This is the quote from Jacques Ellul from last Sunday morning’s sermon.

What are your thoughts?  How do you express your freedom in Christ on the Lord’s Day?

From Ethics of Freedom pp 128-130

“How can this day be lived except as the day of freedom?  How can one make of Sunday a gloomy day of constraint and boredom?  There is an unfashionable absurdity here which can only be satanic.  Work has become a burden, an obligation, a bondage.  Man cannot escape it.  It not longer expresses what he is.  It is a battle against hostile nature.  In this drudgery a break is offered.  The condemnation is lifted for a moment.  The alienation is ended.  Man can catch a glimpse of what he might have been.  He can choose what he wants to do and how to express himself.  This is a festal time.  The liberation from alienation and work is an explosive feast.  The daily round is set aside.  The regular order is rejected.  Another fulfillment of time is found.

If Sunday means this, however, we must reject in its name the seven modern forms of leisure, namely empty leisure, organized leisure, leisure as escape, as conformity, as compensation, as meaninglessness, and as destruction.  At all points leisure is the opposite of freedom.  The man of leisure is more a slave than a working man.  Is Sunday to yield to the discipline of leisure, worship to idleness?  No doubt this is in fact happening, but in truth we should see that it opens the way to bondage.  Servitude replaces the expression of freedom.  Obviously the Christian does not understand the holy day if on it he prefers to head for the beach or the ski slopes.  It is not that he has been badly taught or does not need rest.  But he will not take up his freedom.  He is not acting like a man who is freed in Christ.  Nor has he discovered that prayer and worship in fact refresh him more effectively than eight hours of play.  There is, of course, no point in hurrying after these people who flee life, these liberated ones who are in search of bondage.  Better be honest and see clearly where the Christians are in the domain of freedom by asking where they are on the Lord’s Day.”

While on vacation I did some reading. One of the books I read was Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome by Kent and Barbara Hughes. Kent Hughes served as Senior Pastor of College Church, Wheaton, IL for 27 years. I took the book along because I was trying to understand why, given a wonderfully supportive congregation, I was feeling so stressed and tired. The book helped me start thinking and I want to share with you some of my story.

Its ugly head reared itself in 1983. The roots were undoubtedly already there but in 1983 the weed began to grow. Mine is a common weed with a common name – FEAR. (more…)

Construction is finished, but before we can use the area, we’re going to need help dusting, sweeping, mopping, hanging shelves and whatnot. If you’ve got tools and skills, bring them too! See you Saturday!

I have read the book Grace Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel and have gotten so much out of it that I feel moved to teach a Sunday School Class based on it.

What I love about this book is that it taps into basic human needs for all people, not just little ones and their parents. It is truly a book about relationships of all kinds, but obviously focuses on the specific relationship between parents and their children. (more…)