Best day of my life.

I should mark November 8, 2009 on my calendar somehow. For some reason, even though it was an ordinary day and in fact was filled with hard work (clearing my lawn and gutters of leaves), for some reason, my sense of God’s blessing in my life was more intense than I think I may have ever experienced. In fact, it might have been the happiest day of my life. Despite the greater than normal need for Ibuprofen (I had a LOT of leaves to clear) and the fact that I didn’t really get to watch any football.

 

No real reason for it really, I do have a great life, a great job, a fantastic family, and I got some really great help on my lawn from somebody really special. And I was just, for no real reason I can point to, so acutely aware that God was blessing me and pouring it on… It was amazing.

 

I hope you have a day like this soon!

A little time off…

You all should take a break sometimes… I took a few days off, they ended up being, frankly, kinda difficult. (Stuff I can’t discuss on a blog.)

But it was still good to take some time off, and it was needed. Even if there’s not a lot of “good stuff at times like this, the time that you take a break is still a good idea.

Sometimes, you are recovering (I hope) even when it feels like you are only treading water. Sometimes, your body, mind and spirit are getting a needed diversion from your normal life even when you feel like you’d rather have a “diversion from the diversion”.

I do honestly wonder if Jesus took time off sometimes that felt less than restful or less than ideal…

Am I getting old?

I mean… the fact is that communication is changing like crazy in our world, and I’m treading water to keep up with it. I blog occasionally, thinking somebody might actually be interested in my thoughts. I am tweeting a little now, too, and as cool as I think it is following some interesting people like Tony Morgan and Todd Rhoades and Charlie Hall, I tend to think it’s silly of me to think that people care what I’m doing or thinking.

But…

If what I’m doing or thinking is leading toward Jesus… is that really getting old? I hope not. I hope it’s getting new…

Exponential 09 – Bob Roberts

Bob was interesting, although, to be honest, his important message for us to know more about other world religions is less important in a place like Du Bois, PA than perhaps a metro area like DC or NYC.

In any case, you can learn more about Bob here.

My important take-away is that the geographical boundaries that used to define religions’ spheres of influence no longer do. It is a little unsettling to think that certain non-Christian religions are growing in the West and Christianity, which has long been seen as a “western” religion (but it really isn’t… only our American-ized version of it currently is), is growing in places like Africa and Indonesia and all over the global South.

Share Jesus, not American Christianity! Jesus came to change the world through the church… and that’s us!

Exponential 09 – Craig Groeschel

Some GREAT stuff from this great guy today. I’ll just distill it way down for you here. There seems to be, according to my blog stats, a LOT of people reading this! Thanks! If you want to comment, say “hi” and introduce yourself, that’s cool!

1.   A movement will never be safe, predictable, and clean. It must become dangerous again (the church around the world). Church has become too safe in the past few decades. Promising just a better life for everybody is too safe, instead of the hardcore reckless, “follow Jesus” kind of faith from the NT. People are seeking something spiritual, not just practical. Tell a dangerous message. 

2.   A movement is never about my ministry, but it’s about His kingdom. If God does something great in our church, it’s about his kingdom, which goes beyond the walls of the church. Would I be happy if God blessed the other church more than mine. That answer must be yes! You can’t affect your city by yourself anyway. And be sure to work to build your church on what it’s about, not what it isn’t. (Like… we’re not stuffy, we’re not about this or that… No need to build it on negatives.)

3.   You will not lead a movement based on the old measurements of success. The scorecard has changed. New measurements are needed… Identity can not be in attendance numbers, must be on who we are in Christ. Don’t blame yourself for the declines, because then you might be tempted to take credit for the increases. You will be tempted to design services solely to bring people in. Then it’s “how can the people serve my vision” rather than “how can I set people free to serve God’s vision.” You start to lose focus and passion, and move too slowly… only to increase attendance. It’s far far better to influence the next generation of leaders.

 And if that’s not enough, there was a second session with Craig, about leading a movement… equally good.

1.   To lead a movement, you must see what others don’t see. See what’s coming, look at trends, the marketplace, culture, business, the movies, social networking… What’s coming? Don’t fish in a “blood red ocean” where there’s all that competition? Fish in the blue ocean where nobody else is fishing. The vision you see needs to be a big kingdom vision, a big cause… FIX something in your city. People don’t want to join a church, they want to be part of a movement.

2.   To lead a movement, you must do what others won’t do. Revolutionaries break the rules, not just to be edgy, but for a purpose. Think of those amazing friends who broke the roof to bring their friend to Jesus. Craig likes to say “We’ll do anything short of sin to reach people for Christ”. This means we fail some, too. Jesus broke rules, Martin Luther broke rules. Wesley broke rules. Ask new questions. Not “How can we get more in?” instead… “How can we influence more people?”

3.   To lead a movement, you must hurt like others don’t hurt. Lots of people won’t understand and will shoot at you. You’re not doing much at all if you don’t get called a cult every now and then. Not doing anything important if nobody calls you a heretic. Don’t respond to small numbers of critics, just do what God calls you do to.

   You will always be criticized, always misunderstood, always failing at something even, and always dissatisfied (When you lose this “holy misery”, you will lose your effectiveness.)

Exponential 09: VERY quick thoughts from Neil Cole’s talk.

Fascinating stuff! Sorry, this is only semi-edited, but I thought I’d get it out there for you to think about.

Don’t plant churches, plant the kingdom seeds. The church is the by-product. The idea starts with a seed, the word of God. Your sermon isn’t the word, the Word is… and you will never preach a sermon that will change the world. Don’t just “preach”, invest in the lives of others, and then you will finally realize multiplication.

Planting churches that reshuffle Christians is not kingdom growth. And your efforts should be concentrated to make disciples, don’t make new churches.

Interesting that the first words spoken to man “be fruitful…” are similar to the last words Jesus says to his disciples.

This one is huge for those of us who work in churches that focus on outreach to people who are far from God. Only one out of four soils in the parable of the seeds bear fruit. So if 10 people come to Christ and only 2 bear fruit, don’t babysit the 10 inordinately, work with the 2 and they will multiply. “Jesus didn’t give his heart to the multitude.” The few who do bear fuit will grow like crazy and that’s how the kingdom grows…

There’s way more, but that’s a good place to start.

I’m not a Christian… (?)

Okay, I really am (I got you goin’ there, didn’t I), but I’m avoiding the word “Christian” pretty often these days. It’s a GREAT word, but the culture has changed its meaning (not it’s definition) and I need to engage my culture with the presence of God (Christ) in my life.

In Scripture, the word “Christian” (which appears in the original only two times) was originally applied by “non-believers” to the church to indicate (derisively) that we thought we were “little Jesuses” the way we served the poor and loved each other and stuff like that. Now, in many instances, we self-apply the label based on a creed or list of beliefs, and not necessarily also based on our behavior. Creeds and doctrine are vitally important, but they are not the way we show the world that we are followers of Jesus. We show the world that we follow Jesus based on our great love for one another.

I’m thankful to be in a church that is known for our deeds in the community, and people are attracted by that and end up engaging Jesus in all His fullness because of the way we love them!

(This is an edited version of a response I posted on another blog…)

Equip!

The past two weeks I had some stuff happen that made me really glad I’m where I am. You see, lots of worship leaders in churches would be in trouble if they were off the platform for two weeks. My church encourages it, across the board. (I think I’d be in trouble if I were up there every week in fact…) We totally get the Ephesians 4 exhortation to “equip the saints”. It’s not just in our DNA… it IS our DNA…

So… On Saturday I went to a great conference on worship leading, and some great folks were there to “show how it’s done.” On Saturday night I got into the church just in time to attend the service. I didn’t play, help setup or anything. Our worship team was better than the “pros” who had hosted the conference, in my humble opinion. No paid professionals on the platform.

The week before we had another great worship band play with an all-volunteer (unpaid staff I like to call them) group that was great, too. And… that weekend, we had a guest speaker that was one of our volunteers and he did GREAT (another “non-paid” guy)… AND… we had no staff in our Kids church that day either. In short, every aspect of the service was handled by people who were equipped by paid staff to do it, not paid AS staff to do it… and it went GREAT!

It’s a great time and place to be alive.

Worship… True Worship

Two friends helped me to start building a new deck today. Two great friends who love Jesus, and with every stone they chipped at, with every batch of concrete we mixed together, with every funny quip we shared (in good Christian love) with each other… we worshipped God together far more than we ever do just standing in a church building and singing.

It was wonderful. Thanks guys! You shared your own gift with me today, and at the same time, shared Christ. Bless you!

Thanks!

What a day. What an opportunity. I live in a country where I can say pretty much what I want, pray and worship how I want to, have the friends I want… etc…

Not everybody does.

I have a job where I love what I do, love who I do it with, and most days can’t wait to get there and don’t want to leave.

Not everybody does.

I have a family that is filled with love and the best kind of chaos, and we’ll be having a big huge thanksgiving turkey dinner today after watching some football and relaxing in a great home.

Not everybody does.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this. But Thank You God!