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JackWolfgang
Sun., May. 7, 2006, 7:43 pm
I did a communion meditation based on the IED today, and it went well.

I also marked up some scriptures (Matthew 28:19-20, Isaiah 55:10-12, Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15-16, Psalm 51:10-14) in XHTML fragments. I cut out part of them (mainly Matthew 28:19, which as you can see below was first on the list) and folded them into an awareness ribbon which I wore today. Several people asked me about it, and one of our web-saavy people asked "Is that markup?" It was after church, so I unfolded it as I said "yes", and he said cool or something like that.

<h1>Internet Evangelism Day</h1>
<h2>07 May 2006
<abbr title="Anno Domini (In the Year of Our Lord)">A.D.</abbr></h2>

<h2>Matthew 28:18-20</h2>
<blockquote lang=“en”>
<p>[18] And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying,
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.</p>
<p>[19] Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,</p>
<p>[20] teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />

<h2>Isaiah 55:10-12</h2>
<blockquote lang=“en”>
<p>[10] “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,<br />
And do not return there without watering the earth<br />
And making it bear and sprout,<br />
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;</p>
<p>[11] So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;<br />
It will not return to Me empty,<br />
Without accomplishing what I desire,<br />
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.</p>
<p>[12] For you will go out with joy<br />
And be led forth with peace;<br />
The mountains and the hills will break forth into
shouts of joy before you,<br />
And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />



<h2>Acts 1:8</h2>
<blockquote lang=“en”>
<p>[8] “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem,
and in all Judea and Samaria,
and even to the remotest part of the earth.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />

<h2>Mark 16:15-16</h2>
<blockquote lang=“en”>
<p>[15] And He said to them, “Go into all the world and
preach the gospel to all creation.</p>
<p>[16] He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved;
but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />

<h2>Psalm 51:10-14</h2>
<blockquote lang=“en”>
<p>[10] Create in me a clean heart, O God,<br />
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.</p>
<p>[11] Do not cast me away from Your presence<br />
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.<br />
<p>[12] Restore to me the joy of Your salvation<br />
And sustain me with a willing spirit.</p>
<p>[13] Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,<br />
And sinners will be converted to You.</p>
<p>[14] Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;<br />
Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />

<p style=“font-size:x-small”>All scripture is New American
Standard Bible (NASB)</p>

flutem3
Sun., May. 7, 2006, 8:04 pm
Jack wrote:

"I also marked up some scriptures (Matthew 28:19-20, Isaiah 55:10-12, Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15-16, Psalm 51:10-14) in XHTML fragments. I cut out part of them (mainly Matthew 28:19, which as you can see below was first on the list) and folded them into an awareness ribbon which I wore today. Several people asked me about it, and one of our web-savvy people asked "Is that markup?" It was after church, so I unfolded it as I said "yes", and he said cool or something like that."

Hey, Jack,

That is really nifty!! I like it a lot. May I copy your stuff so that I can use it next year? I will be able to get into the church by then...I think...I hope. Our elevator should be working by then.

What color of ribbon did you use? It would be neat if we could get everyone organized and use the same color of ribbon world wide don't you think? How did you get the "markup" on the ribbon?

Thanks for sharing this with us. I, for one, really appreciate your doing that.

Carol

JackWolfgang
Mon., May. 8, 2006, 9:20 am
Hey, Jack,

That is really nifty!! I like it a lot. May I copy your stuff so that I can use it next year? I will be able to get into the church by then...I think...I hope. Our elevator should be working by then.

What color of ribbon did you use? It would be neat if we could get everyone organized and use the same color of ribbon world wide don't you think? How did you get the "markup" on the ribbon?

Thanks for sharing this with us. I, for one, really appreciate your doing that.


Carol--

I put the markup in Microsoft Publisher 2003 with the font "OCR A Extended" (that name may not be exactly right). I printed it on white paper with our laser printer at home. I'll post the file this evening. I ended up having to trim the paper down to where it was just Matthew 28:19-20 to be able to fold it into the standard "awareness ribbon" shape (which as I think it about it, is very similar to the lower-case Greek letter alpha).

Feel free to steal the idea and use it next year or whenever your church plans an IED.

flutem3
Mon., May. 8, 2006, 10:40 pm
Thanks, Jack,

What exactly did you put on the mark-up ribbon? Our church didn't have any IED this year...nor any year. However, by next year, I should be able to get into the church and be able to present an idea or two in person. That seems to work better than trying to explain by phone...especially in our situation.

I like what you did for yourself. Now, I need to figure out what would be appropriate for the entire congregation to do...not just hear, but something interactive within the church service...something that would take just a minute or two.

We are have a bit of a problem with people's thinking our church services are too long...1 hour, 5 minutes. I have an entire sermon on that topic myself. It seems to me if people can watch TV all evening, read magazines and books, go to the theater, drag their kids to heaven knows what all activities, they can certainly spend two hours in church. I frequently quote a line from a poem named "What If?" The line is:

"What if God gave you the same amount of time that you give Him?"

And I have put it on the index page of our website from time to time. I know that people want a minister present from baptisms, marriages, and funerals. It seems to me that there is a lot of time among all of those events.

Jack and anyone else, what is the attitude of the people in your various churches about Communion. I happen to think it is the most important sacrament we have. Of course, that is up for debate, but at least it is very important. The Christian Church and Catholic Churches have Communion every Sunday and more, but it seems that our church can just manage to get it done once a month. And only recently have people at home received Communion, and that is every three months. It seems so important to me. I don't really understand. And since we have Communion the first Sunday of the month, some people don't attend church just on those Sundays. :confused:

I would like some of your thoughts. If you don't want to put them on here, email me with them. I am trying to figure out what is going on in this old world of ours. Thanks!

Carol

JackWolfgang
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 7:57 am
Jack and anyone else, what is the attitude of the people in your various churches about Communion. I happen to think it is the most important sacrament we have. Of course, that is up for debate, but at least it is very important. The Christian Church and Catholic Churches have Communion every Sunday and more, but it seems that our church can just manage to get it done once a month. And only recently have people at home received Communion, and that is every three months. It seems so important to me. I don't really understand. And since we have Communion the first Sunday of the month, some people don't attend church just on those Sundays. :confused:

I am Restoration Movement (Christian Church/Churches of Christ) type, but I do want to address this issue. David, could you split us into a new thread?

David Gillaspey
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 9:02 am
Hi Jack,

I moved the entire thread to here (Roundtable). At present, it seems to me the discussion needs the context of the earlier posts to be understand, but I will consider that issue some more today.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
Forum Administrator

Faithhb_lutheran
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 10:49 am
Quick post as I have a pastoral meeting soon. Communion is the institution that god uses to keep us in his family, and thus the most important thing we do as christians, because of that many protestant groups only have communion occasionally "so as not to lose the uniqueness" their fear is that the sacrament will become ordinary and thus be misused. thus they only do it once or twice a month or less.

flutem3
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 11:55 am
Kyle wrote:

"groups only have communion occasionally "so as not to lose the uniqueness" their fear is that the sacrament will become ordinary and thus be misused. thus they only do it once or twice a month or less"

Hi, Kyle,

Look at what happens to families when they stop eating at the same table together for their meals. As I was growing up, we did eat together...three times a day. It was usually the best part of the day as well for it helped to bond us together as a unite.

Why would a church be different? In the Catholic Church it is not different. Communion is the high point of any mass...and everyone at the service knows it.

Carol

JackWolfgang
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 2:39 pm
I moved the entire thread to here (Roundtable). At present, it seems to me the discussion needs the context of the earlier posts to be understand, but I will consider that issue some more today.

Thanks, David! That works!

EDIT: Except that it would be nice if we could have left the IED ribbon idea in the IED forum. Sorry, I didn't notice that earlier.

Faithhb_lutheran
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 3:08 pm
Carol,

The reasoning behind that line thinking has alluded me so far. Here is a more in depth look at communion= Here is a pdf article f (http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/wa_communion.pdf)rom the LCMS (http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/wa_communion.pdf) on recieveing communion. (http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/wa_communion.pdf)

Here is some more resources;
westminsiter catechism (http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html)
lutheran catechism (http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/smallcatechism.pdf)
Catholic catechism (http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/ccc.html)
heidelberg catechism (http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/heidelberg.html)
greek orthodox catechism (http://www.gocanada.org/Catechism/catech.htm)
pcusa catechism (http://www.pcusa.org/theologyandworship/confession/catechism.htm)
also check the book of common prayer for an anglican perspective ( sorry I could'nt find it online)

JackWolfgang
Thu., May. 11, 2006, 11:35 pm
I'll post the file this evening.

Later than I planned, but here it is.

JackWolfgang
Fri., May. 12, 2006, 12:09 am
We are have a bit of a problem with people's thinking our church services are too long...1 hour, 5 minutes.

I'll preface my remarks with the statement that services in both the church I attend (which is where I was before I took the church in Cairo) and the church where I served as preaching minister run about 1 hour even to 1 hour 30 minutes.

Jack and anyone else, what is the attitude of the people in your various churches about Communion. I happen to think it is the most important sacrament we have. Of course, that is up for debate, but at least it is very important. The Christian Church and Catholic Churches have Communion every Sunday and more, but it seems that our church can just manage to get it done once a month. And only recently have people at home received Communion, and that is every three months. It seems so important to me. I don't really understand. And since we have Communion the first Sunday of the month, some people don't attend church just on those Sundays. :confused:

I would like some of your thoughts. If you don't want to put them on here, email me with them. I am trying to figure out what is going on in this old world of ours. Thanks!

As I said earlier, I am from the Restoration Movement (Christian Churches/Churches of Christ: see this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_Movement) for much more information). We do celebrate communion each and every week, and personally, I feel like I missed something when I attend a church service that doesn't serve Communion. The Communion part of our service turns our minds to Jesus and His sacrifice upon the cross.

I attend a Methodist church when I am in my parent's town (which I will be this weekend) and like Carol's church, they also only do Communion once a month. Usually, I make it a point to visit my parents on the first Sunday of the month for that very reason. However, their Communion service takes much longer (or at least it seems that way) than ours does.

The difference is that for our communion service, a lay person (rarely the preacher, but in some churches the preacher) does a short (2-3 minutes) reminder of what we are about to do called a "Communion meditation". When I have prepared one in advance, my notes are on a half sheet of paper with quite a bit of white space. After the meditation and prayer, the men who are serving that week pass trays of plastic cups of juice and small wafers of unleavened bread down the pews starting at the front of the church. The elements are consumed after a short time of personal prayer and the cups are placed in holes in the pews designed for the purpose (to be picked up after service). For future reference, I will call this "Restoration style".

In the Methodist service that I am familar with, there is a prescribed order of service for the Communion with responsive readings followed by the service of the Communion at the altar rail (the service is in the UMC Hymnal, but my copy of that Hymnal which I purchased at a library sale is in a box still). The congregation is led to the rail in parts by the verbal and non-verbal direction of the preacher and ushers. At the rail each person is served by the preacher, and then all take the elements at the same time. For furture reference, I will refer to this style as "Methodist style"

Both services have their pros and cons.

The "Restoration style" retains a large degree of individuality, whereas taking the elements simultaneously (the "Methodist style", but I have seen this done without approaching the altar rail) reinforces the idea of one body (see I Corinthians 12). However, the "Restoration Style" can be performed in about 10-12 minutes (that's a rough guess) when combined with an offering, whereas, as I previously said, the "Methodist style" seems to take longer.

Our church in Tallahassee will use the altar rail style of service (without the responsive readings) quite often on Christmas Eve.

As for importance, I Corinthians 11:26 says "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." (NASB)

David Gillaspey
Fri., May. 12, 2006, 12:29 am
Except that it would be nice if we could have left the IED ribbon idea in the IED forum. Sorry, I didn't notice that earlier.Hi Jack,

I'll duplicate the thread back to the original source in a few days.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
Forum Administrator

flutem3
Fri., May. 12, 2006, 9:57 am
Later than I planned, but here it is.

Thank you, Jack. I only have one problem. The file is in some kind of code. I tried all kinds, but I get very peculiar looking results.

I used Winzip...the free version to open the file. And I opened it in Word.
HELP!! :confused:

Carol

dave_fry
Fri., May. 12, 2006, 11:21 am
Carol,

Jack created and saved the file with MS Publisher. As yet I don't know of any "viewers" for .pub files.

Dave

JackWolfgang
Mon., May. 15, 2006, 8:01 am
Jack created and saved the file with MS Publisher. As yet I don't know of any "viewers" for .pub files.

Thanks, Dave, for replying in my absence.

Carol--

You could copy and paste the code from this post (http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2271&postcount=1) into Word and do what I did.