Contagion

Today was awesome. We launched our POISON series off today and I think it was very well recieved. We had various design elements set up around the theatre including "boiling poison" - eery steam and all, a casket (of which I hid in until the beginning of the gathering and came out - scraring the crap out of Donovan who had no idea that I was in it!) and a table set with place setting, POISON and all.

We looked at the phrase "Just one more..." and how our lives revolve around "our" money and that we buy junk just because we have money to buy it. We explored the idea that "our" money is actually God's money and if we were to just switch our mindset, the world could be different. That we are given lots so that we can give lots.

We ended the morning off with a strong challenge and an experiment: Change the phrase "Just one more" to "Not one more" in our lives over the next two weeks. Don't buy anything that is a want and not a need. Save the money you would have spent. Take that money, go out and buy quality non-perishable food items and toys for the Mission Christmas Bureau. Bring it all back on Sunday, Nov.11. And if you aren't into not buy your coffee or renting your movies or going out for dinner, save your reciepts and match what you spend on needless stuff to make someone's Christmas who can't have one like you will, one too remember!

We decided as a church to partner with services that are in our community that are already doing what we have a heart to do. That way we'll multiply our impact and work with the community all in one.

So we'll see how the experiment goes. We're excited to continue on making our core value "Intentional Generosity" a reality throughout the life of the church. It's only the tip of what we want to see happen through our generosity.

...was the challenge I issued on Sunday. I told the story of The Great Blondin who was known for tightrope walking across Niagara Falls doing various different things - one of which was pushing a wheelbarrow. Upon coming back to the crowd he asked them if they thought that he could push it across with someone inside. The crowd cheered "We believe you can!"

Then he asked for a volunteer. Silence.

The point: It's easy to believe - it's another thing to step away from the believing crowd and turn your belief into obedient, trustfilled action. It's easy to believe in Jesus. The bible says that even the demons believe that. It's another thing to get in the wheelbarrow and trust him with your life.

It's so easy to just go to church, pray before you eat, dress right, talk right, read your Bible,etc and not be actually following Jesus.

We are entering into a new season of TXC where we will all have to make the decision of what we are going to do. Are we going to go through the motions or are we actually going to be followers of Jesus? EVERYTHING we do is about reconnecting people to Jesus and we are going to be stepping out onto the tight rope. We are going to see a revolution take place that is much bigger than our feeble minds can even imagine right now.

It's time to get in the wheelbarrow. It may mean leaving behind a reputation, friends, a job, a lifestyle or a myriad of other things. It will mean taking a huge risk of stepping away from the "just believe" crowd. It's not easy. It can be scary.

It's where life is meant to be lived!

To the faithful few that read this blog...sorry for the lack of posts. My head is quite set in a space of dreaming for the future and it just seems that I can't really think of anything to blog except the same stuff over and over. And I find it redundant to write a post about what I spoke about on Sunday. So I'm just gonna wait until something fires up and then I'll post again.

We finished up the series "Finding God on your Ipod" today and it was a blast. The band rocked out 5 current songs that most people would know and we took the theme from each song and explored how God is speaking to us through it. We capped off the series with surprising everyone by giving away an ipod. It was a lot of fun. I was going to take pictures of our giant 8 foot ipods but I totally forgot.

I also totally forgot to take a picture of the poison viles we made for our series that starts next Sunday. We're pretty amped about what God is going to do through it. We have a couple ads in the paper as well. Check out the series description at www.isitinu.org.

I continue to be blown away by how God can use a bunch of rookies that really don't know what we are doing to help in God's mission of reconnecting people to Himself. As much as it may look like we've got it together, we really don't. We wake up some days wondering what on earth we are gonna do? The only conclusion we can come to is to keep moving forward. God led us this far and we seriously believe that he is taking us some place that we haven't even dreamed of yet. That's crazy to me because some of the things that we see in our future are so big that we don't have a clue how it's going to happen.

But I'm in...no matter what the future holds and how we get there.

WARNING! Biased, one sided, pride filled post below.

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I haven't blogged for around a week so I've got all this stuff coming out today...figured I'd just keep letting it rip.

Today I was just thinking about how much I have to be thankful for. At the very top of the list is my wife and kids.

I can't believe why I get to spend my life with the most amazing woman any man could have ever gotten to marry. I say this all the time - I'm not an easy person to live with. I'm grouchy in the morning (some would argue all the time - it's a matter of perspective :) and I can get really snappy when I'm hungry. And through all that, she remains calm and collected - firmly putting me in my place when I'm out of line.

She is a lead pastor's dream come true. I have purposely protected her from being to involved in TXC because I need her by my side. Starting and leading a church is something that a lot of people will never understand and to do it alone would be suicide. Sometimes it's just the simplest thing she can say that picks me up and brings a fresh perspective.

And on top of that, she is H-O-T. I can honestly say that she is more beautiful than the day we met. Call me prideful or whatever you want, but walking down the road, holding her hand, all I can think is "I'm the luckiest guy alive". She definitely makes me proud.

And then there's my kids. They are just so amazing. I haven't seen cuter kids - sorry everyone else in the world with kids :) Sure, they drive me nuts at the best of times, but they are a daddy's dream. I see both of them, playing on the floor together right now, and I can't help but think that they're not going to be in my house for much longer - even though they're only 3 and 1 right now. Time goes by so fast and I need to take advantage of every second I have with them.
On that note...I'm going to go play.

A few months ago I had this crazy idea to do this series called "Poison" that focused on some of the things that we have inside of us that are killing us. So we stuck it down on paper and then before we knew it, it was right around the corner. It's now two weeks away and we're stoked!

We decided that we wanted to make invites for this series and we wanted them to be unique. We finally settled on something and weren't sure what the response would be from the people in our church. Maybe they would think it was cheesy. Maybe they would think it was dark and sadistic (with the picture of a skull as part of the series graphic). Maybe it would be a hit.

Today we unveiled what was going to be happening and in preparation for it, we made viles of green "poison" with labels that had the series title and the web domain www.isitinu.org (go there to see what the series is all about) - that's it. The point is to give these to your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers as an invite to TXC. Maybe we just slip them in their bags anonymously. Maybe we just unscrew it and randomly dump it on their food.

Just as a side, I was in a golf tournament yesterday and in the "goodie" bags we were allowed to stick a vile of "poison" in each one. Because there is no reference to our church or anything, it was hilarious to see peoples' reactions. One lady unscrewed the top and smelled it. She was asking her friends if they were supposed to drink it or not. For her sake...I hope she didn't. :)

Anyways, continuing on, we told everyone about the viles and didn't know if they would take them or not. And to our surprise, people came up to the table and grabbed them! People were walking out with their hands full, ready to give these viles out.

On top of that, we are going to be sticking two ads in the mission city record that direct people to the site as well.

I don't know what's going to happen because of this. All I know is that the only reason we do this is to reconnect more people to Jesus. We have been seeing some incredible things happen in the last few weeks, from the most unlikely people deciding to follow Jesus to having the most people we've had at one of our gatherings today, it just feels like we are on the verge of something.

God's doing some crazy things through some unlikely people and wherever we end up, the only answer to what was behind it all is Him

When I was a youth pastor, the one game I always hated playing was bigger or better. You start with a tooth pick or something and you to some random person's house and you try and trade up by getting something bigger or better than you're tooth pick. Sounds all fun and great right now, but wait until you get to the end and you've got all these youth bringing old rundown cars, microwaves and other beat up pieces of furniture back to the church. Guess who gets to throw it all out? Yes...that's right...the good 'ol youth pastor! For me, bigger or better was bad.

However, as I reflected on this game and my "fond" memories of it, I realized that maybe there was some good that came out of it.

When we were praying this morning before our Sunday morning gathering, I decided to change the way I will sometimes pray. It's the prayer that has a bit of a "If that's what you want to do...then we're happy with that" feel to it and lately, that's been making me sick. It's the prayer that says "God, if just one person's life has been changed in some small way, then this was all worth it."

So I changed it. Actually, it's not necessarily that my prayer changed as much as my heart and perspective changed.

Instead of adding the disclaimer and having that "humble" approach, I've had this new surge of faith to believe that if I'm going to pray and if I'm going to believe God for something, it needs to be HUGE!

Now, don't get me wrong. One person's life being changed IS worth it. But my question is do we only have one person's life change because that's all we're willing to believe that God will do. It's almost like we're afraid to believe that God will do more so we don't pursue more for fear of looking really stupid.

I don't care anymore. I know I'm supposed to care and it's bad to say that, but I really don't. I am sensitive to playing the numbers game and basing our "success" off of how many people are coming and all that. But at the same time, changed lives is what we are all about.

I'm not satisfied to see the same group of people connected to TXC day in day out. What that speaks to me is that we aren't growing as people. I don't really get how an itty bitty church can justify staying small and spouting "But we're healthy!"

Healthy Christians are all about reconnecting people to Jesus. If that's not happening, there is no health. It's stagnant. It's stale. It's lifeless. It's inward focused. It's growth is stunted. It's people are disuillusioned to think they are healthy.

Since the outset of TXC, we have pushed very hard to not become THAT church. (none in particular...just with those characteristics) However, it's so easy to go there. It's so easy to slow down, especially in the stage of our journey that our church is in. We are that nice and comfy-cozy size where it's still possible to know everyone.

We won't be that church. We will dream bigger! We will take bigger risks. We'll attempt things that only crazy people attempt. And all because of this quote that I've lived by since I realized I was a crazy man and was going to attempt to plant a church in Mission:

"Attempt things so huge that they doomed for failure unless God steps in."

So we will attempt to reconnect more people to Jesus than we are right now. We will believe God that he will change just more than 1 person's life. We will attempt things that WILL fail...unless God saves us from falling flat on our face.

Yes, I agree, we're crazy and off our rocker.

I couldn't imagine it any other way!

“If the Gospel isn’t touching others, it hasn’t touched you.” —Curry R. Blake

That's a bold quote! What do you think? Is it true?

God continues to blow me away with what he can do in spite of who we are as screwed up humans. I've said before that when we started TXC, the one constant that would always remain was Jesus. Our whole goal is to reconnect people to Jesus. Every week we call people to His standard. There have been some that don't like that and that's okay. We will NEVER change this.

Today I got a message from someone who's been coming to our church for about 2 months. When they showed up, they really had no clue who Jesus was and I don't think had ever been to church. There were exploring spirituality because they had recently had some crazy experiences and realized that there was more than just the natural. They were exploring buddhism, taoism and other religions, along with Christianity.

From my perspective, this was my redemption. In the first few months of being an "official" church, I made some stupid mistakes regarding people and rushing them to follow Jesus as quickly as possible. I think it was a pride thing - a sense of accomplishment that I was doing what I was supposed to do. So this time, I was determined not to screw it up by getting in God's way and trying to manipulate how things shook down.

As questions came up, we tried to answer them as best as we could without going to far. I went over the line a few times by getting too defensive and had to admit that. Here's a question: Why is it that Christians get all worked up when someone claims to not believe what we believe? We have been so ingrained that we are RIGHT and everyone else is WRONG that it has really become a barrier for others to want to follow Jesus. It's not Jesus they are afraid of...it's us!

Anyways, we suggested some books and a version of the Bible for them to read that would make a little more sense. And we prayed like crazy. Because, quite frankly, what I've come to realize is that it's near impossible to prove Jesus to someone. Sure we can prove the facts, but how do you prove experience if they haven't experience him yet?

The Holy Spirit is the one revealed to us who God is. Paul says that the gospel is foolishness to those who don't believe. So why do we try and make it seem like it's not foolishness if Paul himself said that's the way it's gonna be? When we backed off enough for God to speak to this person where they were at on their journey towards Him, that when they heard.

I get the message this morning. This person is freaking out! Why? Because this morning everything just clicked! It all makes sense! Jesus. God. The Holy Spirit. How we can know Him. How our lives are changed! Their life has been changed! They said "I'm in!" I'm not sure about you, but that sound like a decision to follow Jesus?!

And I was freaking out! Because this had nothing to do with what we could have ever said! It was God! And this is what I KNOW that God has told me is going to happen through TXC. And it's happening all around us in unbelievable ways. This is just the beginning for them and there is a long road ahead...welcome to the journey!

This really is only just the beginning! We had an awesome lead team meeting last night and there are some things that are in the works that have potential to impact our community in an amazing way! Hang on!

I couldn't have said it better myself!

"I get to talk to a lot of future church planters and most would prefer to meet in a school to a movie theater. And I’ve heard some planters who meet in a theater but wish they could meet in a school. Let me just say this: That’s crazy. Our church has spent years in a theater and years in a school. And if you’re trying to reach lost people a theater is a better option hands down. Why? Because lost people hang out in movie theaters, they like theaters, they go to theaters. If you meet in one, you are going to them, meeting on their territory. That’s a very good thing. On the other hand, who graduates from High School and thinks, “I hope somehow I get a chance to go back. I just loved going to school so much, I can’t imagine not getting to hang out in a school building again”?"

Read the rest here

"Mediocre anything... sermon, music, environment, etc... tells a LIE about the quality of the Gospel." J.D. Greer

When I read this something resonated inside of me. The gospel is the most exciting message ever when communicated properly and we will do whatever it takes to communicate that.

People are expecting mediocre; we aren't going to give it to them.