Acts 8:7-8

I wonder what sound a demon makes when it comes out of somebody. It mentions that it was a loud noise, but no real description. Maybe it sounded like a gunshot, or a car crash. Wouldn't it be cool though if it was like a fart sound, or like the super mario brothers theme?
I love that Philip is meeting felt needs, though. He's not just up there preaching and yelling and condemning. He's helping people with real needs they have. The problem with the church today is that we're willing to help people, but usually only after they have already changed to be like us. We don't like to care for people when they don't act like Christians. Sad. JM

Acts 3:1-11

A lot of people like to bash felt-need ministry by saying that it takes away from the focus of the gospel. We can spend so long meeting people's felt needs that we never get around to meeting their real need of Jesus. But most of the time in the Bible I see the focus being on meeting felt-needs. Here Peter and John heal a guy without admonishing him to trust Jesus, or repent, or do anything else. They just said "by the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" and then heal the guy.
Even people that like felt-need ministry still like to make people jump through hoops in order to have their needs met. You have to show up at certain times and do certain things and meet certain requirements to get what you need. Or making it more personal "I am willing to meet your felt-need of being your friend so long as I've had a good day." If it's going to drain us, then we don't want to do it.
I think the point of living in community is that we sacrifice ourselves and any rights we have so that we get to struggle through things together. That's the beauty of it, and the difficulty of it. It's easier to go it alone, but it's not nearly as rewarding and definitely not as much fun. JM

Matthew 9:32-38

Have you ever wondered why people came to see Jesus. I mean, yeah, he was a great speaker, and yeah, he was different than anybody else, but I think the big draw, kind of the root of all this is that he was meeting felt needs. For some people that meant he gave them authentic teaching and interpretation of the scriptures. For some people that meant interacting with people in a personal and non-condemning way. For some people that meant healing them of their diseases and deformities. But he always met felt needs.
That's a great example for how our ministries should run. It doesn't matter how fun our program is, how entertaining of a speaker we are, or how interactive our online presence is if we aren't meeting felt needs. JM