Fall Book Study

Join us this fall for a study of the book A Walk Through the Bible by Lesslie Newbigin!
We will meet in the Fellowship Hall on Wednesday Nights from 6:00-7:00pm, starting Sept. 27.
Books can be purchased at City Lights Bookstore for $12.
Please contact the Church Office if you need childcare!

Schedule:

• 09/27 – Week 1 – Ch. 1: A Unique Account

• 10/04 – No Meeting (Family Night Supper)

• 10/11 – Week 2 – Ch. 2 & 3: Chosen by God

• 10/18 – Week 3 – Ch. 4: Judges, Kings and Prophets

• 10/25 – Week 4 – Ch. 5: Return and Renewal

• 11/01 – No Meeting (Family Night Supper)

• 11/08 – Week 5 – Ch. 6: God’s Kingdom and Jesus

• 11/15 – Week 6 – Ch. 7: Sacrifice

• 11/22 – No Meeting (Thanksgiving Break)

• 11/29 – Week 7 – Ch. 8: Future Revelation

“What is there within the Bible? What sort of house is it to which the Bible is the door? What sort of country is spread before our eyes when we throw the Bible open? The answer is a strange, new world – the world of God.”

— Karl Barth

Nicaragua Mission Trip

“The mission of the church is in fact the church’s obedient participation in that action of the Spirit by which the confession of Jesus as Lord becomes the authentic confession of every new people, each in its own tongue.”

— Lesslie Newbigin

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Mission is at the heart of the gospel.  Have you ever thought about that?  When you become a Christian, you also become a missionary, because the God whom we follow is nothing less than a missionary God – always on the move, always leading people of every tribe, tongue, and nation into a deeper awareness of his reality and his claim on their lives.

I saw this in action during our recent mission trip to Nicaragua.  Six of us from Sylva traveled with friends from Arbor Dale and Newland Presbyterian Churches to spend the week with leaders of Young Life (AKA Viden Joven in Spanish).  Vida Joven is a ministry to youth based in the United States but stretching all over the globe, and it was exciting to see it flourishing in Nicaragua. 

There are too many stories to recount from the trip, but one highlight was the night we attended a “club” meeting in Estelí.  Club is Vida Joven’s weekly youth gathering, usually held in someone’s home, and this week we met at Daniel’s house along with 30 or so kids from the surrounding neighborhood.  The night was warm and the sky was clear and the energy in the room was palpable.  The kids danced, sang songs, and acted in a few skits before a young woman named Deanna came out to share a message from Luke 15, the story of the Prodigal Son.  All of us, she said, have experienced getting lost.  But God desires to find us and to bring us home. 

As Deanna spoke, I was so amazed at her courage and confidence.  Here was someone who was still a teenager, growing up in the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere, with a fraction of the material resources that we normally rely on in the U.S., who was also participating so obediently in the mission of God.  I was humbled and amazed and as the night wrapped up, I felt a deep conviction that we in America have much to learn from our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters about what faithfulness really looks like.

There were other highlights too, of course.  Before the club meeting, we spent all morning walking and praying through the neighborhood, which was a powerful experience of befriending and loving our neighbors in Estelí.  The next day, we traveled up into the mountains to the La Finca camp to see where so many Vida Joven kids get to spend time with God and with each other.  There we got to pick coffee beans, blaze trails for a new low-ropes course, walk a labyrinth in the dark, and eat loads of fresh fruit and gallo pinto (rice and beans) while sipping the best coffee in the world.  Throughout these experiences we heard testimonies from the Vida Joven leadership, shared and received prayers, and dreamed about how the difficult but important work of discipleship can be shared back home in North Carolina.

So often we think of mission work in terms of task-oriented service projects: the Peace Corps with a Christian twist.  But mission work is so much wider and deeper than that. It’s a life of participating in the mission of God.  And this life is always personal and particular and humble and open.  In Nicaragua we met people with personal names like Deanna or Daniel; we visited particular places like Estelí and La Finca; we humbled ourselves to ask for help with Spanish and directions and toilet paper; and we opened ourselves to new experiences, to leaving our comfort zones, and to seeing God at work perhaps where we least expected him. 

To all of you who prayed or gave money to help us get to Nicaragua – thank you.  I hope you’ll consider traveling with us in the future (because we do plan to go back!).  And to all of us who have committed to the dusty road of discipleship, may we walk with a renewed commitment to the mission God has for us.

Yours in Christ,
Blake

What's Your Mission?

What's your mission? 

If you had to write a mission statement for your life, what would it say?

I’ve been reflecting on these questions recently for two reasons.  First, the latest Mission: Impossible movie came out in theaters last month, and I’m eager to see it. (Tom Cruise is a wild man!)  Second – and more importantly – I’ve recently returned from a continuing education trip that focused on this very topic: mission and the church. 

During my time away, I met with seven other pastors to read through the work of the 20th century missionary Lesslie Newbigin.  Newbigin was adamant throughout his ministry that mission is not tangential to the gospel, but at the very heart of the gospel.  Jesus, after all, came on a mission to rescue us, and Jesus has commissioned us to make disciples in his name.  The church, therefore, doesn’t have a mission; the church is a mission – a “joyful participation in Christ’s ongoing life and work,” as our Presbyterian Book of Order says.

So if you’re wondering what your personal mission in life is, look to the Lord.  Look to Jesus.  He already has a mission statement for you, and he invites you to share in that mission with other people in a community called “church,” for the life of the world.

Starting at the end of August, I will preach four sermons on the topic of mission, focusing specifically on our mission statement at First Presbyterian Church: “To make disciples who love Jesus Christ, love the church, and love their neighbors as themselves.”  This statement has its roots in Jesus’ conversation with a teacher of the law in Luke 10.  We will study Scripture and break the statement down week-by-week to consider how God is leading us on mission together in Sylva and beyond.  I hope you’ll join us.

Yours in Christ,

Blake

Jesus Says: I Am the Way

““Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.””

— John 14:1-7

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Today we turned to the "Farewell Discourse" in John's Gospel (chapters 14-17).  It begins with Jesus giving his disciples a word of assurance, a challenge of allegiance, and a call to adventure.  Take a look at these other resources that complement the sermon.

- Blake

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““Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
”I am dying of thirst,” said Jill.
”Then drink,” said the Lion.
”May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

”Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
”I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
”Do you eat girls?” she said.
”I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

”I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
”Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
”Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

”There is no other stream,” said the Lion.””

— C.S. Lewis, "The Silver Chair"

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“It has become customary to classify views on the relation of Christianity to the world religions as either pluralist, exclusivist, or inclusivist … [My] position is exclusivist in the sense that it affirms the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus Christ, but it is not exclusivist in the sense of denying the possibility of the salvation of the non-Christian. It is inclusivist in the sense that it refuses to limit the saving grace of God to the members of the Christian church, but it rejects the inclusivism which regards the non-Christian religions as vehicles of salvation. It is pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but it rejects a pluralism which denies the uniqueness and decisiveness of what God has done in Jesus Christ.”

— Lesslie Newbigin, "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society"

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“The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.”

— Eugene Peterson, "The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways that Jesus is the Way"

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