Archive for December, 2007

Road Rage

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 11 December 2007
in My Life
. 5 Comments

I have about 10 minutes left at lunch so I wanted to throw down this little story. In my last post I was teaching about how to interact with your neighbors and bragging about some of my recent success. Well let’s just say that I didn’t heed my own teaching.

Miami is one of the highest rated road rage cities in the country so I was just trying to be relevant to my environment. Anyway…so I am coming home from work last night on my motorcycle. In my neighborhood all of the streets have a posted speed limit of 20 mph. Since there are few that follow that, us along with some of our neighbors have purchased children at play signs that we put out when our kids are on their bikes, scooters, power wheels, pogo balls, etc. to make people aware of the kids.

So as I am going down my street at 23 mph I see this SUV gaining on me and then proceeds to pass me. I verified my speed and confirmed that I had not left any blinkers on. Also note that this is an unstriped two way street with cars parked on it.

I am now aware that the stress of my life has taken me a lot closer to edge of losing it because my blood pressure immediately went through the roof. I immediately thought about following the individual home to have a conversation with them but quickly thought better of it given my recent string of success in winning over my neighborhood.

So I pulled into my driveway and watched the vehicle pull into a driveway about 4 houses down. I hopped off my bike and began to walk down there. Not sure if I would make it in time and trying to figure out what I would say if I did. All the while I am trying to avoid an Incredible Hulk type rage. So as the lady went to her mailbox I said “excuse me” once to no avail so I repeated myself. Now keeping enough room as to not invade personal space I asked her if I was not going fast enough? With a complete look of “What are you talking about” I proceeded to explain to her that while I was doing 23 mph in a 20 mph zone she felt the need to pass me. This explanation was responded to with a “So”. Now I am doing everything to not turn green and not think about what a great weapon the helmet I am holding in my hand would be. Keeping myself under control I told her that many of us have children that play on this street and that we would appreciate it if she would slow down.

I know that she probably thought no more about it but I am still lingering on this thought… I realized just how easily I was taken to the edge and it is important for me to be aware of that because it only takes one incident for me to throw away every bit of effort toward the success of our church plant.

Needless to say that she will probably never come to our church no matter how much stuff I try to borrow. So I am not surewhat the moral to the story is but I felt better after toilet papering her house. Just kidding…

Armchair Quarterback

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 10 December 2007
in City of Weston Florida, InDependence Church and My Life
. 1 Comment

Well it is another post test drive service Monday. For some reason I am more exhausted today than I have been for the previous two. I even fell asleep while putting my son to bed at 8:00 but woke up this morning feeling hung-over. I am waiting for my boss to start wondering if I am into some sort of underground fight club because I come in with bruises and scrapes all over my arms and hands and have some general muscle fatigue which makes me a little slower than usual. Even though on one side I am looking forward to eventually playing less of a role in tear down and set-up I love when people tell me that they are impressed with the environment we prepare. It feels good to know that I sweated and bled along with a wonderful group of men and women to prepare a great worship experience.

This was our first weekend doing it all on Sunday so we started at 7:00 which meant being out the door at 6:00 to go get the trailer there by 7:00. I finally got home after returning the U-haul a little after 3:00. I don’t say that because I want you to feel sorry for me but to warn any future church planters who may stumble across this. If you have a problem with long hours and back breaking work, confirm God called you, and if He did, start praying immediately that He will send you some men and women that don’t have a problem with the above mentioned things. I am quickly learning that I can’t do it all and thankfully I haven’t had to but I like to lead by example. I want those men and women to see me busting my butt right along side of them. Besides what a great team building exercise!

So what did we accomplish for God’s kingdom with all this work? Just as a reminder to me if to nobody else…that is why we do this. Well I feel this was our best services yet. God laid an awesome message on my heart and I didn’t screw up the delivery too bad. I was a little concerned because even though I knew the direction God was going I really struggled with preparation and had far less notes than I normally do. Maybe that was part of the plan this week. I am going to post some notes later but I believe that God really did some work in people’s lives through His word.

We changed up the order of service pretty dramatically and we had praise and worship at the end. It was a nice change because I think that many of the lyrics reinforced the message and gave it longer to soak in before having to take on the world. Our guest worship leader was Eric Vick and even though he was suffering from a cold I received a lot of positive feedback. We will be discussing over the next few weeks having him back so that we can hear him healthy. We’ll have to see where that goes but I walked away feeling good about what we accomplished for the kingdom.

One of the cool things that I am proud of was that I had another neighbor and her daughter in service with us. That makes three families that have attended our church, the other two multiple times. Being Catholic she told me that it was going to take a complete change of her understanding of church but said they would be back.

This excites me because I believe that evangelism (spreading Jesus) starts at home. Then the next location that makes sense is your neighbors, then your neighborhood, your city, your county, your state, your country, etc. So in planting a church we are trying to do the whole city thing but at the same time we can’t forget the locations before that.

All it takes is enough nerve to borrow something. That is right…even if you don’t need it…go ask your neighbor to borrow something. Whether it’s a tool or some sugar I dare you to knock on their door and ask to borrow something. Break the ice, put a crack in the wall and see if God won’t help you to establish a relationship that allows you to demonstrate the love of Jesus. Sounds simple…what do you have to lose?

Well my lunch break is almost over but I want to quickly thank all of the hard workers who made InDependence successful this weekend. You know who you are and you know what you did. I am praying that God would bless you for your sacrifice because as we discussed Sunday…sacrifice matters more than size to God.

SPAM conclusion

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 5 December 2007
in InDependence Church and My Life
. 1 Comment

The party in the park was a great success. Even though I had hoped for a few more people from the community we still were successful in meeting 5 new families. I found out that there were some individuals in the neighborhood that were working against us and our supposed “solicitation” which may have hurt us some. Here is the definition of solicit:

so•lic•it
v. so•lic•it•ed, so•lic•it•ing, so•lic•its

1. To seek to obtain by persuasion, entreaty, or formal application: a candidate who solicited votes among the factory workers.
2. To petition persistently; importune: solicited the neighbors for donations.
3. To entice or incite to evil or illegal action.
4. To approach or accost (a person) with an offer of sexual services.

Well we may have fell under definition #2 by inviting 240 families but I think a solid argument against that would be actually asking for something, which we were not. Regardless we had one individual actually removing them from the side of mailboxes. I found out this information because one lady who came actually found out about the party because she saw a stack of them in her friend’s house. I guess if that individual was a real friend they wouldn’t have taken an invitation to a FREE party off her mailbox.

So our church attendees could find us I hung a banner in the park with our name on it. Apparently this also fell under solicitation because I was threatened with the option of taking it down or having the cops called. In this case I wish that the individual making this threat would have had the guts to approach me in lieu of troubling the poor gate attendant. I would have enjoyed offering them some free food for stopping by. Since the guard had to deal with that individual we delivered him a plate of food for his trouble. He was appreciative but I am sure was not enough for having to deal with what I assume to be a very pleasant individual.

It is a good thing that we have a law student coming to our church. I need him to finish as quickly as possible so that he can get me out of some future binds that I am sure to get into. By the way he is getting ready to take an exam in a few minutes so I want him to know that we are praying for him.