This message was recorded for our church’s Christmas Eve service as we were unable to attend this year. If you missed our service or want to hear it again, I’ve posted it here for you. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I’ve Discovered a New Gifting
The Christmas season may not seem like a time to start looking for personal giftings, but I discovered something new over the weekend.
To be honest, it isn’t a spiritual gift. I had hoped it was just a fluke. My wife’s inability, though, means it is something special. What could be so special? You’ll never guess.
Why I Won’t Take A Christmas Eve Offering
Over the past couple of weeks I have started looking ahead to 2012 on the calendar. This involves printing a hard copy "master" calendar for the church and keeping track of services, meetings, fellowships and other church activities. While I’m jumping forward, I am also polishing up our December calendar of Christmas events.
This week I received a request from a well-meaning organization to promote giving hope this Christmas by donating three dollars to send a Bible to needy countries around the world. In the introductory letter for the promotion, one of the suggestions was to dedicate our church’s Christmas Eve offering to their cause.
I didn’t think about what was being said the first time I read the letter. But when I looked at it again today, I was shocked. My concern was not that I should give extra funds to this cause, but that churches make a regular practice of taking offerings on Christmas Eve.
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The “Why” Behind Your Activity
TGIF! That phrase is on the minds of millions of people as they wind down their work weeks, planning for Friday night. What are your plans for this weekend? Maybe you have a Friday routine with coworkers, friends or family. Or maybe you’ve planned something different, a distraction from your regular routine. When was the last time you sat down and thought about why you made those particular plans?
Whether we are willing to admit it or not, there is always a “why” behind our choice of activity. So when our responsibilities are fulfilled for the week, and time is in our control, why do we choose the activities that we do?
E-Book Review: “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit”
What did your church do for Easter this year? Was it the same sort of program, if not the same program that they did last year? Does your midweek adult Bible study service look the same as it did fifteen, twenty, or thirty years ago?
Don’t get me wrong, if something that your church does works and has great results year after year, it may only need the occasional tweak to keep it effective. But many of us are repeat offenders. We repeat, repeat, repeat, and we keep on doing repeating, with no end in sight, just like this run-on sentence, and with no results, because we are just plain stuck.
If you think you might be stuck or if you’re are confident that you are, there is hope for you. Tony Morgan just released the second installment in The Leisure Suit Series of free e-books: “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit.”
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Why I Waited a Year for My First Vacation
This past Sunday I did something for the first time in over a year. I missed a Sunday at church. I’m not really sure when I last took Sunday off, even before we took our current pastoral position last August. But I do know that it was an awkward day for me.
You might think me a little unbalanced for not having a Sunday off in over a year. One member joked that the church must pay me so much that I feel too guilty to miss a week. That was not the reason, of course, but I was very intentional about it. While I did take a few days during the week a couple of times over that year, it was very important to me to be in the building every week.
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Chris MacKinnon 