The Church on the Hill. Summerland Baptist Church.

There are some words that carry so much baggage and emotion they always elicit a strong reaction. Think about the words that have grown out of racism, sexism or political idealism. Think about words that you would hesitate to ever use.  Does even the idea of using them make you uneasy? If you have followed any of the media highlights of this over the last few years, it should. There are certain words in 2012 that always generate instantaneous reaction.

Prophecy is one of those words….

Hear more this Sunday

Coming March 17 Join us as we ‘Walk thru the Bible’

More details coming soon…….

In his book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell tells the strange story of Christopher Langan a genius with a staggering IQ of 195. (For some perspective on this, Einstein’s IQ was 150) During High school Langan would ace any test by skimming the text book for two or three minutes before the exam. In his SAT’s he got a perfect score even though he fell asleep while writing the exam. He is an unqualified genius.

But Langan did not live up to his potential and ended up working on a rural horse farm in Missouri. What happened? He was a loner and had no sense of belonging, no community to support him and no functional family system to encourage him. Gladwell summarizes his story this way: “Langan had to make his way alone and no one, not rock stars, nor professional athletes, not software geniuses and not even billionaires make it alone”. (Malcolm Gladwell Outliers Page 115)

We all need to belong somewhere… Find out more this Sunday.

Imagine with me for just a moment that a newly emerged butterfly decided that it didn’t want to change. It still thought of itself as a caterpillar and not as a butterfly. Instead of flying with the light grace of a butterfly it crawled around on the ground like it used to. Instead of sipping nectar with other butterflies it tried chewing plant leaves with the caterpillars. It is kind of a silly thought isn’t it?  Yet….that is unfortunately what happens to many followers of Christ. Rather then embrace and begin to live their new identity in Christ they still think of themselves as they used to be. In the process their transformation journey slows and they never quite come to the place of seeing themselves as new in Christ.

When Paul begins to describe the next steps in our journey of morphing he begins exactly at this place. He wants us to begin to think differently about many things.

Hear more this coming Sunday at 9:15am or 11:00am