Keeping the Sabbath

I hear that some people had some good conversation yesterday regarding Sabbath observance. I had one person ask me, “Where are the rules? How am I supposed to know what to do?” Good question. While we talked about Sabbath yesterday during our worship service, the real rub comes when we get home from worship. At the very least, I would hope that we were more thoughtful about what we did or didn’t do yesterday. In particular, I would hope that we spent more time asking, “Will this help me to know God more and experience His fullness and rest in my life?

If you’d like to hear more about Sabbath, I would encourage you to listen to Alistair Begg. He chose to take on Sabbath in two sermons rather than one because he didn’t feel he could do justice to the topic in one message. I listened to the first part and found it very helpful for my own thoughts on the subject. I look forward to listening to the second half soon, in particular because he seemed to promise to get down to “rules.” Here are the links:

Part one

Part two

e-Newsletter

I also heard some comments about the bulletin – namely, “Where’s the rest of it?” I trust that my explanation yesterday and Bonnie’s email last night served to answer some of the questions. Why are we doing this?

1. So that we can deliver announcements directly to you in a format that more people are beginning to rely on, namely email.
2. So that an archive of the announcements is available to you and others from anywhere you are as long as you have internet access.
3. So that the preparation of the bulletin and the archiving of it can be accomplished more efficiently.

We will still have some printed copies of the announcements here at church for our guests and for anyone who prefers that format.

Options

In order to allow you to decide what emails you do or do not receive, I would encourage you to go to the bottom of this email and Update Your Preferences.  By selecting which list you are on, you can determine what we do or don’t send to you. The active lists below are the ones that we are currently using; the inactive lists are those that we will use only if it appears that people want more control over their Inbox.

Active Lists

Newsletter – that’s what you just received! These are occasional thoughts/communications from me to you. These are also archived in a blog format here.

Bulletin Board – this will send you all of the ministry announcements that you have become used to finding in the bulletin. What’s more, you will be able to go directly to the blog itself in order to get archives of the announcements. I’ll have to post the link to the blog later while we figure out which one will be the simplest to use.

Inactive lists

CRC announcements – The Christian Reformed Church already sends announcements out to the churches in much the same way as we are sending them to you. If you would like to get denominational announcements sent directly to you, sign up for this list. We may be able to find a way to automatically forward their announcements on to you.

Prayer Chain – Again, we’re not using this one yet, but we may have to move in this direction because we’ve had some trouble recently with sending out prayer chain emails. It won’t cost you anything to sign up now and it won’t bring email to your Inbox unless we decide to use it.

Again, there should be a link at the bottom of this email that gives you the opportunity to Update Your Preferences, which really means that you can select which items you receive.