Wednesday, February 01, 2006

What is essential to learn about the church?

Once upon a time Lent was a time of preparation for new Christians. During the 40 days of Lent they prepared themselves to be baptized on Easter Sunday. Keeping this in mind I am planning a sermon series for the 5 Sundays of Lent. The series topic, in general terms, is the church.

SO what 5 sermons need to be heard? THe first SUnday of every seaason is communion in this congregation so that gives the topic for sermon #1--an introduction to UCCan understandings of communion. We tentatively have a Baptism set for the 2nd Sunday (once the Board gives its OK) so that lays out an obvious choice for sermon #2. But what about the other three?

What are the 5 essential things you would want to know about the church? Organizational structure of the wider church (what an exciting sermon that would be)? Membership vs. full membership (baptized vs baptized and confirmed)? Doctrinal stuff? How a worship service is built? What would you want to hear about?

2 comments:

  1. Ok, well...not so much the organizational structure of the church -- I would be snoozing. BUT -- having said that -- when the President of Conference came to our church and I made a big visual of the church structure -- SO many people thanked me and said they had never understood how it all worked. So just ignore my snoring...

    How about a history lesson on Union itself? I'm reflecting on that quite a bit these days, and drawing some parallels to today's issues of limited resources and the need to come together.

    Sounds like a good series Gord. Would you mind if I hijacked it? I promise I would give you the credit for the theme...It just seems very timely for our congregation...

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  2. Hijack at will Sue. I was also thinking of something on special services--especially funerals and how important it is to have discussions with your family about what you do/do not want. And hm, wonder which Conference President that might have been.... :)

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