Faith Fellowship Church of Tennessee, Illinois
Hello Everyone,
No bulletin to post, so I thought I would at least remind us to stay in touch in the ways that we can. We, of course, need to keep each other and our world in our prayers during this very difficult time.
I am hoping to have some music for our Sunday Easter service; instrumental arrangements of Christ Arose, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, He Lives and O Worship the King. I had hoped to have the words streaming over the top of the audio but I don’t know if I am going to have the time to learn how to do that and do it well and still get everything else done.
If you have been reading the emails, you know that I have begun copying the service to DVDs for those who do not have internet access or the ability to access our YouTube channel. I am hoping to have the video uploaded and the DVDs copied and delivered by Saturday evening so you can watch and listen on Easter morning. (For those of you who prefer the audio only version of the service I have good news. I have fixed the annoying hum that was coming through.)
This is a very trying time for all of us so let’s try to be pleasing to our Lord and live joyfully and patiently and prayerfully for his sake during this storm in our lives.
Let’s also keep our president and all of our government leaders in our prayers. And our neighbors and our world. Many people are very frightened. My hope and prayer is that the Church will be rebuked and refined during this time of trial and tempering and that we will come out stronger and brighter than ever in our witness to the glory of God.
Holy, holy, holy is our Lord God Almighty. How I praise his holy name.
Sincerely,
Pastor Dave
Church Phone: (309) 776-3786
Hello. This video is not too bad for my first try. Dark. I have to set up the video camera differently. Very pleased other than that. It took me a while to get used to watching myself … rocking back and forth, etc. … You see this every Sunday so maybe easier for you. Let me know if you think this is a benefit over only audio. Please let me know if anything is not working. I believe I scheduled the video message on the YouTube channel to be accessible tomorrow. Not really sure why I did that but didn’t want to mess with the settings once I finally uploaded, gained permissions, etc. Whew! Wore me out. 🙂
Thanks,
Pastor Dave
Here is the link to our church YouTube channel: FFC YouTube Channel
To cancel or not to cancel? That is the Shakespearean question confronting churches today. It is not a question of mere expediency. The gathered worship service is central to the church’s identity, and therefore, cancellation seems to trample on more than tradition. It can feel like a threat to the church’s existence.
Government officials, medical experts, and civic leaders have all asked citizens to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus by practicing physical distancing. According to leading experts, churches are one of the top places of community spread. Why? Christians shake hands, embrace one another, and kiss cheeks. Some are liturgically directed to drink from a common cup; others pass the peace with a warm touch. Our bodies do naturally what our souls do supernaturally. We connect. And we do so intergenerationally.
What are churches to do?
Our mandate as Christians to obey governing authorities (Rom. 13:1–7; 1 Pet. 2:13–17) is a good reason for churches to cancel worship services. But there are other Biblical principles that help us embrace this difficult decision.
Canceling in-person worship services is not the same as canceling worship. Christians should never stop worshiping, because God is worthy of all our praise. Those in the persecuted church have long worshiped God without buildings, because they know that church is not primarily a place but a people. And technology now gives us unprecedented options. This does not mean, of course, that place is unimportant. God himself authorized the building of a temple that would serve as a place where his name would dwell. Even with that decree, however, at the dedication of the temple, Solomon humbly acknowledged that God cannot be consigned to a place (1 Kings 8:27).
Click here for full article: whitehorseinn.org
Reading time … 14-18 minutes
by MICHAEL HORTON
According to Wall Street’s “Fear-Greed Index,” it is “Extreme Fear” that is driving the market right now in the wake of COVID-19. It’s not just the coronavirus. Everybody seems to be anxious, checking the 24-hour news cycles for the next jolt to our insecurity. Besides their health, many are afraid of losing their job or personal freedom. Many are gripped by the fear of economic collapse, while others are anxious about environmental collapse. Many Christians are fearful of the collapse of a thinly-veiled Christian order. Others worship security and therefore are fearful of anyone and anything that leaders or the media construct as threatening it. You get my point. It’s all about control. What we’re most afraid of losing tells us who or what we worship, where we place our trust.
It’s not that people don’t believe in God anymore, just that it doesn’t seem to matter. And that suggests that there is little knowledge of the “God” to whom a majority (though declining) number of fellow Americans tip their hat. The first test of whether we are actually worshipping the right God is fear. That’s right: Fear. While being afraid of all sorts of things is a sign of sanity these days, the fear of God seems quite insane not only to unbelieving neighbors but even in the church. It’s s not surprising that the God of the Bible is increasingly rejected in wider American society, since in even evangelical circles he is frequently reduced to a supporting actor in our life movie: a means to the end of our own health, wealth and happiness. In ordinary conversations, even among Christians, we express fear of just about any threat to our well-being, but meet stares or raised eyebrows if we mention fearing God.
We worship most what we fear most. So, for some right now, the fear of catching COVID-19 dominates the headlines. People don’t worship a virus, of course, but many do worship health—physical and mental well-being. Fear is an index of the object of our worship, the one ultimately in whom we place our trust.
Personal peace and well-being or political and social utopia become the “heaven on earth,” here and now, that we demand. If God can help with that, great. The philosopher William James said that in America, “God is not worshipped, he is used.”
Jesus has become a mascot for our cause, party or nation, rather than the mediator apart from whom we face God only as “a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Instead of witnessing to the redeeming God of history, public pronouncements from some evangelical leaders give the impression that Christians are fearful, resentful and anxious. Looking to powerful leaders for security, we often seem to be telling our neighbors that we don’t really trust the one who said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). We imagine that we are not a little flock, certain to be wiped out were it not for God’s grace and mercy, much less that we’ve been given a kingdom. Instead, we seem to be fixated on the one we’re building. When Jesus warns of coming persecution, it’s not to stir his disciples to fear but to hope in him alone, based on his victory: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).
As Nebuchadnezzar discovered, we recover our sanity when we lift our eyes to heaven. We’re back in line with reality. We’re not in charge, and never have been. We can’t create or save ourselves. But we have been created and saved by God in Jesus Christ! Now we can see the needs all around us, our own and those of our neighbors and the creation, as opportunities rather than threats. We want to play our part in curbing the spread of the virus. We are called to defend the life of our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable: the unborn, our aging elders, the poor, orphans, widows and all victims of injustice. We are called to be good stewards of God’s creation. But this is because we fear God rather than anyone or anything else.
Practicing hospitality when we could be killed by (or kill) a person standing a few feet away boggles the mind and wearies the soul. Psalm 150:6 declares, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” But we live in a world where the very act of breathing is dangerous.
Christians must look to God—and his glory—more than we look to the physical danger around us. As John Calvin writes:
God expects a very different kind of practical wisdom from us [Christians], namely that we should meditate on his judgments in a time of adversity and on his goodness in delivering us from danger. For surely it is not by mere chance that a person falls into the hands of enemies or robbers; neither is it by chance that a person is rescued from them. But what we must constantly keep in mind is that all afflictions are God’s rod, and therefore there is no remedy for them other than God’s grace.1
Precautions, medical interventions, and vaccines have value, but our ultimate hope is not in any of them. God is sovereign over every breath we take, even the breath of someone who carries disease and enters our six-foot bubble. If “all afflictions are God’s rod,” our task is to fear God more than man and the virus he may carry.
Dr. Emily Landon is the chief infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medicine, who moments after Pritzker issued the ordinance to take effect Saturday evening, took to the stand with a 7-minute-long speech that went viral after striking a chord for many individuals.