PaulPrins.net

This morning I was honored by the chance to preach at Minnesota Teen Challenge to a room full of men working on real life change. The passage is Luke 19:1-10 and this is probably my best sermon I’ve given to date. Please check it out, enjoy it, and let me know your thoughts (email or in the comments). Thanks! The image below was the title slide, put a couple of the other slides below (first time I actually took time to make a power point I liked).

Click on the Image below to play (MP3)

Please leave comments/thought! Not to bad for my 7th message I’ve given.

This is the second and final sermon I needed to give for my Preaching Practicum course that I took this summer. It was this past Sunday (8/16/09) that I had the opportunity to Preach at Eden Prairie Presbyterian Church (www.eppc.com).

I preached from John chapter 14 verses 23-27 and this was the second and final sermon presented for my Preaching Practicum at Bethel Seminary.

This is the Fourth sermon that i’ve given outside of a classroom since I had any professional training as a preacher.

I would really love feedback and thoughts on the style, delivery, and content of the message.

Thanks to everyone who came out!

Also if you’d like me to email you when I have preaching engagements in the future leave a comment and I’ll add you to a list. Think it’s a good idea to do that.

I just finished up 9 straight days of class, 8+ hours a day. While it was very intense and time consuming it was a great experience, though one i don’t think I will need to repeat. I took my first Old Testament course (OT501) on Genesis – Ruth, and then immediately rolled into my Preaching Practicum.

There is still work to be done for each course: papers and exams for OT501 and a sermon to write and deliver for preaching. But I thought it was worth celebrating regardless. Below is the sermon I gave at Woodridge Church on Sunday evening to part of their exchange service (thanks to those of you that made it out!).

There had been some very sizable changes from the way the sermon was delivered the day before in class. Even so, I don’t believe the audiance was any wiser for it, or that it really hurt my illustrations/approach. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Found a talk given by Erwin McManus through iTunes. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Erwin leads Mosaic church out in LA.

‘The reason I can take you through this time is not because I’ve studied this theoretically, not because I’ve read a thousand books, or not because I’ve written one. But because I spend my life immersed with people I love. And that the journey we’ve taught people to go on doesn’t work for them.”

“I’ve been noticing that across universities that whenever you have God verses Atheism, or Creation verse Evolution debate people move further from God, not closer. Christians feel more affirmed and more confident they are right and they loose their effect and impact on their university. But we don’t care about that, we just want to win. I’ve also noticed that we fill the room with all the wrong people. We fill the room with everyone who wants to win too. And what’s funny is that the Christians in the room and the atheists in the room are the same. The both just want to win.”

“‘I heard the voice of God for the first time and the only way I can describe it is like falling in love for the first time.’ I was driving down the 210 to a meeting when I was reading this email and I began to weep, it was overwhelming to me. How many of you would describe hearing the voice of God like that? If you want to reach post-moderns you need to be a deeply spiritual person. It has to be a natural and organic part of your being.”

There was more but stopped feeling like transcribing it out. I am so encouraged by him.

This last Thursday I had the opportunity to speak at the first weekly meeting of UW – Stouts’ Campus Crusade. It was a lot of fun to get back to Stout and see a bunch of familiar faces, and even more new faces. With everything that has been going on there, I was overwhelmed to see 171 students pack out the lecture hall they were meeting in.

The message I gave was an adaptation of one that i prepared for a preaching competition over at Bethel Seminary. So it was the second time giving the message, and much improved over the first time. If you have a half hour check it out, and please leave me your thoughts and feedback!

Be blessed!

This theme is actually several months old and has been around the block a bit by this point. It is called Cotolance (Coo-toe-lance) and was developed for the company blog of Nineteen05, my web development company. This blog serves as a way for me to share what is coming up on a decade of web development, marketing, management, and community development experience with the Church as a whole. The latter three of these topics are sorely excluded from the seminal educations professional ministers receive during their masters programs (I’m also currently enrolled at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN)

The design heavily borrows from the main Nineteen05.com website (which was completed by Ned Wright last spring) The main differences are in the layout of the content section of the design, and the sidebar. While the nineteen05.com site is fairly monochromatic for the moment, I wanted to bring more color into the blog and did that through the header and the date boxes. The design will likely mimic that of the company site as it goes through renovations in the future.

Check out the theme in action

Like the Inductaloot theme, this one is also private. If you are looking for a blog of your own check out Insights For Church and get blogging today! It is hosting the official nineteen05 blog, and hopes to host hundreds of blogs for those involved in ministry in the near future.

Everything is really quite interesting right now. The balance of life, work, and school is quite different then the spring quarter. Just last week I finally got caught up on all my studies by completing an intensive course that met the first two weeks of September.

That course was Global and Contextual Studies that laid a foundation for cross cultural ministry (so both local and non-local missions). Really insightful and helped to further mold my understanding and missional focus. The biggest part of this class that drug on was the research paper, of which I chose to do a study of the city of Paris in France. How to tailor ministry and understand the context that one would be entering into for the purpose of planting a church. Really interesting, but took many hours of research, reading, note taking, and writing.

Since finishing that paper and the final early last week I was able to catch up on some neglected readings for my current course load (Preaching, Hermeneutics, and spiritual foundations). I really am enjoying the current courses. Spiritual foundations seems a bit slow and lethargic (in there as I write this) but my hope is that more practical content is on the horizon.

The biggest struggle has been how to increase the time I spend with my wife, friends, and family without compromising my work commitments and my level of academia. One of the biggest struggle that I had through our time in Minneapolis has been the lack of social involvement. I’ve had a great friend in Matt who has meet with me over coffee almost every week. It was these times that have helped me realize that I need more social outlets.

Being back in school has helped as has setting more time aside to spend with my wife. Still feeling this dynamic out for the best balance to have currently in my life.

Also the dynamic of ministry has been interesting. Jordan and I have been waiting for the next ministry we would be actively involved in since we graduated in December. We are to the point now were we are really excited/anxious to get back into ministering in some way. We shall see what this brings.