Rediscovering The Word

If God has not spoken, our life experience is void of meaning, a sad reality that is increasingly present in our age today. Our culture is quick to confuse facts and truth with matters of taste and opinion. Without God's Word, there is a divide between meaning and evaluative truth, cognitive meaningless (or matters of opinion), the physical word, and science. Values become feeling states, and convictions become preferences. There exists a thirst for reality, for substance, and for purpose, all of which are found in God's powerful Word. God's Word is so powerful that it has spoken creation into existence, proven itself in history, and personally created us.

In our culture today, kids are leaving their Christian lives behind in huge numbers as they grow up into adulthood. And it is certainly no easy task to help our children develop a love for the Lord! This workshop first discusses our role in this area and the correlation between our relationship and influence with our kids. Our own modeling of sincere faith and time spent relationally investing in our children are imperative. Next, the class addresses the need to withstand cultural pressures and provides some age specific ideas for how to engage our kids spiritually and relationally. \r\n

New Christians need to be incorporated, not into a meeting once or twice a week, but into a rich and thriving community. We have a large role in this task, not just to bring people into the community but also to grow in our own understanding and appreciation of the Gospel. We also must fight to make this incorporation personal and out of love, sacrificing our schedules and comfort zones to go out and serve them. We should be encouraging their own personal growth, in service, and especially in the Word. And finally, we should help them recognize the obstacles that oppose their incorporation into the Body of Christ.

We are called to go out from our circle of Christian friends into the cities around us, full of people who need to know God. Far too often, we fail to follow Jesus' example and his pursuit of people who are different from us. Because of this, our gifts are often never fully utilized. As we serve the communities we live in, we can answer the call to let our light shine before men. There are endless open doors for loving people through both word and deeds, something that will refresh us as well as give life to others.

Scripture makes it clear that God's desire is to see every member of His church grow into maturity. This can be accomplished through successful discipleship relationships. To be a strong disciple-maker a large focus should be on character qualities and a focus on the inner life. God's Word is crucial for this to occur. It is in God's Word where we can motivate others towards God's goals with true conviction. In the Word lies the power for true character change.

Gary DeLashmutt explains that the command to "handle the Word of truth accurately" means first and foremost that our teaching must focus on the Gospel. In order to focus effectively on the Gospel in our teachings, it must be the focus of our lives; which means that those engaged in Christian ministry must grow in their understanding of their sinfulness, their gracious acceptance by God in Christ, and their fitting response to God of loving others.\r\n

As a part-time medical doctor and part-time pastor, Jeff Gordon offers his unique expertise on the topic of end-of-life care. This talk is in conjunction with his book, A Death Prolonged. Using distressing statistics and anecdotes, he paints a bleak and frightening picture of the current state of end-of-life care, in which patients endure painful and ineffective treatment that most never would have chosen for themselves. After diagnosing the problem, Jeff also provides helpful tips for navigating the current system as well as suggestions for larger-scale change.\r\n

Reaching internationals around us is not only a call from God but also strategic for expanding God's kingdom. God calls us to love and be hospitable to strangers, going out of our comfort zone to offer friendship and assist with practical needs. Investing in internationals in our own cities is a wise investment because they can go back to their countries to share God's message with others, saving thousands of dollars for what a missionary would cost. Even internationals that decide to stay in our cities have a large influence with people in their home countries too. This presentation ends with some practical ways we can get involved with and help internationals in our cities.

Insights into three barriers to student ministry, highlighting the "Gen Y" or the "Millennial" generations as examples and practical approaches to student ministry are discussed.

The central priority of the local church should be the ministry of the Word. All members must be taught about the importance of knowing and understanding God's Word. Churches that move away from prioritizing God's Word struggle to accomplish God's purposes. Throughout scripture, we see God prioritizing this principle.

How do you teach the Bible? Gary DeLashmutt discusses how to think through and make a teaching outline. He has 4 questions to ask yourself: 1) What is the main truth in your passage? 2)Why is this truth important? 3)What would it look like to put this truth into practice? and 4)How does the main truth relate to God's grace? Go through these questions with an example from 2 Timothy. This is part 1 of a 2 part series.\r\n

The second part of Gary DeLashmutt's class covers key elements of effective teachings. He discusses when to prepare for a teaching, prayer for the teaching, Satanic attack associated with teaching, and how to combat attack. He also includes a teaching preparation check-list that includes non-verbal and verbal communication. This is part 2 of a 2 part series.\r\n

There are several key principles to consider in teaching kids to love the Word. First of all, this is a supernatural work that is brought about by the Holy Spirit. We need to believe that children have legitimate capacity to learn spiritual truths and understand that children often have hearts and minds that are soft to God. We must ourselves love the Word and fight against letting children be bored with the Bible. Through prayer and training we can make ground in this area. At the end of this presentation, there is a panel of volunteers and workers in the children's ministry who participate in Q&A.

The Psalms featured in the Bible are rich and complex. To better understand them, we must take a closer look at Hebrew poetry, its imagery, and its parallelism. With this background, we can study and analyze a particular psalm. This includes praying and meditating on the passage, reading it several times, noting its features, preparing a summary, and identifying key truths. Finally, we can prepare to teach the Psalm by translating it, which brings forth application.

The Gospel is not just the beginning of our faith, but it is the source and core of the rest of our Christian lives. There exists a biblical paradigm that illustrates the functional centrality of the Gospel. First, there is the Gospel itself, that Jesus died for our sins, which is theologically central. If we allow it, the truths of the gospel transform our thinking. Thus by believing these gospel truths, the Gospel will bear fruit in our minds. Beyond this, as our minds are transformed, our actions and behaviors flow out of these truths, and our actions become a witness to the Gospel. From this paradigm, there are both implications and opportunities that follow.

Without God's Word, we will remain a spiritual infant, but with it, we can experience sincere growth in our spiritual lives. We must hold several convictions in our heart as we feed on God's Word. First, we must believe that Scripture is God-breathed. Second, it is necessary that we hold that Scripture is understandable. Furthermore, we must hold that it is useful and that God can accomplish His work through Scripture. It is God's intention to nurture us by His Word, but our responsibility is to create opportunities for Him to do this. Once we have humbled ourselves under the authority of Scripture, there are numerous practical ways that we can create these opportunities.

A biblical case for solitude is presented, a necessary time where we feed our inner person. God has made His Word available to us, but we have a responsibility to create opportunities to exercise this nourishing effect. This goes against the grain of our culture, and thus requires us to schedule this time into our lives and turn off the distractions around us. This is a time to unplug and enjoy extended time with the Lord. Bullmore provides some practical suggestions of how we can best utilize this time. \r\n