Where Do Preachers Get Sermon Ideas?

There are many possible answers to that question. Most often, my ideas come from simply studying the Bible and thinking about what I perceive to be the needs of the congregation. Sometimes, I pick up good useful ideas from books, articles, and online writings that I read. I don't think I've ever just taken somebody else's material and preached it verbatim, but just about all preachers borrow material and ideas from others. For example, Sunday night's sermon will talk about things we need to know about the Lord taken from the letters to the seven churches of Asia (in Revelation chapters 2 & 3). I'll be taking a class on Revelation in June taught by Dr. Stafford North from Oklahoma Christian University. Brother North has written a study book on Revelation (Unlocking Revelation. Nashville: 21st Century Christian, 2003). I've developed a sermon based on these seven "lessons" from his chapter on the seven churches:

1. Jesus knows His churches.
2. Christ wants churches to guard their teaching.
3. Christ wants Christians to live in purity.
4. Christ wants Christians to grow in service.
5. Christ wants Christians to be ready for persecution.
6. Christ wants Christians to know they can be lost.
7. Christ will richly reward those who overcome.

Come Sunday night April 27 at 6 p.m. and see how I develop these points . . . some of the ideas come from Dr. North; some of them are my own -- hopefully, all of them will be biblical and helpful to you as you seek to live each day for Jesus.

Ken and Tami

The Skagit Valley church is going to have to say goodbye to Ken and Tami Beach in the near future. When Trish and I made a three-day exploratory visit to Burlington for us to evaluate the possibility of working together in January 2007, we spent one night each with the Beaches, the Blunts, and the Wilkisons. Each family impressed us, but I'd have to say that Tami probably made the strongest impression of all (Ken was working at the hospital much of that weekend so we didn't get to spend as much time with him). Tami came across to us as a very compassionate and loving Christian lady, but one who wanted to get things going in a higher gear in the Lord's work here in the Skagit Valley. She was candid about problems the church had experienced in the past, but was also very positive in her outlook about what could come to pass in the future. She made us want to come here and be a part of the good things to come.

After we moved here in June, we quickly learned that Ken and Tami were good people to be around. Whether it was sitting with Ken in elders-preacher meetings and praying together for the needs of people in the congregation or sitting around a dining room table playing cards, there was a special bond of cammaderie and friendship with them. Obviously we aren't the only ones who have that kind of feeling about the Beaches. They will be missed by the whole church.

For quite a while, Ken had been aware of the danger of having his job (nurse anesthetist) replaced by anesthesiologists at Skagit Valley Hospital. When that came to pass, Ken first hoped to find employment at another hospital in commuting distance so he and Tami could still live in Mount Vernon. Ken is blessed/cursed with an occupation that is in great demand in some areas of the country while few jobs are available in other areas where the supply of physician anesthesiologists is greater. Eventually they concluded that would have to seek employment in some other part of the country. They visited hospitals in several places including Montana, Missouri, Virginia, but ended up accepting a job in northeastern Iowa. Ken will begin his work there in the near future, but they may be back here from time to time until their house sells.

Ken served as an elder of the Skagit Valley church. During that time, he served well in shepherding the church in the direction of greater service and commitment to doing the Lord's work and following carefully the teachings of Scripture. There is no doubt in my mind that I'm speaking for the whole church in saying that both Ken and Tami will be missed. We really and truly wish you didn't have to go, but we know that our loss will be a blessing to the kingdom of Christ in Iowa.

Back to Blogging

After almost a year, I'm starting again with good intentions in the world of blogging. This time I am undertaking to keep not one -- but two -- blogs current. This blog -- now titled Heavenly Ambition will be intended as a communication tool for the Skagit Valley Church of Christ. As God's people, it surely must be our ambition to get to heaven. All of us need all the encouragement and support we can get in that journey . . . so here we'll try to do just a small part of the job of building one another up in a sustaining faith that can see us through all the troubles and trials as well as sharing with one another's joys and triumphs. In other words, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. Share your comments and news . . . and make a habit of checking Heavenly Ambition frequently. I commit to do my best to keep it current.

The other blog is more personal. Some of it will be biblical in content. Other posts may deal with politics, sports, or anything else that interests me at the moment. It is titled Seeking the Light and its URL is http://lightseeking.blogspot.com/ Keep an eye on that one, too . . . and feel free to respond to anything I say.

Packing Up the Computers Tomorrow

This will be the last post to this blog until we get to Burlington. If all goes according to plan, we will be arriving there Saturday, June 2nd.

The U-Load trailer will be here Thursday and we'll start loading. We hope to get about everything on the trailer Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Then Monday and Tuesday, we'll be getting the house nice and ready for the new owners. The trailer will be picked up next Tuesday, May 22. We're scheduled to close on the sale of the house on the 23rd, then Jared graduates Thursday afternoon. He is taking his finals this week . . . Thursday will be his last day of actual school.

With our furniture gone, we'll move into a little apartment the Leonard Street church has in its building and stay there through Sunday morning, May 27th. I'll preach that morning, then after a farewell luncheon we'll leave Pensacola and start our journey. We'll spend Memorial Day with my older son Daniel and his family in Hartselle, Alabama. Tuesday, the 29th will be the real beginning of our cross-country trip. We hope to make it to somewhere in Missouri that day. On Wednesday, we're planning to travel on across Missouri and Kansas on I-70. Thursday will take us on to Denver, up to Cheyenne, and westward through Wyoming. On Friday, we'll go through the northeast corner of Utah, cut across Idaho, and get into Oregon . . . perhaps somewhere around Pendleton. Then if all goes well, we'll come up I-82 through Yakima and intersect I-90 at Ellensburg. Then, we'll cross the Cascades and head north on I-5. On a trip this long, there is a high probability something will interfere with the itinerary . . . but there you have our plans at this point.

Anyway, in less than 3 weeks, we should be there and ready to get started with our work together for the Lord. I have felt all along that this is the Lord's will and I believe He will bless our labors together in a very special way. Let us pledge ourselves to making 2007 the beginning of a great new chapter in the history of the Skagit Valley church. If we secure the blessings of heaven by doing things according to God's will, the possibilities are great beyond our ability to imagine.

See you soon!!

John & Trish

5 Weeks From Today

Five weeks from today -- Tuesday, May 29th -- we expect to leave Pensacola and start the long trip west. Somehow, my mind goes back to the old pioneers getting ready to leave in a wagon train headed up the Oregon Trail. We are hoping our trip will be quite a bit easier than those who headed that direction 150 years ago. Still, I believe our anticipation level must be about as high as those intrepid adventurers who packed their belongings in a Conestoga wagon and headed west.

I know that the Skagit Valley church has gone a long time without a preacher. You have been blessed by having several men with the ability to ably preach the gospel. I expect, nonetheless, that you are ready for a new preacher to get into town and for the next stage in the development of the Lord's work in Burlington and the Skagit Valley to get underway. I know that it seems so long to me since we first started talking about the possibility of working together last November. Now the time is getting closer and Trish and I are very excited about it. I hope all of you are, too.

The Leonard Street church here in Pensacola, FL where I have worked the past 15 years has a new minister scheduled to arrive in mid-May. Barry O'Dell and his family will be moving here from Ashland City, Tennessee. The O'Dells seem to me to be a good fit with the church here; I believe the work will go well. The elders here tried to work the schedule so that there would be a brief overlap between their arrival and our departure so we can "hand off the baton" in a smooth way. I am happy it is turning out that way.

I want to pass on to those who served on the Preacher Search Committee at Skagit Valley that the questionaire and interview questions you prepared are getting a lot of mileage. The committee here used them extensively in their preacher search process. Barry O'Dell was so impressed with them that he asked for copies of everything so he could take them back to Tennessee and share them with the elders of the church he is leaving. If this chain continues, the work you put into developing those questions might have a part in matching up who knows how many churches and preachers.

I have been quieter about mentioning the sale of our house after the misadventure we had the first time. However, we have had a second contract now since week before last and we finally learned this morning that their mortgage application has been approved. I don't want to rejoice too soon. Once bitten, twice shy (I believe that's the old saying). However, it appears that everything is moving forward in an orderly way toward us being able to close on the sale of the house before we leave. Please keep praying for that.

In Christ,

John & Trish

Understanding What Happened at Virginia Tech

The following is an article I wrote for next Sunday's Leonard Street bulletin. I thought I'd share it with you. I invite your comments.

Understanding What Happened
at Virginia Tech

The title of this article is overly ambitious. I don’t know that we can understand everything that happened April 16 in Blacksburg, Virginia. The numbers killed and wounded are greater, but otherwise it seems more of the same sort of thing we’ve heard too many times in recent years. Paducah. Jonesboro. Columbine. The Amish schoolhouse. Over and over again, killers have gone on “rampages” seemingly determined to go out in a blaze of glory and take as many innocent bystanders as possible with them.

What causes this kind of vicious, violent behavior? It is easy to blame the environment of violence in our culture. Everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded with it: movies, television, certain kinds of music, video games, as well as nearly every newscast and newspaper front page. Surely all of that exposure to blowing things up and blowing people away has some damaging effect on us.

We may be coarsened or desensitized by what we see and hear, but most people don’t get automatic rifles and start blasting away because they have been exposed to a violent world. There is something more at work in incidents like the Virginia Tech shootings.

Evil came into the world in Eden when the first man and woman made their unfortunate choice to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit. Remember that fruit came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [Genesis 2:9]. Adam and Eve were so blessed in their paradise existence in the garden. Their whole world was perfect. Everything God had made was “very good” [Genesis 1:31]. However, there was just one problem – that one tree which had the potential to bring the awfulness of sin into the world. Greek mythology traces the existence of all life’s problems back to the opening of Pandora’s box. The Bible has a more truthful explanation. The first humans had the ability to decide for themselves whether or not they would obey God. The serpent tempted Eve and she made a bad choice. Adam followed her lead with his eyes open. He understood what he was doing and did it anyway [1 Timothy 2:14]. Since that time, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve have continued to make bad choices which open the door wider and wider for evil to wreak its damage in the world. Adam and Eve charted the course, but we have all traveled down the same path. Romans 5:12 explains, Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

We can be thankful that most of sinful humanity does not give in to evil to the extent that Cho Seung-Hui did in Blacksburg last Monday. I don’t pretend to understand the psychology of what was going on in that young man’s mind, but I see the fingerprint of the god of this world in his actions [2 Corinthians 4:4].

The good news is that good will triumph over evil. Forgiveness is available to every sinner who will believe in Christ, repent of his sins, and submit to the will of God. Baptism washes away sins. God is a loving Father who will protect us so that temptation can be resisted [1 Corinthians 10:13]. When we fail and give in to temptation, God is ready to forgive us as we repent and seek to come back to Him. The answer to all the evil in the world is found only in faith in Jesus Christ [John 8:24; John 14:6]. ...John Gaines

Seven Weeks!

I have to admit that I've been bitten by the blogger procrastination bug for the past few weeks. I've had good intentions, of course, but you know where that leads . . . .

Everything is still on track with our moving plans. We're expecting to be in Burlington sometime the week of June 3rd, so that is only a little more than seven weeks away. I'll do a better job communicating with you regularly between now and then.

One of the big deals for us this past month had to do with finding the best way to move from Florida to Washington. We started by getting estimates from several moving companies. The highest estimate came in at $12,500; the lowest a few dollars below $10,000. The church there had agreed to cover the cost of our move . . . that's standard operating procedure with preacher moves . . . but that was an awful burden for the Skagit Valley church to have to bear. I had several phone conversations with Jim & Ken . . . resulting in the elders and I agreeing that we needed to find a more economical alternative. After investigating U Haul and a couple of U-Load, We Drive outfits, we decided to go with a company called ABF. They will bring a 28' trailer to our house in Pensacola and give us several days to load it. Then they will come back and pick it up and deliver it to 1803 Cascade Vista in Burlington . . . where Trish and I will be mighty grateful for all the help we can get unloading. It's a little more labor on our part, but it will result in about a 40% savings for the church. Trish, Jared, and I are perfectly OK with this. With adequate time to load the trailer carefully, I'm confident we can get everything we need to bring packed on the trailer.

I've probably had more reason to keep up with the weather out there than you have had to pay attention to the Florida panhandle. However, we had a severe cold snap last weekend . . . temperatures around freezing with highs in the 40s. I checked on the Internet last Saturday and your temperature in Burlington was about 15 degrees warmer than we were in Pensacola. We drove to church last Sunday morning with sleet coming down. The valleys of roofs were filled with white stuff . . . not snow, but accumulation of ice particles. We seldom get that kind of weather in the dead of winter, and never before on Easter Sunday. The sun is shining brightly today and it is warm again . . . but we had several days of overcast skies and cool drizzle. I can only conclude that the Lord has been getting me ready for the Pacific Northwest!

Sunday will be an unusual day for me. After being the preacher for the Leonard Street church since 1991, I'll be sitting in the pews and listening as a guest preacher "tries out" for the minister's position here. I really hope it works out well. The elders and deacons here have done a thorough job investigating and evaluating all the resumes they received. They selected two finalists and scheduled them to visit. One of those men accepted another work before his scheduled time to visit us, so Leonard Street is left with only one candidate. If it does not work out with him, they will have to start the process over again, which will make it unlikely that a new preacher will be on board by the time we leave. Please keep Leonard Street in your prayers; there are really good and loving people here and this will be a good work for someone. The fact that I decided it was time for me to leave is no kind of bad reflection on this church. I am ready to move to a new work and a new area, but it is bittersweet for us as we get closer to the time we'll be leaving.

Still, in seven weeks we will be on the road crossing America on our way to our new home in the Skagit Valley. We're going to arrive with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of ideas . . . but we will have to work together to accomplish what the Lord has in mind for all of us. Please be praying for us and be praying that our team can grow stronger day by day in the way we love one another and in the way we serve our risen Savior.

John & Trish