eikōn ministry

What’s pot and what’s not pot.

2005-05-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." 2 Corinthians 4:7 ESV

This is one of those quotes that I have come back to time and again over the years. Paul sees himself as an unlovely pot containing a fabulous treasure.

I wonder if this doesn’t have something to say to ministers, ministries and life in general for those who love Jesus.

If you are a minister, or a leader in a ministry, there is a great temptation to forget what’s pot and what’s not pot. A lot of what we do in churches and ministries is “pot.”

Now don’t get me wrong here. Calling something “pot” is not to say that it is worthless. The jar of clay in 1 Corinthians 4:7 is a useful repository for treasure even if it is not itself treasure. Of course the value of an empty pot might be called into question, but if the "pot" is a repository for treasure then that’s a different matter.

There is a danger that in our ministry effort and energy we substitute “pot” for treasure. So much of what we rightly do is “pot.”

Church buildings are “pot”, necessary, but “pot” none-the-less. So to is finance, essential, but “pot.” Greater numbers and church growth? What about healthy churches? “Pot”too.

Some might be getting uncomfortable with this. Surely the treasure is the gospel isn’t it? I think we need to be careful here.

Notice what Paul says immediately before in v 6 “ For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

If Paul sees himself as the “pot” then he sees the treasure within himself as “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” The treasure is knowledge of the glory of God, or to put it more simply, the God we know in Jesus.

Now that is in a sense the gospel, but if we are not careful we will allow more measurable ministry achievements to supplant the living God as the goal and treasure of our hearts.

Sure such temptations are seductive, but to allow that to happen is to settle for “pot” when treasure is on offer.

What kind of preacher?

2005-05-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Some called him a prophet, many valued his writing which still has an incisive edge, and still speaks with power to a culture and church now nearly sixty years removed from his day.

I’ve recently been re-reading some of the works of A.W.Tozer. I came across the following in a forward to “The Divine Conquest.” Speaking in the 1950’s, Tozer said:

If the church of the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries which she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper ruler of the synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth talking pastoral type who knows how to make christen religion acceptable for everyone. All of these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the throne.

A slight change of direction...

2005-05-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

On reflection, I'm going to set a slightly different course from here on in with this page. The sister site eikon tends to contain reflections and sermons etc about living the spiritual life. I have a few ideas for bits and pieces about the work of ministry and they don't seem to fit so well on eikon so....

I thought I would shift the emphasis a bit towards the work of ministry on this page, and we will see how it goes. Don't expect this page to be updated quite as often as eikon, but every now and then I will put something up as time allows etc.

Blessings

Graham

Looking for presentation backgrounds for teaching?

2005-04-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

One of the web sites I go back to every now and then is one belonging to "Lakeview church" They obviously have some talented people putting together images to go with their teaching themes. The best thing is that when they have used them they put them on the web for others to use! Thanks guys!
Check it out for some good ideas or to use their material.

Want to make PDF files for nothing?

2005-04-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

A friend put me on to to cutepdf which installs as a printer driver and allows you to make pdf files for distribution. Looks very useful so far.

Sermon Kit: Is it do or done?

2005-04-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here is a sermon kit. One of the reasons for this site is to give away the things I've made or written, used and will not use again! Feel free to use them in Christian Worship or simply pinch the idea and improve on it!

For this kit, the text is Titus 3:5 "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." NIV

The sermon and pictures were originally used in a baptismal service, and would be suitable for an evangelistic message.

The idea: There is an idea that being a Christian is about what we do for God. The Bible says it's about what God has done for us in Jesus.

The kit: Consists of a zip file containing a word file with a very simple outline suggestion, and two photographs that can be printed on OHP sheets or projected with powerpoint of a PDA with a "to do list." The first photograph suggests some of the things that people think we have to do to be Christians, while the second lists the things that God has done for us. Yes you can see the camera in the reflection, but it will be very hard to see when projected!

You can get the kit here. Right click and save the kit to your computer before opening the zip file.

How not to be a Pharisee: Study Material.

2005-04-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

On the sister site eikōn there is a series of three articles published in April 05 entitled "How not to be a Pharisee." The first article is here.

The articles were based on some reading and reflecting I did on Mathew's gospel. Below I give you all the verses that I studied, with my first thoughts about the issues raised. When I came to preach on the material I didn't use all of the material, and the comments are my first gut reations concerning what is going on in the passages.

If they are of value for a Bible study or as the raw material for a sermon please help yourself! Please remember that these were just origional thoughts.

All references are from Matthew's Gospel.

3:7 Fruitless repentance.
9:1 Spiritual superiority.
9:34 Competitive spirit (see also 12:24.)
12:2 Majoring on the minor and neglecting the major.
12:13 Small heartedness.
12:38 Spiritual voyeurism.
15:1 Honoring tradition above the Scripture see v 9.
15:12 Hardened in thinking.
19:4ff. Honoring tradition above scripture.
21:23ff Rejecting Jesus. (Does this include Pharisees?)
22:15 Asking questions for the wrong reason.
23:5, 25 Hypocrisy.
23:23 Majoring on minor.

Leadership in the NT Church

2005-04-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Some material I put together recently to think about leadership in the New Testament Church is available here. The material was prepared for a leadership retreat at the beginning of the year and used as we began to think about leadership in Priory Street Baptist Church.

Blogging?

2005-04-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering how this page is put together, it’s a “blog” short for “weblog” If you want to experiment follow the link above to get your own blog, and signup. You are only minutes away from your own web site. It’s free and there are a selection of templates for you to choose from.

The beauty of a “blog” is that it is so easy to update. It’s very like writing web based email. You type in the information and hit “publish” and your post appears on your web site. I type the posts in Word, partly because it’s got a spell checker, and partly because web based text entry systems can time out on you so that you loose everything you have typed. When I have completed a post I copy it into the “blog” posting page.

It seems to me that a “blog” could be a useful tool for the gospel. What about having a small group blog? Set one up, share the login and password and use it to share devotional thoughts, prayer requests and information.

What about having a prayer needs “blog” for a local church? A couple of folks could keep it up to date. You need to be a little careful about posting full names on the internet, but in many churches a first name and initial for the surname will suffice.

The possibilities are endless!

A free image

2005-04-13T04:53:00.000-07:00

corsham0007
Originally uploaded by Graham Culver.

Here is a nice image that I made sometime ago. Feel free to use it. I've used it to illustrate the idea of the Lord as my Shepherd.

Cropped down, the left hand side can be used as a powerpoint background.

To get the image, simply click on it, and you will be taken to my photo hosting site. Make sure that you click to see all sizes of the image. When you have done this you can download the largest size image onto your computer.

Esword - Superb and.... free

2005-04-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Now I've spent a fair bit on money on Bible software in my time, and I'm fortunate to have some of the leading packages available to me. Most of the time these days, for Bible Study and sermon preparation I use a system that costs nothing. Esword is available from http://www.e-sword.net/index.html with a large selection of Bibles.

The NIV is not available but a number of modern versions are available legally for no charge. I use the new ESV myself, for study but find the opportunity to work on KJV with Strong’s numbers really useful. I also use The Message and CEV. The opportunity to add the modules that you want is useful, and I have found some of the maps brilliant. There are no modern commentaries in esword, but I prefer paper commentaries anyway.

As I mentioned I have some other software. I find one of them incredibly slow to load and the other fiddly to use. Esword is quick, simple and powerful.

If you want to be blessed follow the link above and just have a look at their distribution map. I marvel at the difference that IT is making in terms of access to the scriptures. What a vision for the authors to have written the software and distributed it freely!

Welcome to eikōn resources!

2005-04-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi welcome to this page. I'm in the process of starting a family of web sites under the title of eikōn. On this site, I intend to post occasional articles and information concerning the use of information technology in churches.

Over the last couple of years I have become aware of the potential expense of keeping church software up to date. I want to help churches by making people aware of the many free alternatives to commercial software. So look out for information on all sorts of software that is as good as commercial alternatives, but will cost you nothing!

Have you tried OpenOffice yet?

2005-04-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here is the first promised article about free alternatives to comercial software.

I know that when you are running a Church you need good software! In this day and age a word processor is a basic working tool. Many minister’s want to be able to produce presentation slides even if they don’t have access to a data projector. Keeping up to date with Microsoft software can be expensive, but there is an alternative!

There is a great free piece of software with word processing, presentation and spreadsheet capabilities. Ahh [I hear you saying] but I need to be able to open Microsoft files, and I need to be able to save files that other people can read, which means Microsoft again….

Well the good news is that Open office can do all that. It does a great job of both opening and saving Word, Power-Point and Excel files. There are even some things that Open Office can do that my latest version of Microsoft Office can’t do!

You can get a copy at http://www.openoffice.org/ if you have a fast internet connection. If not look out for it bundled on the cover of computer magazines.
More on free software for churches soon!