Join us for a new sermon series for February 2012 called Tribal Thrival. Are you part of God’s Tribe?  Come on Sundays at 10:30 and find out how we can thrive together.

You can also participate in the sale by filling out the form below!

The sale begins promptly at 9:00a.m. on Saturday March 24th and lasts until 1:00p.m. at the Church of the Nazarene 3401 S. Custer Rd. Monroe, MI 48162, next to the Monroe County Fairgrounds. Rent our 6’ table for $15 or bring your own table ($10) or your own rack for $5.

The church will be open for set up from 5:00-7:00 p.m. on Friday March 23th and at 8:00 a.m. the morning of the sale. Please be ready for shoppers promptly at 9:00a.m, please do not pack up your table prior to 12:45 the day of the sale.

Come prepared with change (lots of $1’s) and bags (Kroger, Meijer etc…) to put the items in that you sell. Don’t leave money accessible to the public. Church of the Nazarene will not be responsible for lost or stolen items.

You will be offered a lower price at one time or another. You do not have to take anything less than you want but remember you are reselling used items and will not get retail value out of them. 10%-20% of purchase price is a good starting point for resale price, depending on item, brand and condition of the item.

Make sure that items are clean, and organized. While it is more work prior to the sale, if items are clean, priced individually and sets pinned together you will be happier with the outcome of the sale.

A large item room will be available. If you have large items that will block aisles we ask that you check the item into the room during sale set up. Your name and asking price will be taken by the volunteer along with whether or not you are willing to negotiate on the price, and when during the sale. At the end of the sale you will be given your money for the sale minus a $1 fee if the item sells.

Non-resale (Pampered Chef, Scentsy, handmade accessories etc…) vendor tables reserved for MCN members only.

Our tables are 6’ and can be rented for $15 per table. If you would like to bring your own table we will allow space for a 6’ or 8’ table and the space rental fee is $10 per space, fee for bringing your own rack is $5. We have a limited amount of space and rental is on a first come first serve basis. There will be a $1 entrance fee for shoppers.

Unfortunately we will not be providing lunch but will coffee and a bake sale.

Please mail your check made payable to:
Monroe Church of the Nazarene
3401 S. Custer Rd
Monroe, MI 48162

Once your rental fee has been received you will be contacted to confirm your registration.
If you have any questions please call Mom to Mom coordinator Tammy Smith 734-915-7482 or the church office at 734-241-0753.

Looking forward to another successful sale, thanks for your participation!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

The event begins at 9:00 AM with the morning session focusing on Lewis and Narnia.  There will be a lunch available for a donation.  The optional sessions, 1:00 PM-3:00 PM, are highly recommended and will focus on an overview of Lewis’ other popular works such as Screwtape Letters and his space trilogy.  The last hour of the day will focus on Lewis’ incredibly popular Mere Christianity.

It is a sincere privilege to have world class Lewis scholar Dr. Bruce Edwards leading the seminars.  In the scholarly study of C. S. Lewis Edwards is highly regarding, often speaking to national audiences.  His bio is found at the end of this article.

This FREE event will be held at the Church of the Nazarene located at 3401 S. Custer Rd. in Monroe, Michigan.  If you have any questions feel free to call the church at 734-241-7858 or Pastor Randy at 734-693-7090.

Bio of Dr. Bruce Edwards:

Bruce L. Edwards is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Distance Education and International Programs at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where has he been a faculty member and administrator since 1981. He has served as Fulbright Fellow in Nairobi, Kenya (1999-2000), a Bradley Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC (1989-90), and as the S. W. Brooks Memorial Professor of Literature at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (1988). Bruce and his wife, Joan, live in Bowling Green, and have four grown children, ranging in age from 21 to 30.

Bruce was born in Akron, OH, attending the Akron City Public Schools. He graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1977, and received his Masters Degree in English from Kansas State University in 1979. He earned his Ph.D. in Literature and Rhetoric from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, writing his dissertation on the literary criticism of C. S. Lewis.

Bruce’s new books on The Chronicles of Narnia: Not a Tame Lion (Tyndale, 2005) and Further Up and Fuether In: Understanding C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, have been well received, and he has published two previous books on Lewis, including A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis’s Defense of Western Literacy and The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer. He is also a contributor to many collections of essays about Lewis and the Inklings, and has for many years maintained a popular web site on the life and works of C. S. Lewis (http://personal.bgsu.edu/~edwards/lewis.html). He has also published several successful textbooks for college audiences, including, Roughdrafts (Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), Processing Words (Prentice-Hall, 1988), and Searching for Great Ideas (1st and 2nd editions; Harcourt, 1989; 1992).

He was the recipient of a 2005 Fulbright-Hays Grant that allowed him to take a contingent of public and private educators to Tanzania for six weeks in the summer of 2005 to establish internet-based educational opportunities for both Midwestern U.S. and Tanzanian students.

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How do you feel about this prayer?  My first thought was that he somehow cheapened prayer.  Surely God did not need to know that the pastor sees his wife as “smoking hot!”  God already knew it since He created her.  Not surprisingly he has drawn some criticism.  He appeared on a television news interview this morning and was asked about the criticism.  He replied that the prayer was unplanned and it just came out.  In his view it helped people realize that Christians still have fun and that not all Christians are boring.  In short, he seems to see that his thankfulness for his smoking hot wife was a form of evangelism.  What do you think?

In searching the internet regarding this subject I read the responses of many people.  Some criticized him severely.  Others expressed amazement.  Here are two samples:

-“Best opening prayer ever! I would go to church if this guy was giving the sermon. Way to go Joe.”

-“The guy is a clown. I wouldn`t want to go to his church.”

So what do you think?  In my opinion, he is right in thinking that people outside the church view Christians as boring and humorless.  I guess Pastor Joe showed them the other side!  But is this a good approach or a bad approach to evangelism?

What do you think?

In case you missed it: http://youtu.be/OBt2mYnTumQ

There’s just one problem: the much maligned group who are trumpeting the end of the world is right.  The world really is going to end.  Of course I understand that the end-of-the-world group which is attracting so much attention might not have the date exactly right.  But, they are right in terms of the bulk of their claim: the world really is going to end.  And since the Christian world is virtually united around the concept of the end of the world, it just might be that May 21 is as good a day as any for God to pick.

Growing up in the church in the 1960s was to be bombarded with end-times speculation.  The bombs of fear and urgency were dropped because in 1948 Israel became a nation.  This reality, tied with a passage of Scripture in Luke 21 linking the return of Jesus within one generation of the budding of the fig tree (which of course must mean the birth of Israel as a nation), fueled interest in the end of the world.  My mind remains crammed with scary eschatological sermons and colored charts highlighting the fiery destruction of the cosmos.  This emphasis gave rise to equally fiery debates about how the world would end.  In my church world, we heard lots about a secret Rapture.  A strong message went out that if you did not believe in this Rapture you too would be burned up in the eminent cataclysm.  And would this Rapture take place before, during, or after the coming Tribulation?  This, and other end-times speculation, stoked a debate that raged liked wildfire.

But something happened with the gathering smoke generated by this fiery debate.  The conservative church seemed to lose their way.  The heated debate regarding the “how” and the “when” of the world’s end tended to obscure the real issue.  Here’s the real issue from my perspective: be ready.

It does not greatly concern me if the end of the world is on May 21, 2011 or in the year 2525.  I am not losing sleep over if there is a Rapture and trying to decide if it is before, during, or after the Great Tribulation.  Here is my concern: I want to be ready.

This is why the barrage of jokes and insults directed toward the current group of end-times forecasters raises concern.  In all of the guffawing it is easy to lose sight of the important issue: be ready.  Besides.  Who are we to say that God will not decide to pick that date just because He can?  Do I really believe the world is going to end on May 21, 2011?  Nope.  But I guarantee one thing.  If it does, I will be ready.

“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”  (Rev. 22:20)