Since my voicemail gets emailed to me automatically, I wanted a quick way to just listen to it and have it be done without needing to open some bloated media player for one tiny WAV file.

If you want to use it, here it is…

tiny little wav audio player

It’s late at night and my wife is asleep on the couch, but I just have to post this before I go to bed. Tonight at the Skylight Coffeehouse in Lafayette, I went to the open mic night as I usually do on Thursdays. Tonight, however, I was actually hosting, and I performed a little bit myself, but we were graced at the end with an act that was just so cool.

The band is called POPPLE, and you have to visit their websites:

• POPPLE’s main site
• Downloads, Demos, and Videos

You need to watch some of those videos and then come back here to leave a comment.

(Oh, and they are actually doing their music as a Christian Ministry.)

I hope they don’t mind my posting of this rip. (The live version was better.)

Contra by Popple

Click here

MSWord File

When I taught my first ReNEW class, I realized that I couldn’t assume everyone was on the same page spiritually, so I also created this smaller class session that specifically focused on what it means to begin a journey with Jesus.

I still like this material, but it has proven to be too cumbersome for me when I’m trying to explain the gospel to someone. I’ve shifted my focus to another booklet I’ve prepared called “First Steps”.

MS Word & Powerpoint Files

Back in 2001, I developed a concept for an annually recurring class that I would teach in my church every January as a refresher course in church membership to prepare for our “Recommitment Sunday” in the first week of February.

The class I taught in January 2002 contained a great deal of information on my personal philosophy of ministry as well as basic information on membership in our church. Therefore, there is a good amount of material in this edition of the class that is not transferable. However, there remains much that can be gleaned and applied to any church situation.

The following year, I changed the class significantly to focus more on reviewing our core values in the context of table discussions rather than large class lecture. In this format, it is much more transferable to other contexts.

In this above zip file, I include both editions of the class material in MS Word format as well as a PowerPoint file for the original edition.

MS Word format | Student Edition PDF | Teacher’s Edition PDF
(note: MS Word documents contain macros that do not need to be enabled)

Explanation:

According to Jesus, the greatest command in all the Bible is this:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

In other words, the most important thing for people to work on in their lives is to cultivate a deep love for God that permeates every aspect of their lives. This kind of love is a love that puts God first above everything else. Ultimately, that’s the foundation point of the spiritual life. It’s a life that acknowledges God’s supremacy over everything.

That’s what we mean by “worship.”

Here’s a sample page from the teacher’s edition of the curriculum:

Recommended Reading:

• The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer
• The Unquenchable Worshipper by Matt Redman