We talk a lot at InDependence about being a catalyst to start a community wide revolution. Many of our core values are based on that premise. We want to be a key participant in seeing God’s Kingdom come to Weston, FL. But starting June 8^th we are going to participate in something bigger than Weston, bigger than FL, bigger than the United Sates.  

I am talking about One Prayer. Craig Groeschel at LifeChurch.tv has formulated a great method to rally churches around the world. Check out the web site for more information but the series is based on this thought “What would you pray if God would answer One Prayer for the Church at large?”   

I don’t know what this will mean to our local church. I have to believe that God is going to be pretty excited to see a bunch of His children putting aside some “differences” and refocusing their attentions on Jesus. There are currently over 600 churches represented and over 400K people.  

I’m not brown nosing, because he will probably never read this, but I appreciate LifeChurch.tv for taking the initiative and dedicating the resources to put this thing together. It should be amazing so I challenge you to at least check it out.

First let me clarify why I am posting this excerpt from an unsolicited e-mail I received recently. (I hope the unnamed individual doesn’t mind me posting it) This isn’t a vain attempt to boost my ego even though I am encouraged by their words. This isn’t to say that we are a perfect church that has it all together because we are not even close, but I am proud of where we are headed and what God is up to. I am not posting this to say that we are the only people who get accolades like this because I can rattle off a whole lot of churches in the country and in my immediate area that are being great representatives of Jesus. 

I wanted to post this because a lot of the people who work so incredibly hard every week making InDependence work read this blog.  There are people reading this who give sacrificially to our ministry, from our church and abroad. There are people who pray for our ministry often based on the needs I express on this site. So, I just want them to know that their physical, spiritual and financial sacrifices are making an impact for the Kingdom here in Weston, FL.

I also want to give God some credit. I think sometimes we church planters give credit to the latest book of helpful hints, information we got from our coaching networks or the last great conference that transformed our minds and our ministries. Even though I am all for those things, and recently applied for a spot in a great coaching network, without God in the mix we are dead in the water.  

So check out how God is wrecking people for the good: 

“…When I left my previous church, I had a really big problem. I felt disgust for the church. Every time I’d set out looking for a new church I’d find the same thing over and over again. I gave up on attending any church because I came to the conclusion that churches nowadays are knockoffs of what the church originally was, this, to the extent of even believing that we were basically disgracing the name of Jesus and God with all the misrepresentation.

When I first came to InDependence I was shook up. I found nothing but rock solid reality, no games, no shows, just straightforward reality. Embracing all your mistakes and converting them into your strengths, instead of hiding and hiding… it saved me from thinking that Jesus legacy had completely gone astray.

I really felt like I needed to say this to you, because, I really really really really was repulsed by today’s churches. And I hate to say it like that, but that’s what was in my mind…” 

To steal the words from David Crowder, “Beautiful Collision”.

I tried to write this post 4 times last night, as seen here. I don’t know exactly what the block was but… we’ll try again today. I am not very good at hiding my feelings so to compensate for that I try to analyze the situation to see if my emotional read is correct. So yesterday I spent the afternoon analyzing our launch and this is what I got….

I want to start by saying that my expectations of God, our team and our marketing efforts were not met, they were exceeded. Not just a little bit but a whole lot. To sound like I just won a Grammy, I want to thank God first. On Saturday I prayed with our elders regarding our service and I opened our time together by reading Joshua’s speech given to the children of Israel before entering into the promise land. He told them “today we consecrate (devote or dedicate) ourselves for tomorrow God does great things.” The key to that scripture is the recognition that it is God that does great things. God brought a really great “vibe” to InDependence on Sunday.

He did it in a lot of ways. He did it through the music which was led by the band Asa. They were with us for our first preview and have been with us for the last two weeks. They will be with us for two more weeks then we are in the process of scheduling some other bands. I appreciate those guys driving up from Homestead and every week they get better and better. The awesome thing is that they were good to start with!

He did it thought the team of individuals that busted tail in set-up to make sure that everything was perfect for our long awaited day. It does take quite a bit of effort but for me and I believe for them, every drop of sweat, sore muscle, crushed finger and drop of blood is completely worth it. I can’t wait to get more people involved so they can share in the camaraderie and fun that we have turning Sagemont into a fun place for the whole family.

He did it through our sound and video guys who made sure that looked and sounded good. The three guys that we have currently in those positions are doing a great job. I have thrown them into the fire at times with a garden hose and they have made it out every time. It takes a huge load off of me not having to worry about that stuff.

He did it through our greeters and check-in volunteers who got everybody where they needed to be (with a smile). The braved the cold and wind and I want them to know that it didn’t go unnoticed. Regardless of how good the music or “unbad” the message most people are turned off or turned on by the hospitality team. Even though they are small in number (and some small in stature) they are big in effort. I still believe that God honors effort. So thank you.

He did it through our children’s ministry. Since this is the ministry my wife is overseeing, until that time when God send’s that Children’s Pastor that we desire, I put it a little lower on the list because I didn’t want you to think that I was brown nosing.

In all seriousness and honesty my wife is an incredible woman. I told one of our guests this Sunday that I married smart. It is way up there on the list of good decisions that I made in life. God knew that I do some pretty crazy things some times and I needed somebody to help bail me out. Not literally yet… All I am going to say is that she had the kids walking on water this week. Enough said. The better news was that she didn’t have to do it alone. My mom came all the way from Orlando to help her and we had a volunteer ready to take care of our babies. We had one minor issue within our children’s department that I would like you to be aware of because we want to be totally honest with our operation. We had one child who did not want to leave so you need to be warned that tantrums upon leaving should be expected!

He did it through the people that visited us for the very first time. It was great for me personally because we had a representative from every venue that we marketed in. We had a Y100 listener, a lot of people that responded to our mailer, we had a couple last week from the newspaper, etc. Marketing isn’t cheap, even though God did get us some free publicity, and you always wonder if what you are doing is a waste of God’s resources. When one person is reached it is worth every penny. I know that you can never know just how many people were effected but it was so great of God to let us see with our physically eye that something good came out of it.

We had people who came because of old school handwritten note invitations, we had a lady who has been praying for a church like ours to come to Weston and just happened to find her coworker there, we had a church planter and his team come from Delray Beach to support us and we had some of our extended church family from Life Pointe be with us. They brought a video camera and camera man (see some pictures here) with them so we are able to look back on this day and remember God’s goodness.

He did it through His Word. For our last series we did video clips and we have some intro videos that we are working on for our next series but for our launch I wanted to go totally cutting edge and use a book that is over 2000 years old. So we kicked of our LAUNCH Series and for the next 5 weeks we will be dissecting a chapter in Ephesians. This week was on Chapter one and we looked at the Power of a Plan. I love the book of Ephesians and enjoyed talking about the plan that God initiated in Christ. Next week we will look at the Power of Past & Present in chapter two so I challenge you to read it.

Last but certainly not least He did it through His Spirit. I told you some time ago that we were going to do our best to not be numbers driven. I told you that numbers do count because attendance means opportunities to minister to people; it represents potential disciples to continue the message of the gospel, etc. Financial numbers represent our ability to continue and expand the ministry here in Weston and the surrounding areas. It represents our ability to give to other ministries. It represents our ability to serve our community. With that said there is only one number that we are interested in publishing and that is the number of Christ-followers that are reached through our ministry. Well that made yesterday worth every bit of effort because we received our first Response Card with a check in the box that says “I want to become a Christ Follower” In reading that card the offering didn’t matter, the attendance didn’t matter, the soreness didn’t matter, the exhaustion didn’t matter, the challenges that today bring don’t matter because all of heaven was rejoicing and I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to do more than to rejoice with them.

So you want to know how my day went…I hope that some day you can experience the joy of knowing that you took part in facilitating the growth of God’s Kingdom. So for everybody who has ever done anything to make InDependence what it is you too have reason to celebrate because God didn’t have to use us He just chose to.