Advent Choir Rehearsal Tonight

At the church office!

Use the new entrance by new bldg

Men's event dec 12

EVENT SCHEDULE:  
11-11:30 arrival, gun check-in
11:30-12:15 Lunch
12:15 - 3 pm  safety rules review, then shooting.

What the incarnation says about God

“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is — limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death — He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with His creation, He has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile”

--Dorothy Sayers

burdened with blessing

Earth was waiting spent and restless,
With a mingled hope and fear;
And the faithful few were sighing,
Surely Lord the day is near;
The Desire of all the nations,
It is time He should appear.

In the sacred courts of Zion
Where the Lord had His abode
Where the money changers trafficked
And the sheep and oxen trod
And the world by earthly wisdom
Knew not either Lord or God.

Then the Spirit of the Highest
On a virgin meek came down
And He burdened her with blessing
And He pained her with renown
For she bare the Lord's Anointed
For His cross and for His crown.


Earth for Him had groaned and travailed
Since the ages first began
For in Him was hid the secret
That through all the ages ran
Son of Promise, Son of David
Son of God and Son of Man.

--by William Smith, author of Immortal, Invisible

"Come, ye thankful people, come"

Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.

All the world is God’s own field, fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take his harvest home;
From his field shall in that day all offenses purge away,
Giving angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store in his garner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quickly come, bring thy final harvest home;
Gather thou thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified, in thy garner to abide;
Come, with all Thine angels come, raise the glorious harvest home.

—Henry Alford, 1844"

"The General Thanksgiving "

Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we thine unworthy servants
do give thee most humble and hearty thanks
for all thy goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all men.

We bless thee for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for thine inestimable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies,
that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful;
and that we show forth thy praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to thy service,
and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost,
be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.


—Book of Common Prayer"

Thankful People

Thankful People:
"Gratefulnesse
Thou that hast giv’n so much to me,
Give one thing more, a gratefull heart.
See how thy beggar works on thee
By art.
He makes thy gifts occasion more,
And sayes, If he in this be crost,
All thou hast giv’n him heretofore
Is lost.
But thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.
Perpetuall knockings at thy doore,
Tears sullying thy transparent rooms,
Gift upon gift, much would have more,
And comes.
This notwithstanding, thou wentst on,
And didst allow us all our noise:
Nay, thou hast made a sigh and grone
Thy joyes.
Not that thou hast not still above
Much better tunes, then grones can make;
But that these countrey-aires thy love
Did take.
Wherefore I crie, and crie again;
And in no quiet canst thou be,
Till I a thankfull heart obtain
Of thee:
Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me;
As if thy blessings had spare dayes:
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.
—George Herbert, The Temple (1633)"

Jerusalem Above, by D.A. Carson

 
THE EFFORTS OF THE AUTHOR of the epistle to the Hebrews to help his readers grasp the transcendent importance of Jesus and the new covenant, over against the old covenant given by God at Sinai, precipitate a new and interesting contrast in Hebrews 12:18-24.
     On the one hand, Christians "have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire" (12:18) — the reference is clearly to Mount Sinai when God came down upon it and met with Moses.  The terror of that theophany is spelled out in graphic terms.  God himself declared, "If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned" (12:20).  Even Moses experienced deep fear (Deut. 9:19; Heb. 12:21).  Christians have not drawn near to that particular mountain.
     On the other hand, Christians have come to another mountain.  But here the author throws us a curve.  At first it sounds as if he is saying that the mountain we approach is not Sinai, connected with the desert and the giving of the law, but Mount Zion, the place where the temple was built in Jerusalem, the seat of the Davidic dynasty.  And then suddenly it becomes clear that the text is not focusing on the geographical and historical Zion, but on its antitype:  "the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God" (12:22).
     There is a great deal that could be said about this typology, but I shall restrict myself to two observations.
     First, it extends to other biblical books.  The typology itself is grounded in the return from exile.  The hope of the exiles was that they return to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem became the symbol of all that was restorative.  Already in the literature of second-temple Judaism, Jews sometimes speak of "the new Jerusalem" or the like, which is heavenly, perfect.  Similarly in the New Testament.  Paul can speak of "the Jerusalem that is above" (Gal. 4:26).  The last book of the Bible envisages the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven (Rev. 21).
     Second, if Christians have "come" to this "heavenly Jerusalem," what does this in fact mean?  It means that by becoming Christians we have joined the assembly of those "gathered" before the presence of the living God.  Our citizenship is in heaven; our names are inscribed in heaven.  We join the joyful assembly of countless thousands of angels around the throne.  In short, we have "come to God, the judge of all men"; we have joined "the spirits of righteous men made perfect" (Heb. 12:23).  Above all, we have come "to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant" (12:24).  Here is the ultimate vision of what it means to be the gathered "church of the firstborn" (Heb. 12:23).

WorkDay

Workday Saturday; TurkeyBowl Sunday

Saturday come out to church property to help do some simple landscaping

Sunday after church fellas will play a pickup flag football game

Praise God! We got our guy

God is good. All the time.

All the time, God is good.

And just in time He has given us Justin Piazza to lead our worship.

See this week's reminder and reflection for a little more.

Thankful for a Mother's Devotion | CCEF

Thankful for a Mother's Devotion | CCEF

Posted using ShareThis

Men's Retreat

Men's Retreat
April 16-17

I love that 81 year old Bob is in this pic

IMG00887.jpg

IMG00884.jpg

Sweet sweet trees

marshall tree farm is ON IT

Sweet sweet trees

marshall tree farm is ON IT

Where ccc met year one

Shrine Club on Archer

Come work Saturday!

Book it! Give us what you can!

CCC Peeps

This is offered in my ongoing attempt to help you know each other. It is as random as I am.

Who is being baptized?
Caleb Henkel & Everett Davis

Henkels: Nate, Melissa and Caleb
Nate teaches @ Chiles and Melissa @ Fla virtual, live in Williston.

Carter, Stacey, Connor and Everett
Editor with Naylor and she Children's Director CCC and private practice LMHC. Connor is an awesome 5 (or so) year old.

The Henkels are Gators. The Davises are graduates of U. of Alabama @ Tuscaloosa.
Now that I think about it, this could get ugly.

I was glad when they said..

Ground Control to Major Tom

With all serious props to David Bowie and a nod to a little start-up band named U2 (who is using the song as a recorded prelude to their 360 concerts)

The feel the song gives in the 1st 90 seconds that you are about to "take-off" and leave Earth is truly tasty. And it is truly fitting as we think @ corporate worship (because tomorrow is Ps 122, which concerns worship AND because we are coming near the Lord's Day).

Psalm 122 talks with great affection @ Jerusalem, which Rev 21 says is our future home--and Hebrews 12 says is where we worship!

So, as we gather @ 10:30am I'll be hearing Bowie whispering in my mind:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Liftoff!

Sunday we state creed and experience baptism

--Creed

"It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ."

--Dorothy Sayers, "Creed or Chaos?" The Whimsical Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1978) 34-35.

--Baptism

I’m always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the Eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.

Very often when I leave a place of worship, the first impression I have of the so-called “outside world” is how small it is—how puny its politics, paltry its appetites, squint-eyed its interests. I have just spent an hour or so with friends reorienting myself in the realities of the world—the huge sweep of salvation and the minute particularities of holiness—and I blink my eyes in disbelief that so many are willing to live in such reduced and cramped conditions. But after a few hours or days, I find myself getting used to it and going along with its assumptions, since most of the politicians and journalists, artists and entertainers, stockbrokers and shoppers seem to assume that it’s the real world.

And then

some pastor or priest

calls me back to reality with “Let us worship God,”

and I get it straight again,

see it whole.

—Eugene H. Peterson, Take & Read

(tomorrow gonna be great day)

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." --GK Chesterton

The Gospel and Miserable Sinners

One of the really surprising things about the present bewilderment of humanity is that the Christian Church now finds herself called upon to proclaim the old and hated doctrine of sin as a gospel of cheer and encouragement. The final tendency of the modern philosophies, hailed in their day as a release from the burden of sinfulness, has been to bind man hard and fast in the chains of an iron determinism. The influence of heredity and environment, of glandular makeup and the control exercised by the unconscious, of economic necessity and the mechanics of biological development, have all been invoked to assure man that he is not responsible for his misfortune and therefore not to be held guilty. Evil has been represented as something imposed on us from without, not made by us from within. The dreadful conclusion follows inevitably that as he is not responsible for evil; he cannot alter it. Even though evolution and progress may offer some alleviation in the future there is no hope for you and me now. I well remember how an aunt of mine, brought up in an old-fashioned liberalism, protested angrily against having continuously to call herself a miserable sinner when reciting the Litany. Today, if we could really be persuaded that we are miserable sinners, that the trouble is not outside us but inside us, and that therefore, by the grace of God, we can do something to put it right, we should receive that message as the most helpful and heartening thing that can be imagined. (Dorothy Sayers)

The Mississippi Delta - Mark Twain

"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their sidewalks and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. ---Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi.

creed or chaos

If doctrine is rightly understood, however, not as dry and dusty speculations, but as the biblical indicatives of God's work in creation, providence, redemption, and consummation of all things in Christ, then the doctrine is the gospel. In her book, Creed or Chaos, mystery novelist and playwright Dorothy Sayers wrote,

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as 'a bad press.' We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine-'dull dogma,' as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man-and the dogma is the drama....Now we may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all. That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find Him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed.

Help make it welcoming

Hey, we've had some larger numbers at our Sunday gatherings in the last several weeks (the Sundays I haven't preached---hmmm) and it really helps

More than you know

If a big chunk of y'all could sit towards front and center of the theater.

Consider it.

Make it a community group team-bldg event.

Thanks

Betwixt & Between

Psalm 122 is both yes and no. Our pilgrim is, like us, betwixt & between, with so much to enjoy, so much that could be threatened & lost, and so much yet to come.

--Alec Motyer

Turkey Bowl

Day after working together @ church property (and skipping F.I.yawn game together)----

After service all interested fellas (no Title 9 here) will divide up and play some friendley flag football.

What we sing matters

In his book, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century <http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Leaders-18th-Century-Ryle/dp/0851512682/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1256217708&amp;sr=8-1> , J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) spends a chapter on August Toplady, the gifted but often contentious hymn-writer/pastor who penned "Rock of Ages."
I appreciated Ryle's comments on the effect of writing good songs for the church to sing. It makes me more aware of the importance of leading and writing songs for congregational worship.
Good hymns are an immense blessing to the Church of Christ. I believe the last day alone will show the world the real amount of good they have done. They suit all, both rich and poor. There is an elevating, stirring, soothing, spiritualizing, effect about a thoroughly good hymn, which nothing else can produce. It sticks in men's memories when texts are forgotten. It trains men for heaven, where praise is one of the principal occupations. Preaching and praying shall one day cease for ever; but praise shall never die. The makers of good ballads are said to sway national opinion. The writers of good hymns, in like manner, are those who leave the deepest marks on the face of the Church. (382)
What a difference a worship song writer can make! But in the next paragraph, Ryle criticizes many of the hymns that were being sung in his time. His comments are just as relevant today.
But really good hymns are exceedingly rare. There are only a few men in any age who can write them. You may name hundreds of first-rate preachers for one first-rate writer of hymns. Hundreds of so-called hymns fill up our collections of congregational psalmody, which are really not hymns at all. They are very sound, very scriptural, very proper, very correct, very tolerably rhymed; but they are not real, live, genuine hymns. There is no life about them. At best they are tame, pointless, weak, and milk-and-watery. (382)
If you're a songwriter, don't settle for a "milk-and-watery" product. Strive to write the best songs you can. Edit, edit, and re-edit. And if you're a worship leader, don't feed your people songs that "have no life" in them and will only have a temporary effect. Choose the greatest songs - lyrically, melodically, and musically - for your church to sing.
"The last day alone will show the world the real amount of good they have done."
  --from Bob Kauflin @ worshipmatters.com

muffin help

most of you know that Joseph and Lauren Relyea have been rockin' the muffin/coffee patrol for our 10am worship time

and man that coffee gets more tasty as the temperature drops, don't it?

they need help

especially THIS sunday

you know you want to help-- call Emily at the office for details 379-4949

Psalm 122

--is the song of a person who decides to go to church and worship God. It is a sample of the complex, diverse and worldwide phenomenon of worship that is common to all Christians. It is an excellent instance of what happens when a person worships.

--Eugene Peterson

Uh huh

Great Day Sunday

AM
-Children's Classes
-3 adult classes
-10 in Next Step class
-received 2 new members (Suzanne Parrish & Amber Priest)
-

PM
-Congregational Mtg
-reminder of how far God has brought us leads to expectant faith He'll help us take our next hill
-
-Youth group

Pray! Listen!

It is by preaching that God makes past history a present
reality. The cross was, and will always remain, a unique
historical event of the past. And there it will remain, in
the past, in the books, unless God himself makes it real
and relevant to men today. It is by preaching, in which he
makes his appeal to men through men, that God accomplishes
this miracle. He opens their eyes to see its true meaning,
its eternal value, and its abiding merit.

--John Stott

Bldg

Miss a Game, Make a Memory

November 21 Work Day

Please make plans to join us for this full work day from 8:30AM to 4:30PM. There is plenty of work, so bring a small army with you and we should be good to go! RSVP to Frank Matthews <mailto:fmatthews AT christcommunitychurchDOT com> .
----------------
Can't make it all day? Give what you can.
We are landscaping the property and need 50+ peeps. We have 15 so far. Need you, dude.

Congregational Meeting Sunday at 4:30pm

Corporate Officers
One brief order of business before the congregation on Sunday November 8th (at the 4:30pm congregational meeting) is the election of corporate officers. Let me say a brief word about this.

Christ Community Church of Gainesville, is a 503c non profit corporation registered with the state of Florida. One of the state requirements for all 503c corporations is the election of officers. Besides satisfying the requirement of the state, the only other duty officers have is the carrying out of the actions of the congregation in business matters.

So, for example, when Christ Community Church voted to enter into a loan agreement with a lending institution, the officers of the corporation signed on behalf of the corporation. This does NOT mean that they are personally liable for anything. The corporation has entered the agreement, not the officers.

On Sunday you will receive a ballot asking for a yes or no vote on the following:

Do you elect the following regarding corporate officers of Christ Community Church:

Larry Eubanks, President
Mike Marshall, Treasurer
Charlie Staples, Secretary

Original Post from April 2008