Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 28th, 2008 No Comments »
“Let’s deepen our bonds within the church,” Phil Kniss, lead pastor of Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA, challenged his congregation in a sermon on “How (not) to fight the culture wars.” This bond gives us the capacity, he said, to “lovingly fight with each other.” From experience, we know that the closer the bond in a relationship, the greater the ability to have meaningful conflict, and to stay in healthy relationship. His sermon, as a call to avoid participation in advocacy groups, interest groups and partisan politics, was the 4th in a series of sermons with a theme “Before a watching world: How (not) to be the church in public.”
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Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 21st, 2008 No Comments »
Sitting in front of his audience rather than to preach from the pulpit, Phil Kniss, lead pastor of Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA., told the congregation he changed his position because he “was preaching on politics.” He referenced Jesus’ conversation with Pontius Pilate as found in John 18 to say that Jesus entered the political discourse of his time “but not on the empire’s terms.” Rather than fight for his position, Jesus articulated a “radical love ethic” over force. In calling 21st Christians to engage the powers through voting, Kniss asked if we, as followers of Jesus could agree on one thing: “Let me propose to you to make one solid, baseline commitment, going into November: that our loyalty to the Kingdom of Gold will always come first, before any political party’s agenda and before any party’s candidate.”
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Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 14th, 2008 No Comments »
In his second in a series of sermons entitled “Before a Watching World: How (not) to evangelize?” Phil Kniss told the Park View Mennonite congregation that the communities of hope called to tell the good news “will embody the deep truth of the gospel in our lives and thrust into conversations about this life that we live. ‘Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands it, accounting of the hope that is in you, the Apostle wrote in I Peter 3, but do it with gentleness and reverence.’” In this broken, sinful and cynical world that is grasping for some shred, some little piece of hope, a people that live in hope will stick out, he asserted. That is our good news, our shalom.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 7th, 2008 No Comments »
“While we must learn and practice habits of friendliness and hospitality. we cannot let attraction be the tail that wags the dog,” Phil Kniss told his parishioners at the Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Va. in the first in a series of sermons entitled “Before the Watching World: How (not) to be the church in public.” Otherwise, he said, “we’ve sold out to the consumerism and individualism that controls our culture. ‘Come to the church with the biggest and the most.’ ‘Come to the church that will meet your needs the best.’ ‘Come to the church that has ministries second to none.’ It is not our mission at Park View Mennonite Church to convince people to ‘go to church’ here. The mission of this church is God’s mission. Our mission is to embody the loving and saving presence of the living God precisely in those places in our community and in our world that God most wants to save. The places in the shadows that many of us like to avoid. Or the neighbors down our street who we have never met.”
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