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Embracing Weakness
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 06, 2019
If someone called you weak, you would take it as an insult. But what about when the Lord calls you weak? Because He most certainly does: compared to Him, we are utterly powerless. And yet far from being insulted, if we embrace our own weakness, we can let down the burdens of perfection and self-reliance, and receive from the Lord a greater power than we could ever muster on our own. We may be utterly helpless, but the greatest force in the universe is on our side. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 12s)
Life is Hard, Part 2, What Do We Do?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 29, 2019
A few weeks ago we talked about how to cope with how hard life in this world is. This Sunday we're going to focus on the question of what to do about it. What actions should we take in response to hard and terrible things that happen? It's easy to feel quite powerless in the face of tragedies or huge problems. Can we make a difference? What do we do if our best efforts seem to accomplish nothing? Life is hard; what do we do? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 25s)
When Moses is Gone Too Long
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 22, 2019
Imagine that you are in this beautiful world, but there is a canvas sheet a few feet above your head. You can go on living, but a lot is lost. This describes a condition with good people who are trying to go to heaven. But there is a danger. The story of the golden calf the people made when Moses was up on the mountain for too long tells of a danger of earthly life and how we combat it. | By Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss, Sr. | Westville, RSA
See Event (27m 11s)
Innocence is Bliss
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 15, 2019
There is a certain magic in holding a little baby. Their innocence brings a sense of contented peace. But what does it mean to be innocent really? It doesn’t mean being naive. It doesn’t mean being ignorant. But it doesn’t mean being perfect either. Can we keep our innocence as we grow? Should we? This Sunday we’ll explore what Jesus Christ tells us about innocence and what we need to do to live a life led by the Lord. - By Richard Glenn | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 27s)
Life is Hard, Part 1, How Do We Cope
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 08, 2019
There are a lot of hard aspects of life in this natural world—in our personal lives and also in the world around us. What do we do with it all? How do we cope? Is it better to try to ignore the hard stuff? If we don’t ignore the hard stuff, how do we keep from being flattened by it? This Sunday we’re going to try to learn from He who has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” about how we can cope with life in this hard world. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (18m 52s)
Good News, Fresh from Heaven, Part 2: Seen, Heard and Felt
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 01, 2019
This week we continue to explore the Teachings of the New Church and what they can mean for us. One of the more unusual aspects of these works is the descriptions of conversations with spirits and angels and the surroundings in which they took place. Swedenborg did not just share ideas, but also the things that the Lord allowed him to see, hear, and feel. Although unusual, what can these experiences teach us about heavenly life that mere ideas could not? | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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A New Name
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 25, 2019
We get to witness two baptisms as part of the service this Sunday. When someone gets baptised we talk about them being baptised in the Lord’s name. There’s a lot that’s contained in that simple idea. This Sunday we’ll talk about what it means to take on the name of being a Christian and how we can find a new sense of identity in the Lord. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 25s)
Memorial Service for Edward Palmer
Memorial Service - August 25, 2019
On the 18 August 2019, Edward Palmer peacefully passed away at the age of 86. It's always a hard adjustment when someone passes away, even when they've been sick for a long time like Ted had been. While we grieve his passing, we also are glad for him that he is no longer encumbered with a sick body but instead can enjoy the full use of his spiritual body and can again walk, run, talk easily with people, explore, and eat whatever he wants. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (34m 40s)
Good News, Fresh from Heaven
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 18, 2019
People are often intimidated to try reading Emanuel Swedenborg’s books. He wrote a lot of books and they get into some pretty deep and complex topics. And yet in his own words, these books are "the coming of the Lord." So how do we approach these books in a way that moves beyond philosophy and enters into a real, living relationship with the Lord? | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 43s)
What Does it Take to Make Good Decisions in a Difficult Moment?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 11, 2019
There's a lot about life that is beyond our control and so it's easy to feel like life is just happening to us and we are being dragged along for the ride. Despite that we do still have choices to make--big ones and little, day-to-day ones. How do we make good choices? What things do we need to have in place in our lives to give us the best chance of making good decisions in the midst of our busy, stressful, or just overwhelming lives? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 45s)
Samuel, Part 3: Less Than Ideal, But Better Than Nothing
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 04, 2019
Towards the end of Samuel’s life the Children of Israel began demanding a king. They wanted someone in charge who could defend them from their enemies, and besides, all the neighbouring tribes got to have their own king. God had two responses to their demand: Don’t do it If you do, here’s how you need to do it Even though God knew that having a king was less than ideal, He was also willing to work with their demands and show them a way of doing it that would be successful. Likewise, when we balk at the Lord and demand to be able to do spirituality our own way, God is willing to compromise, provided we remain within a certain framework of truth. This Sunday we’ll talk about that less then ideal but still workable way of following the Lord. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (29m 35s)
Samuel, Part 2: Beyond Skin-Deep Spirituality
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 28, 2019
What makes someone spiritual? Is it how they talk and what they say? Is it the rituals they take part in or the practices they have developed? Is it how they treat other people? All of these things do go into a person's spirituality, but what really makes a person spiritual does deeper, to what is going on in the heart. The Children of Israel's superficial treatment of the Ark of God, and their subsequent defeat, has a lot to teach us about the need to go deeper than just going through the motions and to take what God says to heart. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 55s)
Samuel, Part 1: Hearing the Lord's Call
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 21, 2019
This Sunday we’re starting a series on the story of Samuel. As an adult, Samuel becomes a pivotal figure in the history of the Children of Israel but his story begins in his childhood. The Lord calls out to him and at first he doesn’t know that it’s the Lord. We too can struggle to distinguish the Lord’s call in our lives from a lot of other inputs. With Samuel we can learn what it takes to recognise the Lord’s call and what sort of messages the Lord has for us. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 44s)
Heavenly Imbalance
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 14, 2019
“Everything in moderation” seems like a sound rule for life. After all, anything, even something good, can become harmful when taken to an extreme. Yet this common-sense truth finds surprisingly little support in the Lord’s Word. As just one example, Jesus says, “no one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). There is no moderation or balancer here: rather pick a side and wholeheartedly follow it! This Sunday we will look at how a blind devotion to moderation can be harmful and why thinking in terms of prioritisation is a more heavenly outlook. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 23s)
We Need Times of Rest
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 07, 2019
This Sunday we will be looking at the spiritual significance of the year of Jubilee. This was a law that the Children of Israel had that, every fifty years, they had to let the ground lie fallow and not plant seeds or harvest. Also, any land that had been sold during those fifty years had to then revert to the original owner. What is the spiritual significance of all of this for our lives and our need for fallow times? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 15s)
The Spiritual History of the Human Race, Part 3: Christianity and a New Church
Worship Service: Sermon only - June 30, 2019
This Sunday we will finish our series on the spiritual history of the human race by talking about the beginning of Christianity all the way until today. What happened that made it necessary for there to be a new church after the church started by Jesus Christ? And where do we go from here—what do we believe will happen in the next 500 years of the spiritual history of the human race. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (20m 14s)
Jean Powell Memorial Service
Worship Service: Sermon only - June 26, 2019
Memorial Service of Jean Powell, including eulogies by Malcolm Powell, Victoria (Powell) Browning, and Rodney Harber. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 03s)
Becoming One - What It Means and What It Does Not
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 23, 2019
In wedding ceremonies and love songs people talk about two people becoming one when they get married. That sounds beautiful and poetic but is it actually possible? To people who are in love it can feel very possible; to people in the midst of a difficult conflict or who have just drifted apart it can feel entirely impossible and naive. And what does "becoming one" even mean? Does it mean always agreeing with your partner? Does it mean you have to lose yourself in your relationship for it to work? These are the questions we're going to be digging into this Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 28s)
Joy Comes in the Morning: Dealing with Depression from a Spiritual Standpoint
Banquet Address - June 22, 2019
Joel Glenn's banquet speech at the 2019 New Church Day Banquet at New Church Westville. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (20m 16s)
Ancient Words: What Led Me to the New Church
Banquet Address - June 22, 2019
Paul Mayer's banquet speech at the 2019 New Church Day Banquet at New Church Westville. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (17m 39s)
The Spiritual History of the Human Race, Part 2: The Ancient World
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 16, 2019
The Spiritual History of the Human Race, Part 2: The Ancient World In the lead up to New Church Day we are looking at the spiritual history of the human race, in other words, all the churches that went before and how they contribute to where we find ourselves today in the New Church. Last week Malcolm talked about how mankind began in a kind of purity and innocence, but then fell away from that when they decided to make their own sense of self more important than God. This week we’ll look at the next era in spiritual history: the Ancient Church. This is the time period in which people became disconnected from spiritual reality and the Lord had to find other ways of reaching them. By studying this process we can start to understand why God can seem so distant from us today. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 12s)
The Spiritual History of the Human Race, Part 1: The Earliest People
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 09, 2019
On Sunday we’re starting a series on the spiritual history of the human race. This Sunday we’re looking at the earliest people. What does the Word teach us about what the earliest people were like? How were they different from us and how were they the same as us? And how can understanding what they went through all those thousands of years ago help us to understand ourselves better today? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 53s)
Am I Enough?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 02, 2019
We are bombarded with messages that we need to do more, give more, be more. Whether these messages are overt and intended or subtle and implied, they push us to ask ourselves, "am I enough?" Am I enough for my children? Am I enough for my spouse? Am I enough for my work? Am I enough for my society? And above all, am I enough for the Lord? The bad news is that we are all lacking; the good news is even in our lack we are enough in the Lord's eyes. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 45s)
Children and Parents
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 26, 2019
If you have children, you probably spend a fair amount of time talking about parenting—how things are going for this child or that child, what you’re fighting with your children about (what they’re eating or not eating, screen time, homework, etc.), your worries about their future. But what is the goal? What is the role of a parent meant to be? And what about these children that we’re trying to parent—are they perfect, uncorrupted little angels, are they disrespectful brats that need to be brought into line? There are many opinions about all of these things in the world but what I want to talk about on Sunday is what the Lord says about all of this in His Word. What does He teach us about the nature of children and how does He define the role of a parent? Gaining clarity about this can really help us hold the hard work of parenting in a better way. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 39s)
Other People's Children
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 19, 2019
This Sunday we continue our series on children. When we think of children our minds immediately go to parents as well. But children are not just the concern of parents. Whether we like it or not, all of us have some responsibility for other people's children. As individuals, as a community, and as a church, how do we carry out this responsibility that we have not asked for and at times outright resent? All of us have a role to play in the lives of the young people who surround us. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 41s)