WEEKEND UPDATE (013011)

Great weekend at Crossroads!  Here's just a few of the many things I noticed on Sunday:

• I love CROSSROADS AFGHANISTAN.  I love how our folks cheer for those defending the cause of freedom on foreign soil!  I also remember that we have family, friends and brothers and sisters in Christ from Fort Rucker that are still serving in Iraq!
• Favorite quote from Pastor Matt's blog: "Christ is the most important thing in Afghanistan, too!" 
• Biggest crowd in seven weeks.  Woot!
• Children's Center renovation looking GREAT!
• Loved the "W" video on small groups.  "Don't misunderestimate their importance", haha!
• Had a few distracting sound crackles. pops, and hoots early on in the message.  I'm so grateful for our awesome tech crew who got on it and made it go away!
• What a win looks like at Crossroads: Influencing people for Christ (bring on the juice boxes and Little Debbies!)
• We not just performing tasks in church.  When we serve, we serve so that we might win the right to influence others for Christ.
• We're not here to judge people.  We're not here to condemn people.  We're here to love and to serve people!
• Influencing people for Christ isn't just something worth dying for...it's something worth living for!
• A church that's going to influence people for Christ is a church that embraces God's message of GRACE through Christ.
• To influence people for Christ, we're going to have to fight our natural tendency to put people into categories, and instead develop relationships.
• Think RELATIONSHIP, not category.
• Acceptance paves the way for influence (but looks like approval from the outside).  Let's do it anyway, that we might influence people for Christ all the more!
• God WINS, we WIN, everybody but the devil WINS, when we influence others for Christ!

Thoroughly enjoyed this month of prayer, hearing from God, discovery and preparation as we go full force into 2011!  Can't wait to get back to two services each Sunday morning at 9AM and 10:30AM!  Can't wait to kick off our new series God, Love & Sex.  Remember to take your invite cards and invite BIG this week.  Everybody knows someone who is struggling in a marriage or a relationship, everybody knows someone who is single.  For the next four weeks we're going to provide REAL answers for REAL relationships from the Song of Solomon.  Remember...it's not tough to invite someone.  Just say, "Come and see for yourself".

Have a GREAT week!

   

WEEKEND UPDATE (012311)

Happy Monday!  Great weekend at Crossroads.  Like I said last week, you can really feel momentum picking up.  We had our biggest crowd since Thanksgiving.  Really looking forward to our February series and going back to two services as it gives people options.  Here's a few take-away's from Sunday morning:

• First off, great job by everyone in our Children's Center working to provide a warm, caring, and fun environment for Corssroads attenders precious children in the midst of a major remodeling project.  you guys are troopers!  Thanks for your hard work and for the patience of all our parents!
• I thought worship was excellent yesterday.  Nic and the band sounded great!  Our crack tech crew is doing a great job too, tweaking our gear for maximum quality.  I love 'Our God is Greater' and 'You're Love Never Fails'.  Got 'em back to back Sunday.  Woo-hoo!  Great job everyone!
• Awesome to create some space to REMEMBER and REJOICE on Sunday as we dug into Psalm 19 verse by verse.  I rarely ever teach that way.  It was a departure from our normal mode of teaching, but it was so great to dig that deep into the Word!
• I love the idea that "the heavens proclaim the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1-4), that their unspoken testimoney goes to the ends of the earth, that while language barriers may exist between nations, the heavens speal a COMMON LANGUAGE with which to teach ALL MEN at the same time.  Blows me away!
• I love that God's Word gives us LIFE! (Psalm 19:7)
• I love that God's Word gives us WISDOM! (Psalm 19:7)
• I love that God's Word fills us with JOY! (Psalm 19:8)
• I love that God's Word gives us INSIGHT FOR LIVING! (Psalm 19:8)
• I love that God's Word REVIVES, MAKES WISE, BRINGS JOY and GIVES CLEAR DIRECTION!
• I love that God's Word warns us of our responsibility to Him and to others, warns us of our sin and its consequences, and points us to His mercy and forgiveness through Christ!

This week, may the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart be pleasing to God.  May the words of your mouth be words that build up and not tear down.  The Apostle James said that our tongues are like a rudder on a ship.  It follows that the words that come out of our mouths have EVERYTHING to do with the direction we have gone in life, and EVERYTHING to do with the direction we will go from here.

As you meditate in your heart on God's amazing Word this week, may you REMEMBER and REJOICE!  Knowing that as we do, our hearts are changed, and as our hearts are changd, our words become more and more pleasing to God, setting the course for the destinations He desires for our lives!

Peace.

  

Church Hopping and Shopping

You can count the number of churches I've been a part of for the past twenty years on one hand.  Two of those churches we left because of geographic changes (we moved because of my job).  One church we left because we were "gifted" to another church to lead worship there.  The last church we left (with the prayers and blessing of the Pastor and the congregation) three years ago to plant Crossroads.  I'm not special, but I learned something important along the way.  There is GREAT benefit to you when you grow where God plants you.

I'm BIG on growing where God has planted me.  I've experienced the blessing of being a vital part of a community of believers.  At the same time, I've seen how my decision to stay comitted has been a blessing to others along the way.  I've also seen the other side of things.  As a Christian, a worship leader, a youth pastor and now a pastor, I have seen over and over how people "hop and shop"; literally going from church to church as the mood strikes them, or getting offended in some way and leaving without working things out, or staying in a continual mode of trying to find the "perfect church" and never settling down in one place long enough to actually be a vital part of a community of believers.  It's flat tragic and totally avoidable.

Steven Furtick pastor of Elevation Church wrote an excellent Blog post about it yesterday.  Have a look:

One of the things that really troubles me about the church today is the phenomenon of church hopping and church shopping. It’s a consumeristic mindset towards the body of Christ that grieves the heart of God. 

It’s time for us to stop the hop. This isn’t Christianity. Jesus didn’t die so we could sample different churches like varieties of meat on a party platter. Jesus died to establish His church as the most powerful entity on the planet. 

We are alive at the greatest time in history for the advance of the gospel. We have so much going for us. 

We have the ability. 

We have the resources. 

We have the people.

What we don’t have is them committed to a place where they can actually be used for their God-ordained purpose. 

If this generation doesn’t make the impact it should, it won’t be because it didn’t have the resources. Or even the passion. It will be because it was too busy hopping to different churches to stop and commit to one where its resources and passion could actually find an outlet. 

The church is the change the world is waiting for. God help us if we keep the world waiting for us while we try to find the perfect church for us. 

If you’ve fallen into the trap of church hopping, let me encourage you: embrace your place somewhere where God can use you. At the end of your life, God’s not going to be impressed or pleased that you saw what He was doing at ten different churches. He’s going be more pleased that you were a part of what He was doing at one church. 

And you’re never going to find the perfect one, so give up looking. If the church you’re visiting doesn’t have what you’re looking for, it might be because God wants you to provide it. 

Let’s all commit together to begin a campaign to stop the hop.  Find a place to get planted. Embrace it. And start changing the world. 

The question of our day isn’t if God wants to do incredible things through the church. The question is will we be in place to experience it?

Good stuff.

Principle of Magnification

I had a lot of people ask me to tell them again what I said about magnifying the Lord, so I'm providing a bit of what I talked about Sunday here.  It's a very simple principle that I have certainly oversimplified, but it's certainly effective nonetheless.

I will bless the Lord at all times;

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me, 

and let us exalt His name together!

(Psalm 34:1,2 ESV)

What happens when you magnify something?  It looks bigger, right?  What happens when you magnify your problems?  They look bigger, don't they?  That's one of the reasons David (who had way bigger problems than you or me), says, "magnify the Lord".

God doesn't get any bigger because we magnify Him.  He's already as big as He's going to get, and that's way bigger than any problem we will ever have.  But when we magnify God, He gets bigger in our view!  The more we magnify Him, the bigger our view of Him becomes.  The bigger our view of Him becomes, the smaller our view of our troubles becomes.

If your troubles are all you can see, it's because your view of God is too small.

How do we increase (or magnify) our view of God?  Instead of cursing, nursing and rehearsing your troubles, begin to praise Him for Who He is and thank Him for all that He has done.  Praise Him continually, regardless of the circumstances you are facing.  Don't know where to start?  Start by thanking Him that you're sucking air right now.  It is God who gives us life.  Work from there.  Let Scripture be your guide for praising Him.  Read Psalm 145 aloud.  Do it again.  Do it again.  Are you fearful and concerned for your own well-being.  Read Psalm 91 aloud.  Do it again.  Do it again, but louder this time!  Turn on some good praise and worship music and lift your voice.  Are you bummed out, depressed, sad, or filled with grief?  The Bible says to "put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness".  Literally clothe yourself in the praise of God, by speaking or singing aloud (telling) of how strong and mighty God is, and recounting all the wonderful things He has done for us.

When you and I center our thoughts on Gods gift of His precious Son Jesus Christ, and the fact that His sacrifice paid for our sin so that we'll be in God's presence for all eternity...our troubles in this life become smaller and smaller and smaller until they're hardly noticeable in the light of God's glory!

WEEKEND UPDATE (011611)

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ!  I hope you had as much fun on Sunday as I did.  It was a big day at Crossroads for our third service of the New Year.  I am starting to feel that momentum swing that happens every year around this time, where people are done with the holidays and begin re-connecting again with church.  Here's a few of the things that stood out to me on Sunday morning:

• Trend for lots of first-time attenders continues.  Awesome!
• Many people made decisions Sunday to renew their commitment to Christ!
• Started a new three-week series called "play".  
• "play" is all about R&R (Remembering and Rejoicing).
• We talked a lot about how we tend to forget why we started doing things.
• I shared embarrassing pictures of myself from the 80's.
• We had some good laughs, but in reality, looking at those pictures is like looking at photos of a dead man.
• God wants us to celebrate because He knows that the MORE we focus on HIM, the LESS we focus on our PROBLEMS.
• Just as God proscribed festivals at appointed times to keep His people connected with Who He is and what He'd done for them, He has commanded that we continually praise Him, so that He stays bigger to us than our challenges and difficulties.
• We don't have to be in a GOOD PLACE to praise God, but praising God when we're in a BAD PLACE is something we can't afford to do without.
• Here's the great thing about R&R (Remembering and Rejoicing): You can't praise God at the same time you're cursing, nursing and rehearsing your troubles. (Look for tomorrow's short blog post on the Principle of Magnification)
• Love, love, loved seeing Pete and Katie's video.  Praise God!  He still does miracles!

Thanks to everyone who works so hard to make Crossroads work each Sunday.  There are many of you, and you don't get near enough credit.  But can I say there's something else I've noticed, too?  The work of setting up and tearing down would go so much quicker for those who grind it out each week if folks would stay just a few minutes longer after service gets out.  I know, I know, everyone wants to get out of there and get to lunch before the crowd, but what's happening is, so many have adopted that concern, that a handful of faithful folks are getting stuck with a HUGE workload.  Yesterday, we didn't get out of the cinema until 1:00PM.  

I am convinced, if we could get folks to stay 15 minutes past when they typically leave, we'd ALL get out no later than 12:30.  Think about what you might do to help that process next weekend.  Setup and tear down is as much about winning the world to Christ as anything else that happens at Crossroads.  Thank you in advance for hooking up your heart with what God is doing in our community by serving with energy, passion, and commitment!

Have a GREAT week!!

      

WEEKEND UPDATE (010911)

Just for grins, today is 011011.  I kinda like that.  I'm looking forward to 111111, but I'll have to wait a bit.  Didn't have to wait to enjoy a great weekend at Crossroads, though.  What a wonderful day Sunday was!  I had an entire truckload of fun!  here's just a few of the things that stood out to me:

• Sunday's crowd was great.  A lot of energy in the room!
• MANY people made quality decisions about the direction of their lives!
• Worship rocked!  Nic and the band were great.  I enjoyed worship so much from my spot at the back of the sanctuary. I was bouncing up and down, singing my lungs out, clapping my hands and having a great time celebrating how AWESOME God is!
• Great to have Hollie up on stage as the service host!  A lot of energy there, too!
• Had a lot of fun during Sunday's message about Sabbath.  Having the treadmill up on stage was a great illustration of what my life can look like if I'm not paying attention to God.  How 'bout you?
• I love the idea that God rested to demonstrate what we should do.  Not because He was tired, or burned out from His work of creation, but because He knows that we are made from dust, and we need to rest from our toil.
• He tells us to rest, like He rested, to remind us that though we are LIKE Him, we are NOT Him.
• Sabbath isn't the same thing as a "day-off".
• Sabbath is something more, something special, something sacred, something holy.
• Other than intentionally dedicating your day to the Lord, and spending time in His presence, I don't know what your Sabbath should look like.  Each of us needs to figure that out for ourselves.  You (and probably the people closest to you) are the ones who know best what's crowding God out of your life.
• Get off the treadmill.  Jesus lived, died, and rose again so our lives wouldn't just be about making BRICKS.
• I said on Sunday, "Everyone should get a motorcycle".  That probably isn't a good idea for some people.
• I also said that the Bible said we should ride motorcycles.  For those of you who didn't hear what happened next, James Jones piped up and said, "It's true, the Bible says the sound of David's Triumph went throughout the land!"  I don't know where that is in the Bible, but I like it.  I do know that (much to my dissapointment) there is no Scriptural mention of Harley-Davidson, but 1 Chronicles 11 says, "The Lord saved them by giving them a great Victory!"  Those are nice bikes, too.

But I digress.  Great day Sunday FULL of victory for all of us!  I especially want to thank everyone working with children from Nursery to Kindergarten, as they have done a fantastic job dealing with the on-going construction in our Children's Center.  This is going to be a WONDERFUL facility when it is complete, but it's still a few weeks away from being there.

Having said that, to go to two services now as we had originally planned, would put a HUGE burden on our children's ministry volunteers, and add insult to the injury of making them do church in a construction zone.  The facilities are not ready yet. 

So here's what we're going to do:  WE'RE GOING TO WAIT TO GO TO TWO SERVICES UNTIL THE FIRST SUNDAY OF FEBRUARY (FEBRUARY 6TH).  It's going to be a great day to re-start two services as our new Children's Center will be complete, our offices will be finished, we'll be starting a brand-new relationship series (that includes the word 'sex' in the title), everyone will be over the holiday funk, and we'll be RE-LAUNCHING Crossroads into 2011 and beyond!  Let everyone in your circle of influence know.

Have a GREAT week!

 

Vintage Video: CHOPPER PILOT

Thought some of you might get a kick out of this Vietnam era film about WOC school and flight training back in the day...

Yes...it's CHOPPER PILOT!

Courtesy Cost Analyzer - web server analysis

WEEKEND UPDATE (010311)

Happy New Year and welcome back to Crossroads!  So great to be back in church on Sunday morning.  Here's just a few of the things I noticed this weekend:

• GREAT attendance...in fact, best ever for a first Sunday of the New Year.  Way to go!
• Lobby was great - even without Shelly on coffee duty.  Great job Ben!
• "What???  No donuts?!?"  That's right folks, we started the new year by getting the white bread boiled in grease slathered with processed sugar off the counter.  But your good health is not the only reason.  As I shared Sunday, the real reason is we counted and figured we spent around $4000 on donuts in 2010.  If you've been at Crossroads for any length of time, then you know that we know what's truly important.  There's so many better things we could do with $4000 in 2011.  Like feeding people, clothing people, sheltering people, caring for widows and orphans.  So GRATEFUL that I go to a church that places a higher value on doing the things Jesus said to do, then filling our faces with Dunkin's.  (FYI: We still have donut holes for the kids in Elementary Ministry).
• I thought Nic and Caleb and the worship band did an exceptional job with worship Sunday morning.  Great songs, great sound, and tons of energy.  Good job!
• Sunday was Pastor Nic and Janna's first Sunday as Children's Pastors, and they did a GREAT job!  Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help.  Great job by Nic doing double duty!
• I totally blew the Communication Card thing at the end of service by telling people to take out their cards AFTER offering instead of BEFORE.  Oops.
• Thank you to everyone who helped us make the move from the Old Annex to the New Annex!  Now we're digging into a solid month of construction and painting.  
• Parents of little ones, thank you so much for your patience as we renovate our new building into the best facility for nursery through kindergarten kids in town!  It's rough right now, but it's going to be something very special when it's complete.
• Had MANY people tell me that "pause" was what they needed to hear and do after the crazy-busy rush of the holidays.  Before you finish your new year list - make sure God is at the top of it: SELAH!

So excited for 2011.  We had our first staff meeting of the year this morning, and I can promise you that your hard-working staff is seriously pumped and ready for the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead!  We'll be pushing hard through the renovation work this month to make a first-rate space on a Crossroads budget.  We'll be planning out the teaching schedule, scheduling the volunteer effort, and taking leadership and professionalism to a whole new level.  We want to do everything we can to make you proud to say, "I AM CROSSROADS" in 2011!