Needs and News

Hey Church,

There is a lot happening right now as we begin to move into the Christmas season and our Next Steps as a Church. So I’ll be as brief as possible, but please read and respond with all you got.

 Thank you guys for your patience. I know we are all really ready to get back to things like Home Groups, KidJourney, Adult discipleship, etc. Now that the building is not in our way, we are working constantly to reestablish these great ministries.

1. Don’t forget to set your clocks back this Saturday night.
2. We really, really need people to clean before Sunday – Sweep, mop, and clean bathrooms, Access, and kitchen. Jayme and I will do all vacuuming and stage cleaning.
3. We need someone to mow and weedeat. Outside looks rough.
4. This years Christmas Drama Event – Did That Really Happen?  will be presented December 27^th during our morning service. We need all teenagers and kids who wish to participate to let Jayme know ASAP. We will soon begin practicing and choosing people for roles. There will be plenty of speaking and nonspeaking roles. We also need others including adults to help with sets, costumes, etc. As usual this is a production written and produced by The Creative Arts Team, so you know it will be good. Don’t miss out.
5. Home Groups will begin building during November. If you are a Home Group Leader please attend the 40 Minutes meeting every Sunday morning from 9:30-10:10 am. If you would like to explore being a Home Group Leader please see Brad, we need you.
6. Tomorrow, check back here to see KidJourney news. Its coming back!! Yea!
7. January 1^st – Why not go with Brad and Jayme to see the Avett brothers at the Fox at 8pm? Tickets are $25. We will order tickets on Nov. 4^th if you would like to be seated with us. Haven’t heard of them – YouTube em now.

Please be faithful in your giving. We took up less than our needs in October. We know times are tough. Remember, God allows tough times to see how tough the faith of His children. Help us accomplish our goals of more and more mission giving.

You are a beautiful people and it take all of us serving and moving in the Body to get where we are going. I’m glad you are going with us.

brad

 

the older I get

The older I become I find what truly matters…and what I really want for my birthday.

If you watch people you can see what they value. For many you would have to conclude that there is a constant need for the new, better, and more…things. The insatiable desire to prove oneself through accumulation. Success is making sure my mountain of stuff is the biggest, or at least as big as the Jones’. “If my house doesn’t get bigger, what will people think”? “If I can’t have a new car, what does that say about my success.”?

I’ve lived long enough today (oh yeah its my 44th birthday) to begin to see how empty this is…maybe not today, maybe not for a long time. But one day when I get “old” my values will surely change. That new car that I can’t drive will mean so little. That 4000sq ft house where I can’t climb the stairs just won’t matter. And if I have spent my life amassing the more, I will sit in a cold room full of what I treasured and find emptiness all around.

Too many people forget to buy stock in life’s most precious commodity – people…relationships. Instead we trade people in like we trade in cars, about every two years we are on to the next person. Leaving behind us a wake of unforgiveness and broken relationships. “Well you don’t know what they did to me. I can’t forgive that”. But one day you will wish you had.

Beyonce is right, “I can have another you in a minute”. The difference is that I want to keep them all. So I will choose to love and rejoice, and in the end maybe an “enemy” will come to say, “Thanks for loving me, even when I didn’t love you”. 

I want to be that guy who won’t leave you. And even if you leave me, I want you to know that I’ll always be waiting.

So as I sit here at 44 I am evaluating life and success by a different standard – How many people?

How many lives have I purchased with the currency of love?

How many debts have I written off in forgiveness?

How many service calls will be available because way back when I was there?

How many customers will be in my shop when it is time to close this store?

How many hands will hold my hand when I’m letting go?

This is where my treasure is…Happy Birthday to Me.

A Man had a fig tree…

Here’s a Summary of the past month’s teaching which sprang from Luke 13:6f:

• God does not love us based on our performance. If He did, He would hate us all.
• God’s love is based on His choice. In spite of our depravity, God chooses to love us. Ez. 16, John 3:16
• God’s standard is perfection without compromise. Therefore, He never let’s sin slide. The wages of sin are always death.
• Salvation is therefore necessarily a gift of grace through the gift of faith (Eph 2:8f). Works could never accomplish being good enough because the definition of good enough to God = perfect.
• Jesus came to be good enough (perfect) to pay our wages. His death was an acceptable (perfect) sacrifice for our sin. romans 5
• Having done all of this God has EXPECTATIONS of us. This is the major message in Luke 13:6 with the fig tree. He Expects Fruit.
• The natural question to ask is “What fruit?” Since our destiny is Christlikeness (Rom. 8:28f; 1 Jn. 3:2), then we conclude that God expects the same fruit on your tree as He has on His tree. This feeds our practical understanding of the megathemes of “InChrist” and “Christ in Me”.
• So “What fruit”? After all is said and done; if you took the law to the kitchen and put it in a pot and boiled it down, what would be left as God’s great expectation of us?
• The answer dominates Scripture: Love. Thus Mt. 22:18f; 1Jn 3-4; 1 Cor 13 and on and on.
• But we must remember:

1. Nothing is more unnatural to the spirit than hate.
2. Nothing is more unnatural to the flesh than love.
3. Nothing is more natural to the spirit than love.
4. Nothing is more natural to the flesh than hate.

• Here’s One Big Problem: We make too too many decisions based on how we FEEL. This is what I was going to do with Genesis 4 and Cain but never got to. God didn’t accept his offering and Cain “became angry”. Now feeling anger, he acted, and the result was murder. While we may not actually kill, Jesus said that hate was the same thing. Its always been heart stuff to Him.
• My own personal experience tells me that too too often when I act on how I feel – I sin. I don’t love, I hate. Notice the talk 1 John gives from vs. 4-10. Its all about “sin” and “righteousness” to big general concepts. But when John gets more specific in vs 11 he reveals that sin and righteousness all have to do with “love”.
• Most of our decisions can be made by asking the question: What would love (as defined as God kind of love) do?
• This is why we have these large meetings of believers on Sunday: Hebrews 10:28f to “stimulate one another to love and good deeds”.
• Go do what love would do next, and next, and next, and next…

worship 10/11/09

Sometimes it is evident when HE comes to Church. Yesterday it was evident. We loved God hard together.

Some things to remember:

• we are nearing the shore on Leona’s home, so contact Eric to find out how you can help – Love would probably do that.
• Our giving must be strong this month so please consider how you can help give.
• Eric and Hannah Craton are about to go to India on mission. Pray and encourage them.
• I hope you met all of the guests who worshipped with us. Always make it your mission on Sundays to find the new people and do more than say “hello”.
• I will be writing to you this week about Home Churches, KidJourney, Nursery, Wednesday Nights, Youth and more so check your email daily.
• We will have our first ever Masquerade Ball – that will be one fun night.
• I still love you guys

I will go and prepare a place for her…

For me to tell of my love for Jayme would be an impossible task. Even for a communicator, like myself, the task would be insurmountable. But this week I have removed myself from the world of people, facebook, blogs, email, phones, and real people. This week will be for her. Recently, I gave 6 weeks to TCAW to prepare a place for them. God greatly blessed that time and with others we accomplished a great work. I am asking God for the same blessing on Jayme’s home. She is no longer to live in a construction zone. If you don’t know, our kitchen, bedroom, master bath, jayme’s closet, and outside siding are all under construction. Yep, its that bad.

So while she is away in Texas with her family (her plane arrives Saturday), I am going to prepare a place for her. That means I will be unavailable for the rest of this week. And I serve a body of believers who honor that so well. Thank you already. And soon Jayme and I will hold an open house to recieve all of you to come and celebrate with us.

I will see you Sunday. I love you. I love Jayme more. I love Jesus the most.

Church and Gospel stuff

Jesus was much more about going to where people are than getting them to come to Him. He was always “going”.

Imagine if Jesus were to come back to one of our churches today. I wonder how we would handle His ministry. If we followed our current strategies we would find a building – big enough and either churchy looking enough or “cool” enough to begin the invitation strategies. Then the billboards, yard signs, and mass mails would go up and out. Catchy slogans would tease with the benefits of coming to church. We would tell all our people to go and invite everyone to come…well not to come see Jesus…that doesn’t sell here so good anymore. But not to worry, we know people, and if we just capitalize on their own life improvement desires – better sex, better marriage, better children, better friends – then we can show them that Jesus is the way they get all that.

And Jesus says, “Then what?” “Well, we just wait for Sunday”.

There are several observations to make here.

· People doing this can have very good motives. There desire is to win the lost. But the methods don’t square with what God actually told us to do – “Go, make disciples”.

· This strategy is failing miserably to save America – Even among those who actually are successful at filling their church.

· The reason Jesus told us to “go” has more to do with the relational aspect of the gospel than the accumulation of bodies somewhere. It is in that one-on-one experience of you sharing Jesus and life with a lost person, that the good news of a God who loves them comes to life. Mass marketing strategies minus people sharing faith, depersonalize our message.

· Catering to a “benefit” driven society does not produce life transformation.

· That revolving door at church has a lot to do with the bait-and-switch people experience. There is never a billboard or mass mail including “how you can serve God”, “how you can give your money to help the Kingdom”.

· Could it be true that our greater motivation is to build our church and we are using Jesus as support material?

These are the kinds of things I have been evaluating at Woodland for some time now. It is the thinking  behind DontComeToOurChurch.com. So my criticisms are not for others any more than for myself. I am choosing to make some changes in all this. How about you?

Servant Song

Isa 50:10-11 “Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness And has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord And rely upon his God. 11 Look, all you who kindle a fire, Who encircle yourselves with sparks: Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled — This you shall have from My hand: You shall lie down in torment.

Isaiah 50 is one of those “Servant Songs” included between Is. 49-53. It is a look at the Messiah described as “The Servant” and these chapters house some of the most beautiful words written in Scripture. It is a preincarnation prophecy of the Messiah and how He would be. I especially like what The Servant says in verse 4 – “He awakens me morning by morning”. Remembering that Jesus came to show us how to walk “in His steps” (1Peter 2:21) these passages speak to us profoundly.

One critical word is given here in these two verses from chapter 50. It is a contrast between the life of faith and that of self-effort. Notice the direction given to those who walk in the dark; they are told to trust in the Lord in the dark, but they are not then promised light. What a difficult word. They are not told that if they have faith their circumstances will change, i.e. have light. Instead they are just called along with The Servant to rely upon God despite the dark or pain or whatever.

This is the believer’s life – faith in the dark.

Then there is a taunt by The Servant to those who must know a change of circumstance and no doubt will do so in God’s name. They will light their own fires. And why not, didn’t Shirley McLain tell us that we all have a “spark of the Divine within us”? This is the life of self-effort, even that accomplished in the name of Yahweh. And The Servant promises that this person will “lie down in torment”. How harsh. But this is the value God places on sincere religion that does not follow His will of faith. So be careful of reaching for the light switches. Trust The Servant, you’d rather sit this lifetime in the dark than run about in your own light.

Questions and Answers

It is natural for us to desire to reach…but only because of the desire to grasp. it is therefore a felt need to grasp once we reach, even if what we grasp is not worth holding. Hands full of anything are better to us than empty hands.

As a result we are driven to have answers (grasp), especially about God. We don’t like to have questions (reach). We only ask questions to have answers. And it is ever more maddening when our questions only lead us to harder questions.

It appears that God has built life so that true grasp is less attainable but reach is critical.

And there is another reason to reach for God that is better than grasp…

                                                   touch.

 What are you reaching for today?

just thinkin’

I was just thinking about that often used church marketing slogan – “Church for people who don’t like church.”

I think I would like to be known for something else – “Church for people who like spirituality”.

These two are not necessarily the same.

No indictments here. Just an observation.

Mine will probably appeal to fewer people. I’m ok with that.

stupid people

The following is an excerpt from a Bell Motorcycle Helmet Owners Manual. (First, do we really need 22 page Owners Manuals for motorcycle helmets?) Ok here is the quote:

“In order to work right, your helmet must fit right. If your helmet does not fit right, it may come off in an accident, in which case it will not provide any protection. Because many motorcylists are killed each year when their helmets do not stay on in an accident, do not wear a motorcycle helmet that does not fit right. If the helmet does not fit right, do not wear it. Bell manufactures helmets of different sizes, and should have a helmet to fit your head.”

This has provided the most laughter I’ve had in a long time. If you don’t understand why…I can’t explain it.

Now guess how people who need this answer the question: “What are you thinking?”