An Interesting Sermon

My husband and I normally attend Woodforest Presbyterian Church, but on a recent Sunday, we visited Christ the King Episcopal Church instead. The sermon that Sunday was on The Parable of the Talents, found in Matthew 25:14-30.

This is the story of the master who went away, giving five, two, and one talent each respectively to three servants. The servant receiving five talents doubled his money, as did the servant receiving two talents. But the servant who had received one talent was scared and didn't want to take a risk, so he buried the money and returned it – but no more – upon his master's return. Click here to read the actual bible verses to this parable.

What made this particular sermon unique however, is the activity the Reverend used in conjunction with the sermon. They actually passed out baskets of five-dollar bills and asked parishioners to take one. The parishioners were told to take their bill and use it to earn more money that they would return at a predetermined future date.

The Reverend gave examples of how the Parishioners might use their money to make more money… purchase supplies to make a craft that could be sold, a lemonade stand (for the kids), or a family could combine their bills to do something bigger. She challenged everyone to think about it.

This was a distinctive and memorable sermon. I hope that when the date comes for the Parishioners to return the money, Christ the King Episcopal Church finds they have many good and faithful servants indeed!

I'm curious, what would you do with your five-dollar bill?

What I Like Most About Church

I missed church this morning. Missing church is not something I do often or take lightly. To help alleviate some of the guilt I am feeling over missing church and my Sunday morning ritual of fellowship and worship, I thought I would spend a few minutes blogging about what I like most about church. My church in particular.

Woodforest Presbyterian Church is very small, and that is exactly one of the things that I like about our church. When you arrive, whether for a morning worship service or an evening bible or book study, you are always greeted with genuine smiles and warm hugs. Everyone knows everyone, and there is truly a sense of community, of family.

Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.–Matt. 18:20. And so it is. I can truly feel the Lord's presence at my church when we gather together in worship and in fellowship. While the church may be small, it is large in belief.

Right now, in the adult Sunday school class we are studying the Book of Revelation. Another wonderful reason to love our church, this study is fascinating to say the least. Enough so that I will need to reserve more time and space to a more full discussion at a later time. Suffice it to say that we have a magnificent and very knowledgeable leader, one that is able to reference many Old Testament passages that support the Book of Revelation, very interesting questions and conversation, and well, we know the end. God wins!

These are just few things that come to mind when I think of reasons I love my church. There are more. In fact at one point we came up with and published a "top ten list" of reasons to attend Woodforest Presbyterian Church. I don't remember all ten, but I know fellowship and a sense of community was right at the top.

We don't have much information posted on our website, but it you want to take a look, the address is http://www.forministry.com/USTXPCUSAWPCWP/.

Shalom!