Whiteboard: We Press On!

This Sunday we'll be celebrating our 50th Anniversary at FCC Scottsdale!

We've selected the theme "We Press On!" drawing on the Apostle Paul's reminder in Philippians 3:13-14 that we are not working for our own goals and personal agendas, but rather as a people of faith we "press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus."

So we'll be celebrating our history while looking toward the fullness of the future that God is calling us to be a part of. We will praise God, we will welcome old friends (and new ones!), and we will all glory, laud, and honor to God!

You'll notice that the sanctuary looks a little bit different this Sunday. We'll have the original pulpit (the one that our founding pastor Rev. Ebed Hanna not only preached from, but actually brought to the church himself!), the old communion credenza serving as our Lord's Table, the wooden cross from our first Easter celebration, and a specially crafted pitcher and cup for our communion celebration that commemorates our 50th Anniversary. Here is a sneak peak at the communion ware, a custom made set, hand crafted by our very own Scott Jones...

And if you want a head start on my sermon for Sunday morning, check out this great article from 1964 trying to predict what life would be like in the far distant future of...2014!

I hope you'll join us this Sunday. It is going to be a wonderful homecoming and a tremendous opprotunity to praise God for what God has done, is doing, and will do! See you Sunday!

peace,
Rev. Brian

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Philippians 3:1-14

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. 

To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.