I had a great day ruined by a rough evening.  I came home disturbed at several critiques I had received in regards to my ministry (not really new to get critiques part of ministry, they hit harder tonight), I shared with Christina then sat down to decompress, which is when I saw this photo:My 2 1/2 year old, and suddenly I had perspective.  This morning this same 2 1/2 year while we were driving said, “I going to be pastor too Daddy.” He said those words without any prompting. I was listening to sports talk radio while we were driving, I turned down and asked, “What did you say? “Daddy I going to be pastor too.”  Perspective.  What matters most in my life is being faithful to God and His calling and vision for my life and ministry and secondly that both my boys always find joy in the career of ministry. Whether they follow my career path or not is really between them and God, but it is my responsibilty to make sure ministry is never a curse on their life.  Perspective. If I do that well I guess it really doesn’t matter if others critique or chop down or decide I am doing a poor job in some area of ministry…praise God my 2 1/2 year old “going to be pastor too.” Perspective.

So I didn’t keep up with blogging through the Radicalis Conference I went to to learn about church planting, so I am going to give a bullet point summary in this blog.  Even if you are not into church planting there is some great wisdom in here to glean! 

How Do We Get Back To Real Christianity? Through the 5 Stages of Renewal:

1. Personal Renewal–Corporate Renewal always starts in the heart of a leader. 
2. Relational Renewal–2 Signs of relational renewal: Singing improves because a church that is being renewed relationally likes to sing together.  And people hang-out longer after church is over. 
3. Missional Renewal
4. Structural Renewal
5. Cultural Renewal

“If you have no risks in your life, you have no faith. In ministry you are being unfaithful by not taking risks.” –R. Warren

There was a great tangent comment about his (Rick Warren) wife (Kay Warren).  He just paused and pondered how his history would have been different if his wife hadn’t been willing to take a risk on him and the ministry vision he had.  He commented that if she had said “no” he would not have planted the church he did.  I was thinking how would all of Christianity be different.  I don’t agree with all of Warren’s theology, but I value a lot of his methodology and his conviction to love and serve people!  This moment was just significant for me because I thought about how we as spouses need to be mindful to support God’s vision in our significant others life!

Radical Faith Is– (Hebrews 11):

• Believing when I don’t see it (Heb. 11:1)
• Obeying when I don’t understand it (Heb 11:7, 8). 1,050 commands in the Bible, every time we obey one we are exhibiting faith and receive a blessing from God.
• Persisting when I don’t feel like it (Heb. 11:27, 11:1).  Spoke here about the secret of success is to out love, out last, and out fruit your critics 🙂
• Annoucing what God is going to do in order to experience it (11:22; 11:3; Ps. 33:9; Rom. 4:17; Rom. 10:10).  There is a direct connection between your words and your faith!  You can’t speak doubt and then hope that God proves you wrong. “Rather than telling it like it is, tell it like it could be.”
• Giving When I Don’t have it (Heb. 11:4; 2 Cor. 8:2, 3; Prov. 3:9; 1 Cor. 16:2). There are two types of giving the first takes no faith.  Giving by reason–to give a reasonable amount based on what is within reason.  Faith giving though is giving by Revelation–A number that God directs that goes BEYOND reason.  “Finances are the acid test of faith.”
• Thanking God before I receive it (Heb. 11:30; Mk. 11:24; Mt. 9:29).
• Trusting even if I don’t get it here on earth (Heb. 11:39-40; Rom. 10:17). This comes from a daily connection in God’s Word.

Steven Furtick spoke our second day and his message made me cry because I’ve known for a long time that God is calling me to step out in greater faith and I haven’t been faithful to that because I am scared…

Okay my boy just asked me to read him some books…so I guess I will have to finish the rest later…

So I am at a conference to learn about church planting.  The entire conference is not focused on church planting, this is just the conference track I am a part of.  So some of what I am going to share is not directly related to chuch planting, as the Plenary speakers are focused on more ministry issues in general. 

So here are some highlights from Day 1: (in bullet points)

• When satan puts an idea in my mind that is called temptation.  When God puts an idea in my mind we call it inspiration.  When I have an idea on my own we call it STUPIDITY.
• Acts 1:8 is not sequential “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth.” God wants us to do all at sametime.  Be both local and global: GLOCAL
• Acts 2:1 “When day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.” –Holy Spirit doesn’t come where there is division.
• The sign of a good sermon is when the people go from asking about the text: “What does this mean?” to “What shall we do?”
• A crowd is not a church!

Some Points on Leadership & Church Planting:

• Leaders are people that know how to find and build their own strong teams not always depending on someone above to help them recruit (this is in the context of paid employees).
• Non-Delegators always sink a ship!
• Plan to plant churches that are reproducing churches.
• Studies show if you don’t reach 200 in attendance in first 2 years you probably won’t ever get over 200 in attendance.
• When you open up places of ministry God provides people to serve.
• Why plant churches?  Latest studies show that only 17.5% of U.S. Pop is attending church on a weekly basis.  Gallup says higher, but these are numbers from actuall reporting of attendance at churches rather than a phone call to a persons home.  People, especially “Christians” don’t like to admit they weren’t at church last week.
• Churches 10 years and younger grow at a rate of 16.7%; 10-40 yrs. 0.6%; and 40 years + have a negative growth rater of -1.1%
• Younger churches (not demographics of members but actual age of church) reach more folk and isn’t our goal as workers for Jesus to reach more people?  

Can’t wait to start!

“You shall not murder.” –Exodus 20:13

Murder is: “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Unlawful has come to be defined by our laws not God’s law.  Which is why I don’t like this definition because then society creates the standard by which murder takes place. I say this because in our society it has become acceptable to practice abortion as a means of birth control and or to utilize death row as a means of punishment and in neither case is it ever considered “murder” because by definition it is “lawful.”  Who decides what is murder though, a law made by man or God.  When men feel it is in their right to decide who gets to live and who gets to die, we are walking a fine line between being human and playing God. And when we begin to play God, things can go terribly wrong.

Our starting point in discussions regarding abortion should not be a woman’s right to choose.  It should not be convenience.  It should not be the economic situation of an individual. Roe v. Wade.  These all may be a part of the conversation, but they should not be the starting point of the conversation.  For the Christian the starting point should always be: God values ALL life!

Our starting point in discussions regarding the death penalty should not be humaneness of lethal injections.  They should not be retribution for the family.  They should not be the combined criminal record of an individual. These all may be a part of the conversation, but they should not be the starting point of the conversation.  For the Christian the starting point should always be: God values ALL life!

“You shall not murder” based on God’s definition of the immense value of life, not the laws of men trying to play God.