VALLEY VINE Valley Presbyterian Church
October 2015
Volume 60, Number 9 Our ambassadors will welcome these students, offer them encouragement and hospitality, conduct tours and be ready to answer questions about our church and its mission. They’ll seek to embrace and bless the members of their classes and respond to those moments when acquaintance can become friendship, and when friendship can take on a deeper spiritual aspect.
Dear friends, What happens to sermons when they’re over? I used to think of sermons as a kind of disposable art, created for a particular group in a particular moment in time and then tossed away. (In the case of Valley Presbyterian Church, four services and four moments in time!) The digital age has made sermons far less disposable. Now they live forever on the internet, and their audience can be anyone with a modem. One answer to the question is that sermons are archived, and so they are not really over. But there is a deeper issue under the question, too. What do listeners do with sermons they hear? What happens in worshippers lives beyond the Sanctuary? The danger of preaching and teaching is that truths understood will not become truths lived out.
Pray for our volunteer Ambassador Coordinator, Stephan Sciacca, and for all of our members who are salt and light at Encore University. If you’ve been attending Encore classes, we’d love to invite you in this effort! Well done to Encore Assistant Director Tracy Keller and Director Becky Bennett and other Encore leaders for developing this idea. I’m a little scared when I think of sermons archived forever on the internet! But I’m very excited to think they can live long and be greatly improved in the hearts and lives of our members. What thought will become an action for you this month?
Yours in Christ,
To paraphrase the Christian poet, T. S. Eliot, between the thought and the action falls the shadow. The life of a disciple only deepens when inspiration becomes perspiration, when prayers become practices, when worship spills over into witness. What happens to sermons when they’re over? They should live in the lives of the listeners. That is finally the measure of preaching, and that is why I am excited about a new Encore initiative. Last year we had a series of messages and a retreat seminar on the theme “Each One Reach One.” We examined how to discover and enhance the spiritual dimensions of our relationships and how to connect people to the ongoing work of God in the church and the world. This year Encore University has decided to make that a reality in its life and work. Members of our own faith community who attend Encore classes will be invited and then trained to be ambassadors within their classes. Encore will attract 300 students in the Fall Term, with the vast majority taking more than one class. Sixty percent of Encore students are not members of VPC.
Valley Presbyterian Church
6947 E. McDonald Drive ▪ Paradise Valley, AZ 85253-5342 Phone: 480-991-6424 ▪ Fax: 480-991-6427 Email: church@myvalleychurch.org ▪ Website: myvalleychurch.org
1