Weekly Update 4.20

Saturday, April 24
You are invited to a birthday party! It's not for a specific person, but for the Movement. On April 25, 2009 we took part in Launch Day, where we launched ourselves into motion. This Saturday from 1-3, we are going to celebrate a year of moving. We will see highlights from a great year, eat birthday cake, and play party games. Please let us know if you will be attending by e-mailing youth@bowlinggreenchristian.org, calling the office, or joining the event on Facebook.

Sunday, April 25
We will be concluding our Sunday School series on 1 John this week as we look at God being life. So far we have talked about God being light and love, and how we should continue to strive to be light and love as well. As always, if you miss a lesson, feel free to go to the blog and check out the outline for the lesson.

Sunday night we will be continuing our "Life's Toughest Questions" series. Franklin Wiggins will come and speak about baptism and our band will be playing. We hope to see everyone out Sunday night. Remember, you can still send in your questions to 502-517-9170, or e-mail them to youth@bowlinggreenchristian.org.

4/18 Sunday School "God Is...Love"

Introduction

Review. Last week we began the series called “God Is…” by looking at basically the first two chapters of 1 John. We said that “God is light”. We noted that God doesn’t live a private life, He is the same every second of every day, and has always been that way. We also discussed how, as followers of God, we cannot say that we belong to him and live a lifestyle of darkness, or with any hint of darkness.

Online, we had a discussion about the rest of the chapter dealing with the Antichrists. You can get on the blog and check out what you missed if you did not participate. Any questions from last week?

While I’m not sure that one word “best describes” God, this one comes close. Today, we are going to explore John’s discussion of God being love.

Bible Study/Exegesis (What it meant then)- 1 John 2:28-4:21

Everyone turn to 1 John 2:28. We are going to ready through chapter 4 today.

Read 1 John 2:28-29.

·      These verses serve as a transition between light and love. The reiterate the idea of Christians continuing a light-filled life, and staying away from the darkness.

Read 1 John 3:1-6

·      Just from these verses, what evidence do we have that God loves us?

·      We are also seeing a continuation of the idea that we are to strive to be like God.

Read 1 John 3:7-10

·      Is this saying that once we accept Christ we should no longer sin, and if we do we lose that salvation?

Read 1 John 3:11-24

·      We asked earlier for the evidence we have that God loves us. Let us now ask a similar question. From what we just read, what evidence should we give to the world that we are full of love?

·      1 John 4:1-6 will be our on-line discussion this week. We will be talking about false teachers and figuring out a way for us to identify them.

Read 1 John 4:7-21

·      John does the same thing here that he did with the discussion on God being light. He takes the truth that God is love, and now implies that we are to take that truth and live it out. Our actions and everything we do should reflect love. We should love God, love friends, and love enemies. We should be full of love.

Application/Hermeneutics (What it means now):

What is one thing you learned today?

Weekly Update 4.12

Wednesday, April 14
We are going to A 10th for the Lord a little late, but it is better than never. This Wednesday from 3:30-6:30 we are going to be painting and working on our adopted part of the campus. Hope to see you guys out!

Sunday, April 18
This Sunday morning we will be exploring 1 John looking at God as love. Sunday night at Ignite, we will continue to answer the question "What does it mean to be a Christian?" Hope you will join us.

4/12 Sunday School "God Is...Light"

Introduction

Let’s begin by noting that there is no way that someone could do a series called “God is…” and have all the names and attributes of God listed. It is impossible. So what we are going to look at over the next three weeks are not a complete summary of God, rather it is a look at three attributes of God that the writer of 1 John wants to highlight. We are going to look at the three L’s: Light, Love, and Life.

Bible Study/Exegesis (What it meant then)- 1 John 1:1-2:27

Everyone turn to 1 John 1. While we are turning there here is a little background. While some say this book was written by John the beloved the disciple, others say it was John the Elder, and others someone else, we know fairly certain that this was written by the same person as the person who wrote John the Gospel. The word structure and some of the same themes are present in these letters as in the Gospel.

Also, the reason for the writing of this letter is to address the problem of declining commitment to the cause of Christ. This is after the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem and the Christians, as well as Jews, were dispersed throughout the land. Along with declining commitment, there was the problem of false teachers who were coming and leading the people astray. So we need to see this letter as an apologetic letter, standing up for the Christian faith and correct teaching.

Read 1 John 1:1-4

·      Starts very similarly as the Gospel (Read the first few verses of John)

·      Think about our series on evangelism, what is John trying to do here in the introduction? He is trying to show his credibility and showing that he knows this Jesus that he is writing about.

Read 1 John 1:5

·      This is one of the eternal truths that no one will dispute. Light and dark cannot coexist. What this statement says is basically this, as a human, you have a public life, but some of us have lives that we live in secret that are in stark contrast to who we are in front of others. God is not like that. He does not put on a mask, and He does not change. He is the same God all the time and in every situation.

Read 1 John 1:6-2:17

·      It is almost like John talks about God and has everyone nodding their heads, and then very abruptly he turns it into, “But you aren’t acting like that is the God you are following”.

·      These verses highlight a hypocritical life. It is not just the life lived by what we like to label as “Sunday Christians” but all Christians. In a very simplistic way it is like saying don’t work at McDonalds but eat on your breaks at Burger King.

·      Remember, the epistle was written to combat the decline in commitment. What do these verses say about our commitment to God?

·      What was the other reason for writing this letter? To combat false teachings. There was a teaching (how quickly people twisted Christianity to be easy to do) that there actually was no one thing called “sin”.

Application/Hermeneutics (What it means now):

Is there a thought in people’s lives that God has a secret life?

What do you derive from 1 John 1:6-10, when he discussed the Christian walk?

What is one thing you learned today?

Weekly Update 4.6

Hope that you had a great Easter! Here's what is coming up in the coming days for us here at BGCC:

Saturday, April 10th...maybe
We ARE going to do "A 10th for the Lord" this month. It just might not be on the 10th. We are trying to work out some things with people here at church and the community and we will let you know ASAP what we are going to be doing and when we are going to do it. This is probably the most vague announcement we've ever done...

Sunday, April 11th
Our Sunday School classes will be beginning a series entitled "God is...". We are going to be looking at 1 John and finding the three things that John describes God as being.

On Sunday night, we will begin an exciting new series called "Life's Toughest Questions". However, this series goes NOWHERE, unless we get your input. We have some questions that have been submitted for the series, but WE NEED MORE. We need more texted in questions to 502-517-9170. We need more e-mailed questions to questions@bowlinggreenchristian.org. However you do it, please send in your questions.
This Sunday night, we will be starting answering one of our questions. We are going to answer it in two parts, one this week, and one next week. Hope you will join us at 6:00 Sunday night.

Weekly Update 3/28 ***New Opportunity***

Hey gang,
While there is nothing going on this Sunday for the youth program, we would still like to make sure that you know that you are invited to join us for Easter on the Hill. We will be having an awesome worship service beginning at 10:00am at Van Meter Auditorium on the campus of WKU. We hope you will join us.

Even more, we hope that you will help us take part in a ministry opportunity. We had previously been granted the opportunity to give postcards out to those kids who attended Potter Gray. However, someone raised issue with it and we now have a lot of postcards just sitting here in the office. So, we are calling on our youth to be the hands and feet of Christ and hand these suckers out. We want you guys to organize yourself with your family, or just your friends, and deliver these cards to people in the community. They do not have postage, which means they can't simply be put in mailboxes. They need to be handed out or left on doors. If you are interested please shoot me an e-mail (jared@bowlinggreenchristian.org) or give me  call in the office with how many cards you want to take and hand out. Let's be an example to the church and the community by showing the love of Christ and inviting others to accept the invitation of love that God has given to us!

Jared

3/28 Senior & Junior High Sunday School "Hosea"

Senior High-Steve Briggs, Junior High-John Baker

Introduction

Have the students get in two groups. They each will have one White-Out bottle and will be asked to go through an article laced with typographical errors. They are to change/erase anything that is wrong. At the end of the time, come together and see who caught the most errors.

Today, we are finishing our series on Hosea. We’ve covered a lot of material the last three weeks. We started out in Hosea 1, which showed us God telling Hosea to take for himself an adulterous wife. We find that the wife, Gomer, continued to cheat on him and we only know that Hosea is the father to one of the children that Gomer has. The next week we looked at Hosea 2—3, where God shows Hosea that the Israelites were quite like Gomer. They were supposed to be in a covenant relationship with God, but they had decided to suit their own interests and likings. At the end of the lesson, we see God instructing Hosea to go to Gomer, and to stick with her, telling her to turn from her ways. Last week was a little gloomy. We went through God’s speech to the Israelites, telling them about all the wrong that they had done to Him. We find that there are many parallels between the Israelites of that time, and the Church today.

Today, we are going to look at the final restoration that God has for the Israelites. See, God invented White-Out. He has, even with a huge list of transgressions, forgiving His people when they saw the error in their ways and repented. He sent His Son to die on the cross so that we can be forgiven, and that we can be made white as snow.

Lesson

Have the students get out their Bibles and turn to Hosea 11

Read Hosea 11:1-11

Take a look at verse nine. God knows His creation all too well. He knows that their first instinct when someone wrongs them is to go in anger towards the one who wronged them. God says, I’m not like you. I am holy. With this verse in mind, how do you view statements made by Christian conservatives who say that Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake were results of God’s wrath against people for not following Him?

Another lesson that we can take out of this verse is the fact that many people mold God into thinking exactly like they do. They want God to react in the same manner. God does not conform to our image of Him. He is holy and is not bound by human emotion or theories.

God, for the next two chapters resorts to calling out the Israelites for their wickedness and adultery against Him. However, these are a little different, because they are prefaced by the love of God. He wants to reiterate the fact that He always loved the Israelites. ALWAYS. He goes back to what they have done. Kind of a “I love you, and I want you to know that, but look what you have done to me”

Read Hosea 14:1-3

Hosea makes a plea to the Israelites. He tells them to ask God to forgive them, but also turns from their ways. Repentance is kind of a Christian-ese word. It’s something that we have said so many times but we rarely live it out. How many times do you ask for forgiveness but not do anything about it?

Read Hosea 14:4-8

Let’s go through and show the symbols that God uses there and say what they mean: Dew=Representation of a new day, Water to a dry heart. Green Pine Tree= Everlasting God

Read Hosea 14:9

This sounds a little like a proverb. Who are the people who are stumbling in the ways of the Lord? Allow them to answer, but point out that nowhere in this book did God talk to anyone who was not already a believer. God is talking about believers who are stumbling around because they continue to do what they want instead of what God wants.

Another question we could ask is this, can we tell people who are not living right without seeing their actions?

Application

What is the evangelistic message that was given to the world through Hosea? (That no matter what you have done and how long you have been running, God is still there waiting to use White Out).