God’s love. Real love, like God’s love, brings change in those who are receiving that love. That means love will call sin what it is, not slough off responsibility onto someone or something else; it will step into a mess and help our families change. If you are not willing to do that, then you aren’t willing to love and simply want to continue to be defined by what you consume.
Sometimes love is all those things, but love is never inactive, and it innately calls and breeds change. Reflect and inspect what your vision of “love” accomplishes and see if lines up with God’s love as our Father, and how He loves us.
Last Sunday was our Baptisms, and we had 8 people baptized! If you didn't make it, or missed reading the stories, this week's blog is simply a link to them. Please read them, be excited for them, and always stand amazed at the goodness of our great God.
It’s the oddest thing when I run into Christians, who claim to be followers of Jesus for years, and yet have never been baptized. Please don’t take that as a judgment against you if you haven’t, I am simply stating that it puzzles me because it is one of the concrete things, written in black and white, that Jesus specifically said to do (or at least told his disciples to be doing).
Matt 28:16-20 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Baptism is more than just a show; it is more than an awkward few moments in front of people in pool, it is more than simply another step in the life of Christian. Baptism is a public acknowledgment, in front of a body of people (that you believe are family), that you publically identify with Jesus and his calling. It is a celebration of life and hope.
In the early church the identification with Christianity in Baptism could also get you killed, so it was a deeply moving event. As time progressed all sorts of extraneous beliefs got laid upon baptism, such as believing that baptism forgave sins. In the later second century, and for hundreds of years, people waited until they were near death to be baptized so they could get the most sins forgiven.
Theologically speaking, ALL of your sins were laid upon Jesus at the cross; baptism doesn’t make God forgive you more, like you more, or love you more. Baptism is symbolic in that you understand what it took for God to declare us righteous in His sight. Jesus’ death (symbolized in the burial as we are submerged under the water), and rising to walk in resurrected life (symbolized by us coming back out of the water) is what makes us righteous before a wholly holy, wholly good, and wholly loving God.
Baptism is also an event that is meant to be shared, so we invite all of you to come and celebrate with us this coming Sunday…and if you would like to be baptized its not too late to sign up, we would love to celebrate with you.
Other items to bring:
I get some bizarre emails from some bizarre people (that would be you). People are always asking my opinions on things I really have no idea about (like stocks, cars, unladen weight of European swallows), but every once in a while I get a question about something I do know about (cookies, Jesus, or Spiderman). I was kind of happy this week when someone asked me this question, "I just saw a bumper sticker that said, 'Jesus was a liberal,' what do you think about that?" Now that is something I can answer because they asked, "what do you think about that," and if I know anything, it is that I have opinions about everything.
For a very long time people have been trying to attach Jesus to their cause to give it validity; these causes can be good, like the abolition of slavery or the civil rights movement, or they can be bad like burning people at a stake for opposing views or trying to justify slavery. Almost every cause has a "god" attached to it in one form or another to try to make it more valid. It seems as though most people can't hold their opinions strongly enough without dragging God into it.
So what do I think about the bumper sticker? I think that if you are liberal and you have to drag Jesus into it, maybe you don't have enough conviction in your cause to begin with. This is also true for conservatives who say the same things, so don't think I am only picking on one group of people…I am picking on everyone (it's fun).
The point of following Jesus means we follow Jesus, we don't make Him follow us. We do not get to say, "I like this set of beliefs, therefore Jesus must like this set of beliefs." Maybe Jesus sees the things you like as idolatry, maybe He is sickened by how many things we tolerate as healthy today that are destroying us, maybe Jesus is calling us to repent of ourselves and our causes and actually follow Him and the things plainly laid out in the Scriptures.
In 2014 we will be going through the Sermon on the Mount, and I am going to steal my own thunder by taking the wrap up to one of my messages…but in Joshua 5 God's people are entering into the promised land and we read Joshua 5:13- When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” There's the question. War is coming and Joshua asks "whose side are you on?"
V14 And he said, “No;" No is the word "neither." "Which side are you on, you have to choose side A or side B." And God says "I choose option C." V14-15 And he said, “No but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Our impulse is to say, "whose side are you on," but Jesus is on His own side and we must understand His holiness because only that will give us the larger perspective that we all need.
Can you explain I Corinthians 15:29? It was used at a funeral service that I attended over the weekend and I'd never heard it before.
I have to wonder, were you at a Mormon funeral? Mormon's have a practice of baptizing themselves and others for those who have died. The Mormon Church has claimed this verse as the reason they do so (1 Corinthians 15:29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?).
In the practice people will go to their Mormon temple, appropriately dressed, and adopt the name of a person who has died and then be baptized for that person. There are numerous records of people having been baptized for Princess Diana, Barak Obama's mother, Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter), Elvis, Adolph Hitler, Gandhi, Anne Frank, and even Pope John Paul II. Mormon teenagers have been baptized for Shakespeare and Einstein as well. Mormons do this because they believe baptism is part of the requirements for salvation and now these people can enjoy extra spiritual benefits in the afterlife.
But, and you probably know this is coming, the Mormons are incorrect because that is not what this verse is stating. We must always be those who take the scriptures in context.
In Verses 1-19 of 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is recounting the facts of the resurrection, the reality that it happened and the hope that it gives us. In verses 20-23 Paul speaks about the order of the resurrection:
Verses 24-29 talk about Christ's return and His destruction of death.
Paul is making an argument about the resurrection and how essential it is for believers to understand and believe. North of the city of Corinth was a city named Eleusis where a pagan religion practiced baptism for dead people (though not with the same connotations as Christian baptisms, obviously) to guarantee a good afterlife. The Corinthians were always being swayed back and forth by other religions (much as people in America are today); they were in the center of an economic world power that a large mass of foreign people frequented. The Corinthians would have been fully aware, and possibly influenced by, the practices at Eleusis.
One the arguments that people made against Christianity (as they do today) is that Jesus didn't rise, and so our own personal hope of a resurrection in Him is worthless. So in one verse Paul not only calls the practice of being baptized for the dead useless, but says if the "dead are not raised why also are they immersed on behalf of them." (Literally the Greek text should be translated as THEY). He is NOT saying "we" are baptized for the dead, he is saying the detractors and those who oppose the message of the gospel are being baptized for the dead and it would be stupid to be baptized for the dead and not believe in a resurrection.
Read all of 1 Corinthians 15 in context (at least verses 1-29) and it will make a lot more sense. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…
OUR MISSION: To Glorify God by teaching and living out the Scriptures, transforming community into Gospel Community, and planting churches.