How Our Summer Preaching Series Will Work

Okay: I've been dropping clues on this blog, on my Facebook page, on Twitter, and during worship, about our summer series.

If you remember last year, we coordinated our bible studies with our sermons in the summer and did a long series on Becoming an Externally Focused Church. You can judge the results of that focus yourself.

(By the way, "we" in this post refers to myself and Joey Whelan. Joey is working with me this summer as my assistant and doing a tremendous job. He should be commended. The slides you see every Sunday? Joey's creating those and running them while I preach.)

This summer we wanted to tackle a similar project. But how could we top that? How better than to actually look at Jesus, within the context of one of the gospels? So we chose Matthew. And the theme we picked is "Choices."

We broke Matthew down into 9 segments and selected a theme for each segment that corresponded to a choice we have to make as a follower of Jesus. Here are the 9 segments, with themes:

July 5 (Mt. 1-4) Choosing Jesus
July 12 (Mt. 5-7) Choosing Simplicity or Complexity
July 19 (Mt. 8-11) Choosing to Live by Faith or by Your Own Ability
July 26 (Mt. 12-14) Choosing to Stay or Leave
August 2 (Mt. 15-16) Choosing a Difficult Faith or an Easy Faith
August 9 (Mt. 17-18) Choosing Relationships over Conflict
August 16 (Mt. 19-22) Choosing to Love Instead of Judge
August 23 (Mt. 23-25) Choosing Subversion over Conformity
August 30 (Mt. 26-28) Choosing to Follow

Over July and August, every Sunday, we will examine a segment of Matthew and discuss the choice for that week during the sermon. For the bible study, I'll provide an overview of the segment we'll look at during the sermon, so that through July and August we'll work our way through the entire gospel.

Many of you also know that we (Joey and I; illustrations by Sam Cale) wrote a book to tie-in with the series. You'll get your own family copy this Sunday. The book is written like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's built around making Christian choices. Each week, we plan to incorporate a scene or two from the book into the actual teaching.

So as you read the book and participate in the series, you will be challenged to grow in your faith and to make good choices that affirm your status as a follower of Jesus.

Please pray for this series, that it will be effective in our church to move us forward in following Jesus. Please pray also for Joey and myself that we will bring out the key concepts and teaching that God desires us to present. And please pray for yourself to be receptive to God's truth, not only during this series, but at all times.