A Place to Belong

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (audio file)

Bulletin: May 6, 2012
Fifth Sunday of Easter

Scripture: Acts 10:44-48,  Psalm 98, John 15:9-17

Songs:

Joel Russell-MacLean

Potluck Supper – Everyone Invited!

If you are from a small town or grew up in a church, you probably know about potlucks! Potato salad, jellied salad… that salad with carrots and marshmallows…

Potlucks are quietly becoming popular in many city neighbourhoods. People are recognizing that our too-busy-to-eat-together lifestyle is killing us, our families and our communities. The question is, it killing our churches?

Neighbours may or may not have much in common but Christians have everything in common – maybe not language, or age, or interests, or other things of lesser importance, but they have the love of God in common. They have hope in Jesus in common. They have the joy of the Holy Spirit in common.

We will be celebrating communion this Sunday around what is called “The Lord’s Table”,  with the bread and wine. It is a meal hosted by Jesus, and God alone gets to send out the invitations. Those who choose to come have no say in who else they eat with! The best response is to welcome others just as we are welcomed by God.

Beyond Sunday morning, sharing meals together – even if we are different from one another – should be one of the things that sets Christians apart from other groups. This is a way that First Baptist can continue to aim to be ‘a place to belong’.

Go Further

  • To read more about belonging at FBC, read this welcome from our Senior minister
  • A reflection on Eugene and Jan Peterson’s view that meals together are crucial in the Christian life
  • a blog on hospitality by CBM’s Dr Lois Mitchell

 

 

With My Own Eyes

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (audio file).

Bulletin: January 1, 2012

Scriptures: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 148:1-6, 11-14, Luke 2:22-40

Songs:

Pastor Joel Russell-MacLean

God is not visible, right? One reason Christians celebrate Christmas is the “incarnation”. That’s a big word that means “God became a human being”. As one of the early Christians wrote, “We are talking about what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our own hands.” (1 John 1.1-3).

Christmas is the “incarnation” — when God became a human being.

Simeon the priest got to do just that when Jesus was presented in the temple.  Somehow, Simeon recognized that God was at work in the baby he was holding. Far to the east of the temple, Magi looked up into the sky and saw something that spoke to them about the important events unfolding in Israel.

These are examples to us of using our eyes to see God at work in the world around us, to see the God who affirmed our physical world by becoming a physical being himself.

The Good Host

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (audio file).

Bulletin: December 25, 2011

Pastor Joel Russell-McLean

Scriptures: Psalm 98, 1 John 4:7-12,15, John 1:1-14

Songs:
Praise: O Come All Ye Faithful (lyrics & melody, contemporary, history, 2)
Preparation: Joy to the World (based on second half of Psalm 98, lyrics & melody, contemporary, history, 2, 3)
Response: Go tell it on the Mountain (lyrics & melody, contemporary, history)
Good Christian Folk Rejoice (lyrics & melody, children, orchestra & choir, history, 2, 3, 4)

Christmas and advent are times for hosts to shine as they open their homes for come and go’s or family dinners.  During Advent, everyone is encouraged to ready themselves to welcome Jesus, as we sing in Joy to the World: “Let every heart prepare him room”. But who welcomed whom in the stable?

First of all, Jesus was sent to invite people into God’s world, into the Kingdom. Angels came to announce this event proclaiming, “peace”, and the first on the guest list were poor shepherds. And yet something more than this was happening that night. God had become human.

God was irrevocably being joined to humanity:  humanity was being welcomed into God’s very self.

And so hospitality – God’s hospitality – is a big part of the rescue plan for humanity and creation.

It is no small thing when we are good hosts, when we make others feel like they belong in our lives and homes.  How appropriate and yet bold of First Baptist to call itself, “A Place to Belong”.

Judgment Day

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (audio file)

Bulletin: November 20, 2011

Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23, Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 95:1-7a, Matthew 25:31-46

Songs:
Praise: Our God Reigns (lyrics & melody, video)
Preparation: Be Still and Know (lyrics & melody)
Response: Let Your Heart be Broken (lyrics, video)
Preparation (baptism): Blessed Assurance (lyrics & melody, video, contemporary, history)

Pastor Joel Russell-MacLean

No one likes to feel like they are being judged by someone else. And most of us are uncomfortable when our opinions clash with an acquaintances’, or when someone we know does something we don’t like.

We prefer being permissive about other people’s lives and to say “do what is right for you”.

At the same time, how many of us were pleased to see Muammar Gaddafi’s reign come to an end? How many are satisfied to know Robert Pickton is in jail – though perhaps he got off too easy? There are some judgments most of us can agree on.

This is where Jesus comes in. We believe Jesus is going to return and sort everything out – but this will mean sorting out what is good and what is bad in everyone who has ever lived. In other words, Jesus is coming back one day to judge the living and the dead.

Christianity connects all the worst in our world to one big problem: sin. But It doesn’t stop there. It claims that the obvious evil we see out in the world is the very same evil in each of us. This is not a nice thing to say about someone. But when God deals once and for all with evil, it will be with all of it, even the bad stuff in us. Fortunately, God gives us the chance to begin to face that today if we put Jesus in charge of our lives. And though it is judgment we expect, it is love that we encounter. In James’ words: “mercy triumphs over judgment”.

“I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace.” Tarrou, in “La Peste” by Albert Camus.

Death Be Not Proud

Note: Summer Worship Begins at 10:00 am

What Happens After Death?

Death Be Not Proud, by John Donne.

Scriptures: Isaiah 65:17-25, Psalm 36:5-9, Revelation 21:1-6, Luke 24:36-48

Songs:
Praise: For All the Saints (YouTube w lyrics, 2, 11 verses)
Preparation: Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (lyrics & melody)
Response: It is Well with my Soul (lyrics, melody, and background, by Hillsong, by Gaithers, by Kutless)

Bulletin – August 28, 2011

Joel Russell-MacLean

Good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell, right? Harps, clouds and singing hymns for some; flames and being poked by tridents for others. But there is this messy bit in the stories of Jesus where he came back to life with a physical body of some sort. Where does that fit in? If we stop at heaven, we haven’t got the picture finished properly.

The good news isn’t about ‘going to heaven’, it is about living once more, new bodies in a new world with Jesus – a “life after, life after death.”

This isn’t just good news about the future. Jesus’ resurrection also means this world and the one that is coming are connected. Our world and our bodies are not disposed of – just the opposite! Instead, we are waiting for their renewal, and the renewal of all things, the re-creation of sin scarred life, the restoration of all that’s been lost. What happens here on Earth matters and how we live does affect who we will be in the coming world. Life isn’t all pointless after all – thanks be to God!

Preparation

Besides reading the scriptures and becoming familiar with the songs, you’ll want to do the QUIZ to see where you stand on this week’s sermon topic. Go ahead, it’s fun!

Take it Further

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (audio file)

 
Untitled Document