supporters blog

Hey!  Just so you all know, I just launched my blog that will be specifically devoted to informing my prayer and financial supporters on what is going on within my ministry.  I plan on keeping the two going and separate.  This is will still be my blog where I write novels about things God is teaching me at the time and similar such things.

So, if you haven’t seen it and you’d like A) to check it B) to commit to pray for me and my ministry intentionally or C) to consider helping me financially as I follow where God is leading me, then click HERE.

Fort Mills Campus Launch!!!

Hey, thought you’d be interested to know that I”m flying out to Charlotte this weekend to lead worship with Blake as we launch the Fort Mills campus of LifePointe Christian church.  I’m crazy excited about what God might do with this body of believers we have out there in Charlotte.  They had a preview service this past weekend to work through some of the kinks and things and they had around 200 people show up for it!  So awesome.

I’d love if you would join me in praying for LifePointe and this exciting next step of faith through this weekend, thanks!

BUSY!

hey all, sorry I haven’t had any updates in awhile, everything has been FLYING and my task list for the month gets longer and longer!  I’m sure you can relate.  But you know, even with all the craziness, God’s been keeping me (as far as I go) sane.  He’s placed some good reminders around me to enjoy the people around me, practice times of solitude and quiet to center myself on what’s important.

He’s also been reminding me nearly every day to live in the Present.  Sometimes, as I’m sure you know, when things gets busy, it’s easy to constantly be looking ahead and multitasking like working on a paper while in class or a graphic while in a meeting… checking e-mails as someone is talking to you.  er, not that I’ve ever done any of that… in the last two days… *cough*   But I think when we do this, we often miss the joy in the moment because we are trying to fill it with too much.  And if you’re anything like me, when you’re doing two things at once, neither is necessarily as fulfilling, rewarding, or high quality as I would have liked.

So even when things are busy and stressful, be present where you are.  Be engaged in the meeting, add to discussions, enjoy the outside, turn off the TV if you’re talking with a good friend, look up from the computer when someone walks in the room.  These little things have helped me enjoy every moment much more even when it is “work” and there is still a pile waiting to fall.

some of my tasks for the next week as I look toward LifePointe:

-> Fly out and Lead worship at the Fort Mills Campus launch!! woo hoo!

-> design the rest of my support material.  Bring it to kinko’s.

-> Let EVERYONE know what I’m doing next and what it entails for me; includes mailings, presentations, travel, and facebook events galore!!

-> Set up the blog for my prayer and financial supporters to look in on what’s going on with me and LifePointe.

-> Let God keep me from freaking out with my jumble of notes, tasks, and deadlines.  D  He’s so good.

I’m so excited about what’s next, I’ll be sure to let everyone know when some of these tasks get set in place and how you might be able to come along side me as I start this crazy new God thing!

Diversity

So, here’s something that’s really cool about Charlotte:  The city itself gives great value to recognizing diversity.  And above that, LifePointe has the belief that the Church should reflect the diversity of the community.  Both of these points attracted me to LifePointe.  For this to be a value ingrained in them means a lot to me because as I look in the Word, I see all the times Paul talks about equality in Christ.  That once we choose to follow Christ “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).”

This is what I hope to uphold in my own life.  Sometimes it is so hard for us to live this out.  For some it is racial issues; for others it is economic issues; for some it political ties; for others allegiances different than their own; for some it is doctrinal stances.  Sometimes its cultural differences that we just do not understand, musical tastes that seem outlandish, social habits that are completely foreign to us (whether the people themselves are “foreign” or not).  When we get down to it, I think this is a struggle for all of us one way or another even when diversity does not just mean race.  So in my effort to step outside of myself and see the universal nature of Christ’s call to ALL people, I am excited about entering a culture that is very intentional about diversity.

Here’s a PDF Matt McGue (the lead Pastor at LifePointe) sent me from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that I thought was just so need.  It explains some of the great diversity in Charlotte and the School district’s efforts to celebrate it:

Diversity

LifePointe Christian Church – Part 2

The last couple values of theirs that I told you I would share are Relevance in presenting the Gospel to the culture in which their community is in, Excellence, Spiritual Growth and Fun & Celebration.  They really were convicted that in their culture there needed to be this emphasis on Fun & Celebration; that many think Christians are supposed to be stuffy and defined by what they can’t do, but LifePointe believes that as the people of God, there will be times of seriousness, but that we are called to be joyful in the Lord always and to party because of this great grace we have been shown.  I love their outlook.

Here are a couple things that really attracted me to Charlotte, NC and LifePointe CC

> The Community: Both at Lifepointe and in the surrounding churches.  Something unique about LifePointe is that their main gatherings take place around tables together — no rows, no pews.  Their conviction is that with this emphasis they have on community and relationship, they wanted everything they did to reflect that value and the way this worked out in their community was to seat people at tables together (with communion on each table).  So as they go through their main gatherings they go for a very casual, as intimate as possible, feel.

>Unity: One of the surprising things in Charlotte is that there is a lot of inter-church and even inter-denominational community.  Many of the leaders from churches around the city come together to meet and support each other.  There are several ways this works out, one really cool way is in this college/young adult ministry in which over 34 churches partner together for a worship experience and teaching in Charlotte called Charlotte One.

No doubt some brave and couregeous leaders sacrificed somewhere along the lines to make this unity a reality, and God is using this in incredible strides for the city of Charlotte.  There is a common goal to see the Kingdom advanced whether it directly benefits your individual church body or not.  Great stuff.

>Risk factor: If you’ve talked to me at all about life direction stuff, this may have come up.  I’ve always had this conviction in my life that I never wanted to let myself settle or get too comfortable.  Part of it is that I know in my being I am often a Maintainer and its easy for me to rationalize myself out of taking risks.  So one of the outworkings of my own faith is that I wanted to find a place that was taking some big risks in their faith community.  I wanted to make myself be a part of something bigger than myself –that I knew I could not control on my own, as is my human tendency to desire.  I wanted to come along side of a church because of a mission.  I also wanted to find a city that I could get passionate about reaching.  And I think LifePointe and Charlotte embody this well.

I’ll share in my next post what some of the risky faith steps they’ve been taking which was one of the biggest reasons I chose to come on board and also the biggest cause of struggle in my own spirit.  Because I’m sure many of you know that to say you want a risky faith and that you want to be a part of something you can’t control is all easy to say, but when you start seeing the actual, real-life outworkings of that you just stand there looking up and say, “… oh.”   ha. But God is good and he is working something incredible, I’ll let you in on more of that next time.

-NM-

LifePointe Christian Church – the beginnings

Just a little bit about how LifePointe Christian Church – the Church community I will be joining this coming summer [see previous post]:

This community began southwest of the city of Charlotte in 2004 as a small group of families met in the home of Matt McGue.  Matt McGue and his family moved from ministry in Ohio to partner with the church planting organization called Stadia.  From that time on, Lifepointe has attempted to honor God and trust his guidance in every of the journey.

Here’s some of the things this faith community has been built on (their values):

Relationships: This value tapers much of what they do.  Frankly its half of their missions statement, which is Love God, Love People.  Very straight forward, very biblical.  They believe that healthy relationships honor God and that life change happens when people build these healthy relationships with those in their lives.

Authenticity: They believe authenticity, acceptance and honesty create an atmosphere where people can be themselves and find wholeness.  Being open and real about the struggles of life and never pretending to have it all figured out is so important in conveying the grace God has poured out to all of us.

Prayer: They believe that nothing of eternal value can be done apart from Christ, so in every step of their life as a Church they try to cover everything in prayer

Love: (again, major part of their overall mission as a church) “We believe the church is to be an active agent of change in society by loving, caring and serving all people, especially those who are hurting, oppressed or devalued. We believe the church should represent the ethnic diversity of its community.”
That’s about half the values they publically profess.  I’ll share more in the next post (hopefully) along with some stats of the community they are a part of and fun stats about the church community itself.

So there’s about half of their professed values as a body of believers.  I’ll talk about the others in the next post along with (hopefully) some stats about the community they are a part of and some fun facts about the church community itself.  (If you want to jump ahead, you can always check out some of that stuff on their website)

Next for the Intern…

Alright, everyone, the die has been cast and the decision is finally official. No more straddling the fence, no more anxiety over indecision, but I finally took the leap in saying confidently and officially that my next step in life is moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. Wow, it’s so weird to actually say outloud. I am SO excited and God has given me such peace about this decision.

Here’s the initial facts (there will definitely be more to come as time goes on):

— —->The Church is called Lifepointe Christian Church (lifepointecc.com). It was planted about 4 ½ years ago and God has just opened some incredible doors for them to start this second campus right over the Carolina border in Fort Mills, SC. It’s an awesome story of God coming through in some big ways that I’m sure I’ll eventually talk about on here.

— —–>I will be the second creative arts/worship guy working beside Blake Strozyk as they launch their second campus in May (I won’t be joining until later that summer for those of you at Suncrest freaking out at that moment). Blake is a good friend of mine. We’ve played in the bill wolf band together and have worked together and led at Crossings Knoxville while I was still a student at Johnson Bible College. I am really looking forward to working with him and the way we’ll be able to compliment each other’s gifts.

— —–> My role will include rotating between campuses with Blake to lead Sunday mornings. I’ll head up a lot of our efforts in graphics, video, drama, and whatever other artsy-visual stuff we tackle. I’ll also be in charge of working with some of our student musicians to build up a student band. Our hope is to eventually let the students take on a lot of responsibility in this area, but it’ll take some time for us to get to that point. As I look at the roles and responsibilities, I just laugh because God has just taken me on this journey where I’ve built up my skills and passions in all of these areas and at times I would question why certain things would happen or why I’d be in certain places, but a lot of that makes sense for this next step (like the fact that I got over wanting to be a youth minister about 6 years ago, yet still have worked in student ministry for so many years and now more of it makes sense with my needing to build up the student band at Lifepointe [and of course along with the friends I've made and the lives I've touched in each of those ministries])

K, that’s probably enough for now. I’ll give other little snippets every so often so you can start to get an idea of the huge, amazing, crazy, scary, ridiculous thing God is now calling me to.

My truck’s a fighter…

So, for those who didn’t hear, this weekend I was on the expressway and heard a funny noise coming from my engine area.  Long story short, I find myself parked near a flying J staring under my hood at flames shooting from my alternator.  Exciting, huh?  The good thing is that with the help of a good friend and a little bit of money (thankfully), it is now running again.

The thing I wanted to share is something my dad mentioned today as we were talking about how painless it was this time around.  He thought about a decently obscure passage in Deuteronomy where the people are reminded of their time in the desert.  They are told to walk in God’s ways and revere him and how when they were following God’s leading in the desert and obeying his commands, their “clothes did not wear out and (their) feet did not swell.”  And my dad related this to the times in our lives where we have very little and yet are trying our best to honor God and walk in his ways.  That somehow, in these times, yes bad or inconvenient things may happen, but God has a way of stretching our resources and letting things hold on a little longer so that we can get by.

So all in all, my truck caught on fire and I thought “this could be the end of this” and yet God let’s it hold on a little longer.  Moral of the story?  Once again, I think that when we are trying our best to stay faithful to God and put our whole selves into his will, he will also stay faithful to us and work things out the way it needs to happen.

questions on holiness/the yoke of Christ

Here’s just something I’ve been thinking about:

As a kid, I was frustrated when I couldn’t get something just right.  And it wasn’t that I didn’t do a lot of things pretty well, but I always saw what I could do better.  The situation that sticks out in my mind is when I could see vividly the image I wanted to convey on a piece of paper.  I knew exactly how it should look, where each line should be, the perspective that you were looking in from… But, I just could not get my hands to lay out the image that was seen behind my eyelids.  And I got SO frustrated.  My skill/ability didn’t match what I knew it should look like.

Sometimes this carries over to my Christian walk and my concept of holiness.  The tendency is to try to do all the right things you know need to be done. I see what a righteous and holy person should be and have a vivid picture in my mind of how this looks.  And yet, I get myself so frustrated.  because I see the person I could be (and often think I should be) but it’s just not simply naturally a part of who I am yet.

And this is where I get caught up.  Because when I am not that person, I try to force myself to be that person, I try to pretend it is natural, but all I get then is depressed, exhausted, maybe feeling a little guilty.  And I begin to wonder:  how much of this holiness thing is really our burden to bear?  As I learn more about the Spirit and about grace and I read about how God is the one who justifies and purifies, I wonder if I am trying to accomplish something by skill, that ought to naturally come with my relationship with the Spirit.

Jesus said things like “come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Mat 11:28-30).  This ridged holiness was what Jesus was freeing people from.  This exhaustion and depression and burden of not doing what we ought to do and not being who we ought to be is not what Jesus intended.  Paul in Galatians says this, “Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

So, this is where I’ve landed for now:  Instead of putting energies into doing the right things and being the right person, I’m going to pour those energies simply into being with God and investing in that relationship.  That’s what he wants from me, and then all the other stuff — the ‘what I’m supposed to be’ — comes from him.  I mean, Paul later gets into the Fruit of the Spirit; and what we’ve heard harped on for a long time is that this isn’t stuff we’re just trying to be but it’s supposed to be the work God does in us because we are following him.

See, I firmly believe we all know this and believe it, but sometimes we forget it in the way we live.   Just some thoughts.

Highlights from my journey to the South

1. Wearing a jacket instead of a parka in February

2. Bottom line of thoughts about the future: I asked God to challenge and stretch me and to let me be a part of something bigger than me and what I could control, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to do it.

3. The above thought freaks the dickens outta me. But it is good.

4. Skating and talking music with the Duane Chew.

5. Sitting down for lunch and a lady coming up to Joe Mueller and I saying, “Excuse me, could you please help, my husband is having a heart attack.” Being the “adult” males at the table, I felt it necessary to help. The guy was alright, we got him to the bathroom; I signaled the Johnson Bible College Security if we should need their assistance. Apparently it happens more than on a rare occasion for this guy and he’s got nitroglycerine or something to take for it. But Joe and I got to be action heroes that day. Just another day as an Alum of Johnson Bible College.

6. The above mentioned man, upon helping him, told Joe and I “never get old” and we told him we would do our best.

7. Getting a green card-sized paper that said, “This Green card shows that: (your name here) is a Citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.” I always knew I’d get something like this by going to Johnson…

8. Lyn Anderson chucking metal keys into a crowd of alum, some of which are farther along in years. I was worried because their reflexes may not have been what they were when they graduated.

9. Bill Wolf leading the Johnson Hymn…

10. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt to homecoming. For those who don’t know, as a student, this was frowned upon and a rule I was obligated to abide by and enforce as an RA. This week was different.

*if you hadn’t caught it by now, in some of my blogs I’ve started the habit of linking certain words to fun pictures that illustrate what I’m talking about.  It makes it like a fun little treasure hunt!