10 Week Sermon Series begins this Sunday, September 18th

A great church-wide read for our Pilgrim Family

Thanks to everyone who’s already picked up the book Vital Vintage Church by Michael Piazza. It’s a fast read full of ideas and insights that align really well with our dynamic vision statement: Growing faith. Strengthening families. Loving all. I’ve been alluding to it since I arrived, but this is the first time I’m leading everyone who’s interested on a church-wide read to see how this book could strengthen us.

If you’d like to buy the book, get it here. Or here.

If you’d like to read along, I’m including the full series below. You can read the chapters of the book in advance of each Sunday, or you can read them after. Truly, you can just come to church and still get the message! Reading will put more meat on the bones and more power in the possibilities.

Michael Piazza has been the pastor of dozens of churches that have experienced great turnarounds. One of the tenants of his method is that we don’t need to forsake all we have in order to reach new people. We can become a new creation that shows God’s love to the world. We achieve this, according to Piazza, by improving our communication and our methods. The message is eternal: God’s love is here, and it’s here for all.

This first week I’ll be addressing Chapters One and Two

Chapter One is “Contextual Despair” and Chapter Two is “Liberating Your Church.” I guess you can see why I didn’t just have you read Chapter one, huh? However, Chapter One outlines the challenges, and Chapter Two starts us on the way to identifying the solutions. While the book is focused on churches, I believe it applies to the hearts of congregants, too. That’s why the series is Vital Vintage FAITH. Each week, I’ll relate the chapter to the scripture of the day, and focus both on your faith journey. I’ll also speak about why each chapter applies to Pilgrim as a faith community.

I hope you’ll find this enriching and inspiring! Thankfully, those who’ve read the book already have told me how much they’re getting out it. I hope you will too.

Finally, as promised, here is the entire series:

Week One, September 18th: Vital Liberation. Chapters 1& 2, Contextual Despair and Liberating Your Church

Week Two, September 25th: Vital Worship. Chapter 3, Bringing Worship into the 21st Century

Week Three, October 2nd: Vital Awareness. Chapter 4, Structured for a Wiki World.

Week Four, October 9th: Vital Leadership. Chapter 5, Removing the “Lead” from Leadership

Week Five, October 16th: Vital Voices. Chapter 6, Finding Our Voice

Week Six, October 23rd: Vital Welcome. Chapter 7, Making “Welcome” an Active Verb

Week Seven, October 30th: Vital Vitality. Chapter 8: From Survive to Thrive

Week Eight, November 6th: Vital Generosity. Chapter 9, Liberating Generosity

Week Nine, November 13th: Vital Metanoia. Chapter 10, A Metanoia Church.

Week Ten, November 20th: Vital Homecoming. Chapters 11 & Epilogue: Evangelism is NOT a Four-Letter Word, and Michael’s Crystal Ball.