Sermon Recap for July 25

Good evening! Here is yesterday’s sermon:

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. You’ll also find the embedded YouTube videos of each sermon.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is coming soon! Search "Doug Hibbard" to see if it's there yet

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Sermon Recap for July 11 2021

Good evening! Here is the July 11, 2021, sermon.

And some good music for you:

June 27 and July 4 Sermons

Good morning! I’m still getting all the sermon workflow running properly, but here’s the last two Sunday mornings.

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. You’ll also find the embedded YouTube videos of each sermon.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is coming soon! Search "Doug Hibbard" to see if it's there yet

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Videos:

Worth your time:

And the ever recurring reminder that Doug and Ann do a video together every morning:

Have you earned the do-over?

My family and I just returned from our yearly trip to the Southern Baptist Convention. We've gone since 2016, after also going in 2009 and 2010. (I expect we'll miss Anaheim, at 1695 road miles, next year, but who knows?) I'm not necessarily going to reflect on the whole convention, but I want to highlight something that happened on the trip up.

Now that we live in Crossett, Arkansas, and Chick-fil-A is somewhat inconveniently located for lunch trips, we thought we would run through a CFA on the trip up to Nashville. So, as I'm used to doing, I punched the order into the CFA Mobile App (Angela was driving, I was in the backseat) and we rolled up to the Tupelo, Mississippi, Chick-fil-A. They brought us our order, and away we went...back on the road.

As Ann was distributing food around the car (I'm back to driving, I trust my eat/drive combo), we noticed something. Something very, very unusual: Chick-fil-A got our order wrong. They shorted us a sandwich. Now, since it was Steven's sandwich, that could have been a disaster, but we had ordered too many nuggets (with plans for the leftovers) so he just ate nuggets and was fine. We had gone too far to turn back, and it was just easier for us to let it go.

Now, how long do you think will be before we eat at CFA again? I can give you a hint: it was on the trip home, because there wasn’t an accessible Chick-fil-A where we were in Nashville. And that without CFA “making it right” or giving me a free sandwich or anything.

Contrast that with the word that Burger King has a new chicken sandwich which, according to some, is fantastic! Now, with all due respect to Burger King, the various local franchises of BK we have tried over the years were sub-par. Orders were consistently wrong, service was slow, food quality was weak, customer experience was just pitiful. So we’ve given up on Burger King and probably will never darken the door of another one.

There is essentially nothing I can picture BK doing that would convince us to try again. Too many wrongs, too many times consistently being bad at what they were supposed to be focused on: delivering reasonable food at a reasonable price, letting us have it our way.

Chick-fil-A, meanwhile, has made mistakes on our orders in the past (probably 2 years ago was the one before this one), but our experience, overall, has been great.

CFA gets a do-over because they have demonstrated a commitment to get it right, and so one honest mistake indicates humanity, not something to be overly angry about.

BK used up all their do-overs and it would take a mountain of testimony from others that they had reformed their low standards and were getting it right to even get a thought from us. It would probably take being in a place with a high quality Burger King, where we knew employees, managers, local owners, and could see that they were all bought-in to doing what the place is supposed to do: reasonable food, right, quality (recognizing fast food, ok?), and at a decent speed.

Without that connection, the whole chain is on our “never again” list.

Now, the preacher part of me wants to turn this into an illustration, but instead there’s a situation for you to ponder:

Do you think you are Chick-fil-A when you are really Burger King? (Fill in different restaurants if necessary from your experience.)

I think we in churches assume we’re CFA: moral stance that fits our views, off on Sundays, lots of right things said about us…

But in truth, we’re more BK than we admit. Over the years, people have, in our name, been rude, mean, grouchy—and that’s just within the church to each other! (I’ve been a Baptist for a while now and been in lots of business meetings.)

And they’re done. Not with God. Not with spirituality or even religion, but with us. Done with churches that are primarily marketers of a specific system. Done with pastors who are sales representatives with all the fake smiles and outward shininess that involves.

Done with churches that cannot do the one thing they claim to do: be a community of people that helps one another walk with Jesus. Which is what we are supposed to be: people, broken, failed, faltering, forgiven, growing, loving, caring, people; community, group, diverse body, gathering; walk with Jesus and do the things He does and did and commands and loves those He loves and serves those He died to redeem.

So, now, what are you going to do about it? You can’t just rebrand it. You can’t just put up a new sign or add a few new items to your menu.

You have to find the problems; fix the problems; then demonstrate your trustworthiness to the people around you. Realize it will take years: you cannot escape in a month a problem you’ve spent a decade building.

The first step is the biggest: realizing where you really stand.

Sermon Recap for May 30 2021

 

Happy Tuesday! Here's the sermon from May 30th. If you go to the church's Facebook Page, you'll find the videos of the complete service.

Meanwhile, here is the audio of the sermon:

https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/19318676/height/360/theme/standard/thumbnail/yes/direction/backward/

And here is the video on YouTube:

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. You’ll also find the embedded YouTube videos of each sermon.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is coming soon! Search "Doug Hibbard" to see if it's there yet

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Sermon Recap for May 16th

I’m a little late, but here we are!

for the YouTube video

for the same video on Facebook

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is coming soon! Search "Doug Hibbard" to see if it's there yet

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: hhttps://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

On having many books

The writer of Ecclesiastes comments that “of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Having just moved, I can agree that many books definitely weary the body. Overall, I think the book box count was somewhere in the high 70s between the office and the house.

And that was after two hard looks through everything to consider what needed to be given away before we moved it all.

Why do we have so many books? This is a question we asked ourselves every time we found another box of books. We had already asked it every time we packed another box of books. Why?

Here are a few of the reasons:

1. We spent money on those books and we’re not throwing them away. It’s not a flashy reason, but it’s a reality: books aren’t cheap. Unless a book is bad—and by bad, I mean, bad in theology or result, like some books that endorse abuse, racism, or others like that—we don’t just toss it. (and a book from the 1700s would be treated differently than, say, the nonsense that comes out of some camps RIGHT NOW, given its historical setting). We’ll give it away to someone or, if it’s a basic fiction paperback, give it to Goodwill, etc., but we hate to throw books away or just to neglect them. Trees died for us to have that book.

2. Books represent opportunities to learn. We have books on the shelf that help with math—even parts of math we don’t expect to use, like Calculus or addition! (mainly Calculus) The more I read, the more my family reads, the more we know, but also the more we are aware of our “knowledge differential.”

What’s a “knowledge differential”? It’s the difference between how much you know and how much you know that you don’t know. For example, as I’ve said several times in the COVID mess, I know enough about infectious disease to know that I don’t know enough about infectious disease. Knowledge differential is both empowering and humbling at the same time: it’s what drives us to know more and also to listen to others, realizing that they may know more as well.

3. Books represent what we already know: why do I have so many history books? I am a historian. I’m a pastor, too, and have lots of pastor-y books. It’s helpful to remember what we’ve already learned. There are some books that I can simply pull of the shelf and remember what I learned from it.

4. Books represent the accumulated wisdom of years gone by. Sometimes, there is the presence of error from years gone by that we can then learn from even now, like the assumptions about race or gender from centuries past that need to be revisited. Even so, people learned, grew, and passed on what they had learned. Life without books is like suggesting that we do not need anything from those before us, which risks buying into the myth that we are fully self-made. There may be one or two out there who taught themselves everything—but usually self-made folks did a lot with books and the wisdom of days gone by.

And lest we forget: all the authors, even the bad ones, were made in the image of the Almighty God. The God who causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust may have also left wisdom in the hands of many. Should we neglect His gifts?

5. Books are just fun. Honestly, they’re heavy, take up space, but books are well-worth the lifting, sorting, and reflecting.

Now, if I just could find the right organizational scheme for the ones in my office…