Month: September 2019

Today we hear from worship pastor Chris Smith and worship leader Ryan Lewis as they discuss the vision behind the original songs being written, shared, and captured at Living Word. This past Friday evening our worship ministry recorded several original songs that will be released next year.

Chris: Over the past 5 years we have introduced about a dozen original songs at our worship services. Can you share a little bit about what has been inspiring the worship leaders at Living Word to write original songs for the local church?

Ryan: As we choose worship songs from other churches and movements, we have seen how the songs themselves echo the stories, heart, and culture of the group that wrote them. It’s our desire to capture the specific way that God has been moving at Living Word through song. Songwriting also provides a medium for us to shepherd and pastor our congregation. For example, Diana’s song “Send Us” was written out of our desire for a benedictory song to close services, and also from our desire to be a missional church.

Chris: What was the inspiration and vision behind doing a live recording?

Ryan: Our mission for this recording is to …

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Some people have asked about the author Mark Sayers and his idea of hyper-reality.

Mark is a pastor, author, and teacher from Australia. He is one of my favorite authors. You can learn more about Mark here.

Mark has written quite a few really good books. The Trouble With Paris was the first book of his that I read. It was written about 10 years ago and was a defining book for me. It is well-written, clever, insightful, hopeful, a little philosophy, and more theology-spirituality! Many of the themes from Sunday had their origin in this book.

Especially this thing called hyper-reality.

Hyper-reality means that we now prefer our reality better than the real reality. And therefore, real reality seems kind of boring, mundane, and uninteresting.

If you want to go deeper into this topic, check out The Trouble With Paris.

Pastor Brian

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The Deadly Combination

Here are two values that alone are powerful, but put them together and you have a volatile mix. First, the supreme value of the individual. You are supreme. You decide. Whatever you choose, whatever you want, that is good and right for you, even if someone else disagrees. Individualism has been pushed to extreme degrees. So, we now have the ridiculous situation of most Americans still believing adultery is wrong, but at the same time having NO justification to say that if a person in a marriage wants to commit adultery that person is wrong for doing so. We are told not to judge and instead to be tolerant of all personal decisions!

Second, the supreme value of pleasure, usually through materialistic and consumerist pursuits. Stuff makes you happy. Things make you happy. Shopping, spending, buying, and owning things makes you happy. And the same for experiences. Shopping for experiences and then having the ones you want makes you happy. Adultery makes you happy. It may not make your spouse happy, but that no longer matters. If you are happy, that matters. Happiness is now to be found not in being a good person, but in being …

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On Sunday, I talked about the issues of depression and anxiety in our culture. I didn’t talk about those things to make anyone feel ashamed. Far from it. If someone is depressed and/or anxious, it is important to be able to admit that condition and then get the best help for it.

I referred to those widespread experiences for a reason. I’ll take a short detour before I come back to the issues of anxiety and depression.

DETOUR BEGINS NOW:

I believe in the Christian faith because I believe it is TRUE. I believe some things are right and other things are wrong. I believe some things are good and other things are bad. I believe some things are helpful and healing and other things are hurtful and harmful.

And I believe this is the state of objective reality and not just my subjective perception of reality.

For example, I believe adultery is objectively bad. Adultery is not bad because of my subjective opinion, it is bad because God (the author of reality) says it is bad. And adultery remains bad, even if my subjective opinion believes otherwise. I am using this particular example because a large percentage of Americans …

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Today’s blog post is written by John Hilliard, pastor of global ministry and local outreach. 

As most of us watched the weather last week, Hurricane Dorian was bearing down as a Category 5 storm on the small group of islands called the Bahama’s. Because it is near the east coast, I’m sure many of us from York County have visited this island paradise. But a paradise it is no more. This massive storm sat over the island, progressing at less than 5 miles per hour with winds in excess of 180 mph devastating everything in its path. Reports from people who survived the storm are terrifying as their homes were literally blown away as they hunkered down within them.

The cleanup is just beginning as well as accounting for people lost and killed by the storm’s fury. Many organizations are stepping up to help, cruise lines are bringing in food and evacuating people. Celebrity chef Jose Andres is feeding hundreds of people each day. Water is the biggest crisis. Where they don’t have clean water disease, dehydration and many other problems follow.

Living Word has found a partner to help provide clean water in situations like this. In the past …

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