Stars on 45

Church was fun this morning. Tomorrow we start our annual children's Holiday Club - Landlubbers. We have 75 kids signed up and the set looks amazing - will post a photo later today.

With Holiday Club on it was appropriate to be preaching on 1 Corinthians 9.19-23, where Paul writes about being all things to all people in order to save some. In doing so he relates and lives differently when with the Jews compared with when he is with the Gentiles. The gospel always remains the same but the way it is brought to people varies tremendously according to your audience.

In the first part of the chapter Paul writes about giving up his rights as an apostle in order to communicate the gospel. As if that were not hard enough, Paul then tells us we need to be prepared to give up our preferences for the sake of the gospel too.
I illustrated this by talking about how we might prefer different musical styles but that we need to put these aside for the sake of the gospel. (This seemed appropriate as the new kids songs are loud and fast). So one way we can apply this is by putting aside our musical preferences for the sake of the gospel.

The first person I speak to on the door after the service tells me, "I didn't like the music today and nor did a number of others."
It made me smile.

PS - The reference to the title of this post? 45 today.