July 2008

Alex Chediak has more information on the Obama/McCain joint appearance at Saddleback:

The folks at Saddleback have set-up a website describing the August 16 joint appearance between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain (moderated by Pastor Rick Warren). Ticketing information will be available August 1st.

This historic forum will be the only joint event for the two, and the last public appearance for either candidate prior to the two-week hiatus during each party’s national convention.

Due to Secret Service mandate, tickets will be required for the event in the main auditorium, but the program will be broadcast live in multiple venues on the Saddleback campus, as well as on several national broadcast networks and online. It will also be streamed live on www.SaddlebackCivilForum.com.

Update: Ross Douthat has a post on Obama and Evangelicals. He concludes it by saying: “Obama’s performance at Saddleback (and McCain’s) will probably be at least mildly important in determining how those undecided evangelicals cast their votes.”

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New sermon posted at WasecaChurch.org.

To say I got carried away with my sermon today is a slight understatement. A video I intended to use wouldn’t play on our worship center’s computer (and that would be the Pastor’s fault, A/V guys did their part) because it was in a format that our computer would not play. The time it would take to download the software, or to download the video in a new format made it an impossible to fix problem. So with no video, I tried to fill in the gaps, and boy did I fill. I had planned 10 minutes for the beginning of the sermon, 5 minutes of video, and then 3-5 minutes for conclusion and challenge. While I didn’t time it, I suspect my sermon hit around 25-28 minutes! It’s on video, so I’ll wait and see what the official count is.

I have a lot more to post on coming soon. I apologize for this blog being fairly inactive this week. I was ordained this afternoon, and that has been my complete focus. More on the ordination tomorrow.

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The sermon I preached today is now posted on our church’s web site - Wasecachurch.org. Along with that I posted a video I showed to start the sermon off. The video is the YouTube version, and we played the high definition version in the service. But you’ll get the idea. It got a lot of laughs! This sermon brings to close the series I have been preaching that came out of Ken Sande’s book The Peacemaker.

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I’m not certain that it’s newsworthy (they crossed the 10,000 barrier a while ago) but Eagle Brook Church of Lino Lakes/White Bear Lake/Spring Lake Park is in the Star Tribune today. The author seems to be a bit slanted in his perspective, but any publicity is good publicity is how the saying goes, and this isn’t really negative, just not quite positive. Nonetheless it is great to hear of a regional church who is making a difference in their community. I have a number of friends on staff at Eagle Brook -e.g. I was Pastor Bob Merritt’s teaching assistant for a couple of years in Seminary, Jason Strand who is reference in the article for his sermon went to Bethel Seminary with me, and I was on staff at Spring Lake Park Baptist Church with some of the Eagle Brook staff before SLPBC became a campus of Eagle Brook Church.

Reading the comments on the Trib article, you’ll find a lot of uninformed people lashing out against Eagle Brook. In spite of the size of Eagle Brook Church, they have worked very intentionally to connect people in small groups so they have a strong connecting point at church. They have more volunteers on a given weekend than 95+% of all churches have attenders. They preach the Word, making Jesus know, giving Glory to God. They are making a difference in their community and the world. They are helping other regional churches in many ways. They are doing great things! But because they are big, some people will blindly lash out against them. That’s silly and immature. I pastor a small church, and understand that not everyone will be comfortable in a sanctuary that seats 2200 people, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Lives are being transformed by Jesus there, eternities are being changed. Glory to God for that. May they continue to grow and may their influence multiply as they give credit to God for all their success!

My last post was in May.  I simply stopped posting after that because using Voxtropolis had become such a headache for me.  Rarely would it load, and it was constantly flaky and buggy.  I realize I get what I pay for, so I simply quit including Vox in my posts.  It appears that things are good now, things appear to be stable.  So I will begin to include Voxtropolis in my posts again.  My regular blog is @ http://mrclm.blogspot.com and that is where I post first and most frequently.  If you want to follow my day to day blogging, that is the place to go.  Voxtropolis only gets the bigger things, or things I deem most worthy of letting the whole world know about.  I also post at my church’s web site with some regularity - though it is generally about sermons I have written or things going on related to my church.