sponsored by:

 

Catholic

Holy Family Parish
316 S. Logan St.
         217-732-4019

Pastor:
  Rev. Jeffrey G. Laible
Assistant:
 
Rev. John Huy Pham
Liturgy schedule:
  5PM Saturday
  8AM & 10AM Sunday

Website:
www.holyfamilylincoln.com
E-mail:
info@holyfamilylincoln.com

Christian

 

Elkhart Christian Church

113 S. Gillett St.

Elkhart, IL  62634-0229

217-947-2726

 


Jefferson Street Christian Church
1700 N. Jefferson St.
         217-732-9294

Preaching minister:
  Dustin Fulton

Worship:
  9AM & 10:45AM Sunday
Midweek activities:
  "Truth North": 6PM Wed.
Website: www.jeffstreet.org
E-mail: dustinf@jeffstreet.org

Lincoln Christian Church
Independent Christian Church
204 N. McLean St.
         217-732-7618

Preaching minister:
  Ron Otto

Worship:
  8:15, 9:30, 11AM & 6PM
  Sunday
Midweek activities:
(Beginning Sept. 12)
  Adult, Youth & Kids' Club:
 
6:30PM Wed.
Website: www.lincolnchristianchurch.org
E-mail: gtparmenter@insightbb.com


Prairieland Christian Church
P.O. Box 108, 1st St. Hartsburg, IL 62643
         217-642-0415

Minister:
 Vance Russell

Sunday School:  9:30AM
Worship: 10:30AM

Church of God

Lincoln Church of God
1415 Fourth St.
         217-732-8989

Pastor:
  Jacob Skelton

Sunday School:  9:30AM
Morning Worship:
  10:45AM
Evening Service: 6PM
Wednesday Family Hour:
  7PM
Website:
www.lincolnchurchofgod.com

Episcopal

Trinity Episcopal Church
402 Pekin St., Lincoln
         217-732-7609
Pastor:
 James Cravens
Worship:  

 7:30 & 9:45AM Sunday
 9:00AM Wednesday

Independent

Kingdom Life Ministries
2500 Woodlawn Road
         217-732-1466
Pastor: Joe Bennett
Worship:  
 10AM & 6:30PM Sunday


Lincoln Bible Church
2316 N. Kickapoo St., Lincoln
      
  217-735-5959
Pastor:

 Ron Denlinger
Worship: 10AM Sunday
Sunday School: 9AM
Website:
www.lincolnbiblechurch.org

Lutheran

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Association of Free Lutheran Congregations
1140 N. State St., Lincoln
         217-735-9320
Worship: 9AM Sunday
E-mail: gslc@ccaonline.com


Immanuel Lutheran Church  ELCA
1409 Pulaski St., Lincoln
         217-732-6777
Pastor: Andrew Nyren
Worship: 9AM Sunday
Sunday School: 10:15AM
Praise Service:
 5PM Saturday
Website: http://www.immanuellincoln.org
E-mail: immanuel_lincoln@verizon.net

Nondenominational

Open Arms Christian Fellowship
311 Broadway St., Lincoln
Pastors: Larry Crawford
, 309-830-0461
Kevin Wolf
, 309-838-8564
Worship: 10AM Sunday
Home Group:  Various dates and locations
(
please call for more information)
Website: http://comebackministries.com
E-mail: comeback7@msn.com

United Methodist

Chestnut United Methodist Church
313 N. Logan St.              Chestnut
         217-
796-3532


First United Methodist Church
302 Broadway St.,  Lincoln
         217-732-2204
Pastor: Jame Hahs

Asst. Pastor: Becky Barrow
Worship:  
 9AM Sunday
Sunday School: 10:15AM
Website: www.gbgm-umc.org/
lincoln1stumc/index.html


First United Methodist Church
303 E Jefferson,               Mt. Pulaski
         217-
792-3918


Latham United Methodist Church
241 N. Walnut St.             PO Box 246               Latham
         217-674-3749


New Holland United Methodist Church
201 N. Mason St.,  New Holland
         217-445-2485

United Church of Christ

 

ST. JOHN UNITED CHURCH of Christ

Seventh and Maple Street,

Lincoln

          217-732-6957

Pastor: Rich Reinwald

Worship:

10:30AM Sunday

Sunday School:

9-10:15AM

E-mail: stjohnucclincoln

@yahoo.com

 

Presbyterian

First Presbyterian Church
301 Pekin St.,  Lincoln
         217-732-6141
Pastor: Rev. Phillip Blackburn

Worship:  
 10AM Sunday
Celebration: 6PM Wed.

Website: www.firstpreslincoln.com
E-mail:  office@firstpreslincoln.com


First Cumberland Presbyterian Church
110 Broadway St.,  Lincoln
         217-732-7568
Pastor: Dr. David West
Cell phone: 871-9940

Worship:  
 10:00 AM Sunday
Sunday School: 9:00AM
 

To inquire about listing your congregation's worship information, please e-mail us at ads@lincolndailynews.com or call us at 217-737-7418.

Church Activities & Announcements

"I Am"

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”-John 10:11

Three times in the Gospel of John Jesus delivers powerful “I Am” statements. In John 8 we learn that Jesus is the light of the world. In John 15 we are taught that Jesus is the true vine and here, in John 10, we learn that Jesus is the good shepherd. It is worth noting that the “I am..” phrasing is important. Remember back in Exodus when Moses is beckoned to the burning bush from which the glory of God is radiating? In that passage Moses asks God for a name, to which God replies, “I am who I am.” This had always been the divine name. But now Jesus is elaborating on “I am who I am.” He offers us these images and none are more powerful than good shepherd.

So, what is so special about this? I mean, it casts you and me as sheep, how great can it be to be compared to sheep? But this is not the point. This image points to the very nature of God. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” He then succinctly defines the image thus, “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Period. Full stop. Jesus, the son of God, the Word of God, the Light of the World, will lay down his life for you and me. It is not something he does, it is who he is and if it is who he is then it is who God is. This is incredible news! And it means several things to us. First, it illustrates God’s love for us. God loves you a lot. Second, it highlights the selfless nature of God. And perhaps its most important meaning is this; that it establishes the value of human life. Human life is pretty cheap these days, but not to God. In God’s mind the value of a human life is the divine life. Think about that for a moment. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Those are some important sheep Maybe being a sheep is not so bad after all.

Prayer: Holy God, help me to understand how valuable and loved I am. Fill me with joy, hope and peace, that I may know today that you love me. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Phil Blackburn, First Presbyterian Church


The Accidental Message

My mother-in-law called. She was laughing. “For the last twenty minutes I’ve been listening to the message you left on my answering machine,” she said. I had to agree that it was a funny message that my wife had left. I was sitting right beside her when she made the call. The funniest part about it, I thought, was that my wife couldn’t stop laughing as she left the recording on the voice mail. It was one of those times when you say something and realize how ridiculous it must sound and you laugh at yourself and you can’t stop as silliness feeds silliness. But for my mother-in-law to listen to that brief message over and over for twenty minutes? Wow. I wasn’t sure it was that entertaining, but then again, I wasn’t on the receiving end.

Turns out my mother-in-law wasn’t laughing at a 45 second message. Our cordless handset hadn’t succeeded in telling the base to end the call and so we accidentally produced an extended audio recording of our home life. Oh no! What had we said? What did she hear? I instantly felt exposed. Had she caught me lecturing my teenage son? Was I short with my wife about something? Did I utter some thoughtless complaint? Had I said something negative about my parents or parents-in-law? (Not that I ever do any of those things, mind you – but, just in case I had – my brain was frantically doing the instant replay of the last hour of my life.) And then I remembered. Soon after the phone message should have ended, I had picked up a book and was quietly reading and then I took a short nap – pretty benign stuff. I hesitantly concluded that I had squeaked by and that other members of my family had entertained my mother-in-law – at least I hoped so.

Several years ago I was at a party. I had struck up a conversation with a stranger, asked him what he did for a living, how long he lived in the area – that sort of thing. After freely answering all my questions he returned the favor and asked what I did for a living. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I could see the panic in his eyes. Unknowingly he had been talking with a “minister.” Oh no! What had he just told me? Did he include some off-color remark? Had he thrown in some four-letter word or spoken some irreligious thing? Had he exposed himself? Now, years later, I understood what that poor fellow had gone through.

I’m a transparent guy. I tend to be fairly vulnerable. Right now I’m sharing my thoughts for everyone to see. Right? Not exactly! I’m in control of what I choose to share. The thought of being the star of “The Truman Show” or having a camera constantly on me as a member of the “Jon and Kate plus 8” family – No Thanks! And yet, the “reality” is…

“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Heb 4:13 (NIV)

“There’s a Father up above and he’s looking down in love. So be careful…” He is listening in. He is watching. Does that comfort us or make us squirm? Does it thrill us to think of all He sees in us? Probably not that!

The implication of Hebrews 4:13 is simple, yet profound: If we were to consciously and consistently keep in mind that everything about us is exposed before God, at the very least we might take a little more responsibility for our lives. Or this “practice of His presence” may be transformational. We might be led to call on Him who can cause all old things to pass away and in His mercy He would give each of us a new heart.

Ron Denlinger (pastor of Lincoln Bible Church)


Let God borrow your boat…he’ll fill it with fish!


Nobody is on top of the world every day. Everyone had ups and downs. Sometimes the world is sweet and sometimes it is sour. Sometimes life moves along briskly, we accomplish what we set out to do and we meet our personal goals. And sometimes things get stuck. Life comes to a halt.
In Luke 5:1-11, we meet three discouraged men. They were fishermen – not recreational fishermen, but workers whose families went hungry if there was no catch. They had fished all night and caught nothing. Now it was morning and the men were washing their nets.
There was a crowd on the beach near where they were working. A big crowd! They were listening to Jesus – pressing in upon him. Jesus steps in the water – out away from the crowd. Suddenly Jesus steps into Simon’s boat. “Put out a little way from shore,” he asks Peter, and he does. From the boat Jesus continues to teach the crowds. Jesus then turned to Simon. “Put out into the deep water,” he tells him, “and let your nets down for a catch.”


It was really quite audacious for Jesus, a landsman, to tell a professional fisherman how to do his business. Very audacious – and Peter answers Jesus immediately explaining the facts to him. “It won’t do any good,” he says, “We have worked all night – and have caught nothing. There is no point to it.”
Have you ever been there? You do your best. You work hard. And the results are zero. An important relationship goes sour and there is nothing you can do. You watch a marriage dissolve and you can’t save it. A project you have worked on just will not pan out. The harder you try – the less you produce.
Have you ever been in the place where all your wisdom tells you – just give up? I have, and the last thing you want to hear when you are in this position are the words “try harder.”
These fishermen were not stupid men. They knew the lake, the ledges where the fish congregated, the kind of weather you had to have to bring in a good catch. They knew the time to fish – and where to fish – and they had gone fishing – at the right time – and at the right place – and come up empty.
“Try over there,” Jesus says. “Over there in the deep water – let your nets down for a catch over there.”
Peter replies, “We have done everything we should have done, everything we were taught to do by our fathers and their fathers before them, we know our business here Jesus, and we have caught nothing … YET – if you say so – I will let down the nets.”
You know the story from here – They threw the nets out from Simon’s boat and engulfed such a great score of fish that the nets began to break. Indeed they caught so many fish that the boats began to sink. It was an amazing catch. A catch made in deep water. A catch taken where there should have been no catch. A catch taken at a time of day when no one fishes! It was a miracle catch!


“Put out into the deep waters and let down your nets for a catch.” When I read those words … I can almost hear Jesus calling me to go deeper as well. “Come on, Ron; let’s dive a little deeper here,” Jesus says. “But I tried that before!” I respond. “Come on, let’s try it again,” Jesus says.
So I give Jesus control of my boat, my ministry, my relationships, my finances! I hear his call to go a little deeper, “Give and it will be given to you, a GOOD measure, PRESSED down, SHAKEN together, RUNNING over, will POUR into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
(Luke 6:38)


Sometimes we just need to head out into the deep waters and let down our nets for no better reason than Jesus has asked us to do so.
Our nets may come up empty for many days in a row but if we are obedient to God – if we are willing to listen and try the deeper things he suggests – if we are willing to venture out to the deeper truths – our nets will in the end be filled and filled so abundantly that our nets will almost break and our boats almost sink.


Ron Otto, preaching minster, Lincoln Christian Church


Silence

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”-Deuteronomy 6:4

We live in the loudest society in the history of the world. We are inundated with noise. We hear it in our cars, our homes, our businesses. We shop with background music, we watch sports in stereo surround. Some of us even sleep with the soft purr of white noise lulling us away into the night. We lead loud lives. Much of the time this is not a problem until we want to hear something else, another sound that can’t find its way through all the noise. In these moments we can feel like we are trying to have a conversation at a concert, straining to hear the words we so desperately want over the din of rock music and the lyrical whines of the singer. In short, the noise can drown out the most important things in our lives.

And this brings us to silence. For centuries it was simply understood that people of faith would experience silence. And in their silences, people of faith experienced great things. From monastics to peasants to kings, history is rich with stories of God’s voice penetrating the silence. And so it comes to us. If we want to know what God is really up to in our lives. If we want to understand where God wants us to go. If we hope to draw ourselves closer to God then we need to spend some time being quiet. We need to make room for the still, small voice of the Lord to enter our minds and thus shape our lives. Try it this week. Turn off the radio in the car. Turn off the TV after the kids go to bed. Turn down the radio while you work in the kitchen. Be quiet and listen. Hear, O people, the Lord is your God. To know it, you have to be able to hear it.

Prayer: God, help me to be silent, help me to listen for your voice in my world and in my life. I need your help. The noise has overcome me and I feel lost from you. I need silence and I need you. Amen.


Love Your Enemies

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”-Matthew 5:44

At first glance we Americans know little of persecution. Our children are not kidnapped in the middle of the night to serve in a rebel army as they are in Uganda. We do not fear for our lives when we go to the market as they do in Baghdad. We do not lose our job because we are Christian as they do in India. And yet we all know persecution? How? Because we know people. We all know someone who is our foil, our nemesis, our foe. They don’t like us. They go out of their way to challenge or attack us. Their mere presence unsettles us. And so we respond to them Sometimes we match their anger with our own; their yells with our screams. Sometimes we ignore them and lie low, hoping they will leave us alone. Sometimes we just fume in private and ponder opportunities for revenge.

But Jesus tells us these things just aren’t acceptable. He was not one for retribution and so he offers these words; love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Of all the things Jesus asks us to do I think this is the most difficult. It is very difficult to put aside our concerns and angers and hurts and to pray for those who persecute us. But Jesus teaches that prayer is the proper posture. And the nature of the prayer is important. Jesus is not telling us to pray that they will agree with us or be nicer to us, but instead our prayer should be one of selfless hope, that those who persecute us might find true joy and peace. That is a radical difference! So on this day I invite you to pause, think of those who torment and trouble you and say a loving prayer for them.

Prayer: God, please help me to pray for those who persecute me. Help me to see their humanity and their identity as your child. I offer this prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.


Rejoice!

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

If you are like me, you probably weren’t too glad on this day.  I woke up to subzero temperatures here in Lincoln, where they are supposed to remain all day.  Nothing to celebrate there.  My front door is frozen, my car is creaking and my floor is freezing cold.  I have to wear long underwear because of the cold so my skin is extra dry and itchy.  The large boots that keep my feet dry and warm are also heavy and cumbersome.  It is not a great day.  And yet the psalmist does not qualify his words.  He doesn’t say, “this is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad when it turns out well.”  No, he says the opposite.  He makes his claim universal.  Every day comes from the Lord and every single day is a gift.

This is an important reminder on the frosty days, the dark days, the sad days, the hard days.  Even when we find life challenging, even when we have suffered loss, or are afraid or even shivering under blankets, we are enjoying a day of God’s creation.  Each day there is reason to rejoice because the rising sun always bears with it he promise of God’s kingdom and a reminder that God is with you today.  So on this frigid midwinter day, I invite you to live this day with gladness and joy; gladness that the sun is shining and the trees are beautiful and joy that God is here, working in this world.  Every day is a gift from God.  I have a hunch that somewhere in those words is the key to life.

Prayer:  Holy God, thank your for this day.  Please help me to find joy and gladness today that I might be grateful for this gift.  I pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.


 

 

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Recent Spiritual Life Articles

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New Staff Member at Lincoln Christian Church

 

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Cleaning House

I
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