A day in the life...

Today was my first day back to work at North Greenville University after a nice summer vacation. It was great to see everyone, and it is great to have a job that I absolutely love! God is AWESOME! He not only provides for all of our needs, but sometimes, He gives us abundantly more than we could ever ask for or imagine! Some of you are thinking that I mean monetarily. I assure you that while I haven’t starved, people who teach in private Baptist colleges aren’t rich. What I mean is that this summer, I had the time to be able to work at my church as a volunteer much more than anyone who is working a full time job would be able to do. God has allowed me to be a part of the birthing of two new ministries and be a part of two others! That is the blessing I am referring to. Being able to work closely with some great staff members and share in the vision of what is happening was something I wish every Christian could experience. Being able to rejoice when people gave their hearts to the Lord, and be sad when people got mad and left the church was something that can’t be experienced when one only comes on Sunday morning. I thank God for giving me the time to be a part of all of that.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t figured out what to do with the title of this blog. Next Monday, I start my first day on staff at my church as a part time connections pastor…which means, I am not a “lay person” anymore. So, this blog may change names and formats slightly. Even though it has only been up a couple months, I hoped it inspired someone out there.

Freshmen Christians

For those who don’t know, I work at North Greenville University as a Spanish Instructor. During the summer, there aren’t many college students running around the campus. This weekend, the droves of students were moving back into the dorms. Many of them had parents in tow. The campus once again was alive with excitement and anticipation of a new semester. It reminds me a lot of the church. Some churches are like the summer campus. The same old professors and administration are sitting around planning for the upcoming year, but it isn’t until the life of new, young, and vibrant students come on the scene that things get exciting. In the church world, if there hasn’t been any new, young and vibrant life in your church, look around. Are there any new baby Christians? Young Christians, just like freshmen are full of energy. They sometimes do stupid things or at least things that are unexpected from a “mature” Christian’s point of view. The life they bring to the scene is incredible! Even God and the angels party in heaven every time a new Christian is born into the kingdom! Look for ways to bring about new growth in the church. It will keep things exciting!

Missions

Churches have different views of what “Missions” means. In its most simple form, it is anything that reaches out to others with a purpose. In Christianity, we reach out to others with the purpose of showing them God’s love and asking them to join us in our journey through life accepting Jesus as their Savior. When Jesus told us to “Go unto all the world” he mentioned Judea, Samaria and the ends or the uttermost parts of the earth. Many preachers have paraphrased that to mean your local community, your state/country, and foreign missions too. I believe that there is order to that. If all our church is doing is sending some money to a missionary in a far off land while never showing God’s love to the grumpy guy who lives right next to the church building, then we have missed the call. Likewise, if we are reaching out to our local community, but never reach beyond it, we have also missed out on what God intended. If your church has never taken part in foreign missions, then I encourage you to do so. I don’t just mean that you send a few dollars to a missionary. Contact a missionary and find out how you can help them on the field. When you take a group of people from your own church and reach out in another area of the world, it will not only help the missionary and the people where you go serve, but it will be a life changing event in the lives of the people on your team! Another side affect is that when people are concerned about those who live in another land, they will begin to see the needs in their own community as well. If your church rarely goes outside the walls of the building you meet in, give missions of any kind a try! I am sure that you will find the effort very worth the return on investment when you see how the people in your own congregation are changed.

Sin Or Normal?

Is it ok to have a Bible study at the home of a dating couple who are living together? What if they are both male? Or have a porn collection in the living room? Before I go on, it is only fair to let you know that the couple doesn’t yet know Jesus as their savior. This hypothetical couple is not “living in sin” as we church folk might be quick to say, they are still completely lost souls heading to hell. The fact that they are engaged in activities that are counter to what the Bible tells us is appropriate, is normal. Yes, normal. Sinners tend to sin and some do it very well! God calls us to go unto all the world and preach the gospel. He calls us to be fishers of men. The good news is that He doesn’t command us to actually catch the fish/men, nor does He expect us to clean them. Back to my starting point. The unsaved couple who exhibit signs of sin need Jesus and many won’t darken the doorstep of a church. WE must go unto THEM and share Jesus. Have fun fishing! Oh, and while I am on the topic, there are many kinds of bait out there. (Stealing an idea from Dean) It doesn’t matter what kind of bait you use, (within reason), what matters is that Jesus Christ is changing lives through us as individuals and through our church. Rockin churches will catch one kind of fish, while traditional churches will catch another kind, Cowboy churches another, and Biker Churches yet another…Each are fishing.

Monday Night Porn Talk

At my church, we are starting a new ministry called “Monday Night Porn Talk”. My personal opinion on the subject is that it is killing marriages and families. I had originally thought the room would be filled with married guys who are scared of losing their wives to divorce if they don’t get a grip on the habit. I am realizing that I was quite naïve! We haven’t even started yet, but just having let the church know that the ministry will be starting in a couple weeks has had men from teenager to senior citizen asking if they can attend, or letting me know they will be there! If you want to get something going in your church, or if you already have a pornography addiction recovery group, I would love to hear from you. The following information comes mostly from www.safefamilies.org
Here are some groups that are online to help with pornography addiction recovery.
Pure Intimacy - www.pureintimacy.org
Focus on the Family’s section on sexuality, including sections for ministry leaders, couples, and parents. The website has many articles and resources for addressing the issue of pornography.
Blazing Grace - blazinggrace.org
Biblically-based website and ministry addressing the epidemic of pornography use, providing help for those who struggle and support for those affected by pornography users.
XXXCHURCH.COM - www.xxxchurch.com
Billed as the number one Christian porn site, this ministry tackles the issue of pornography head on with irreverent and in-your-face presentations. xxxchurch offers, among other resources, Porn Sunday, a holistically constructed event-based program to help your church confront the issue head-on.
Porn-Free.org – www.porn-free.org
With many articles, resources, and online studies, porn-free.org is a content-packed site designed to help people discover the truth about pornography and sexual addictions.
Beating the Bunny - www.beatingthebunny.com
This website has numerous resources for parents and pastors in helping young people acknowledge and overcome struggles with pornography.
Morality in Media - www.moralityinmedia.org
A national, not-for-profit, interfaith organization established in 1962 to combat obscenity and uphold decency standards in the media. This site features articles and information about how to fight obscenity in the media and the detrimental effects of pornography on society.
Overcoming Temptation (Webcast) - safefamilies.techmission.org/webcasts/temptation
Learn about the structures to set in place, the groundwork to be laid, and the direction to take for your recovery work. Learn to embrace ongoing habits for a new lifestyle and what to do when temptation is strong and things are very stressful.

A guy commented on my other post on pornography asking if I am familiar with accountability software. Just to give a quick response to that, if you want to check these out, I am not endorsing or condemning the following programs, just letting you know they exist.


X3watch
www.x3watch.com
• Free
• Ministry of xxxchurch (www.xxxchurch.com)
• Regularly sends list of questionable web visits to
selected recipients
• Best free monitoring software
• X3watchPro version available for $14.95; includes tech support

Covenant Eyes
www.covenanteyes.com
• $74.99/year or less
• Pricing for households/ministry staff/business
• Regularly sends list of ALL web visits to selected recipients, with objectionable sites highlighted
• Most widely used monitoring software

ComputerCOP
www.computercop.com/homeprods.html
• $19.95 for download
• Scans computer files and Internet history for potentially
offensive material
• Deluxe version ($39.95 + S&H): includes keystroke
monitoring, scans chats and emails, expanded
dictionary of key words
Parents CyberAlert
www.itcompany.com/cyberalert.htm
• $39.95 for download
• Free trial
• Records email, IM, websites, keystrokes, file access,
screen snapshots
• Website, email, chat, IM blocking
• Games & applications alerts & blocking

Guardian Monitor
www.guardiansoftware.com
• $39.95
• Monitors websites, email, chat, IM, p2p applications
• Records keystrokes & downloads
• Website blocking

Chat Checker
www.chatchecker.com
• Free
• Records instant message (IM) conversations
• Login online to review IM conversations from within the
last 24 hours
• Receive daily usage summary via email
• Receive alerts to dangerous conversations or watch-
words via email

A cool link!

The following blog made me think of a prayer time my pastor and I had recently.
Steven Furtick's Blog really hit me. Are we dreaming God sized dreams?

Lone Ranger or A-Team?

This post is more for pastors, but Lay leaders still might want to read it. Pastor, are you a Lone Ranger or part of an A-Team is the question we are looking at. If you aren’t in the right age bracket for those references to make sense, The Lone Ranger fought crime by himself (though he did have a sidekick) and the A-Team was a group of guys who fought as a team, each one adding his level of expertise. I am not talking about how many people you have on staff. Some of you have a small church, and you are the staff. What I am talking about is running your church and sermon preparation. Are you trying to do it all by yourself? I want to suggest, if you aren’t already doing it that you try having a creativity team/big picture team/ideas team or whatever you want to call it. That doesn’t mean that God isn’t still your source of inspiration for your sermons. But it does mean that once you have the direction for your sermon that there will be people to help you in the planning. If you use video clips, they can help you get or create good ones to go with your sermon. They can help you pick out music for the song service that ties into the sermon topic. If you decorate your platform for a sermon or series, they can help you come up with ways to do it, and help carry out that decoration. These people don’t have to be paid staff, just find creative people in your church that love the Lord and would be willing to meet with you at some time during the week. As people see how things come together in your church they will be more supportive of you as a pastor as well. This works in a church of 20 or a church of 20,000. Granted in the church of 20, if your creativity team is very large, there won’t be very many people who haven’t already hashed out your sermon with you before Sunday morning comes, but so what? They are involved, and they will remember the sermon better than if they just came Sunday morning and listened to it. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” This doesn’t have to only apply to the Sunday morning worship service.
If you disagree with me on this, please comment! If you are using a creativity team in your church, please comment too! And if you aren’t, but want to start one, try it out, then come back and comment later once you have! I would love to hear feedback on this one….I don’t want to be a Lone Ranger blogger!

Short thought on Christian-ness

Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary wrote, “Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” When he wrote that back in 1911 I am not sure of his intentions. Now however, it seems to be an accurate description of many who claim the title “Christian”. When people in our churches reflect the word Christian in its meaning of “one who is like Christ” rather than Bierce’s definition then our churches will be what God intended them to be.

Promise Keepers Atlanta

(The following is an article I wrote for the Pickens County Courier and thus not my normal fare for this blog, but I wanted to post it anyway.)

On the first of August, 21 men from Pickens County took off to Atlanta to experience a Promise Keepers weekend. The high energy at Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church was much like a Clemson/Carolina football game! From the opening National Anthem through the final prayers, men were excited to be there. They confronted a great mix of serious life changing issues like pornography addiction and deciding what the measure of a real man is. There was also comedy in the form of George Bush impersonator John Morgan and Comedian Cletho Rodriguez. Speakers, Former NFL player Don Davis, Mike Silva, Josh McDowell, Dr. Richard Blackaby, Bishop Larry Jackson, Coach Bill McCartney and Dan Seaborn brought home challenging messages about how to be real men of integrity and purpose to the six to seven thousand in attendance. The altar call was reminiscent of a Billy Graham crusade in that hundreds of men went forward to ask Jesus Christ to change their lives, but not to the tune of “Just as I Am” but to U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. There at Promise Keepers Atlanta, many men did find exactly what they were looking for! Like the last verse of the song says:
You broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the cross
Of all my shame
All my shame
You know I believe it

Jesus Christ was breaking the bonds of men’s addictions and helping them deal with shameful issues throughout the weekend. Men had a great time just bonding with other men as well. Garry Renner of 5 Point Fellowship in Easley said, “I have decided that this will be an annual event for me!” For more information on Promise Keepers or to watch parts of the Atlanta event, check out their website: http://www.promisekeepers.org/

When you don't know what to do next!

When one is in leadership of a church, especially the senior pastor, I am sure you come to points where you think about the future of your church and don’t know what God’s plan is exactly. You seek His leadership, but He hasn’t spoken for whatever reason, or you haven’t heard Him speak. There is a verse that I love- 2 Chronicles 20:12 – “O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.” We can feel like the whole world is against us and not have a clue how God is going to work in the situation, but we can learn from the children of Israel here that when we don’t know what to do, we keep our eyes on God. I like to combine that philosophy with something Mark Twain said, “It isn’t the parts of the bible that I don’t understand that scare me, it is the parts I do understand.” As long as we are walking in what we know to be God’s will and we keep our eyes on Him, He will reveal to us in time what His next step is for us in the ministry. Be encouraged! We serve an awesome God!