Will Vaus

The Institute for American Church Growth conducted a survey a number of years ago. They asked 10,000 people what led them into the church. 79% said a friend or relative invited them to a worship service. If I were to ask the same question right now, many of us might respond in a similar fashion. And if I were to ask how you came into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, many of you would probably identify some person who was very influential in that process. There is great power in personal relationships. And all of us might benefit if we made a commitment to improving our relationships as part of our vision for 2020. In a way, our mission as a church is all about relationships. In fact, there is not one part of our mission statement that does not have to do with personal relationships. Four years ago, we set forth our mission in this way… Stowe Community Church Develops loving followers of Christ who Celebrate through worship Grow through teaching Co...

When I was in seminary I helped to start a church that met in a theater. I wrote drama sketches which illustrated the sermon each week and organized people from the congregation to perform these dramas in worship. The first sermon series in that church was on the Gospel of John. I wrote drama sketches all about a relationship between a man and a woman. The pastor used these dramas to compare human romance to our relationship with God. That church was the place where Becky and I met. And I recruited her to play the woman opposite me in the dramas. There was even a wedding drama. So, as we often like to tell people, we got married before we got married! In the drama the groom had some mishap on his way to church and so didn’t have any pants to wear. He stood in front of the congregation with a sheet wrapped around his waist until it came time for the kiss. He forgot all about the sheet, and while embracing his bride, dropped the sheet, revealing some very colorful boxers. Now ...

Mark Twain was well known for his use of profanity. After many years of marriage his wife decided that she was going to help him quit. Thus, one morning, while she was helping her husband tie his tie she started using every profane word that she had heard her husband utter. She did this in hope that her husband would recognise how foul such language really was. When she finished, Twain, without missing a beat, said to his wife, "Dear, you got the words, but you ain't got the music!" Sometimes I wonder: when it comes to Christianity, do we have the words without the music? What I mean is this: it is possible to believe all the right things, say all the right words, even act in a mostly Christian fashion, but have no vital relationship with God. In short, it is possible that there is no music in our lives, and perhaps there never has been. The good news is: our lives do not have to remain song-less. There is one who can put the music of God back into our souls. The p...

Here is more of Boadt’s commentary on Amos…. Although Amos never mentions the ten commandments by name, his charges reflect them in every chapter. The people violage all the demands that God has made upon them in the great covenant on Mount Sinai. His words touch moreal failure in every level of society: the law, the leadership, the economic life, and even worship. Northern Israel is a people confident that God will protect them no matter what they do because of the covenant bonds between them and God. But Amos understands it differently. He speaks again and again of the times that they have suffered attacks from their enemies and natural disasters in punishment for their evil ways and yet remain unmoved (Am 3:3-8; 4:6-13), he sings a mock funeral song over the people to warn them of their coming death (Am 5:1-5), and he attacks their most cherished liturgical celebrations. In a moving passage (Am 5:18-20) he flatly contradicts the hope proclaimed on their feas...

Here is the conclusion to Boadt’s commentary on Hosea…. Yet God does not forget Israel nor lose the hope of recovering its love again! “What shall I do with you, Ephraim? What shall I do with you, Judah? I would restore the fortunes of my people” (Hos 6:4,11)…. Such deep feeling for God’s love of Israel leads the prophet to picture Yahweh watching over his people like a father over his young son in chapter 11, and like a husband in love with a flighty and unfaithful wife in chapters 1-3. This latter image becomes the key to Hosea’s message and has been placed at the beginning of the book to emphasize how important an idea it is. It is presented in three different ways in each of the three chapters. Chapter 1 tells a story of Hosea taking a prostitute for a wife and raising three children by her whose symbolic names tell the parallel story of Israel’s infidelity: “Jezreel,” to recall King Jehu’s battle in the Jezreel Valley against the cult of the god Baal; ...

In Genesis 45, Joseph finally reveals his identity to his brothers, a very dramatic moment indeed. We also have revealed to us God’s purpose in all of this as he has been working behind the scenes. Joseph says to his brothers, “For God sent me before you to preserve life…. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” One can understand how Joseph would see the good hand of God in his circumstances since he was enjoying prosperity in Egypt. The harder thing to do is to keep this same perspective upon God and our lives when things are not going so well, when we, like Joseph, end up in slavery, or prison, or other hard circumstances. During such times it is hard to believe or even remember that “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) In addition to this spiritual lesson, drawn from Joseph’s l...