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October 8, 2014

I Asked God….

I asked God to see through His eyes, so He made me a pastor.

I asked God to help me understand His grace, so He sent me addicts and alcoholics, and then he let me watch them relapse.

I asked God to help me love like He loves, so He sent me the homosexual who has been made an outcast by society….and even churches

I asked God to help me understand His patience, so He sent me the greedy who are more concerned with themselves than their neighbor

I asked God to help me understand His forgiveness, so He sent me parents of wayward children

I asked God to know His mercy, so He sent me the self-righteous

I asked God to understand His promises, so He sent me couples who are struggling in their marriage

I asked God to show me who I really am; He told me to simply open my eyes and look around me

The greatest pleasure of my life is to pastor New Passion Church and to serve as the manager of a local substance abuse program. Everyday I have the opportunity to share life with people who struggle to make it each day; they are messy, they are broken, and they definitely aren’t big on social graces….they are human. My daily experiences have shown me God in ways I would have never seen Him, doing anything else. The gospel is a beautiful and powerful message. I am grateful God has called me to pastor myself through many different people.

September 22, 2014

What does a Financial Sermon Series have to do with the Gospel?

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This Sunday, September 28, we begin a new 6-week sermon series, Life. Money. Legacy. I am excited about this series and I know God will do an amazing work in your life and home, if you will let him. During the series, we will watch 5 video messages from Dave Ramsey that were recorded at another church. I will preach the sixth message live. During the video messages, I will be at New Passion and will introduce the videos, as well as help connect them to our local body. During the 5 weeks I am not preaching, I will be working on sermons for our final two sermon series of the year. This is a huge blessing since I am still bi-vocational. To help our people, I want to answer this question: “What does a financial sermon series have to do with the gospel?”

The Gospel is Generosity: “For God so loved the world that He GAVE….” The gospel is God giving Jesus, to us. As followers of Jesus, we are called to give to others, whether in our service, our finances, or our lives. We are not saved to be selfish, we are saved to become selfless. When our finances are not in order and are chaotic, it does several things: 1. It prevents us from being generous financially, because we can’t afford to be; 2. It prevents us from being generous in service, because all of our times is tied up in multiple jobs trying to right our financial ills; 3. It makes us internally focused rather than externally focused. Consider these verses when understanding gospel generosity:
An Improper View of Money Hinders Effective Application of the Gospel: When we have a wrong view of money it hinders how we share the gospel and how we live it out. In 1 Timothy 6:1-19, Paul addresses Timothy by comparing a Biblical perspective on finances to a corrupt view. Paul tells Timothy that by following these instructions, no one will be able to find fault in him.
In the same way, Jesus shared an inescapable truth when he told His disciples that man cannot serve two masters (money & God); we will love one & hate the other. He said the biggest thermometer to gauge our love or hate is to examine where we invest our treasure (earth or heaven). These are strong verses. If you’re a non-giver, or just a whatever change I have in my pocket giver, it kind of makes you stop and think if you truly love God, or is it money who is your god.
Poor Financial Management is a Poor Reflection of Jesus: The best tippers at restaurants should be Christians, unfortunately it’s Christians who typically tip the worst, while possessing the worst attitudes. Consider a Huffington Post article and an article written on Christianity Today for a glimpse into the world of “Christian Tipping” and our reputation. As “Christians” we bare the name of Christ and therefore we are a reflection of Him. We are a ‘light’ to the world, not our own light, but His light. When we are months behind on bills, on a first name basis with the title pawn clerk, and bouncing checks because we’ve overspent and managed our money poorly, we make Jesus look bad…and let’s be honest, how can we truly have the courage in those moments to share our faith with the bill collectors, or even invite them to church? Paul said that in whatever we do, do it all to the glory of God; this would include how we manage our money.

This series is not to condemn you, but rather in love provide you the necessary tools and resources needed to manage your finances according to Biblical instructions, to teach you to be generous, and to help you leave a God honoring legacy for your children and the future church, who will carry on the work of the gospel, years after we have died and completed our work on earth. Why continue to live in financial chaos, when the Bible provides a pathway of freedom and peace? Join us, because our finances matter to God’s work on earth, for his eternal purposes in heaven.

August 14, 2014

It’s Time

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The intended audience for this post is my family at New Passion Church; all others are more than welcome to read.

The death of Robin Williams has brought mental illness and substance abuse to the forefront of a worldwide discussion. I posted the other day that if the church really cares about broken and hurting people, they have to be willing to enter this discussion. To their credit, there are many churches that are already involved with these issues. As I thought over the last couple of days, the church, as a whole, needs to do more than enter the discussion and have even more conversations. The church is great about ‘talking’ but our track record for ‘acting’ on our many discussions and meetings is not always up to par. Over our first four years of ministry, we have talked a lot about these things, but other than preaching sermons and trying to love everyone who walks through our doors, we’ve done very little to put actions behind our messages within our local community.

So, for New Passion, it’s time that we not enter the conversation, but rather we engage these issues. We can’t help people we’re not sharing life with and we cannot expect to sit back and have the broken and the hurting come to us, we have to be willing to enter their world, go to them and offer hope and healing.

New Passion’s population is diverse. We have more people who have either overcome addictions, or are still Man-Sad-Friend-400px struggling through them, than we do people who have had lifelong sobriety. We have more people who have suffered with and experienced some type of mental illness, than we do people who have a clean bill of mental health. Many of you have experienced broken marriages, abandonment, and major set backs in life. New Passion is truly made up of people who know they have hurts, habits and hang-ups. Sermons on Sunday provide the truth of the gospel, but lectures from a stage alone do not fix our problems. Community groups are great ways for us to grow in our faith, to develop deeper relationships with other people and with God, but they are not always designed to fix broken homes, address mental illness and substance abuse, or other specific issues that people all throughout our community face. For four years we have poured most of our energy into the Sunday morning service and Community Groups, but now, as we step over the five year mark, it’s time for us to go to the next level in how we care for our community.

We have an opportunity to lease or purchase a vacant clubhouse in a large Grovetown subdivision. The clubhouse is 2,200 sq. ft., has a pool and kitchen, and sits on 7 acres of property. We are not in a position where it would be wise to purchase this property and clubhouse, but we definitely could lease it, with the help of our people. The property owner is asking $1,200 per month for a lease.

This clubhouse would provide our church a place that we could use outside of Sunday to engage some of the specific needs of the people in our community. This would not suit us for Sunday mornings, but would provide a perfect environment for us to do things like….

Celebrate Recovery: This ministry is a Christian based recovery group that specifically engages people suffering with addictions, alcoholism, mental illness, food addictions, sexual addictions and a wide range of hurts, habits, and hang-ups. Celebrate Recovery WILL be a primary ministry of New Passion, how soon we start it will depend on whether or not we are all willing to support it.

PassionStudents: Our weekly student gathering will be restarting the second week of September. As soon as we start, we’ll already be busting out of our house. This is a great problem, but we’ll be limited with how many more students we can reach. The clubhouse would provide a larger environment for our weekly gathering with plenty of room to grow!

Community & Neighborhood Events: The clubhouse and surrounding property would provide a perfect environment for events like Movie on the Lawn, NPC’s annual Halloween Event, Community-wide Mega Easter Egg Hunt, and Summer outreach programs for children and youth, plus so much more!

Food Ministry: The poor and needy are often overshadowed by the rooftops of the new homes being built in our area, but the economy is still tough for many, unemployment is still high and we have been called to care for the least of these. This clubhouse would provide a perfect monthly service station to provide affordable meal kits for families in need. There would also be a potential for a food pantry.

Church Family Days: Did I mention it has a pool? The clubhouse would provide the perfect opportunity for our church family to gather around the pool and a hot grill as we grow deeper in our relationship with each other and with the guests that we bring to enjoy the fun. No need to set-up a portable baptistry, we can just baptize at the pool. Flag Football games, Volleyball, Ultimate Frisbee, and so many other opportunities to connect and have fun together would be available to us. We would no longer have to rent a space for church Christmas parties and other gatherings, we would have a place we could use at our discretion.

It’s time, we step further inside our community to be where the people are and to offer ministries that will provide them hope and healing. This is who the church is called to be and what we are called to do. This will cost financially. We are not bringing in $1,200 extra per month to agree to this lease. If we agree to lease this building, I would like to raise a full year’s lease up front, plus the extra it will take to get the clubhouse ready (tables, chairs, etc.). Our goal would be to raise $25,000. At the very least, to move forward, we would ask for pledges above our normal monthly giving to show that our people are going to help fund this ministry endeavor. Here are a few ideas of how we can make it happen:

Simply Give: If you don’t give anything, start giving something. If you give only a little, give a little more. If you’re already faithfully tithing, but God has blessed you, can you give sacrificially above your normal giving?

Special Services to the Community: Ideas have already been tossed out for 1) “Date Nights” which would allow couples to drop their children off, pay a set fee for babysitting services, while they go on a date. The fee would cover babysitters, dinner for children, and funds for the building. 2) It can be rented out for wedding receptions, family reunions, birthdays, and other gatherings where people need a large meeting space and kitchen. Just to name a few…..

Special Fundraisers: Ideas have already been tossed out for 1) Community Softball Tournament. 2) Raffles, among other ideas that may be shared.

Single Gift: Of course, if you have the extra money, you believe in this call to care for all people in our community and you are dedicated to leading people to a passionate relationship with Jesus, we will gladly accept your single donation to make this dream a reality.

Our goal is to set-up a tour of the clubhouse and the property within the next week or two. If you are an owner at New Passion, please stay tuned. If we feel it will be doable and we want to move forward, we will hold a vote among all of our owners around the first week of September.

If you want to go ahead and fill out an online form to pledge a specific amount above your normal giving towards this project, you can do so now. You will not be obligated to fulfill this pledge, until the church owners vote, ‘yes’ to leasing it. Your pledge will allow us to have solid numbers to present to our people, if we move forward with a vote.

New Passion, it’s time to start leading people to a passionate relationship with Jesus, by engaging these issues.

August 12, 2014

A Few Thoughts Following the Death of Robin Williams

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Just a few of thoughts I wanted to share, following the death of Robin Williams. Take them as you will.

Really, it’s okay to honor a man who we welcomed into our homes for over 30 years to entertain us, make us laugh, and bring a little bit of happiness to what can be a stressful, broken and sometimes sad world. Yes, there are millions of people who suffer from mental illness and who have died by suicide. No, we do not interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with breaking news to alert the world of their death. Why don’t we do this? Because we didn’t pay for matinees, a coke and popcorn to be entertained by their goofiness or to laugh at their jokes and antics. We didn’t rent their VHS’ and eventually their DVDs, or tune in to their TBS all day marathons. Does this make them any less important or valuable as people? Absolutely not! It just makes Robin Williams and others like him, different, and that’s okay. It seems like every time someone famous dies and are celebrated by the fans who enjoyed their art and craft reminisce about their life, the uptight purists start trying to guilt everyone else for honoring them while the millions who have died like them go unmentioned. Robin Williams was famous, worldwide, for more than three decades and though many of his fans never met him or knew him personally, they shared a connection to him through his characters. Do the millions actually go unnoticed though? When anyone receives a call about the death of a family member or friend, it interrupts all planned activities, it brings our world to a halting stop. Do these supposedly ‘unmentioned’ people not have funerals and memorials where their friends, family, churches, and communities remember them and honor their life? I believe it is safe to say that the celebration of life for those ‘unmentioned’ people, who are so often used as pawns for the drivers of guilt, is as big as their life was. As much as anyone is known, loved, and appreciated, they are missed in equal proportions, if not greater. Robin Williams was not perfect, we all know that, but he was known, loved and appreciated by many and therefore the mourning of his death and the celebration of his life is expressed by many. So, if you need permission, here you go….Celebrate the life of great people who have brought happiness into your life and impacted for the good.

January 9, 2014August 12, 2014

Crazy and Ridiculous

For just a short period of time, Jesus was a rock star. The Bible tells us through many stories in the Bible that there were times where Jesus would come to a town and it would be so crowded that the people would press in on him. There was the time that the friends had to lower the crippled man through the roof to get him to Jesus and then there was that other time where the woman that had the issue of blood had to fight her way through the crowd to simply touch Jesus’ garment. Rock Star!

Jesus the Rock Star! Well, at least he was for a short period of time! It was easy to follow Jesus when his message was one of ‘Come and See‘ where he went around turning water into wine, healing the sick and lame, casting out demons and acting like David Copperfield on steroids. Everyone wanted to know Jesus and to be his friend. Everyone wanted to follow him and receive the blessings that he was freely giving. But then Jesus got all crazy and ridiculous. For instance, he started talking strange and teaching encrypted messages. He admitted that he knew people wouldn’t even understand them. He should have just called his audience dummies! As Pastor Rick Warren has pointed out, his message went from ‘Come and See’ to ‘Come and Die’ with crazy messages like:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” Matthew 16:24

See, crazy and ridiculous stuff! Jesus didn’t say if you want to be saved, rather he said if you want to be my follower abandon your selfishness, die to yourself and follow me. I guess that’s the line that Jesus drew in the sand for those who ‘said’ they wanted to be a part of his group. It was a line that many were unwilling to cross and it was a commitment too great for many to make.

This is why the rich man walked away from Jesus sad. He was unwilling to sell all of his possessions and give all of the money to the poor and then leave the life he knew to follow Jesus into the unknown…or into the knowledge of the life following a transient Rabi who didn’t even own a home and often stayed with friends for rest, who had plenty of haters. This is why many of Jesus’ groupies who once saw him as a rock star walked away from Jesus sad. They saw he was about others, not about himself. They saw it wasn’t all about a show, rather it was about a totally new lifestyle that was focused on others and less on self.

This line wasn’t drawn in the sand for just the disciples of that day, it is a line drawn in the sand for all those who ‘say’ they desire to follow Jesus. Being saved and following Jesus are two totally different things and our American culture is quickly slipping into a comfort zone that is more willing to settle for the comfort of a salvation knowledge than they are a lifestyle of following Jesus.

Why? Mostly because people hate, absolutely HATE, abandoning their selfishness (concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure). We can’t be selfish and follow Jesus; he is the definition and reflection of perfect selflessness. We can’t be selfish (focused on self) and take up our cross and die to ourselves. Jesus didn’t walk the earth demanding to have things HIS way, no he did things His Father’s way. He didn’t walk the earth demanding comfort and convenience, no he was often inconvenienced.

If our local churches are unhealthy, I believe it’s for this reason. We have a lot of people who want to be saved, but we have very little who want to follow Jesus. People will come in droves when the message is one of ‘Come and See‘ and they depart quickly as it transitions to ‘Come and Die.’ The church is loved when it’s ‘Come and Watch’ or ‘Come and Experience’ the awesome show, but they disappear when it’s ‘Come and Serve’ or ‘Come and Make it Happen’. People love when the church is there to give and to serve, but when called to give and serve and die, well that’s just crazy and ridiculous. Teach me all that makes me feel good and like a winner and I’m there, but point out my sin and tell me I’m wrong and I’ll be gone. Jesus is a Rock Star, even in our culture and our generation, at least for a little while; but hang around long enough and you’ll discover that there’s a crowd who is unwilling to cross certain lines. It’s too far…too deep…and requires too much. It’s not convenient, it’s not comfortable and it’s not cheap, so count them out. Where do you stand? Are you willing to cross the lines Jesus calls you to, or are some lines just too far?

Join the Conversation….Why do you think so many are unwilling to cross the line Jesus drew in the sand to be his followers? What’s been the most difficult thing to abandon in your own walk?