Martin Smith, the lead singer of Delirious?, will be leading worship at Vineyard Columbus this weekend. So if you are in town, come and worship with us.

A song called "Obsession" from their Cutting Edge (1 and 2) album which came out in the late 90's is one of my favorite songs. Here is the lyrics:

Obsession
What can I do with my obsession?
With the things I cannot see
Is there madness in my being?
Is it wind that blows the trees?
Sometimes you're further than the moon
Sometimes you're closer than my skin
And you surround me like a winter fog
You've come and burned me with a kiss

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns

And I'm so filthy with my sin
I carry pride like a disease
You know I'm stubborn God and I'm longing
to be close
You burn me deeper than I know
I feel lonely without hope
I feel desperate without vision
You wrap around me like a winter coat
You come and free me like a bird

And my heart burns for you
And my heart burns for you

Vineyard Columbus collected a special offering on Palm Sunday asking people who had jobs to give (above and beyond tithe and offering) to help those without jobs. And the church responded in an incredible way by giving over $625,000. Praise God! And it doesn't stop there. The following week, on Easter weekend, the church had its highest attendance ever with 12,090! The news of the collection is making headlines around Ohio. (The Columbus Dispatch did a front-page article on the collection.) And it is beginning to get national attention as the AP just picked up the news. (Read on to see the Dispatch article)

For me, the best part of this story is not the amount that was collected (which is absolutely amazing!). The best part of the story for me is that so many people gave out from a place of need! It was a wonderful gesture of faith, hope, and love. Each gave out of love for God and their neighbor. Each gave in the earnest hope that what they gave (big or little) will make a difference in someone's life. And each gave, believing by faith, facing an uncertain future, that should they ever be in need, that God will always provide! This story reminded me of the story of the widow's offering found in Mark 12:41-44 (and also in Luke 21:1-4):

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on."

If history teaches us anything, it is that Christianity is at its finest when the people of God rise to the challenge to meet the needs of their fellowmen!








Church's $625,000 to aid the jobless
Friday, April 17, 2009 2:56 AM
By Meredith Heagney

The Rev. Rich Nathan knew that the 8,000 people in his congregation were generous. They've given hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes.

But even he was surprised by the size of a special collection to help the unemployed. Over Palm Sunday weekend, the congregation at Vineyard Church of Columbus gave $586,000 in cash and checks.

Since then, the total has grown to $625,000.

"I was incredibly grateful to the Lord," Nathan said. "It was more than I expected."

The former record for a special collection was about $250,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief.

Members across the church contributed, Nathan said. Most of the gifts were less than $1,000.

He had told his congregation that anyone with a job in this recession has a responsibility to help the unemployed.

The money will support the church's programs that help people find jobs and offer counseling for the emotional toll of unemployment. The church, at 6000 Cooper Rd. on the Northeast Side, plans to expand those services and offer more financial counseling as well, Nathan said.

The new services will be available first to members but will eventually be offered to the public, he said.

Unemployed church members are suffering but hopeful, said Kerry Davis, pastoral director of the church community center.

"People that have been employed for decades, now, all of a sudden, there's no work," he said. "They're perplexed about what to do."

The money also will help support a food pantry that the church plans to open, probably in the Cleveland Avenue/Morse Road area on the North Side, Nathan said.

A yet-to-be-determined percentage will be given to a church fund that helps members who are facing financial emergencies.

Nathan doesn't know how many people in his church are unemployed, but he said dozens have e-mailed him about their struggles.

mheagney@dispatch.com

I recently read an article about various learning styles and it pointed out that the three major learning styles are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic (tactile). Out of these three major learning styles, about 30% of the population are auditory learners, 65% are visual learners, and only about 5% are kinesthetic learners. (And of course, these are not mutually exclusive) This is just a hunch, but I imagine that as our society becomes more and more ADD, that these numbers will shift significantly in the direction of visual learners.

Here is why I bring this up: If these numbers are really correct, then most of our churches need a major overhaul in how we disciple people. The church is almost exclusively geared towards auditory learners with preaching as the primary medium. Some churches may incorporate slides, videos, dramas, and special music and such, but is that really the best that we can do? And while we spend so much time focusing on what happens during the corporate gathering on Sunday mornings (and mostly on the sermon), are we digging ourselves into a hole if the rest of the world is slowly moving away from simply auditory learning? It seems that our Universities are slowly beginning to grasp this concept because they are moving away from traditional lecture style to more of an interactive learning environment.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that preaching is still an essential part of the discipleship process. But I think that is just the beginning. We need to do a much better job of helping people navigate from "hearing" to "doing." I'm sure you've heard this before: "I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand!"

In the process of discipleship, it would be wise to ask ourselves how we can most effectively produce passionate, mature, and reproducing disciples. We need to look at the three major ways that most people learn, and utilize this information to create a discipleship roadmap that matches this learning process.

Auditory Learners
Making up about 30% of the population, Auditory Learners absorb information best through the sense of hearing. Some of their main characteristics include:

• Relate most effectively to the spoken word
• Learn effectively through lectures, audio books, oral presentations, music or verbal instructions
• Enjoy discussions and debates
• Benefit from reading aloud
• Doesn’t automatically understand graphs, diagrams or maps
• Enjoys talking to others
• Enjoys music
• Benefits from study groups

Visual Learners
Making up about 65% of the population, Visual Learners absorb and recall information best by seeing. Some of their primary characteristics include:

• Love books, magazines, and other reading materials
• Relate best to written information, notes, diagrams, maps, graphs, flashcards, highlighters, charts, pictures computers
• Like to have pen and paper handy
• Enjoy learning through visually appealing materials
• Benefit from recopying or making their own notes, even from printed information
• Have trouble following long lectures
• Need to see the instructor's facial expressions and body language
• Concentrate better with clear line of sight to blackboard or visual aids

Kinesthetic (Tactile) Learners
Making up about 5% of the population, Kinesthetic Learners absorb information best by doing, experiencing, touching, moving or being active in some way.

• Enjoy feeling, discovery and action
• Remember by using tools, building models and manipulating things
• Learn through emotions, touch, movement and space
• Enjoy demonstrations of concept demonstrations
• Master skills through imitation and practice
• Benefit from hands-on teaching techniques
• Think in terms of physical action
• Get restless during long lectures
• Learn more effectively when free to move

What is your learning style? If you want to find out, you can take this free online test. CLICK HERE. This test introduces a few other learning styles to the ones that I've mentioned above.

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Sunday, April 12, 2009; Page A17

Are we witnessing this Easter season the decline of Christianity in America, or is this a moment of reform and renewal, a time when the deterioration that has been underway is arrested?

The death and resurrection of religion, if not of Jesus Christ, has been a favorite subject of newsmagazines since April 8, 1966, when Time momentously asked: "Is God Dead?"

This trend, announced on a somber black and red cover, lasted a little over three years. Or perhaps the original question was premature. In any event, on Dec. 26, 1969, Time offered a bright white, yellow, blue and purple cover carrying the hopeful query: "Is God Coming Back to Life?"

This Easter week, Newsweek doesn't pretend to know God's state, but its cover offers a stark declarative statement positing "The Decline and Fall of Christian America."

The article by Jon Meacham, a thoroughly knowledgeable student of these issues, offers some powerful data, notably a near-doubling since 1990 of the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation, from 8 percent to 15 percent. Meacham also points to a 10-point drop in the share of Americans who self-identify as Christian, from 86 percent to 76 percent.

As a Christian, I find these figures neither alarming nor surprising. There has been a long, steady growth in the proportion of Americans whom pollster Andrew Kohut calls "the seculars," those disconnected from religious institutions who may or may not describe themselves as atheists. Yet the United States still runs well behind Western Europe in moving in this secular direction.

Immigration has also made us far more diverse religiously, which will inevitably reduce the size of the country's Christian majority. Indeed, immigration long ago reduced the dominance of Protestantism, with Roman Catholics now constituting the nation's largest single religious group.

Will Herberg wrote an important piece of religious sociology in 1955 called "Protestant- Catholic-Jew." If he were here now, his book would have to be named "Protestant-Catholic- Jew-Muslim-Hindu-Sikh-Buddhist-Jain-Confucian." And even that ungainly title wouldn't exhaust the possibilities.

In fact, the United States has gone through many periods in which religious enthusiasm and affiliation waned, only to be renewed in subsequent revivals. Christianity is a rather durable faith. Many believers would ascribe this to the power of its truth claims, but its resilience also speaks to the adaptability of its core message.

But, yes, something is changing, and that change will strengthen rather than weaken the Christian church over the long run. For nearly a quarter-century, Christianity in the United States has been defined to a large degree by the voices and the ideas of a very conservative evangelical strain that, over time, became highly politicized and closely allied with a single political party.

These conservative Christians had as much right as any other group to bring their core concerns to politics. But in doing so, they narrowed the Christian message. They sometimes became apologists for politicians whose behavior and attitudes could not easily be called Christian and forgot that Christ himself became a victim of injustice at the hands of a mighty empire.

As James Carroll notes in his lovely new book, "Practicing Catholic," the idea that there is no "light of Easter dawn" without "the darkness of the Good Friday noon" is at the heart of the Christian message. It entails the "exaltation of servanthood over lordship" and a Resurrection that turns "defeat into a kind of victory."

Religion is always corrupted when it gets too close to political power. It's possible to win a precinct caucus and lose your soul, to mistake political victory for salvation itself.

It is this approach to Christianity that is decidedly in decline, thank God, in part because conservative Christians themselves are rediscovering the church's mission to the poor, the sick, the strangers and the outcasts. This augurs new life, not decay.

The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr offered the classic criticism of a feel-good brand of American religion that presented no challenges and posed no problems. He said that it peddled the idea that "a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

Niebuhr was critiquing certain varieties of liberal Christianity, but his scolding applies to all Christians too eager to conform their faith to the political and cultural whims of the moment. Grace is never cheap, and a Christianity that is struggling with itself is on the path of rediscovering its true calling.