If you entered the church building any evening this past week you heard a lot of noise! Laughter, singing, yelling, and loud music came from within the halls and rooms of OPCC. Children were excited to learn more about God as they eagerly came to participate in Vacation Bible School each evening from Sunday to Thursday. Adult and youth volunteers were excited to build relationships with these kids as they led the children through lessons and activities. 

We divert from our sermon series this week in order to recap all we've learned in VBS. We will join together on Sunday morning in high energy praise as the children lead us in worship. Be prepared to experience God from the point of view of a child. I am pretty sure you won't be disappointed. You might just find God in new ways as we dance, sing, pray, and experience the love of God in scripture. 

Our main scripture verse for the week was, "In God we live, move, and exist." Pretty short and sweet, as well as easy to memorize. The larger context of the verse is above. 

The verbs in this short memory verse, "live, move, and exist", are anything but passive. They point us towards the activity of God in our world. They point us towards our own active involvement with God and our world. 

Join us Sunday morning as we explore "God's Love in Action".

When was the last time that you wrote a letter?  I know many of our church members write cards to other church members, and I'm sure there are lovely messages exchanged between each, but what about a letter?  My fiance and I are full-on in writing wedding shower thank-you notes (we're a bit behind, be gracious please!), but I can't think of the last time I wrote a letter.

I can think of the last time I wrote an email - even a long one at that.  Sometimes my brother sends me text messages that should be letters because they come in 5 different parts, but I can't think of the last time I sat down and wrote a letter.

Think back, really hard to the last time that you wrote a letter, and tell me this.  Would you like it to be published as a book?  That is what we are dealing with when we come to most of the second half of the New Testament, and specifically when we come to 3 John, the third letter written to the community of believers that were being led by John, or at least his initial followers.

It is important as we continue tor read ahead, that we remember this.  As we read any of the epistles, and especially as we read 3 John, we are reading a letter that was written from one individual to another, with a specific message in mind.  There were very specific circumstances with a very specific time frame.  However, there are also messages of the Gospel present in each and every one of these letters, which is why we still read them today.  

Hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the midst of hate, and forgiveness in the midst of evil wrongdoing. Life in the midst of death, welcome in the midst of betrayal.  This is the Gospel. This is Christianity at its best and finest.



What do you take from this letter?  What message of Gospel are you receiving?  Come join the conversation, and join us Sunday morning!

Scripture: 3 John 1:1-15 (Or, the entire book)


1 From the elder.

To my dear friend Gaius, whom I truly love.

2 Dear friend, I’m praying that all is well with you and that you enjoy good health in the same way that you prosper spiritually.

3 I was overjoyed when the brothers and sisters arrived and spoke highly of your faithfulness to the truth, shown by how you live according to the truth. 4 I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are living according to the truth. 5 Dear friend, you act faithfully in whatever you do for our brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers. 6 They spoke highly of your love in front of the church. You all would do well to provide for their journey in a way that honors God, 7 because they left on their journey for the sake of Jesus Christ without accepting any support from the Gentiles. 8 Therefore, we ought to help people like this so that we can be coworkers with the truth.

9 I wrote something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, doesn’t welcome us. 10 Because of this, if I come, I will bring up what he has done—making unjustified and wicked accusations against us. And as if that were not enough, he not only refuses to welcome the brothers and sisters but stops those who want to do so and even throws them out of the church! 11 Dear friend, don’t imitate what is bad but what is good. Whoever practices what is good belongs to God. Whoever practices what is bad has not seen God.

12 Everyone speaks highly of Demetrius, even the truth itself. We also speak highly of him, and you know that what we say is true.

13 I have a lot to say to you, but I don’t want to use pen and ink. 14 I hope to see you soon, and we will speak face-to-face.

15 Peace be with you. Your friends here greet you. Greet our friends there by name.

As we continue with our sermon series covering some of the shortest books of the Bible, we come to the book of Haggai for this Sunday.  Haggai - probably not one that was on your most recent reading list - is one of the twelve minor prophets of Israel.  Called "minor" because of the length of time in which Haggai acted as a mouth-piece for the Divine, not for the impact of Haggai's prophecy, this book is a call to build a little hope.

Open your Bible to the end of the Old Testament, where we will meet Haggai following the Babylonian exile.  The Israelites have been exiled out of Jerusalem, but are now allowed back to Jerusalem, and are figuring out what to do next.  Some have returned home to Jerusalem, some never left, but rather assimilated to a certain degree with the locals.  Some continued practicing their religious festivals and stories, as best they could away from the Temple, where they believe that God was most present here on earth, while others struggled with a seemingly absent God.  The first temple, Solomon's Temple has been destroyed and these prophets - Ezra and Haggai - won't lay off, "Build the Temple! Get back to it!"

Charles H. Bayer, formerly the pastor at First Christian in St. Joseph, MO, wrote a book called "The Babylonian Captivity of the Mainline Church," in which he describes some of the struggles that the Israelites faced following the Babylonian exile and how they are remarkably similar to the struggles the Mainline Protestant Church is facing today.  He talks about the "secular assault" (Babylonian) in which we see some of the ways that we are facing pressure from "outside ways," that encourage us to abandon our faith in God.  Similarly he talks about the "fundamentalist assault," in ways that we are being told the church simply can't be the church if it doesn't look exactly the way it did prior to any kind of "exile," (or exactly the way it did in the 1950s).  As the Israelites come back to Jerusalem and are being told to build the Temple again, yet they are also facing the life that is so different from before the exile, it is difficult to find hope in a future that seems so uncertain.  Funny enough, Charles Bayer wrote this book in 1996!  

Haggai has some inspiring words for us from nearly 2500 years ago, in the same way that Charles Bayer has some inspiring words for us from just 20 years ago.  No matter if we are attempting to build a temple that matches the previous and its splendor, or if we are attempting to build a church in an ever-changing world and society - these inspiring words encourage us to focus on God.  In short it does not matter what we are building, we are building with a foundation in God and materials that include faith, hope and grace.

Even though its only 38 verses and 2 chapters long, there's a lot more to this story.  Won't you come and help us envision what this new version of church looks like?  Won't you come help us build some hope?  Join us on Sunday, June 14 - 8:30am and 10:30am!  ALL are welcome - and all means ALL!

This Sunday we will begin our series on the shortest books in the Bible and we randomly chose to begin with the Hebrew text Jonah. 

I know, most of you probably haven't even thought of the book of Jonah since you were a child. I'm not sure why we tend to focus on certain Biblical stories with children. Some of these Old Testament stories are actually very hard to teach to children. 

I will not include the text of Jonah on this blog but I encourage you to read through it before Sunday. It will only take you a few minutes. If you are unable to locate your Bible you may find the text here. 

Jonah is unlike the other prophetic books we find in the Old Testament. It does not contain the many prophesies that we find in books like Micah or Amos. Instead, it is a book can be thought of as a teaching tool for moral instruction. 

But what morals can we learn from Jonah?

Jonah is so important to the Jewish faith that it is read at the end of the Yom Kippur (or Day of Atonement). It is much more than a story about a man being swallowed by a large fish. 

In fact, there are many themes that run through the text of Jonah: God of second chances, repentance, forgiveness, listening to the call of God, and more. 

After refreshing your mind about Jonah, think about what you envision as the central teaching. Is there really a moral lesson to be learned? Or is it just a strange story about a man who wants to complain and not listen to the call of God? 

We hope to see you Sunday as we discuss this strange story and try to figure out what it might mean for us in our lives today. 

Blessings, 
Lisa