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No Room for Them in the Inn
Worship Service: Informal Family - December 26, 2021
There will be a worship service on this day, even though it’s just the day after Christmas. It will be a simple family service, offered in-person and online. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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An Eternal Perspective
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 28, 2021
As another year draws to a close and as many people are dealing with the stress of a manic time of year, let’s turn to the Lord’s Word this Sunday for passages about the Lord’s eternal perspective. Let’s zoom out for a few minutes on Sunday and think about what will still matter in a hundred years or a thousand years and then see if we can bring some of that perspective back into all that we’re trying to do before the end of the year. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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A Sermon about Sermons
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 07, 2021
One of the main things we do as part of our weekly worship services is have a sermon. But why? What is the purpose of a sermon? What makes a sermon good or not so good? How can you get the most out of even a mediocre sermon? Come on Sunday for a sermon about sermons. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Religion and Politics, 1, Seeking the Lord's Justice in a Corrupt World
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 24, 2021
We don’t often talk about politics in church and with good reason. It can be done wrong in so many ways. And maybe it is better for there to be a “separation between church and state” in society. However, it’s not good for there to be that separation within an individual—it’s not good for there to be a separation between church and state in you. What can we do to try to better integrate our spiritual beliefs and our political beliefs? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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The 5 Senses - Part 3 - Touch
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 10, 2021
The last sense we’re going to cover in our series on the five senses is touch. Touch is a powerful sense and a big part of that is because of its role in relationships. Touch is one of the most powerful ways that we communicate and experience affection, comfort, and love; touch is also one of the most powerful ways that we communicate and experience anger, pain, and coercion. The Lord healed people through laying His hands on them. This Sunday we will reflect on touch and ask the Lord to bring us healing in this area of our lives too. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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The 5 Senses, Part 1, Taste and Smell
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 26, 2021
Have you ever thought about why the Lord gave you a sense of smell or why He gave you a sense of taste? This Sunday we’re beginning a sermon series on the five senses and we will be focusing on taste and smell. We will look at some stories from the Lord’s Word that involve taste and smell and reflect on the spiritual significance of these senses in our lives. How can we become more sensitive to the things that the Lord wants us to notice? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Strands Through Scipture -2- Precipitation
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 12, 2021
This Sunday we are going to look at another strand that runs through scripture from beginning to end: the imagery of precipitation. We might think of weather in the Bible as something going on in the background while the real story plays out between the human beings in the story but we can learn a lot about what’s going on in different stories by paying attention to the atmospheric conditions. We’ll look at the symbolism of the whole water cycle and also touch on things like dew, snow, and hail. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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What Kind of God do You Believe In?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 29, 2021
There are many ideas of God in the world. Over the history of the human race and in all the different religions around the world there is a huge variety of ideas about what God is like. So what God do you believe in? This Sunday we are going to look at a number of the different ways God is depicted and described in the Bible as an opportunity for you to reflect on your relationship with God. We’re also going to look at some common ways in which people’s beliefs about God can be hurting them. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Genuine Goodness - 3 - Is it Wrong to Want Some Credit
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 15, 2021
We’ve been talking for a couple of weeks about genuine goodness and this week we’re going to venture into some of the thorny issues around motivation. Does it matter what our motivations are if the actions we do are good? Is it wrong to want some credit for the good things we do or does that somehow spoil them? Why does the Lord care about our motivations? Spoiler alert: the Lord cares about our motivations because He cares about us and He knows what will make us genuinely happy. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Genuine Goodness - 1 - Doing Good When You Don't Feel Like It
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 01, 2021
There’s something in each of us that wants to be good—that wants to make the world a better place. But how do we do that? There’s a lot to talk about here. For this Sunday we’re going to start with the rather mundane topic of the good things that we do that we don’t feel like doing. We all have things that we are asked to do, required to do, nagged into doing, or have to do because nobody else is going to do it. Often we don’t feel like doing those things. Should we do them anyway? Should we not? Let’s talk about it on Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Our Relationship with What the Lord Teaches - 2 - Individual Experience
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 11, 2021
Last week we talked about some general principles as to what makes for a healthy or unhealthy relationship with what the Lord teaches. This week we’re going to talk about what it’s like to be an individual navigating the ups and downs of our individual relationship with what the Lord teaches. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Our Relationship with What the Lord Teaches - 1 - General Principles
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 04, 2021
Here’s one expression of our relationship with what the Lord teaches: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!” It’s not quite that simple, is it? What should our relationship with statements in the Lord’s Word be? What if we don’t understand them or don’t believe them? Do we reject them? Do we tell ourselves to believe them anyway? There are big ramifications to how we hold our relationship with what the Lord teaches so let’s talk about it this Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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What is the New Church - Part 2 - Being Different
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 13, 2021
In talking about what the New Church is we could focus on how the New Church is different from other churches but this Sunday I’m more interested in talking about how we hold those differences. Are we meant to be trying to be different? Do we feel embarrassed to be different or maybe superior? Let’s work to have the Lord guide our thinking about being different. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Being Born Again
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 30, 2021
Have you been born again? Or, to ask the same question in a different way, have you been significantly changed by trying to follow the Lord? That’s the point, right? To become a less selfish, more loving, more wise and useful person. Who could you become if you really gave yourself over to loving the Lord and loving other people? Sometimes it can feel like we’re not making much progress in that direction. Is that because we’re not trying hard enough or not letting go enough or just because it’s hard and it takes a long time to change? These are the questions that we’re going to wrestle with on Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Circumcision and Baptism
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 16, 2021
This Sunday we get to witness a baptism. The teachings of the New Church tell us that the sacrament of baptism was instituted by the Lord to replace the ritual of circumcision. We might prefer not to think too much about circumcision but, if we spend a bit of time reflecting on the purpose and function of circumcision, it can give us a different and useful angle from which to get a better understanding of the sacrament that replaced it, baptism. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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When Having the Ark of God Doesn't Help
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 02, 2021
We’re going to look at a story this Sunday where the Children of Israel are facing a powerful enemy and they decide to bring the ark of the covenant into battle with them. But then they get absolutely slaughtered by their enemy. There are other stories in the Bible where the presence of the ark of the covenant with the people brings about a miraculous victory for the Children of Israel. There are also times in our lives where we’re facing something difficult and we feel like we’re making an effort to follow the Lord but He doesn’t seem to be helping at all. What’s going on? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Education, Part 2 - An Opening of the Path
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - April 18, 2021
Last week Joel talked about the necessity of education. This week we will be talking about a model of what education does for a person and how a New Church worldview can inform what we educate people in and how we educate them. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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From Disbelief to Joy
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - April 04, 2021
Easter is an opportunity to reflect on the Lord’s life, death, and resurrection. But what if you’re not sure what you believe about all of that? Or what if you believe that it happened but it doesn’t feel particularly relevant to your life? In either case, you’re in good company. On Easter morning the disciples did not immediately believe that the Lord had risen from the dead. It took them a while and a number of experiences to get to the point where they believed that it was true. On Sunday we’ll look at some of the stories after the Lord’s resurrection from the Gospel of Luke and what we can learn from them about the process of growing in our belief in the Lord. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Finding Jesus in the Lives of the Prophets - Ezekiel
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 21, 2021
The role of the prophets was to communicate God’s messages to the people. They did that by speaking and writing but also by embodying the message they were communicating in one way or another. The prophet Ezekiel was often commanded to do some rather weird things to embody the messages he was communicating. This Sunday we will be trying to understand why he did these things and what that can reveal to us about why Jesus did the things that He did as the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Finding Jesus in the Lives of the Prophets - Isaiah
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 07, 2021
The teachings of the New Church say that the whole of the Word relates to the Lord Jesus Christ and what He went through while on Earth. And so we’ve done sermon series in the past on finding Jesus in the life of Abraham, Joshua, and Elisha. This time we’re going to focus on three of the major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. This will be a chance to learn a bit about these prophets, about what the Lord went through on Earth, and about the role of a prophet in difficult times. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Stories from the World of Spirits
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 21, 2021
Two weeks ago we talked about what life is like after death. We discussed the structure of the afterlife and the succession of states that we go through. This week and next week we want to flesh these ideas out with stories. The teachings of the New Church contain lots of stories about things that happened in the spiritual world. Why were these stories included and what can we learn from them about how things work after death? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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What Do People Do After Death
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 07, 2021
A lot of people have lost loved ones recently. When someone we love dies we can have a lot of questions. First, how do we know that they are still alive somewhere? If they are alive somewhere, what is their experience like? What do they do with their time? Is it a pleasant experience; is it an unpleasant experience? There is a lot of information about the afterlife in the teachings of the New Church. This Sunday we will scratch the surface of that body of teaching and try to cover some of the important basics of a New Church understanding of what life is like after death. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Practicing to Be Spiritual Through Meditation
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 24, 2021
How do we get better at being the kind of people we want to be? How can we get better at catching ourselves before we do the mindless or hurtful things that we find ourselves prone to doing? The same way that we get better at most things: by practicing. Practicing meditation is one way to practice being more spiritually awake. This Sunday we will talk about a New Church Christian approach to meditation and then we will practice it together. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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Taking Refuge in the Lord
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 10, 2021
Things do not feel particularly safe or secure in the world these days. There are many reasons for people to feel upset, fearful, and anxious. This Sunday we will reflect on passages from the Word about taking refuge in the Lord. How can we take refuge in the Lord? And then, from that place of security and peace, how can we move back into the world to face whatever we need to face? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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The Perspective of Anna and Simeon
Worship Service: Family (may include music) - December 27, 2020
After Christmas life goes on. Life can seem pretty long and hard without something to look forward to. How can the stories of Simeon and Anna, two old people who meet Jesus shortly after His birth, help us to gain a different perspective on our lives? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
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