It’s A Christmas Open House!
Join us for an afternoon with good food…good drink…the sounds of Christmas in the background…crafts and activities for the kids…giving to those in need in our community and around the world…spending time with friends and family…remembering/celebrating the reason for the season.
Drop by for as little or as long as you would like between 3:30pm-6:30 pm Saturday, December 18th, 2010
There will be two short times to reflect on the meaning of Christmas at 4:30 pm and 5:30 pm. For those who want to join us this Christmas to worship fully, spend less, give more and love all, there will be an Advent Conspiracy offering/collection (cash or cheques written to "WBA - The Joshua House"). All the money collected will be split between The Richmond Food Bank and gifts from the World Vision Christmas Gift Catalogue (ie. clean water for a family, etc.). If there’s no money left in the budget then bring a non-perishable food item. For more info visit: adventconspiracy.org
Ever wonder what these three have in common? We invite you to join us as we unpack the truths in why GOD, SEX and MARRIAGE are so closely intertwined. This study will encourage those of us in married relationships and those who one day hope to be married.If you ask any married couple they will tell you, marriage is not what they thought it would be. The romanticized, Hollywood portrait of marriage is far from reality and often leaves couples frustrated, discontented and quick to find a way out. Marriage is hard work and requires much more than a little give and take.
Over the course of six Saturday evening sessions, and for those who want to continue, four more Sunday morning sessions, we will look at what the bible says about God’s design for marriage and the distinct roles of husbands and wives. This study will also help to answer and provide practical implementations for everyday struggles from communication, to the intriguing question of how to fully enjoy sexual intimacy with your spouse.
There is no cost for this workshop and dinner will be provided for the Saturday sessions, childcare will be provided at no cost for those attending the sessions, however childcare space is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible.
All we ask is for you and your spouse to bring an open mind and a desire to positively impact your marriage/relationship.
When: Every other Saturday evening starting October 2nd for 6 weeks
Where: Terra Nova Co-op Common Room
Time: To Be AnnouncedPlease RSVP by September 25th!
For more info or to RSVP please e-mail thejoshuahouse@shaw.caFor more video info visit the web site of the video sermon series we will be using at http://www.peasantprincess.com
So I was sitting in my car parked on the side of the road after a long day of inspections and this song comes on the radio…helped to put some things in perspective.
Join us for an afternoon filled with food, fun and friends. Drop by for as little or as long as you would like between 3:30pm-7:00pm on Saturday, December 20th.
Where: Terra Nova Co-op Common Room located at 74-6600 Barnard Drive, Richmond. For a map click "here"
Bring the family. There will be crafts and activities for the children and all the sounds of the holidays.
There will also be an opportunity to support those in need both locally and internationally:
We will have a "Love All" table where you can donate to our Advent Conspiracy Fund. The money we raise will be split with some donated to buy gifts for families in need through the World Vision Christmas Gift Catalogue and the rest going to The Richmond Food Bank.
Cheques need to be made out to: "CSBA - The Joshua House"
Through JubeJube there will also be a table where you can buy fair-trade hand-crafted women’s handbags from the Philippines.
Hope to see you there!
Iraq, Afghanistan, Rawanda, Darfur, AIDS, cancer, malaria, starvation, poverty, terrorism, 9/11, Indonesian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, three children murdered in Merritt, Bisphenol-A in baby and water bottles, theft, adultery, molestation, rejection, loss, broken relationships, pride, selfishness, greed, suffering, death, the list goes on and on and on and on. Why is the world so messed up? Why are we so messed up? Where is God in all this? I’m sure there isn’t one person who hasn’t asked themselves these questions and wondered about it all.
Renowned new testament scholar and Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, N.T. Wright, recently wrote a book called Evil and the Justice of God where he tackles these very issues head on. He reflects on the reality of evil in our world, how the world has tried to offer theories and solutions in both modernity and post modernity but how ultimately the answer may lie in a Galilean Jew who was crucified on a cross 2,000 years ago.
As a result of the book, N.T. Wright made a short DVD series entitled Evil that we as a church will be using at our Terra Nova group on Sunday nights after we finish our study in the book of Acts. This looks to happen around the end of May or early June and will go over four Sunday nights. So I would like to invite all of you to join us and to think and pray about others you would like to invite who might be looking for some answers to this very real question of evil and suffering in our world.
Did you just say birth control?
So how about that birth control, eh? “What, did he just say birth control?” That’s right. Glenda and I have recently been listening to a sermon by Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church) on Birth Control and to be honest, found it quite helpful. This is clearly one of those real life issues that everyone (hopefully just married couples) thinks about but hardly ever wants to talk about. Well, leave it to Mark Driscoll to talk about it, why he’ll talk on just about anything if it will help people learn how to follow Jesus in this world in which we live.
So that being said I would like to pass it on to you, those who choose to connect with The Joshua House. This is just our part of our trying to be a church that helps people live their whole lives in glory to God.
Just click on the link below and listen or go to the church website above and look for it under the recent sermon series “Religion Saves and 9 Other Misconceptions.”
Also a warning, the content might not be suitable for the younger folk, so keep that in mind if you play it with kids listening in.
Sermon
Question and Answer Period
Exclusivity: how can there be just one true religion?
Interesting book coming out by Timothy Keller, pastor of a church in Manhattan, New York called Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The book is called The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.
Tim Keller is an interesting bloke because he’s sort of known as one of the pioneers of a more recent urban kind of Christianity (what Christianity should look like in the cities). Put another way, he’s up there with guys like Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, N.T. Wright, etc. I can’t believe I just put all those names together on the same line!
For some of you who might not know, these guys definitely don’t always agree with each other on everything but they are sort of part of an increasingly more popular group of leaders steering the way for Western evangelicalism in the 21st century.
I just finished listening to a really interesting sermon given by Tim Keller on “Exclusivity: how can there be just one true religion?” and wanted to pass it on to our community as I found it rather helpful. Have a listen and maybe pick up the book if your looking for more answers to questions like the one above. The sermon is on the book’s website as it is one of the several issues the author raises and seeks to answer.
The book’s website above has other helpful links, resources and media too.
To listen to the sermon click here
To me, heaven is getting the kids to bed early without the kind of drama that would put Grey’s Anatomy to shame, making a big plate of nachos and sitting down to watch one of my favourite 80’s movies on TV like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, Lost Boys or The Breakfast Club (if you want to know more about my quirky movie taste feel free to see my favourite movies list on my facebook). Whether it’s Cancun Mexico in the winter, a bite of our favourite chocholate bar, or scoring that game winning goal, I’m sure if we thought about it we’d all have different ideas of what heaven means to us, right? But what of the bible? What does it mean when it uses that term, and subsequently how are we as Christians to apply this understanding to our real lives here, now and today?
Often the way we talk about heaven in church can be like the way we talk about RSP’s (which by the way are due at the end of this month). Most of us have them, believe in them, and even put our hard earned money into them but ask someone to explain how this will save us money on our tax returns and you will likely get back a blank stare and the word, “uhhhh” being uttered.
I wanted to share with all of you a recent interesting article in Time magazine entitled “Christians Wrong About Heaven, says Bishop.” It is an interview with a well-respected Anglican bishop, pastor and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright who actually seems to dare talk about the specifics of what the bible means when it speaks of heaven. I found it very helpful and I hope you do as well.
By the way, in the near future I am considering on using some of his new DVD resources in our church. He’s got a great DVD on the Resurrection as well as another on Evil, both of which I believe are very timely and essential topics to learn about today as Christians.
For the article just click here
Lent
This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday which is known as the beginning of the season of Lent in the Christian calendar. This is the period of time leading up to the passion week and ending with Easter. I came across a rather neat description of Lent from a visual liturgy resource website I use known as The Work of the People and thought I would share it below:
“Our Orthodox brothers refer to this season as a time of “Bright Sadness”. During Lent we face our humanity: we learn that sin still dwells in us, that we still carry darkness. We learn that we would likely have fallen asleep as Jesus prayed for deliverance in the garden, and we would likely have denied knowing him as he silently accepted his death sentence. So, it’s a dark season indeed, but it is also a season of tremendous hope, a looking forward to the celebration of the resurrection. In identifying with Christ’s suffering during the Lenten season, we ready ourselves for the sorrow of the Passion Week and as a result more fully embrace the joys of the resurrection.”
Before our bible study time I’ll be showing a short video relating to Lent to help our community enter into this season together. I will also be giving out a great handout of daily readings in the Psalms in anticipation of Easter for those who are interested. The handouts were made possible by Mars Hill Church , thanks Mars Hill! I was made aware of this resource because our sister church, The Open House in East Vancouver, is also using them during Lent.
Mars Hill – Acts 17
It’s actually funny that I should thank a church named Mars Hill this week as this Sunday we will be reading the well-known passage in Acts 17 where the name Mars Hill, located in Athens, Greece, is taken from. There are actually two famous Mars Hill churches in the U.S.A., one in Michigan led by Rob Bell (the one that we got these Lent readings from above) and the other in Seattle led by Mark Driscoll. Both got their names from Acts 17, and if you want to know why, then you’ll have to come on Sunday…
ok…
I’ll tell you now…
Its because the when Paul shares the message of Jesus with the very intellectual, religious and non-Jewish Athenians he seems to do so with great sensitivity and understanding of their culture. In other words he seems to use the culture to reach the culture with the message of the Kingdom of God. Both the two churches mentioned above seem to try to make this one of their guiding principles in building their churches. I don’t even want to try to begin to compare ourselves to these two very large churches but the same holds true for The Joshua House.
I hope you can all make it!
Terra Nova Group
Date: Sunday, February 10th
Place: Terra Nova Co-op Common Room
Time: 5:30-7:15pm
Topic: Acts 17 – Mars Hill
Community in Prayer
Please call or e-mail us with any prayer requests you would like to have the church community praying for!
Upcoming Events
The Richmond Winter Festival
The second annual Richmond Winter Festival will feature two nights of fireworks, live music and celebration of winter. From playground to podium, easel to stage, the weekend activities and family fun will be held:
Date(s): Friday, February 8th, 2008 Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Location: Richmond City Hall, Granville Avenue, Brighouse Park
Admission: FREE
Website
Trinity Western University & The Centre for Entrepreneurial Leaders Presents
The Virtues of Business – Good Qualities Business has to offer and Good Qualities Business needs to flourish
Featuring Dr. Richard Higginson
Date: Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Time: 12pm - 1:30pm
Location: Vancouver Club
Cost: $25/person (includes lunch buffet)
Date: Saturday, February 16th, 2008
Time: 8:30am - 10:00am
Location: TWU – Reimer Student Centre Dining Room First Floor
Cost: $25/person (includes continental breakfast)
To register or for more info go here
Higginson’s work, dealing with the interplay between entrepreneurship and Christianity, has been an inspiration and encouragement to many Christians in business—proving that conversations about seeing business as a calling are engaging businessmen and academics all over the world. “Virtues and vices are being inverted. Greed is good and sin to win: the gauntlet has well and truly been thrown down. How can Christianity meet this challenge?”
Have You Heard Any Good News Lately? - Evangelism in a Postmodern World
So this Sunday at our First Sunday gathering I’m going to be speaking and sharing about this whole evangelism thing and what it might look like in a postmodern world. You might be wondering what I mean by “evangelism,” you might be wondering what I mean by “postmodern,” well if you want to find out then you’ll have to come out. The truth is that evangelism is one of those words that if you throw around enough in church settings it makes you look like a super Christian rock-star but when used in the “normal world” seems to come across like a swear word.
So what do we really mean by it? What should we mean by it? What does Jesus say about it? And how does it look in the world we live in today?
Please note the new time below for this First Sunday!
First Sunday
Date: Sunday, February 3rd
Place: Towers Baptist Church (small sanctuary)
Time: 4:30pm-5:15pm (pizza dinner – cost by donation) 5:15pm-6:30pm (service)
Theme
Have You Heard Any Good News Lately? - Evangelism in a Postmodern World
Community in Prayer
Please call or e-mail us at thejoshuahouse@shaw.ca with any prayer requests you would like to have the church community praying for!
Upcoming Events
WestCoast Baptist Association Gathering
Date: Thursday, January 31, 2008
Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm
Location: Surrey Chinese Baptist Church
Street: 8590 160th Street
City/Town: Surrey, BC
facebook event link
The Richmond Winter Festival
The second annual Richmond Winter Festival will feature two nights of fireworks, live music and celebration of winter. From playground to podium, easel to stage, the weekend activities and family fun will be held:
Date(s): Friday, February 8th, 2008
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Location: Richmond City Hall, Granville Avenue, Brighouse Park
Admission: FREE
Website
Trinity Western University & The Centre for Entrepreneurial Leaders Presents -
The Virtues of Business – Good Qualities Business has to offer and Good Qualities Business needs to flourish
Featuring Dr. Richard Higginson
Date: Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Time: 12pm - 1:30pm
Location: Vancouver Club
Cost: $25/person (includes lunch buffet)
Date: Saturday, February 16th, 2008
Time: 8:30am - 10:00am
Location: TWU – Reimer Student Centre Dining Room First Floor
Cost: $25/person (includes continental breakfast)
To register or for more info go to website
Higginson’s work, dealing with the interplay between entrepreneurship and Christianity, has been an inspiration and encouragement to many Christians in business—proving that conversations about seeing business as a calling are engaging businessmen and academics all over the world.
“Virtues and vices are being inverted. Greed is good and sin to win: the gauntlet has well and truly been thrown down. How can Christianity meet this challenge?”
