Text: Exodus 15:13 [Neh. 9:12]

Sermon Body Outline:
Year in Review---News Stories that affected the Christian walk…both positive and negative…as reported by Religion Today

None of these affect us here in our community directly…but indirectly they do…for these are the stories that make the limelight of the secular news

On the positive side we saw…

· Amish response to Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting.
Just hours after shooting several schoolgirls and himself, Amish families reached out to the wife and family of the gunman with comfort and forgiveness.

· American Christians on the forefront of aid during and after Israeli/Lebanese conflict. Evangelical Christians donated nearly 20 million dollars to provide humanitarian relief to Israel during the war in Lebanon.
· Christian movies keep coming. Movies such as End of the Spear, The Nativity and Facing the Giants were well received by critics and movie goers.

On the not so positive…

· Episcopal Bishop Jefferts-Schori fallout. The Bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, who was named as the denomination's national leader, has said that she does not believe that homosexuality is a sin.
· Muslims offended by Danish cartoons, Pope's speech. Caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and a speech wherein the Pope linked Islam with violence led to protests and apologies.
· Gnosticism returns. The Gospel of Judas and The Da Vinci Code were two examples of Gnosticism being repackaged for a postmodern culture.

There are other stories…but as I lead into this series on leadership…there are few statistics that directly relates to the church over the year of 2006…these are from the Barna Research Group…listen to these…for these do relate to our community

1. Only 15 percent of those who regularly attend a Christian church ranked their relationship with God as the top priority in their life. On average, pastors believe that 70 percent of the adults in their congregation consider their relationship with God to be their highest priority in life.
2. Three out of every four teenagers have engaged in at least one type of psychic/witchcraft-related activity with fewer than three out of every ten churched teenagers receiving any teaching from their church about elements of the supernatural.
3. Just 21 percent of adults consider themselves to be holy; by their own admission, large numbers have no idea what "holiness" means and only one out of every three (35%) believe that God expects people to become holy.
4. The growing movement of Christian Revolutionaries in the U.S. distinguished themselves from an already-select group of people -- born-again Christians -- through their deeds, beliefs and self-views.
Revolutionaries' demonstrated higher levels of community service, financial contributions, daily Bible study, personal quiet times each day, family Bible studies, daily worship experiences, engagement in spiritual mentoring and evangelistic efforts.
I would like to think of myself as a revolutionary
5. Involvement in a house church is rapidly growing and four out of every five house church participants maintain some connection to a conventional church.
6. The only measure of spiritual health used by at least half of all pastors was the extent of volunteer activity or ministry involvement…I am glad I am not part of this statistic
7. Tracking of young people showed that most of them had disengaged from organized religion during their twenties.
8. Seven out of ten parents claim they are effective at developing the spiritual maturity of their children, but the survey among 8-to-12-year-olds discovered that only one-third of them say a church has made "a positive difference" in their life; one-third contend that prayer is very