The Sweet Dropper

REMIND
Would you like some Sunday School with your coffee? Beginning this Lord’s Day there will be coffee available in the Fellowship Hall from 9:00-9:30 am and from 10:30-10:45 am. We want to encourage friendliness and visiting. We will have people there who can help visitors find classes for themselves or for their children. Maybe, just maybe, a cup of coffee might help you be a bit more alert for worship as well.

NOTE: Jesus Unplugged study guides: I’ve posted an introduction and two weeks’ worth of study guides for the Jesus Unplugged sermon series. Go to fpckosciusko.org and read or download the pdf formatted document. Early reviews have been very good. Each guide contains individual and group study questions to prepare you for the upcoming sermon text, along with a daily suggestion of how to incorporate the material into brief family worship times.
Wanted: men who will fight: Men’s groups are starting back up this month. The old groups will remain intact, and a new group is forming as well. If you are interested in joining the fight, let me, Grant, or Thomas Pound know. Men’s groups offer a practical way to apply the gospel to everyday life: small, simple, biblical, reproducible groups who meet regularly to help one another keep the gospel at the center of their discipleship. It’s time to start fighting…with the church, in the gospel, for the glory of Christ.
REVISIT
Organ concert and mission report: Thanks for your welcome of Roger and Abi Lowther last week. That was quite a concert and quite a moving missions presentation. An FPC member said to me last week that she had assumed that unless you could preach, than church planting work was not for you. Roger’s story shows us that the Spirit uses all kinds of gifts to establish and build up the body of Christ. We need preachers, for sure. But we need so many other gifts as well. It’s like that around here too!
REFLECT
So you want to be a leader…Quotes from a 1995 address by John Piper called “The Spiritual Leader”:
•    ”If you want to be a great leader of people you have to get away from people to be with God.”
•    ”Spiritual leaders have a holy discontentment with the status quo.”
•    ”Leaders must be able to digest depression because they will eat plenty of it.”
•    On tactfulness: “There is a big difference between saying, ‘Your foot is too big for this shoe” and ‘This shoe is too small for your foot.’”
A REAL Apology: You’ve seen a Kindle, right? I’m talking about the little electronic device that lets you read electronic books with great ease. A couple of months ago, customers were buying copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Amazon for their Kindle, and it turns out that such editions were unauthorized. Amazon deleted them from purchasers’ Kindle devices and refunded the money. An outcry ensued. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos offered an apology for the way in which they handled the situation. It’s a nice model of admitting fault and accepting blame. It’s short, succinct, and utterly without sugar-coating or predictable passive platitudes of qualification (i.e., “we regret if anyone was offended…”)

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

ANTICIPATE
Mission Sunday and Morning Worship: Dr. Jack Chinchen will preach in Morning Worship from Numbers 14. Jack and his wife Nell are the founders of African Bible College. After spending seven years training pastors in the interior of Liberia, the Chinchens realized the great need for a Bible College that would meet the educational and spiritual needs of the multitude of high school graduates emerging from an awakened Africa. In 1976, the vision became a reality when the Chinchens established Liberia’s first four-year Bible College. The college was designed to hold the highest international university standards and meet the qualifications to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies.

As the graduates in West Africa proved the value of quality Christian education–dedicated Christian leaders who could truly have a transforming impact on the continent–it became imperative that this same ministry be made available to other parts of Africa. Thus, in 1988, African Bible Colleges established a second institution 4,000 miles away in the East African country of Malawi. Seventeen years later, in 2005, the third African Bible College was opened in the equatorial country of Uganda.

Today African Bible Colleges has nearly 800 graduates serving in a wide spectrum of Christian ministries–from program production at TransWorld Radio, orphan care with Children of the Nations, leadership positions at Campus Crusade (Life Ministries), and HIV ministries with World Relief, to planting churches in the former communist stronghold of Mozambique–ABC graduates are proving to be a key component in the evangelization and transformation of Africa.
In the morning liturgy we will sing  Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, a second singing of The Power of the Cross, and Am I a Soldier of the Cross?
Evening Worship: Grant will be back from vacation. He’s tanned, rested and ready to preach from Ephesians 4:1-6.