No time for blogging today. I am trying to get all of the preparation for Sunday done today so we (my family and I) can have a “normal” people day tomorrow. Harmony told me Wednesday night that she wants us to push to be done with everything on Friday so we can have Saturday together. (Which we desperately need especially after an Easter weekend) Sounds good to me… I’m just not sure if “us” and “normal” can exist in the same sentence much less in the same day. Besides, I don’t even know if I could recognize normal or pick it out of a line-up. But I am desperately looking for it.
Archive for March, 2008
We have tackled some challenging topics since we started The Elephant in the Church series 4 weeks ago but this is the first time we confronted Sex in Church. So we are going to take a PG-13 look at the topic because I think the church in general just doesn’t address this topic near enough. We are a world filled with sexual regret and scars but yet the one place people should be able to go for healing is apparently too embarrassed to talk about it.
If I make myself blush this weekend or if I make some people squirm in their seats it will be worth it if we help somebody heal a little, release some guilt that keeps them from freely worshiping or help them avoid an affair next year. We even have a special gift for our married couples to take home and use. I want it to be a surprise, but we are committed at InDependence to helping our couples experience sexual fulfillment in their marriages.
I’ll update you next week on what it is and how it goes over… Who knows you may want to get one too.
In case you haven’t ever been a part of the truest definition of community that I have visualized than let me describe it for you:
Community is +/- 40 people crammed under a +/-14’x14’ tent during the middle of an incredible hard rain storm while their kids are enjoying a bounce house/slip and slide. That was the early ending of our Easter Celebration but I didn’t hear not one complaint, one soaked spirit but just a lot of people taking the opportunity to laugh together as life got rained on. I don’t know if anybody else caught the spiritual significance in this moment but I can’t help but laugh and fight back tears of excitement of what a community like that can accomplish.
Our first Easter at InDependence was a big success. Here are some bullet highlights and things I took away from the weekend:
- God showed up to celebrate the resurrection of His Son with us.
- We participated in our first communion “in remembrance of Him”. I am looking forward to doing that again really soon.
- We had some crazy inviters and even had to bring in some more chairs. (Keep inviting we have a lot more chairs)
- The bad news is that I now have a good idea to get everybody closer to the front.
- Our set up team was amazing…I think we were done faster than ever before which was good because we had to repair a projector. Thank you God for all the technical people you sent us.
- Publix may not be “the meat people” but the hooked us up with lots of burgers, dogs and buns.
- A great grill master uses a grease fire to his advantage.
- The rain saved me about 5lbs. worth of desserts I was going to eat.
- I have a bruise on my chest from a girl hitting me while playing “two hand touch” football.
- We sent some of our teardown team to get the park ready and they did a great job hiding eggs and getting everything set up…but we missed you… a lot!
- Those that stayed to tear down worked extra hard…they must have wanted a burger real bad too.
- If you thought a bounce with a slide is fun…just add water! (Check Harmony’s blog for some pictures)
- I informed the weather analyst in our church that if it made her feel better “she was right” about the ensuing rain… but with a smile she said “I wish I was wrong but I am still wet”.
- We had a bunch of great help cleaning out the park after the “gully washer” went through.
- The last point is that some of the greatest memories in life don’t come out of the perfect days, but days like Sunday when the storm comes, the storm goes, and the people you were smiling with before the storm, you are still smiling with after the storm.
Thanks to everybody who worked so hard to make our first Easter atInDependence one to remember.
Final thought: Hamburgers and hot dogs donated…Cooler to hold the hamburgers and hotdogs and a small body if need be $85, Picture of our sound guy operating the grill in an umbrella hat…priceless!
I wanted to write something really profound for Easter. I wanted to blow people out of the water with deep intellectual thoughts about the most significant event in the history of the world short of its’ creation. Giving thoughts of how amazing the sacrifice that Jesus made, thoughts about the significance of every stripe across His back or on how He was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the flesh. In the end this thought is what I got: When I struggle, when I break, when I am tired, when I am in trouble, when I am on an emotional high or when I am depressed, regardless of my situation, when I call on God for help, Jesus says “It’s okay Dad, he’s with me.” I have access past every “bouncer” that stands between me and God because I am with Him. So this Easter, I am glad He gives me the opportunity to name drop. I am glad that He gets me access through seemingly closed doors. Thank you Jesus for paying my cover in advance and putting my name on the list. So maybe the club entry analogy isn’t appropriate for Easter (maybe this young adult/single small group I have been leading is messing me up) and I may get some heated comments, but analogy aside…being with Him has flipped my world upside down. In the process of flipping I have shaken some junk off that I was needlessly carrying. He has taken me to places that I never could have got to on my own. He has shown me a better way and has given me an amazingly fulfilled life. I can never repay Him for the price that He paid on the cross or for His representation in the throne room. So if you don’t like, or can’t relate to the analogy, look past the warped thoughts that enter my brain and pursue a deeper relationship with Him. I promise you won’t regret it.
A new monthly sponsor of InDependence sent an undercover agent to church on Sunday. It was actually pretty funny because she was really good at her job. I didn’t see her come in during worship and apparently I missed her during intermission. I try to strike up a conversation with our first time guest during this time. Then when we were closing out in worship I noticed somebody setting in the back row that I hadn’t seen or met. All I caught was the back of her head and before I could get back to catch her before she left she was gone. I was actually joking with the tear down team about the apparition guest that we had.
He called Monday to fill me in on the mission. He didn’t give me a heads up because he didn’t want me to worry or go out of my way to do anything different (not sure that we could have or would have). He wanted a sincere (without wax) report. Well let me just brag on our people who were incredibly nice to our apparition. She bragged about how nice everybody was and really gave us a raving review. Here is the part that is really funny… she told her pastor that if she wasn’t so involved in his church she would be at ours. This should have made him feel good that his churches seed was being planted in good soil… but it was his mom who was “considering a move”. LOL Thanks God for sending us partners and more importantly sending us partners who are good stewards of the finances you have blessed them with. I pray that we would continue to be a good field for people to sow into.
My thoughts on Evan Almighty (which we watched last night as a family) are a little different than my wife’s, but here goes:
- If God asks you to do something He will make sure you have the tools.
- You can’t make people join you in fulfilling a crazy vision but if you are patient, God will get the message to the ones you need.
- I want a monkey to share lemonade with!
- Changing the world takes one random act of kindness at a time.
- The best time to get people on the boat is when a crisis occurs.
- Doing what God asks you sometimes means a little bit of embarrassment.
- Get your dam permit… it is not worth it to cut corners.
- Succeeding alone isn’t near as fun as fulfilling God’s vision with your family.
- Sometimes you need to stop and do the dance!
Check out what my wife’s son was up to today…I have no idea where he gets that from.
5- Minutes GO… This past week we talked a lot about the power of confession. So I am going to confess that about a month ago my wife and I had some marital issues. No, I wasn’t running around with the piano player but I wanted to share some of my findings because I think it can help some people. So for you church planters that catch this pay close attention. I have been married for 8 years and we have been together for 11. So a fair amount of time. To be honest even though we have gone through some pretty challenging life circumstances I considered our marriage to be pretty strong. Sure we have had to deal with the romantic challenges of dating vs. marriage and many other common issues but I could easily count on one hand the amount of “arguments” that we have had.
The stress level of our current lives far exceeds anything that we could have anticipated or have experienced in the past. What I found is that stress can magnify any issue in your marriage and expose it for what it is. So one of the biggest ones was lack of communication and as you probably guessed this one clearly sets in my fault box. I could probably throw out some reasonable excuses that you would almost buy but there really is no excuse. The details don’t matter but in the end I learned that love is overrated. Love is an emotion and emotions come and go. I learned that love doesn’t make you stay, love doesn’t make you try, love doesn’t make you change, and love isn’t even a good reason to get married in the first place. Do I love my wife…sure, today. Can I tell you that there are certain days that I am unlovable? Those that know her may not believe it, but there are certain times that she is unlovable. Lately, there have been days that I am just emotionally exhausted to the place that I am not capable of loving. I don’t have enough emotional capability to deal with one more issue…or at least I think. (See AQ)
So my wife and I are still married and our communication lines are improving. They have a long way to go but why are we working at it? I don’t think it has anything to do with love. In the end it has to do with covenant. Love is an emotion and emotions come and go. Marriage is more than commitment, because they are like contracts, which are broken everyday. A covenant involves a sacrifice. Back in the day it used to involve animals and blood. For us it didn’t involve a goat but we sacrificed ourselves one to another. This doesn’t happen all at once either. Everyday you may have to make, or in some cases just be willing to make, a sacrifice for the good of the whole.
My marriage is not out of the woods though. Everyday (which should have been happening all along) my marriage is a gift from God. So I need to evaluate, EVERYDAY, my appreciation for the gift and ensure that my priorities are inline. What is standing between you and a great marriage? Discuss it, and you may need to light a fire and torch it. Guys I’ll leave you with this…sometimes lighting that fire will lead to lighting another fire… Sorry…more like 10 minutes
These were my thoughts early in the day yesterday. One of our key guys missed set-up but let me just say he deserved it. He has been there every weekend since we started and I know first hand how difficult that is. He travels all over the place for work and still gives InDependence 110%.
God has really blessed our ministry with some incredibly dedicated people and we are slowly gaining more and more. We have a wonderful lady who braves the heat and the cold every week and still greets people with a smile. A sound guy who has grabbed that job by the horns and every week makes time to take on other responsibilities. We have two video guys who do an awesome job of keeping up with their spastic pastor who tries to give them one surprise (others might call them mistakes) every week. We have entire families that are committed to doing whatever we ask them to do, and lots of times the things we ask lead to great sacrifice on their part. We have new friends that are a huge blessing every time they come to church because we don’t even have to ask them to help…they just do. I have a 4-year old that loves going to get the InDependence trailer every Saturday and hops out of bed every Sunday at 6:40am to help us set-up. I have a wife who loves me enough to support the vision that God gave me and even though it isn’t God’s ultimate vision for her, she does whatever it takes including doing a great job as our interim Children’s Pastor.
I have started down this road and I can’t get off so… For the last three weeks that I have been tracking this, we have over 40% of our adults serving in some way every weekend. Many of them are serving in multiple ways. I don’t know a pastor in the country or in the world for that matter who wouldn’t be excited about that. I am proud to be a part of the ministry at InDependence in part because of the amazing people that I am not only doing ministry with…but doing life with.
So quickly back to my initial thought because I am way over my 5 minute limit… God turned yesterday into a great day. He showed up big, brought us our second largest crowd behind our launch, lots of first time guests, and in spite of my doubtful attitude going into the day, made yesterday a huge success.
Ps. Thanks Carl for hooking me up with my blog. Anytime you need some styling cues just let me know because nobody does pea green like me.
So I had a totally non-spiritual blog prepared for my five minutes today but as with a lot of things recently God wrecked me and set me on a different course. So I have been reading this book titled “I became a Christian and all I got was this Lousy T-Shirt”. I have a couple more chapters to go but so far it has made me laugh and has challenged me in some areas of my life. My wife wrote this blog the other day which is along the same lines so God clearly understands the need for oneness in marriage.
In last nights chapter “Monk” the author Vince Antonucci talked a lot about the relationship of abiding in Christ. He reminds us that we need that face time with Christ but we also need reminders throughout the day that He is with us. Whether you take time to recognize or not He is there.
He uses the analogy of becoming a dance partner and how at first your movements with a new partner are awkward and every step involves intense thought. Over time the movements become more fluid and in the end it is almost like the two bodies are so in tune that they could easily be portrayed as one. Abiding with Christ is just that way…at first it is awkward and you easily get out of step, you struggle with who is leading, there is uncomfortable starts and stops. In the art of dance you have to work at it. You must be disciplined, and stick with it. So for you “Dancing with the Stars” fans you can look less like Master P and more like Helio Castroneves.
So bust a move, break a leg, cut a rug, and get down tonight… Try dancing through life with a new partner named Jesus. Don’t turn it into a routine but allow everyday to be a new adventure, artwork in motion. Don’t worry so much about stepping on toes but enjoy your time abiding in Him.
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