Friday Five - Sermon Series'

Today's Friday Five - The 5 sermon series' that I want to preach:

1. "The Gospel". Above all else, I love talking about the message of the Gospel - whether on stage or one-on-one at Bux - and so I'd love to do a message series where all we talk about is the Gospel. We'd talk about what it is, what it isn't, how it affects our everyday lives, why it's such a big deal to Christians and why we put such a high value on telling others about it, etc. I mean, we'd just talk all about the Gospel every week, and every week we'd give people an opportunity to respond to it.

2. Something about Jesus (like "Missing Jesus", "Re:Jesus", etc.). Really, this should be number 1 also because it's on the same level as the Gospel. As much as I love talking about the Gospel, I equally love talking about Jesus. I mean, there's no Gospel without Jesus, and Jesus is all about the Gospel, so they really do go hand in hand. So this message series would probably be like what Troy's doing with our youth, where he's talking about misconceptions we have about Jesus and is revealing the true Jesus of the Bible.

3. "Storyline". Life is a story, and all of history is a story, so I'd love to talk about the storyline of the Bible: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. I know I've talked about it before, but I can't help it ...I just love the storyline of history that is woven through every verse of the Bible, so I'd love to take like 4 or 6 weeks and just talk about it and weave in the hearer's mind a tapestry of how God has been at work since before the beginning of time up 'til this very moment right now.

4. "Junk in the Trunk". So that I'm aware of, nobody has done anything like what I'm thinking of with this message series. This one I'm pumped about, because I think I'm actually doing something original with this one; it'll be about the crap we have in our lives that we try to hide (our "junk in the trunk") and how God wants us to bring it out in the light and process through it in community and find healing and forgiveness and release as we surrender to God by taking our junk out of the trunk and give it over to Him.

5. An expositional message series. Craig Groeschel over at LifeChurch.tv did a series awhile back on Habakkuk - with the ridiculously creative title "Habakkuk" =) - which was basically an expositional (verse-by-verse or chapter-by-chapter) teaching series, but rather than just reading the verses and "exposing" them, he did that, but he did it in a way that each section of Scripture had a theme or topic.

Walter does a pretty good job at that; when he taught through Philippians, he did a great job at that. Expositional preaching is not something I'm good at, and I want to challenge myself and force myself to grow as a leader, so that's probably the best way for me to grow as a communicator at this point.