Keep your ears stopped.
Shut your eyes tight.
Make your necks stiff.
And harden your hearts.
For:
If you hear and see,
If you receive and obey,
This message will bring life abundant.
Do you have ears? Use them.
(Reflections on the Parable of the Sower.)
Series: Gospel of Mark (2022)
Scripture: Mark 4:1-25
Date: Sunday, March 13, 2022
The portrayal of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel is of a man of great power and authority:
He commands the unclean spirits;
He heals with a word;
He calms the storm into silence.
But there is one thing Jesus does NOT do, one thing he never commands or coerces.
That one thing is, so to speak, the dog that doesn’t bark in Mark’s Gospel.
And it is unbelievably important.
[Sermon video below.]
Series: Gospel of Mark (2022)
Scripture: Mark 1:21-28; Mark 1:40-42; Mark 4:35-41; Mark 8:27-30
Date: Sunday, March 6, 2022
I’m really looking forward to this Lenten season at Munger, and thought you might be interested in some of what we’ve got going on. So grateful I get to be involved in this stuff. Keep reading until the end—there’s lots here!
As I say on Sundays, Munger is a Bible-reading church. Since 2017, we’ve lived into this aspiration by following church-wide Bible reading plans. Here’s what this looks like:
The entire congregation follows the same reading plan;
We read through entire books because we believe the entire Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus; in other words, the Bible isn’t just a collection of individual, inspirational fortune-cookie sayings that can be embroidered on tea-towels;
I write a daily commentary that gets posted on my blog each weekday (and emailed out to everyone on my email list);
I preach through entire books and only very very rarely do topical sermon series;
We hold a few large Wednesday Bible studies for all ages to help folks get the most out of their readings.
Our Lenten Bible reading plan will be through The Gospel of Mark! The readings will be weekdays (with the exceptions of Sunday readings on Palm Sunday and Easter), and they begin on Ash Wednesday (3/2) and conclude on Easter (4/17).
[Be sure to pick up our new Mark booklets—the reading plan begins on Ash Wednesday.]
I’ve written daily commentary on each Mark reading, and we’ve printed Mark devotional books that have the readings and the commentary assigned to each day of the plan. If you haven’t grabbed yours, be sure to do so before the plan begins on 3/2. (If you live out of town, email info@mungerplace.org and we’ll send you one in the mail.)
I’m kicking off our Mark series this Sunday, 2/27. Can’t wait!
Starting Ash Wednesday, March 2, we’ll have daily online Bible study every weekday morning, 7:00-7:10 AM. The format is very simple (and the order we’ll use is inside the front cover of the Mark books!). Here’s the plan:
We’ll begin with an opening prayer;
Then a brief thought on that day’s Mark reading;
And conclude with brief prayers prompted by the comments and requests of those who are tuned in.
You can join us via Facebook Live on the Munger Page (I don’t like Facebook or Meta—that name alone makes me queasy!—but I have to admit that Facebook Live is the best platform we’ve found for this kind of thing): www.facebook.com/mungerplace.
Don’t use Facebook?
I love you. Keep doing what you’re doing—it is NOT worth it.
Join us on our own live video site: www.mungerplace.LIVE. If you are using a desktop browser, you can comment in real time; unfortunately, on the mobile version commenting is not yet possible.
I’d love to have families participate before or on the way to school.
Make it a daily habit, or just join when you can—either way, we’d love to have you.
Speaking of families, we have a brand-new Holy Communion service every Wednesday morning in Lent that I promise will conclude no later than 7:20 AM. It is my hope that families might attend on the way to school—we’ll even have Chick-fil-A breakfast items available each week so you can grab and go on your way. (Uncle Munger is picking up the tab.)
(We’ll keep the daily online Bible study and morning prayer schedule rolling on Wednesdays for folks who are unable to come to church, but because I’ll be at church, I won’t be leading on Wednesday mornings.)
Coming together on Wednesday mornings and receiving Holy Communion is a great way to keep the fires of faith burning during the week.
Come every Wednesday in Lent, or just whenever you can fit it in—you’ll be welcome whenever.
The Daniel Project is a weekend seminar that I created—it’s 100% my curriculum—no one else teaches it. The reason I say that is because I want you to understand the why behind it: I felt a burden and a responsibility to push back against the culture’s claims against the faith—I wanted to be able to look myself in the mirror and know I’m at least trying.
The schedule is:
Friday, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Saturday, 8:30 AM - 1:30 PM.
What we do over the course of the weekend is look at some of the questions people are asking or hearing about the faith, questions like:
Why isn’t there more evidence for God?
Does science contradict faith?
Is it reasonable to believe in God?
Isn’t the Trinity an unnecessary and superfluous idea?
Aren’t all religions basically the same, in the end?
What is the Bible, and where did it come from?
Who decided what was in the Bible?
Isn’t Christian teaching on marriage and divorce and singleness cruel and hateful?
Etc.
My goal is to help Christians feel more confident in the faith and be able to stand with courage in the midst of a hostile culture. Hence the name, The Daniel Project.
We have two Daniel Project weekends scheduled this spring, March 25th & 26th, 2022
May 6th & 7th, 2022.
PARENTS: I would love to have interested middle school and high school students attend. You are welcome at any time, but I know that the youth ministry is trying to get as many kids as possible to attend the 3/25 weekend together.
More info and registration here.
If you’ve been to a Daniel Project before, I’d love to have you again—I’ve made lots of improvements and changes!
[Our Wednesday evening Bible studies are some of my favorite times at church.]
March 9 and March 30, 6-7 PM. Dinner in the parking lot to follow. Love these nights!
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return;
Repent, and believe the gospel.””
Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite days of the Christian year—it’s both very solemn and hopeful at the same time. Hope you can make it to one of our services that day. Come before school!
Our schedule:
7:00-7:20AM
12:00-12:20 PM
7:00-7:45 PM.
I’m looking forward to pushing hard these few months at Munger, and I hope you are too.
I’m still grieving like crazy at the thought of leaving, but that also helps me resolve not to waste a single moment—we’re going to have a great spring.
Who’s ready to run?
I hear the same canard all the time: "You know, the New Testament was actually put together by a group of men intent on perpetuating a conspiracy about Jesus. Jesus was actually such-and-such a traveling prophet, but the early church started spreading incredible stories about him to justify their power claims. The Gospels are a hoax."Here's the problem with that theory (one of many problems, actually): if you were creating a conspiracy about Jesus, WOULDN'T YOU GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT BEFOREHAND? Hasn't it ever struck you how strange it is that there are?four Gospels in the New Testament, and not just one? Why include four similar but separate accounts of the life of your religion's founder?Today we began reading the Gospel of Mark in our Bible reading plan. Mark is the shortest Gospel, and though it generally tells the same story as Matthew, you'll see differences in detail and emphasis. In fact, each of the four Gospels is different from the others in detail and emphasis. The basic story is the same, but some of the details are hard to reconcile. To cite one important example, although each of the Gospels tells the story of the Resurrection and the empty tomb, they each place a difference number of women actually there that first Easter Sunday morning as eyewitnesses . Either there were one woman there, or there were two women there, or there were three or more women there, but the differences are irreconcilable. Why would the early church permit those sorts of discrepancies to be included in the Bible?The early church was okay with including those sorts of discrepancies in the Bible for the same reason that there are four Gospels in the Bible, and not just one: because that's what had been passed down by the eyewitnesses. It was so important that the early church preserve and not tamper with the testimony of the various eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that it decided to stamp all four Gospels as "official" and include them in the New Testament, even though that meant there would be slight discrepancies between accounts. If you were creating a conspiracy, you would never do that--you'd get your story straight and clean.But real life isn't straight and clean--it's messy. And if you actually witnessed God-made-flesh walking among you as a man named Jesus, and if he did the amazing things that Jesus did,?and if the tomb really were empty and you subsequently met and touched and ate with the Risen Jesus, you'd expect there to be some discrepancies between eyewitnesses.The Gospels are not a sign of some ancient conspiracy; the Gospels are signs of an ancient certainty:this stuff actually happened.