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Practicing Forgiveness - Transformation
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 25, 2018
This Sunday is Palm Sunday and the last Sunday of our Practicing Forgiveness programme. Throughout these past few weeks we've talked about the difference that forgiveness can make - in an individual's life and in society in general. We understand the before picture and we like the after picture but how do we get from one to the other? This Sunday we'll try to understand more of what comes in between in the process of being transformed by forgiveness. The sermon was written by John L. Odhner, read by Malcolm Smith. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (27m 14s)
Practicing Forgiveness - Forgiveness within Ourselves
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 18, 2018
We have talked about how we are called to forgive those who have hurt us, and to seek forgiveness from other people and from the Lord for the things we have done. This Sunday we will consider another important aspect of forgiveness: forgiveness within ourselves. There are times when other people may have forgiven us and the Lord certainly has but we still beat up on ourselves and we can't seem to let it go. The Lord can help us to understand why this happens and help us to get free. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 47s)
Practicing Forgiveness - Why Forgive?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 25, 2018
This Sunday we begin the Practicing Forgiveness programme with a question: "Why Forgive?" Why should we forgive people who have hurt us? What is it about forgiveness that is so essential to spiritual life that all the major world religions teach about how important it is? And - most importantly - how do we do it? How do we grant and seek forgiveness in a genuine way? Come on Sunday as we begin to try to find answers to these important questions. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (26m 51s)
Collected, One by One
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 11, 2018
There's a verse somewhere in the middle of Isaiah that says, ...."you shall be collected, one by one...." Someone recently showed me this verse and pointed out that it has important implications for how we approach our relationships with other people and the Lord. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (33m 52s)
Rebuilding the House of the Lord - Part 2 - How to Keep Working
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 21, 2018
When the people obey the Lord and rebuild the house of the Lord it doesn't meet their expectations of what it should be. The Lord's response to them, through the prophet Haggai, can be very useful for us when the results of our spiritual efforts aren't quite what we think they should be. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 56s)
Rebuilding the House of the Lord - Part i - Is it Time?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 14, 2018
At this time of year we're often taking stock of who we are and where we are in our lives and thinking about what we might need to do to improve our lives. This Sunday and next we will be exploring the somewhat obscure but very relevant story in the book of Haggai of the Children of Israel being called to rebuild the house of the Lord and what it can teach us about the process of trying to do better about prioritising the Lord in our lives. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 19s)
And His Name Will Be Called
Worship Service: Family (may include music) - December 25, 2017
This Christmas Day, as we celebrate the Lord being born into this world, we will be reflecting on the significance of some of the many different names that that little baby was called. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (11m 00s)
How to Receive the Lord's Light in Our Lives
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - December 17, 2017
This Sunday we'll be talking more about the Christmas story according to the Gospel of John, with a focus on theme of darkness and light. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 37s)
Facing Floods, Part 4 - Rebuild
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 19, 2017
What do we do after a crisis? How do you go back to normal? This Sunday we're going to talk about what happens after Noah and his family can finally leave the ark after the flood and what we can learn from the story about how to rebuild our lives once a crisis has passed. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (26m 20s)
Facing Floods, Part 2 - Get Ready
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 05, 2017
Noah has been told by God that a flood is coming that will destroy everything and everyone, except for those people and animals that God saves on the ark that He tells Noah to build. There are times when we know something big is coming. The Lord can help us to get ready and help us to keep safe what is most important. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 37s)
Get More Out of Reading the Bible: Part 3: New Testament
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 22, 2017
The New Testament is the last section of the Bible that we haven't talked about yet in our series about getting more out of the Bible. On Sunday we'll talk about things like how the New Testament differs from the Old Testament, whether all the books in the New Testament are equally authoritative, why there are four Gospels, etc. It will be fun and I hope it will help you to get more out of reading the New Testament. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 35s)
Get More Out of Reading the Bible
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 08, 2017
A lot of people when they open the Bible find it hard to get much out of it, particularly the Old Testament. There are hard to pronounce names and strange and sometimes disturbing stories. What are we supposed to do with it? How do we make sense of it? The goal of this 3 part sermon series is to help you have a better understanding of what you're looking at and how it can have relevance to you today. This Sunday we're going to be focusing on the first big chunk of the Bible, the Old Testament stories in Genesis through 2 Kings. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (43m 50s)
Healing Spiritual Blindness
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 24, 2017
This Sunday we're going to be looking closely at an amazing story of the Lord healing a man who was blind from birth. It's an amazing story because the Lord did an amazing miracle but also because it's clearly also about people who are spiritually unable or unwilling to see. With the help of this story we're going to try to understand how we might be spiritually blind and how the Lord can heal us and help us to see in a new way. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 36s)
Helping Each Other: Part 3 - Offering Spiritual Support
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 03, 2017
In this sermon we are concluding the Helping Each Other series by talking about how to offer spiritual support. It sounds so good–offering spiritual support. And it is so good and can make such a difference when it’s done well. But offering spiritual support can also be done badly–people can be arrogant, controlling, clueless, etc. in the ways they approach "trying to help" and they can end up actually making things worse. But the answer isn’t that we should stop trying. Let’s learn what the Lord teaches about how to avoid common pitfalls and how we can best approach offering spiritual support to others. Download the workbook and other resources for doing this program at http://newchurchwestville.co.za/helping/ | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 45s)
Helping Each Other: Part 1 - Challenges and Opportunities
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 20, 2017
This Sunday we begin the sermons that go along with the Helping Each Other: How to Serve Spiritual Needs programme. Helping each other sounds great in theory but it can also be really challenging. We're going to start this series by looking at the challenges involved and how the Lord's teachings can help us to overcome them. For Part 2 by Rev. Joel Glenn search by date: August 27, 2017. For Part 3 by Rev. Malcolm Smith search by date: September 3, 2017. Download the workbook and other resources for doing this program at http://newchurchwestville.co.za/helping/ | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 28s)
Why Heaven and Hell are Relevant Today - Part 2 Hell
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 23, 2017
Hell is something a lot of people would rather not think about and not talk about. And it makes sense: who would want to contemplate the idea that they or people they love might end up in a place of suffering for eternity? That's terrifying. But ignoring hell or pretending like it doesn't exist also doesn't work. Just like we talked about last week with heaven, hell is a reality that we can experience on a daily basis and so we need to look at it squarely and try to understand how best to deal with it. That's what we're going to try to do on Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 18s)
Why Heaven and Hell are Relevant Today - Part 1 Heaven
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 16, 2017
Heaven and hell can seem like fuzzy, distant, old-fashioned ideas - something from a different era, like fairytales with heroes and monsters. A lot of people today aren't sure that heaven and hell even exist and those that do think they exist often think of them as something that will only be relevant later in life, when they're getting ready to die. The New Church perspective is that heaven and hell are realities that we deal with every day and that what we believe about them can have a profound impact on our lives. Come and hear the New Church perspective on heaven this Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (27m 04s)
Hazards and Blessings of Comparing Our Spiritual Lives with Others
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 25, 2017
"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men - extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector." (Luke 18:11) "And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God be merciful to me a sinner!" (Luke 18:13) | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Bryn Athyn Cathedral
See Event (23m 49s)
An Open Invitation - Part 2: The Misled and the Willfully Ignorant
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 04, 2017
The letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation reveal seven different kinds of people that the Lord calls to be part of His church - their good qualities and their potentially fatal flaws. This Sunday evening, in Part 2 of this series, we're talking about people who do good things but lack a true understanding, either because they're in false thinking or because they can't be bothered to think about what's true. Come and see what the Lord has to say to people like this. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 49s)
6 Ways the Jewish Ingathering is Relevant Today
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 21, 2017
"O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good for His mercy is forever." This Sunday the topic for the service will the harvest and gratitude. To celebrate this important topic we are inviting all children to bring fruit and vegetables up to the altar at the beginning of the service. All food collected will be donated to The White House Community Care Centre, which is our current outreach focus. Any non-perishable items will also be gratefully received. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 26s)
Finding Jesus in the Life of Abraham, Part 2
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 08, 2017
This Sunday evening we'll be exploring a difficult story—the story of Abraham bargaining with God and asking Him if He will still destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if even just a few good people are there. The teachings of the New Church say that, in this strange and somewhat disturbing story, we can actually find a glimpse into the heart and mind of Jesus Christ when He was in this world and gain a better understanding of His incredible love for people who are trapped in evil. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 37s)
The Hazards and Blessings of Comparing our Spiritual Lives with Others
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - April 23, 2017
One of the ways we evaluate how we are doing spiritually is by comparing ourselves to how other people seem to be doing. This can be a positive thing: being in community with other people who are striving to uphold the same values as us can inspire and encourage us to do better. And it can be a negative thing: comparing ourselves with other people can lead us to be envious or judgmental or it can even lead us to the absurd situation of trying to prove that we're more spiritual than other people. Let's talk about how the Lord can help us to deal with these challenging dynamics. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 52s)
Mindful Communication Challenge - 5 Are You Willing?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 26, 2017
In our last service of the Mindful Communication Challenge program we're going to be looking at the question that underlies all the different ways of improving our communication that we've talked about: am I willing? Am I willing to try to improve how I communicate? Am I willing to put in the work that it will take to change the way I typically act? So.... are you willing? And if the answer (honestly) is no, what do you do about that? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 33s)
Mindful Communication Challenge - 3 - Is it Kind?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 12, 2017
Communication well takes more than just figuring out if what we want to say is true; we also need to go deeper and ask, "Is it kind?" Do I want to say this because I love and care about this person or is it something else? These questions are often hard to answer but learning how to pay attention to our motivations is an essential piece of learning how to communicate better. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 17s)
Mindful Communication Challenge - 1 - Am I Listening?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 27, 2017
This Sunday we have the first topic of the Mindful Communication Challenge program: listening. As the person talking, really feeling heard by someone can mean a lot to us. As the listener, there are a lot of things that can get in the way of our being able to listen fully. Let's learn from the Lord about how to get better at listening to Him and to other people. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith | Westville, RSA
See Event (31m 57s)