Confirmation Sunday

What a cool worship on Sunday!  Not that other Sundays are cool too, but this past Sunday had an extra cool factor.  We got to confirm 7 wonderful teenagers.  It was the culmination of a year's worth of blood, sweat and tears...mostly from me!  I'm only kidding.  They really were a great bunch of kids, and I miss seeing them regularly on Sunday mornings.  Here's hoping they don't become strangers!
I do confirmation a little bit different here at Minden UCC.  As I talked about in my sermon I try to stress relationship and how our faith should/does have an impact on our lives.  I don't spend a lot of time drilling the kids on the order of the books of the Bible, dates, names and history facts.  I find that boring, and I know the kids would too.  Plus I always have in the back of my mind that I went through that type of confirmation where we filled in answers in a book, and it didn't help me and I went on to seminary!
I want the kids to have an experience that they can look back upon when they're young adults and starting a new life and say, "boy that Pastor Brian wasn't too weird...church wasn't a horribly boring place...maybe I should check a church out now."  I would much rather have them say that then be able to recite books of the Bible and dates and names.  Now, we do talk a lot about the Bible and faith, but I try and take the stories and relate their meaning to the kids' lives.  We open the Bible and read some verses to see how they can direct us today.  Some meetings we'll spend the whole time talking about an incident at school and how we as Christians should respond.  We most definitely laugh a lot, and I try to get the kids to see that the Bible isn't some dry book, because if you read through the Bible you'll certainly see there are some wild stories in there. 
Most importantly I want the kids to connect their faith with their lives.  The Bible verse I used for confirmation Sunday was from John 15 when Jesus is talking about the vine and the branch and how if the branch is disconnected it withers and dies.  If these kids, and us, don't connect our faith with our daily lives then it isn't relevant to us and it dries up.  I wanted them, and I want you, to know that going to church, connecting with the Spirit through daily devotions and prayer is vital to your vibrant life.  We need that connection so we can keep our faith growing and alive.  If we aren't growing and live then we are stagnant and dying.  I certainly don't want to be called stagnant.  As I try to stress with the confirmands, and I want us to see too, you need to see how your faith influences your life.  Let God into your life, try to live by God's commands, and see the blessings that flow.  We aren't going to miss all of life's bumps just because we are plugged in, but we'll certainly have more strength to get through the bumps if we are connected the life giving vine of Jesus Christ.

Perfect football weekend

I am going to write this weekend down in the history books.  I am not sure it can ever be repeated.  It was the perfect football weekend for the Wohlhuter house.  Let me explain...first the Gophers won, then the Hawkeyes lost, then the Huskers lost, then the Vikings won, and then the Packers lost.  Folks, life doesn't get any better than that!  The perfect football weekend was had. There was dancing in the streets, champagne corks being popped, and fun and frivolity happening all around the parsonage.  Ok, maybe not all that, but I don't think the perfect football weekend has happened before, and it may never happen again so I enjoyed it.
Now I have an exercise for you.  I want you to close your eyes and imagine the perfect weekend.  Can you see it...what is the perfect weekend?  And does that perfect weekend include a worship service at church?  I can hear the tires screeching to a halt...church and perfect weekend?!?!  Is that an oxymoron?  I would be curious to know how many people had worship plans in their perfect weekend?  If I'm honest, I'm not sure I had a church worship service in mind when I was dreaming about the perfect weekend either.  Why don't we include church in our idea of a perfect weekend?  Is it because church is something we do if we have time instead of making time for it?  Is it because church is pretty low on the priority list for weekend projects? 
Ok, I admit I might be stretching it a bit thinking a church worship service should be included in our thoughts of a perfect weekend, but I don't think I'm stretching it too much to ask us to think where Sunday worship is on our weekend priority list.  Sunday worship is one of the primary ways we can grow our relationship with God, so why is it so easy to blow it off?  If we want our relationship with God to improve wouldn't it be prudent to move one of the primary ways we can connect with and learn more about the Spirit in our lives up the priority list?  I would certainly think so.  If you want to get better at cooking, playing the piano, etc. how do you do it?  You go to classes to learn.  You practice using the skill, and more than likely you seek out people who already are good at the thing you want to learn.  Well, if you want more of God in your life then the same principles apply.  You need to work on making the connection and growing your faith.  A very good way to do that is to attend a worship service with people who are seeking the same thing.  Too often it is way to easy to blow off Sunday worship.  Then when we want that deep meaningful connection with God we wonder why we can't connect so easily.  Well, when you don't practice it's hard to pick something up and be good at it right away isn't it.  Work at connecting with God and you will be be amazed at how the relationship can grow.  Sunday worship is a great place to start.