Is it wrong to be more excited about a sermon for the Sunday after Easter than the one given on Easter?


I hope not. Because I am.

Not that I wasn't excited about Easter's message. I was.

It's just that I love what's going to happen this coming Sunday. I believe it's one of Jesus' best disruptions of them all.


To get ready, read John 4:4-26. And don't stop at 4:24 -- that's the verse people mistakenly believe is the point of the story.

We'll see that it's not.

Sunday.

8:30. 10. 11:30.

So this week I'm helping out John Pavlovitz, Amie Berryhill and the rest of the Student Ministry Team with Spring Breakthrough 2010.

What is it?

Pretty incredible, actually.

It's 100 students from Charlotte, Fort Mill, and Lake Wylie spending their spring break in a most unconventional manner: serving people in need.

Instead of a trip to Myrtle Beach, the students are tutoring at-risk children, serving lunch to men in early stages of drug recovery, painting the warehouse of one of the church's ministry partners, prayer walking the streets of uptown Charlotte, among others.

They're bunking together at Camp Thunderbird on Lake Wylie and then jumping into vans early each morning to drive to the various ministry sites.

That's where I come in. Van driver.

It's a student ministry of which the people of Good Shepherd can be justifiably proud.

We're doing something different this year at Easter.

This time, we're starting a new message series on Resurrection Sunday.

(Usually, Easter is the culmination of a sermon series and we use that Sunday in part to promote the next collection of messages.)

But this year, Easter Sunday is the jumping off point for a four-Sunday series called Disruption.

Disruptions come at the most inconvenient times: The fender bender on the way to an important meeting, the ring of a cell phone as you begin a deep conversation, or the cry of a hungry newborn just as you've entered into the bliss of REM sleep.

Disruptions: We're looking one way, and suddenly, our attention is diverted somewhere else.

We believe that God works that way too. In fact, we believe the most disruptive force in the history of planet Earth happened on that first Easter. We believe that Jesus came to disrupt us and that the disruptions have kept coming ever since.

We pray this weekend will disrupt people out of bondage and into grace.

Here's the schedule:

Friday, April 2 at 7:00 p.m. -- Good Friday Remembrance In Worship Center

Easter Sunday, April 4 at 7:00 a.m. -- Sunrise Worship at the Corner Campus

Easter Sunday, April 4 at 8:30, 10, and 11:30 -- Easter Celebration In Worship Center And Backstage

Be prepared to be disrupted.

While I'm not on Facebook, I have an awareness of its power.

So at the end of yesterday's message -- based on the connections between Leviticus 16, John 19, and Hebrews 10 and with the Rob Bell-inspired refrain "the goat has left the building" -- I invited the people of the church to post as their Facebook status:

"My goat's gone."

And they did. Some did it right there in church on their mobile devices; other, less technologically mobile folks, posted on their home computers after church.

Perhaps the most creative is John Pavlovitz's status in the milk carton photo.

But as is typical of Facebook, the status postings started cyber-conversations with hundreds of people who hadn't been to Good Shepherd on Sunday morning. Here are a couple of responses:

You are the second person I've seen without a goat today. Goats must be on the loose everywhere!

I give up...what are you speaking of?

Where is this from. It's on everyone's Status

Now it makes sense! Hang with me for a moment...
The movie, 'Men Who Stare at Goats' was about the shame and guilt they had about the way goats were used in experiments. In the end they set the goats (captives) free. The same is true for us...but a little in reverse... Christ as the "scapegoat" took on the sins of the world to set us (captives) free - so we would no longer live with shame and guilt :-)

And I love the way this mini-phenomenon empowered the people of Good Shepherd to offer explanations to their friends. Take a look at this conversation:

I give up...what are you speaking of?

Thank you for asking! In Old Testament days, the law was to bring in a goat as a sin offering. The high priest laid hands on the goat to put all the people's sins on the goat. The goat was then led out of town to the desert away from the people to take away their sins for the year. The ceremony was repeated every year at Yom Kipper. Leviticus 16:3-10; 20-22

Well, in the New Testament, Jesus came for all of us to die for our sins, and become our "scapegoat". He was sacrificed for our sins, so now our sins are gone, or our goat that is loaded with our sins is gone! John 19:15-17, Hebrews 10:1, 10-14.

It's all theological conversation, 21st Century style.

Gone goats and Facebook status.

You can hear the sermon itself here.