Snow Hill News Blog

Sunday at Snow Hill

A Special Guest - Allan Karr

 

More than ten years ago we responded to a request to help plant a church in Douglass County, Colorado. Allan Karr contacted me and asked if we would consider helping financially with the dream of a new church.

We took the matter under prayerful consideration and agree to a three year commitment to help start Castle Valley Community Church. Allan was recently profiled by Oklahoma Baptist University where we met as Freshmen. Here is a clip from that profile, 

"I got a call from Golden Gate Seminary about joining The Nehemiah Project," he said. "The North American Mission Board and Golden Gate have a partnership with the project, and they both asked me to join."

At the time, Karr did not feel led to leave Colorado, so the seminary offered for him to stay in the area. Karr signed on to become a professor of church planting for the seminary and he also was designated as a national missionary by the North American Mission Board, serving as a director for The Nehemiah Project, helping to better equip church planters.

Karr quickly found that he received more than just a teaching position. He also had the opportunity to work with a multitude of diverse cultures, backgrounds and languages.

"I really get to be like a foreign missionary," he said. "Ninety percent of my time I spend with international people, especially with my students. It is very diverse, which I like. It's my passion."

 

What Is God to do?

From Pastor Todd's weekly email,

Finally, the Hosea passage gives us a glimpse of a conversation God has with himself. You may take this as odd, but if you have been a parent or responsible for younger siblings at any point in your life then you know why you may be found talking to yourself.  Despite your best attempts to tend and care for those children it seems they are always looking for a way out from under that influence. Even more they tend to walk away from rather than be drawn by our cords of love. What is a parent to do? What is a God to do?  Show mercy. Gather the people together again. In our lives may we exhibit that same trait. Ready to show mercy when the impulse is anger and wrath. If God who is often right to be angry over our dismissal of his love shows mercy, how important would it be for people who claim his name and live in a relationship of love with him to follow that example?

You may listen to more thoughts on the texts for this coming Sunday by clicking here.

Looking forward to sharing life and faith with you this Sunday. See you on The Hill!

Pastor Todd began his weekly email about the texts for the coming week this way,

Chuck Berryhill and me traded emails earlier this week. We acknowledged both the reality of busy schedules and evidence that despite busy schedules people will do what they want to do. The email conversation reminded me of something I recently read.

 

It seems that the seventeenth century French mathematician turned philosopher/theologian, Blaise Paschal, had some thoughts about why people fill their lives with busyness. He wrote in his famous work, Pensees,

 

I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Paschal has much to say about this thought. At its core, he suggests people live into, even create, distractions so as to avoid the hole in our lives that may only be filled by God. It terrifies us to think of our own mortality, limitations, and failures. He continues, 

Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it.

The way to avoid thinking about it is to fill our lives with distractions intended to make us happy. We spend a great deal of time before we learn these externals really do not make us happy. But, we tend to continue to fill our time with whatever distractions may keep us from thinking about what it means to be a human being.

 You may read the entire piece here. If you would like to receive this email weekly, you may sign-up in the right sidebar.

And, Pastor Todd posted some audio reflections centered around the Scriptures for this coming Sunday here.

Shaping Us Toward Sunday ... Texts for the Week

From Pastor Todd's Weekly Email ...

I was sharing a conversation recently where it was remarked, "Can you believe how fast the year is going by?" We all agreed that at some point our parents or grandparents often made this remark while we felt like life dragged on slowly. Then we all acknowledged just how fast time does go by. Sometimes it goes by so fast we forget just how we are to make use of our time. Jesus remarked about time and the need to make the most of the "day" and the Apostle Paul notes that we must "redeem the time." If we are not about things that give preference to the mission of God in the world we are forgetting the "day" Jesus described and we fail to bring to bear any kind of "redeeming" of the time in which we live.

 

Our texts for this week challenge us in a variety of ways. Last year I had the privilege of sharing a small collection of pastor's talking about preaching with musical artist Michael Card. At the time Card was working on a book on the Gospel of Luke. One theme he replayed over and over was, "the people who should 'get' Jesus don't and the people who shouldn't get Jesus do.' That could easily describe some of the setting for the Old Testament text for this week. You would think the King of Israel would get it when an opportunity to point to the work of Israel's God comes along he would seize it. Instead he responds out of feat, if not mis-perceiving the ways of God.

Scriptures for the Week

Naboth, Simon, and Paul. Three personalities different stories. Intrigue. Treachery. Abuse of Power. Failure to recognize the need for forgiveness. The Faith of Christ. The Faith in Christ. Crucified selves.

Take some time to read the texts for Sunday. What strikes you about the lead characters? What kinds of damage is done by power?

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Scriptures for the Week - Trinity Sunday

The relational characterizations of the Trinity in Jesus' words draw attention to the relational nature of what it means to follow Jesus. Rather than immediately equipped with what we "know" we learn a dependence on the Spirit of God to illuminate what we read of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Mediating the presence of the Christ to us, the Spirit reminds us just what the Father wants us to remember - the Jesus Way in all things.

Take some time with the John 16 passage and the Romans 5 passage. Lay these side by side and see in what ways the progression to hope pointed up by Paul bears a striking relationship to the life work of Jesus. And since we witness the work of the Spirit in the life of Jesus we may well underscore our own need for dependence on the Spirit as we participate in the Kingdom of God to make the Good News of Jesus known.

What are your thoughts?

Pastor Todd's Audio Reflection for Sunday's Scriptures

Facing his own fears as he followed the lead of the Spirit to visit Cornelius he had to know that no one, even Gentiles, were outside of the love of God if he himself could be reconciled.

The story behind the events of Peter's words in Acts 11 reveal personal discovery and a means to mature to a new place of following Jesus. Here is a link to Pastor Todd's audio reflection on the Scriptures for this coming Sunday.

Pastor Todd hopes you will add these reflections to your preparation for worship, fellowship and participating in the sermon from week to week. Leave your thoughts here in the comment section or over at Pastor Todd's website.

You may listen by going here. Click on the "play now" or "download" for listening later.

We will share the Lord's Supper/Communion during worship this Sunday.

Scriptures for the Week

Sunday Pastor Todd noted that at Babel God scattered and in Jesus he gathers. We battle our own culture with its inherent segregating of people - ethnically, socially, economically, along the lines of success and failure. We long for something new.

Our texts for this week describe occasions where something is new - something constructive. Skeptics express a wariness that anything can bring about the kind of radical new-ness Jesus lays claim to. Cynics distrust any assertion offering a way forward in virtue that does not have a material expression.

The passage from Acts notes a material shift in the way in which Jews and Gentiles related to one another in Jesus. No longer at odds because of the differing ethic and cultural distinctions, Peter relayed the very way God had prompted repentance in him - a change of mind that produced a material difference in how he would engage people different than himself.

The Gospel passage considers the new-ness brought by Jesus to constitute a new way of being with others - love for one another. More than just a "principled approach" which often remains that, just a principle. Jesus indicates the material shift would be evident and apparent by those who noted the differing way in which those who followed him would relate to others.

Finally, the Revelation passage once again portrays the theme of new-ness with the coming "new heaven, new earth, and new Jerusalem." Those aspects of the material creation that were once at bay would be brought together where John from Patmos describes the dwelling of God would be with people. This new constructive way for people to be together rests on the reconciling work of Jesus, the Christ. He brings those which have been at odds together. Here the vision is one wherein the once far off God is now the very near God who dwells with people. The result is a new-ness that many long for today.

We may present to them this new-ness with the hope we have in the final fulfillment of that picture with the second Advent of Jesus. Remember, we continue to celebrate the realities of the Resurrection by living into these new constructive ways of being people made in the image of God who live reconciled lives in love with others.

Scriptures for the Week - Second Sunday in Eastertide

For the next six weeks we continue celebrating Easter and the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus. In the same way we prefer not to zip past Christmas and into the New Year, we choose instead to linger awhile at the empty tomb with many in the wider Church.

Here at Snow Hill we believe the story of God in Jesus Christ does not prompt us to pour all our resources into one day, but every day. And as the church we understand the Resurrection has implications far and wide - well beyond Easter Sunday Morning. We applaud the many who view this as their one time to pull out all the stops. We want to pull out the stops every day in our living our the Resurrection in our own lives.

Sharing the next six weeks of Eastertide may help move us to see the beauty of living Resurrected lives for the glory of God and the blessing of the world. So, put away your Easter duds and put on your living clothes and let's consider the ongoing implications of the Resurrection where you find yourself living every day.

Our Scriptures for this week are found in the right sidebar. Read them. Meditate on them. Share a thought about what you have read. How does it point us to living Resurrected lives? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Scriptures for the Week, UPDATE

You will find the texts for this Sunday, and every Sunday, in the right sidebar. Here is a clip from Pastor Todd's weekly email regarding our texts for this week. This week is considered Transfiguration Sunday in the Christian Seasons Calendar. It precedes the Season of Lent. 

See you Sunday.

Our texts this week could be summed up in the word "reflection." Moses reflects the glory of God in his face. Jesus is "transfigured" before the eyes of Peter, James, and John. The Apostle Paul reminds us of Moses and suggests Jesus lifts the veil that keeps us from seeing the glory of God. Our experience with the goodness of God, his glory, alters us. Paul uses the phrase, "are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."

 

The work of the Spirit in our lives takes us from one degree of glory to another. The implications for what Paul writes is profound. It helps us see both others better and be more self-aware of what changes we need and face. In the first place, we must know people, human beings, are made in the image of God. Our texts from Isaiah last Sunday remind us personal and social sin make us uncomfortably aware of our need for change. To treat other people as less than created in the image of God is both a personal and social sin. Each dimension of that sin has insufferable consequences in our relationships with others.

 

And, as we increasingly become aware of the changes necessary to reflect Jesus we work by the power of the Spirit with all the energy we have to be today for the world what Jesus was in the world in his day (Col. 1:28-29). Living the Jesus way helps remove the veil for those in need of God's grace and mercy.

Pastor Todd just posted audio thoughts on this week's texts here.