Pastor's Notes April 2011
Welcome to Pastor's Notes April Edition!!
HE IS RISEN!!
Easter is always a great time of the year. Personally I think it is the greatest of all days.
Christmas - not to take away from the birth of Jesus, but every man is born
Good Friday - not to take away from why Jesus died on the cross for us, but every man dies
Easter - Only one man has ever conquered death and rose from the dead.
What message is going to be coming across your pulpit?
Trying to fill up empty seats?
It's not too late to order NET Bible Pew Bibles for your church. Order this week and get our Pew Bibles ( http://bible.org/pew-bibles ) at $12 each when you buy a case of 10. If you are interest in this please contact me
Find a (your) Church Program
We are in the final process of putting together our Find A Church program. We are going to promote from our front page a link that will help people find a church in their area. You can see an example of this by going to this link http://bible.org/churches it should open up to your state. We want to help people find you.
In order for this to work you need to go into your profile and either add or update your church information. We will be color coding the flags for the churches. The pin you see now on the site will be the normal pin. If you have marked in your profile that you are preaching form the NET Bible your flag will be blue. If you are a NET Bible Church your flag will be a gold color. A NET Bible church is a church that preaches form the NET Bible, has NET Bible pew Bibles in their church and uses some of our online widgets on their website ( NETBibleTagger, daily verse, search the Bible)
We would like to start this soon. We still have some programming to do on our end, but we wanted you to get your profiles up to date so when we are ready to launch this your church is listed and ready to go.
Why list your church? Bible.org is the largest Bible Study site on the web. We have over 1 million people who visit our site each month, over 750 people are joining our website every week. Our visits are up over 30% from last year and we are still growing.
HE IS HERE - BECAUSE HE IS RISEN!
By Austin Phililips
Philippians 3:10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, 3:11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Practically every year we read from the Gospels about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ! Churches are usually filled, many with people who have not attended since Christmas, but they come because they give mental assent to the historical reality of the death and resurrection of Israel's Messiah and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course there are those who don't believe and even deny the truths we hold near and dear, but even some of them show up once in awhile. So, it gives us the wonderful opportunity of "preaching the gospel", which will in far too many cases not be carefully explained and many will leave as ignorant and empty as they came.
I am convinced that in the verses above from Paul's letter to the Philippians, he thrusts the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into us as a sword and if we can communicate this to our listeners, I believe the Holy Spirit will not only save the lost but CHANGE believers permanently.
The verse from the NET Bible is wonderful because of the phrase "MY AIM IS TO KNOW...EXPERIENCE...SHARE...BE LIKE...AND ATTAIN"!!!! That is about as powerful as it gets! It moves us out of history into the PRESENT and from the past into the future. It transcends the limitations of time and space and transport into the dimension of infinity. It is both objective and subjective! Consider:
We can know (experientially) something that only a select few can or will ever know (experientially). And, we can have this knowledge Personally. When you and I are taken back in time to the historical account of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we have no frame of reference for relating to that. It is simply a historical fact Christian believe, but when it become PERSONAL experiential knowledge through my identification with Him in that death, I can KNOW it experientially (spiritually, not physically). I can DIE!
Paul did not say, "that I may know his death", because he already did positionally. So he move on from the death with which he could identify with Jesus to the Power of His resurrection. That also now become Personal! It is the Power of the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead physically who has now raised me from death spiritually, so that I may now walk in newness of life.
Here is the clincher! He knew the suffering before the death, but I can't know the suffering until after my identification with Him in that death and the outflowing power of His resurrection. Only then, can I begin to know personally the joint participation in His sufferings as I share in the "afflictions of Christ" as Paul wrote. NOW, ever pain, every heartache, every rejection, every criticism, every fault found, and every sin laid to my charge by the devil and those who represent him, are all a part of my sharing in the fellowship of His sufferings through the power outflowing from His resurrection. It is all Personal now because He is in me and I am in Him.
Therefore - HE IS HERE! HE IS ALIVE AND LIVING IN ME!
HAPPY EASTER!
PREACH IT!
Bless and Be Blessed
By Clarence Johnson
This Month's Digital Pastor is still the find that I found last month. The Skit Guys They have some awesome stuff for Easter and if you have not seen the Grace video yet please do. I still cant say enough about the ministry of these guys. This is still in my awesome find file!!
Have you ever heard of Skype? Skype is an online system that lets you talk to other Skype users, anywhere in the world, for free. You can even video chat for free too. There are some paid features but the free services alone lets you do so much that you may never need to upgrade to anything else. We at bible.org use Skype as our main "Talk-to-each-other" system. We have group chats and sometimes we will even video chat. A lot of kids are using Skype is even being introduced into the business world. There are new free chat services popping up all over the place but at the moment this is the system that they are all aiming for.
NET Bible Webinars
We are still offering FREE one on one Webinars on how to get the most out of the NET Bible Study Environment. I was surprised by the amount of people who asked for a webinar. We are still offering if you are still interested. If you are interested please contact me to schedule a one on one webinar.
Closing Notes
We are still looking for people to help with our Pastor's Notes. Some of you have responded and as a result you will start seeing some more content added to our Pastor's Notes. If you are interested please contact me.
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Related Topics: Pastors