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Here you’ll find updates, announcements, and our thoughts on this world around us.
Here you’ll find updates, announcements, and our thoughts on this world around us.
Conversations with folks from the Emmanuel Church Family and friends about life, faith, and our God who knits us all together.
Young Life… An Upward Spiral into apologetics… The most fun wedding at the Governor's Inn… Scale Free… All this and more with our very own Roosevelt Pires!
*Check out Roosevelt's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@ScaleFree777
Our Sunday Roundtable- Week 5
Robert E. Lee, the great Civil War general, was on his deathbed when he took a deep breath and exhaled a final order: “Strike the tent.” These last words were those of a pilgrim whose life here on earth was spent sojourning. He knew that his beloved Virginia was never his home or final resting place. The picture he paints of a man breaking camp to head off in a new direction was one he’d experienced many times as a soldier serving on a military campaign. When the order’s given, it’s time to move on. To strike a tent was to pull its pegs, wind its guidewires, and fold the canvas into the pack. Lee wasn’t fleeing the earth. He wasn’t retreating or on the run. He was breaking camp for Kingdom come. So, what exactly was the tent that Lee was looking to have taken down and packed for the journey across the Jordan? We tend to understand a man’s essence to be found in his soul and we tend to think of his physical body as but a house; an instrument for our spirit’s expression. But when we die, what should be done with this house? What is a proper way to dispose of the “remains”. While the Bible doesn’t give clear directives on the question or post any prohibitions, our practices do say something about our worldview and our hope. This week’s article for discussion is Grave Signs, written by Russell D. Moore. This somewhat provocative essay by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, challenges its reader to grapple with the question of whether cremation is consistent with biblical Christianity. Our aim will not be to decide the right and wrong of the matter as much as it will be to use the issue as an exercise in understanding; a kind of theological obstacle course run. Please consider joining us for what will likely be a lively discussion on death. God bless our study!
Click Here to read the article for this week, entitled “Grave Signs”
Join the Pursuit!
To find God is to begin a lifelong pursuit of Him. This sounds like a contradiction or a bit of nonsense, but it’s true. When a man falls in love with a woman, he does not ask for her hand in marriage that he may end his pursuit of her, but only to begin it in earnest. So it is and should be in a person’s relationship with God. When a person is called by God and surrenders his life to Him, he has found God in fullness and secured the promise of spending eternity with Him in heaven. But what salvation also wins for the believer is a newfound peace with God that leads to fellowship, intimacy, and real friendship with Him. Too often, our church’s pulpits and programs have taught that a person’s pursuit of God ends in baptism and that’s a terrible mistake. To those whose growth in God has been stunted by such spiritual malpractice, A. W. Tozer has written a wonderful word of challenge and encouragement. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God reads like a modern day prophecy written to a people in exile and offers the would-be pilgrim a clear pathway back to the Promised Land. A group of us here at the church are reading through this book and meeting on Sunday mornings at 8:30 to discuss what we’ve learned. We’d love to have you come and join the pursuit!
Our Sunday Roundtable- Week 4
Should parents childproof their house or houseproof their child? What do speedbumps say about a city’s opinion of its citizens and their integrity? Do chastity belts produce good Christian girls?
Too often modern man is caught trying to pick the lock on Eden’s gate as he works to make a world with “no alarms and no surprises”. Our anthropology today has man’s nature being something altogether good. Any evil actions must be the result of poor nurturing and nothing else. Man doesn’t need to change; his world does. In The Terror of a Toy, G.K. Chesterton gives us an antidote to this error in essay form. We’ve all been bit by the viper and its venom is in our bloodstream, but this Sunday’s discussion should be good and timely medicine!
Click Here to read The Terror of a Toy for Week 4
Our Sunday Roundtable- Week 3
Somewhere in the Sonoran Desert in Scottsdale, Arizona you’ll find the frozen remains of Ted Williams. Somewhere in San Juan, Puerto Rico you’ll find the old bones of Ponce de Leon. And somewhere in the foothills above the Dead Sea you’ll find the sodium chloride reduction of Lot’s wife. Death is difficult to live with. It doesn’t do to run from it. It’s not living to dance with it. And it’s not right to spit at it. The Bible thinks it best to be prepared for it by beating the old stinger to the punch. While the world conspires to have us either embrace death or think nothing of it at all, the church is called to dispel the power of death by welcoming it into our consideration and calculation. As we look this week at an old tale and a couple of famous poems, let’s look to sit with the enemy – uncloaked and without his scythe.
Click Here to read the selected readings for this week
Our Sunday Roundtable- Week 2
How is it that we freely do so many things we despise? Perhaps we’re not so free after all.
In Shooting an Elephant, we have a haunting, brutally honest confession of a powerful man, powerless to do what he knew was right. This wonderfully written little essay by George Orwell serves as a rich mountain for us to mine; providing the coal to fire a discussion of our own powerlessness in the face of unending societal pressure. I hope that, as we gather for this Sunday’s roundtable, we’d be as sober in our assessments of ourselves and as unflinching in our pursuit of the honest truth. Are you tired of shooting elephants?
Follow this link to read “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell.
Our Sunday Roundtable- Week 1
The same fire that heats your home can burn it down.
Passion is a blessing from God and few would want to try and live and love without it. But the same passion that can stir your heart can break it as well. In Austen’s Powers, Jennifer Farrara compares the passions of two of literature’s most famous leading men and offers many reflections into matters of love, romance, marriage, and our relationship with God. Some of Farrara’s insights are a little provocative and I’m not sure I share all of her convictions. That said, I think there’s a lot here that merits discussion and there’s much to apply to our relationships with each other and the Lord. Please take time to read the article and consider joining us for a roundtable discussion of it this Sunday morning at 8:30 in room #208 in the Family Life Center. Hot coffee and a homemade treat will greet you at the door!
Click Here to read the article for Week 1
Join Us Backstage!
For the theater-goer, the intermissions between scenes in a three-act stage play are some of the most suspenseful moments of the entire night. The curtain comes down on a scene full of turmoil and unresolved tension, on characters in crisis and distress, and on a story coming to a climax. As you sit in the dim half-light, surrounded by the hushed, excited chatter of the audience, you hear the stagehands hard at work behind the curtain. Props are being wheeled in and out, actors and actresses are scurrying to find their marks, and the director is whispering the script in the wings. When the curtain goes back up, what setting will you find for the final scene? What characters will be center stage? What kind of score will be struck up from the orchestra pit? One can hardly wait!
In the great stage play of history, there was no intermission more important or suspenseful than that provided between the Old and New Testaments. As the curtain came down on the Israelites rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem, the Lord was wheeling out the great Assyrian, Egyptian, and Babylonian empires and wheeling in the Greek and the Roman. A great and seismic scene change was underway, the world being outfitted with an entirely new setting. A cast of new characters were being positioned center stage. As the house lights went back down and the spot light put on the Savior of the world and the dawn of His kingdom here on Earth, the final act became the story of the Church. Right now, we’re offering an opportunity for everyone to take a tour backstage during this intermission. Professor Jere Vincent is teaching a class on Sunday mornings entitled Early Church History. Using videos, pictures, and vivid description, Jere is resetting the stage for us and opening our eyes to the amazing work the Lord did in preparing the world for the establishment of Christ’s kingdom. Please consider joining us Sundays at 8:30am in room #208, upstairs in the Family Life Center for this excellent look behind the curtain. Hot coffee and a delicious home-baked treat will also be served! Don’t miss it!