Preaching

I'm not sure why God keeps giving me opportunities to share and preach the same ideas. I guess it's all ok because He's the one that gives the opportunities and inspires the scriptures that I've been teaching.

So I had the chance to preach yesterday at our church, The International Chapel of Vienna (http://www.viennachapel.org/). Our Pastor James, who despite being a Chelsea fan is a great guy, asked a few of us in the church to be on a preaching team that meets regularly throughout the year. We disuss the section of scripture he will be teaching from each week (currently 1 Peter).

We go through books of the Bible verse by verse, but cover ground a bit quicker than some other churches. One positive of this type of study is that you get a very managable picture of the themes throughout a book of scripture without getting bogged down in intricate, exegetical details. One of the negatives, however, is that some themes that need to be expanded on may not get the full time they need. As a result, James decided that he will preach the book verse by verse and, when certain topics or subjects arise that need to be further expanded, he wanted a few of us from the preaching team to tackle those issues. I thought this was really cool because it gives the Pastor a break every month or two and makes sure he is also under the teaching of the Word.

So yesterday I got to expand on the idea of being an elect exile (a major idea discussed in 1 Peter). I'll post a rought outline and some thoughts on the text later on.