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Phoenix Area House Churches Newsletter
News from the home-front of the house church movement in Phoenix, AZ.
Greetings!
This edition could be called the Thanksgiving Day
edition since it's just a couple of days from now.
Here in the US we celebrate this day to
give thanks (to God traditionally) for the harvest,
or the abundance we enjoy. Of course, now, at best,
most families get together for traditional meals,
usually turkey, and to watch their favorite teams on
TV. Then on Friday, the crowds hit the stores for
the best sales they can find. This has become the
traditional
beginning of the Christmas season.
Unfortunately, this is another example of how we
have left our good traditions and substituted some
others. In the early days of our country, they were
thanking God because they knew that He provides for
His people everything they need. Even if the
harvest wasn't so good, God
should be thanked. In the middle of hardship, they
knew that they were blessed to be here, to be free,
to have the opportunities to own their own property
and raise their children in His ways.
This last year, many people I know experienced
some real hardships. I'm talking about sickness,
injury, infidelity. Thankfully, most of the time,
those in such circumstances were firm in the faith
and were thankful that what happened to them was not
worse. I know its hard to be thankful
sometimes in the midst of that kind of adversity and
hardship.
But how can we not be thankful to God for His gift
of salvation. We all deserve to be on the cross in
the place of Jesus. But God is so faithful to those
who put their trust in Him.
Read Psalm 100 below and meditate on the words of the
psalmist. This is a great example of true
thanksgiving to the Lord.
Shout triumphantly to the LORD, all the earth. Serve
the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful
songs. Acknowledge that the LORD is God. He made us,
and we are His--His people, the sheep of His
pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His
courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise
His name. For the LORD is good, and His love is
eternal; His faithfulness endures through all
generations.
(Psa 100:1-5)
Because of the busy season approaching, I would like
to offer my thanks to everyone who subscribes to
this newsletter and extend my wish that you have a
very safe and happy Thanksgiving Day. Also, I would
like to share some tips for a safe holiday season here.
Please remember to be safe.
Larry
Luke10:2b
Prayer Requests (and Praises)
From the Phoenix house churches
Please remember these prayer requests in your daily
prayers:
- Continue to pray the Luke 10:2b prayer. Ask Him to
send the house churches of Phoenix into His harvest
field. Ask Him for divine appointments to share
God's love.
- Praise God that He has sustained our brother
Vernie Abbitt through his injuries while working on
the hospital building project in Chad. Thankfully,
Vernie is now recovering from the injuries and
should be home soon. But he
does still have a long road ahead. Please keep him
in your prayers.
- Praise God for those taking part in the Valley's
Saturday
Morning Mountain Top Prayer Campaign. Pray
that there will be someone on every mountain top
around Phoenix December 2 to start this campaign.
- For the 16 year old daughter of one of our
brothers to find peace and come to Christ.
- For one of our house church families going through
some challenges.
- For the continued success of the Alpha group being
taught by Darrell of Big House. And for wisdom for
Darrell for issues he has been confronted with.
- Aaron Spence who is now at Navy boot camp in
Illinois. Pray for peace for his mother Debbie.
- Permanent employment for Alena's father.
- Larry's coworker Phil still recovering from heart
attacks and a stroke.
If you have a prayer request that you would like to
send to the Phoenix Area House Churches, please send
an email to me
and I will be glad to send it out with a newsletter.
Whats happening
Within the house church community
Coming Up:
Nov. 27, Dec. 11: Air Assault on the
Kingdom of Darkness. Email Darrell for
location and time.
Nov. 28, Dec. 12: Churches in the East
Valley meet for prayer. Call 602-524-9400 or
email Larry
for times and location.
Dec. 2: The Valley's Saturday Morning
Mountain Top Prayer Campaign See here
for more information.
Dec. 14-16: UNCONFERENCE III WITH THIRD
DAY CHURCHES Go here
for more information.
Jan. 26-28, 2007: First Annual CMA
Conference - Members of CMA and others
interested in organic church will want to attend
this. Complete information can be found here.
The lighter side
A little humor for the month
Church-Lite
Has the heaviness of your old fashioned church got
you weighted down? Try us! We are the New and
Improved Lite Church of the Valley. Studies have
shown we have 24% fewer commitments than other
churches. We guarantee to trim off guilt, becuase we
are Low-Cal... low Calvin, that is. We are the home
of the 7.5% tithe. We promise 35 minute worship
services, with 7 minute sermons. Next Sunday's
exciting text is the story of the Feeding of the
500.
We have only 6 Commandments-- Your choice!! We use
just 3 gospels in our contemporary New Testament
*Good Sound Bites for Modern Human Beings*. We take
the offering every other week, all major credit
cards accepted, of course. We are looking forward
with great anticipation to our 800 year Millenium.
Yes, the New and Improved Lite Church of the Valley
could be just what you are looking for. We are
everything you want in a church... and less!!
{Courtesy of Howard Chapman]
Windows 95
Avraham (Abraham) wants to upgrade his PC to Windows
95. Yitzhak (Isaac) is incredulous.
"Pop," he says, "you can't run Windows 95 on your
old, slow 386. Everyone knows that you need at least
a 486 with a minimum of 16 megs of memory in order
to multitask effectively with Windows 95."
But Abraham, the man of faith, gazed calmly at his
son and replied, "God will provide the RAM, my
son."
[Thanks to Mary Wald]
What they are saying
About house church
Being Fed
As a reminder, we must go back to the basics. Babies
or the sick get fed. Healthy mature adults feed
themselves. The church of our culture has done
great disservice to the body of Christ by
normalizing "spoon feeding" to those who should be
feeding themselves. In the last couple of years of
pulpit ministry, I discovered that the same
individuals who went "head over heels" for great
teaching would not even remember the topic 1 week
later. They were simply hungry again! Feed me! Feed
me! they cried..... But what was the food they were
looking for?
Jesus fed the multitudes bread. He used it as a
illustration for His being the "Bread of Life". The
problem was, they were more interested in the
natural bread. He even vented His frustration once
and said "you are only here because you want the
bread." They were driven by their natural desire
and consequently overlooked the spiritual food that
was available.
One "bread" of our church culture is entertainment.
Roman culture taught us to appreciate and be
entertained by great oration. The resulting
monologue has hijacked Christianity and formed how
we "do church". Conversely, Hebrew and Greek
cultures used dialogue for education. A good teacher
in those cultures was one who could moderate a
discussion and draw out the conversation of the
participants. Then there is music. Our Christian
culture is addicted to music. I am a musician and
enjoy music from both sides of the guitar. The
entertainment factor has dictated that only the big
flashy shows will survive. After one gathering with
His disciples we learn this of Jesus - "and after
singing a hymn, they went out". No worship team, no
rock-n-roll band, no expensive sound systems...
Jesus could not compete in today's music market.
Another "bread" of our church culture is instant
gratification. It is much easier to run by
McDonald's and pick up fast food than it is to
prepare a meal. Jesus sent Peter and John to
"prepare" the Passover meal. This meant they had to
deal with the lamb, bread, bitter herbs, wine,
charoset, etc. Now we would just order "take out"
from the restaurant with the Big Fish rotating in
the sky (or order it from Passover.com). Churches
are full of people who depend on a leader to eat for
them and just regurgitate it to them (like a bird
feeding its young). The leader studies for them,
prays for them, visits for them, and consequently,
grows for them - until he burns out.
So, you see, I get excited when I hear that someone
is not "getting fed" in a house church! Someone is
doing something right!
(Article by Mickey Mooney as posted on the House
Church Chronicles Blog. Article was posted
originally to Mickey's website Network Vine.)
Another interesting article about on the post-modern
Christian church can be found here.
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phone:
602-524-9400
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As we approach the end of the year, I feel that we
should evaluate how we are doing as stewards of the
resources God has provided for this newletter and
the house church website.
Thanks to those who have helped support the website
and newsletter during the year by making purchases
through the links on the website. Unfortunately,
there has not been a lot of support for the
merchants listed.
On the other hand, there has been good readership of
the newsletter (60% - 80% opens) and a good number
of hits on the website.
If you have reached this point in reading the
newsletter, I ask for feedback on what can be
improved for the new year. Email any thoughts or
ideas directly to ljoh3106@cox.net .
Until next month, God bless.
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