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When Family or Man Does Not Understand - Mark 3:20-35 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 25, 2009 AM During a Youth Camp I was directing one young teenage girl was deliberately creating personal drama all around her. Because of her self-centeredness and total self-absorption in boys, she was keeping the whole camp in turmoil. Of course, being the Camp Director, I had to be the one to confront her. At first she got really angry and tried yelling at me that I “just did not understand her and what she was going through.” So, I patiently asked her to explain it to me. As she got into her lengthy dissertation on why she was being a pill, she realized how totally selfish she was and how the whole camp had begun to not want to be around her. All of a sudden she went kind of pale, began to cry, and apologized. We have all seen in situation comedies, or have experienced for ourselves, a pouting child that storms off into the next room while shouting to their bewildered parents, “You just do not unders...

The Gathering Crowds -- Mark 3:7-19 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 18, 2009 AM Crowds and their dynamics are very interesting and have been studied by sociologists and pubic bystanders for centuries. Crowds can be mobs, crowds can be audiences, crowds can be steered and directed, or they can become mindless and panicked. And they can form for a myriad of reasons, everything from the looky-loos of a horrible accident to the gathered listeners of a vibrant speaker or musician. In fact, gathering crowds can become like storm clouds that gather on the horizon. They can become threatening and uncontrollable. I was a witness to such crowd dynamics in Vancouver BC during a Christian conference put on by the late speaker John Wimber. A convert to Quakerism, who was the Founding Director of the Department of Church Growth at the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth, that has spawned much of the emergent church theology of today. He also was a founding member of the music gro...

Shriveled Hand and Hearts – Mark 3:1-6 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 11, 2009 AM Have you ever met someone who suffers from a “shriveled” personality? I have. They have become mentally “shriveled” because they are so into themselves that they do not allow anyone or anything to affect their lives. Shriveled personalities can be displayed by those who are angry at the world because of some emotional or physical hurt; those who are emotionally or materially selfish and self-centered; those who only think they have the correct answers for everyone else; or by those who are so spiritually blinded they do not see their saintly shallowness. I knew a man who was so shriveled up inside, because he had lost his first wife to cancer, that he found very little emotional time or empathy for his second wife. And, of course, like many do who are emotionally shriveled up inside, he blamed God for his predicament. People can indeed have shriveled hearts. Jesus saw this disease around him daily but one d...

Lord of the Sabbath – Mark 2:23-28 By Pastor Lee Hemen October 4, 2009 AM I was in a discussion with one of our area’s ministry directors when he grandly announced that he did not agree with “organized religion.” I was stunned and immediately asked him, “Why then do we pay your salary?” He could not answer me. I then followed this by telling him, “If you have placed your faith in Christ, you are now part of an ‘organized religion’ that was prearranged by God Himself, centered on the foundation of the gospel message of salvation through His One and Only Son!” In being a Christian, you have submitted yourself to membership in the body of Christ. There is a foolish discussion going on in some circles today about the importance of church membership in the life of the Christian. It has come about because of universalism creeping back into Christian theology from sources like the emergent church. It is not a new heresy. It is the notion that the church and thereby worship should center spiri...