Both Harmony and I have gotten behind on blogging. We have been focused on doing some planning for the summer. There are some exciting things coming up such as our participation in One Prayer starting next weekend. This next week I am challenging our people to search out information on the participating church closest to where they were born and pray for them.
I will be praying for Prince of Peace Church in Mentor, OH led by Pastor Ken Sowers. With almost 1200 churches around the world finding a church close shouldn’t be too challenging.
We are starting a new InVest Group for stay-at-home moms this week. For more information you can contact Harmony. We also are planning our welcoming party for our new Worship Leader and his family, David Quiles (keyless). We are trying to have this on 4th of July weekend so stay tuned for some more info.
We are also preparing to participate in the 4th of July parade in the City of Weston. We put in our application this week and are hoping that they will allow us to bring our escorts Christian Skaters. We want to hand out some candy and some invitations for our series starting that weekend “I Became a Christian and all I got was this Lousy T-Shirt” based on the book by Vince Antonucci. We just placed an order today for 100 “Lousy T-shirts” and 3000 invite cards. Well that will get us into the middle of August… I can’t wait to see where God takes us from there.
This week I have done some strange sermon preparation for our new series The Ultimate Fighter. We are fasting “Chick Flicks” at our house for the rest of the month so last night my wife and I watched “We are Marshall” an amazing story about fighting through adversity.
The night before that I stayed up way past my bed time watching an hour or so of MMA (Mixed Martial Art) fighting. Basically it is two men placed in an octagonal cage with a few minor rules and a referee… the one who doesn’t tap out, get knocked out, or delivers the most punishment wins.
The featherweight title match of the night was between Eurijah Faber (18-1) and Chance Farrar (5-0). I have seen Eurijah fight before and he is considered to be pound for pound one of the best fighters in the business.
I don’t know how you feel about the power of words and the ability to speak life and death with your two edged sword (the tongue) but I had to laugh given the fighters names. Eurijah - Flame of the Lord and Chance - fortune, luck, accident.
I don’t know if the outcome was written on the card or not but Eurijah put Chance in a bare naked choke in the first round and remains the featherweight champion calling out anybody who wants to fight him. At 5’-6” and 141lbs, I am sure that he was referring to anyone in his weight class but still representing himself as a fighter and a champion.
The Ultimate Fighter Series will be directed toward our men. To give you some insight here is the bulletin statement: Gentlemen, The Bible says in Exodus 15:3 (NLV) “The Lord is a fighter. The Lord is His name.” and we were created in His image. It is time for some of you to find your fighter, it is time for others to redirect their fighter, and for some it is time to get it back from your wife.
Sounds sexist and it will be. I suspect there may even be some angry e-mails but I am going to be honest with InDependence. WE men were called to be the priests of our households. We were given the heart of a fighter and have been given charge by our commanding officer God the Father. We have abandoned our heavenly post and it is time for us to return to our post and relieve the women who have fought so valiantly in our absence. Hope to see you Sunday and don’t forget your man card.
I came across this advice from a “mildly” (said in a sarcastic tone) successful CEO and I think it brings out some valuable thoughts to doing church and selling coffee. The following are some of his philosophies that Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, shared in Success Magazine (April/May 2008).
This week we have been talking about generational curses in our InVest Groups. Those are the sins of the generations before us that don’t have eternal consequences on us but can, and often times do, affect our quality of life. In my InVest group we talked about a few and I challenged them to list out not only their personal sins but also the sins of their families. Then they were to take them to God and get specific when asking for His forgiveness and help in breaking the consequence cycle.
It may seem weird to worry about other people’s sins but they can affect you. It is a part of life. For a non-religious example: If the owners of the Architectural firm that I work for decide to sell out to a larger organization and cash out the investments that they have made in the company. Then the new owner wants to bring in their own people to fill my position… get it.
Okay, well in the spiritual sense the same holds true. There are eternal consequences for our personal actions. Ex: Let’s say I steal something (“Thou shall not steal” – one of those pesky Ten Commandments) and I don’t confess it to God with a remorseful heart. When I die I stand before God with the sin of thievery in me. Since sin and God can not reside together, and I don’t think God is going to leave heaven than I have hell as my destination.
There are also earthly consequences for our personal actions. This time let’s say I kill somebody and depending on how good my lawyer is and some other factors I could be facing life in prison or even the death penalty. I can remorsefully confess my sin (“Thou shall not kill”) and God will forgive me but that is not a get out of jail card that is a stay out of hell card. Now to generational curses/sins… Let’s say that I am physically abusive to my wife. (Which I should be given this post) Now I am personally accountable to God and to man for these actions. Here is where the generational stuff comes into play. My son Owen learns how to be a husband by watching me. Now even if he is not physically abusive to his future wife he still carries with him the damaging images of me beating his mom. The choice is his to be the same type of husband I am or break that curse and be everything I wasn’t. By recognizing my sin it enables him to evaluate his own life and break what often times turns into a repeating cycle. Let’s say your parents weren’t good stewards of their families. Maybe they put “stuff” as a priority over you. You have a choice you can continue that poor stewardship of family or you can repeat it.
Maybe your parents lived in fear. Fear of failure or even fear of success. You find yourself living in the sin of anxiety or fear in lieu of finding hope and peace in God. It is your choice to carry and live the curse or pray and break it.
Generational curses are not always easy to break because like it or not a large portion of who we are reflects the people who raised us. For some of you that thought is scary and for others that thought is comforting. I challenge you to evaluate not only your personal sins list but take an inventory of the generational sins that may be keeping you from experiencing the life that God has for you.
I have really been slacking on the blogging lately and I feel like I am living the verse that “there is a season for everything.” The problem is all the seasons are happening at once. This weekend we wrap up The Moment of Truth Series. This has been a great series for us. I hope that we will be able to get three out of four messages posted online soon. (Technical difficulties on one) God has really been challenging us through this series about maintaining our integrity in a world that has seemingly lost site of what that means. One of my sons new favorite books (thankfully it is not another Thomas book) is Flo the Lying Fly. It is basically a story based on the “crying wolf” concept but instead of crying wolf she is a habitual liar. So in a moment of distress when she needs people to believe her they don’t.
If there has ever been a time that we need people to believe us (the church) it is now. The question is have we been caught telling too many lies or withholding too much truth to be a legitimate voice. God has challenged us with some difficult stories like Ananias and his wife Sapphira (Acts 4:32-5:11) and Jephthah (Judges 11:30-35) to help us understand the intensity of the message. These aren’t exactly common “cherry picked” scriptures used because they don’t really deliver the flowery love and grace message. When you look at the bigger picture, you can see that these accounts are in the Bible for us to share because God doesn’t want other people to fall into these same circumstances.
In the story of Ananias and Sapphire the bible says that “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.” I wonder how many people that heard the story didn’t follow in the path of Ananias and Sapphira? (Stealing from God with no remorse in their heart) So in reality this is a story of grace for a lot of people. I wonder how many people have because we failed to share it. This week we take honesty in church to a whole new level with a polygraph machine in house. I am praying for no horror stories on Monday but God pulled some strings for me to get it so we are going to use it. So if you have been waiting for something different to get you to church… just think scene from “Meet the Parents” AT CHURCH.
Today was a significant day in the life of InDependence Church. I guess at this point not too many of them are not. We made a big announcement today and in case you missed it I wanted to fill you in.
As many of you are aware since our very first preview service back in October ’07 we have been hiring Christian bands. We have hired from as close as Boca Raton and as far away as California. We have done our best to bring in some talented live music because I didn’t want to get stuck in the cycle of “canned” music. For those of you involved in ministries that have gone the route of recorded music, I am sure that you can confirm that it is tough to get out of.
It wasn’t always easy to find bands and there was a few last minute God things that had to happen along the way but we did it with the goal of getting our name out in circles of musicians. We prayed that God would help us get our need to the right individual. Whether that individual was just sitting on the back row of a church without the opportunity to minister in their passion and calling or somebody feeling led out of an existing ministry.
Well God has answered our prayers! InDependence Church is excited to welcome David Quiles, Lead Singer of City of David (www.cityofdavidband.com) to the team. As a side note to church planters… If you want to grow a church it doesn’t hurt to hire a worship leader with 4 kids. So we are excited to have David’s family join us as well. Even though we don’t get the whole band we are also excited that God is leading the bass player to come and minister at InDependence.
For the City of David groupies out there they will still be touring and I would obviously recommend them to other ministries. So check out their site and music clips so you can understand just how blessed we are. I also challenge you to order their CD because it really is incredible.
Last week I gave you “Too funny not to share” but as a prelude to our next series The Ultimate Fighter starting on Memorial Day weekend, I wanted to share this. Don’t worry this won’t be in our intro video… justwalkitoffsissy.wmv
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 8th 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.
What a great week we have had at InDependence. On Tuesday we sealed a deal that will certainly help us to get to the next level. (Can’t share details just yet, but I hope to be able to spill my guts on Sunday) How appropriate during our Moment of Truth Series.
Then on Wednesday we set a new record in attendees to our InVest Groups. The leaders are pumped, including me and the communication/relational levels are escalating at break neck speed. We almost pulled the plug on our Couples/Parents Group a few weeks ago because of lack of participation but in the last two weeks they have grown to the level that we almost need to start a new group. So we are praying that God would call out another leader.
Then Thursday I secured the date for our polygraph machine to be in church. I had a great conversation with the Dr. that administers the test and it lined up with some of the conversations you had in small group. So I can’t wait to have it administered in our version of Moment of Truth.
God has also been dealing with me regarding where we are going from here and we have laid out our series teaching schedule from now until the middle of August. That is still a ways from the year schedule I want to have but 3 months isn’t bad. I am looking forward in the future to being able to plan longer and dream bigger. But I will say this beats the heck out of week to week.
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