Keeping in Step with the Spirit
Intentional Preaching, 2010-2012

The Background
The Purpose
How It Will Work
First Year Schedule

The Background

Evangelical Christians are people of the Book. Preaching belongs at the center of our public worship. We want to be much more deliberate about preaching in the next three years. We believe this will deepen our faith and make us more receptive to the Holy Spirit.

The Purposes

1. To give the congregation a coherent sense of purpose in the sermons that are preached at BVBC.
   
2. To involve the congregation more deeply in the subject matter of sermons.
   
3. To deepen our faith, to broaden our knowledge of Christian truth, and to encourage us to live out our faith in all aspects of our lives.
   

How It Will Work

All sermons, with a few exceptions, will fall within seven categories:

• Who We (BVBC) Are:
  Churches have distinct personalities just like people. What is BVBC's distinct personality? What makes us that way? Some sermons from this series, along with some from other categories, will be part of a basic teaching tool to introduce new people to BVBC.
  
• What God Is Like
  A seasoned pastor said not long ago, "When I started ministry, skeptics wanted to know, 'Does God exist?' Today, they say, 'I don't like what I know about God.'" Sermons in this series take tough questions about God and help us to think seriously and prayerfully about them.
  
• Our Biblical Legacy
  Before we occupied our new sanctuary dozens of people spent 24 hours a day for a week, reading the Bible from cover to cover. We did that, because we are people of The Book. This category features sermons that present the central biblical writings, how we are to understand them, great Christian words we need to understand, and some difficult Christian doctrines.
  
• Home Sweet Home
  Marriage and family are under great stress in our culture. We want to provide help in coping with this stress. Sermons in this category deal with marriage, children, singleness, adolescence, emerging adulthood, divorce, aging, sexuality, and bioethical issues.
  
• The Renewal of Our Minds
  The Bible says that renewal of our minds is the path to personal transformation. This calls for spiritual disciplines of personal and communal prayer and scripture reading, repentance, service, and sacrifice - to name some of the more prominent. Sermons here call us to look inward at the kind of people we need to be inwardly.
  
• The Jesus You Need to Know
  The center of our faith is a crucified, Jewish Messiah whom God raised from the dead to be the Savior of the world. Sermons in this category will look at isolated events from the four Gospels and sometimes will take the church through an entire Gospel in a few weeks to deepen our devotion to Christ the Lord.
  
• Monday, Membership, and the Sociology of the Church
  We want to teach stewardship of money, time, talent and the environment. We also want to address our deep distrust of institutions, including the Church. Sermons in this category will take us below the surface to the reasons for and benefits of our participation in a local church like BVBC, and in the universal church, what the Apostles' Creed calls "the Holy, Catholic Church."
  

First Year Schedule

• Who We Are
  October-December, 2009
  
• What God Is Like
  January-February, 2010
  
• Our Biblical Heritage
  April-May, 2010
  
• Home Sweet Home
  June, 2010
  
• Our Biblical Heritage
  July-August, 2010
  
• Money, Membership, and the Sociology of the Church
  September, 2010
  
• The Renewal of Our Minds
  October-November, 2010
  
• The Jesus You Need to Know
  December, 2010
  
• The Jesus You Need to Know:
  Every Sunday Communion service from November 1, 2009 through December 5, 2010 will focus on an episode from the Gospel of Mark.
  

Individual brochures will give detailed information and dates.

The order in which we do the categories will vary each year. We will do some categories more than once each year. No series within a category will be more than seven sermons long and a series may be as few as three sermons long.