Post Sunday passout thoughts...
I had someone taken aback today at how young I was for being a lead pastor. I just laughed. I agree! The only reason I can have confidence to lead this church is because I know without any doubt that this is God's dream. If it was mine, I probably would have quit by now because I would have second guessed myself way too many times.
This same person made the assumption that our church was full of mainly youth. I too thought this would be who we would mainly connect with but I have been proven wrong! We don't have a main demographic anymore. We have teens, young adults, young marrieds, young families, mature families with teens, divorcees, divorced and remarried, empty nesters, grandparents and I'm sure there are more I'm missing. I honestly can't believe it because we are just a bunch of rag tag followers of Jesus that are simply tired of playing church games...it seems that more people are into that than I originally thought!
This same person also made the comment that her son (who was with her) was sick of lame Christian music. This kind of put me on the spot so I said that I couldn't promise her that our music wouldn't suck but that we try our best. I followed the son out of the auditorium afterwards (like a good stalker-pastor does) and asked him "So, is our music better than crappy Christian radio stations?" And with an emphatic "Totally!", he informed me how much he liked it. Kudo's to dave and the guys! By the way, the sound mix rocked today...lawrence is a machine!
We were in our second week of our "Poison" series today and we addressed the issue of Blame by looking at the phrase "It wasn't me!" I had a feeling that this would strike a nerve in people and my feeling was right. We all love to live in a world of blame where it's never our fault for anything. It originated with Adam and Eve (Adam blaming God for giving him a woman that would lead him to sin!) and then we looked at Saul and how he blamed David for his life falling apart when, in reality, Saul was at fault because he had previously disobeyed one of God's strict commands.
The main point/question was" Is it possible that our lives are screwed up not because of what the other person has done to us, but because our reaction to what they've done is wrong and it's dictating how our lives are being lived?"
We had our highest attended Sunday yet today. People are talking like crazy. We rarely ever tell people to invite their friends to a worship gathering. However, we DO want them to invite their friends. Our goal is to give people the confident to invite their friends without any fear that it's gonna suck. That is happening and every week we see more and more new faces.
You never know...we just may be launching our next location or planting our first church sooner than planned!
This same person made the assumption that our church was full of mainly youth. I too thought this would be who we would mainly connect with but I have been proven wrong! We don't have a main demographic anymore. We have teens, young adults, young marrieds, young families, mature families with teens, divorcees, divorced and remarried, empty nesters, grandparents and I'm sure there are more I'm missing. I honestly can't believe it because we are just a bunch of rag tag followers of Jesus that are simply tired of playing church games...it seems that more people are into that than I originally thought!
This same person also made the comment that her son (who was with her) was sick of lame Christian music. This kind of put me on the spot so I said that I couldn't promise her that our music wouldn't suck but that we try our best. I followed the son out of the auditorium afterwards (like a good stalker-pastor does) and asked him "So, is our music better than crappy Christian radio stations?" And with an emphatic "Totally!", he informed me how much he liked it. Kudo's to dave and the guys! By the way, the sound mix rocked today...lawrence is a machine!
We were in our second week of our "Poison" series today and we addressed the issue of Blame by looking at the phrase "It wasn't me!" I had a feeling that this would strike a nerve in people and my feeling was right. We all love to live in a world of blame where it's never our fault for anything. It originated with Adam and Eve (Adam blaming God for giving him a woman that would lead him to sin!) and then we looked at Saul and how he blamed David for his life falling apart when, in reality, Saul was at fault because he had previously disobeyed one of God's strict commands.
The main point/question was" Is it possible that our lives are screwed up not because of what the other person has done to us, but because our reaction to what they've done is wrong and it's dictating how our lives are being lived?"
We had our highest attended Sunday yet today. People are talking like crazy. We rarely ever tell people to invite their friends to a worship gathering. However, we DO want them to invite their friends. Our goal is to give people the confident to invite their friends without any fear that it's gonna suck. That is happening and every week we see more and more new faces.
You never know...we just may be launching our next location or planting our first church sooner than planned!
