Sunday Reflection

31 07 2007

Forgot to share about Adam preaching on Sunday. He did an awesome job teaching on our core value of “worship”. It was VERY weird being there at church and not preaching. I listened to Grants sermon the other day as well and wow is he continuing to grow as a speaker and did great teaching on our core value of “family”. Talking with my mom the other day of where God has brought Grant from. That’s a blog or two in itself. Not to take away from what Grant spoke on or any other topic but Adam probably had the toughest subject to cover. First of all worship is a very broad subject. Second it’s VERY important to the church as a whole. Nothing has divided the church more in recent years than worship. I felt Adam did a great job of not talking about our style of worship - feel - look - but the HEART of worship! A few things Adam talked about that I thought was REALLY good. (None of these are direct quotes)

— The Father is looking for worshipers who will worship in SPIRIT and TRUTH (John 4). Paul said our SPIRITual act of worship is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to HIM. That’s worship. Giving of MYSELF. In John 4 Jesus said to the woman at the well essentially “Your worshiping this God that you don’t even know.” We’ve got to worship God in TRUTH. Worshiping for who He is. In His awesomeness, holiness and POWER.

— Be careful that we don’t worship worship instead of worship God. So easy to worship the kind of worship we like. Or the place, sound, leader of worship. “I wish we had worship like camp…conference…that church.”

— Worship is only strange to those who are unfamiliar with God. If I KNOW God I want to worship Him.

Worship at Element Church will look different at different times. Typically it will be loud, fresh and modern. But we don’t want to be bound to a style or sound. Some Sunday’s we’ll pull out a djembe and acoustic guitar to do an Unplugged set. Some times we’ll sing more older songs and others all new. It’s going to look different but the God we sing to remains the same. Worship METHODS change, but the God we worship remains the same.

This should be a whole other blog but churches need to realize that worship begins in the parking lot. “Worship” is not JUST the singing portion of church. When our greeters shake hands we are worshiping. When ushers ush they are worshiping. Etc. Another time for that discussion.

Anyway, Good job Adam and good job Grant on sharing your hearts. Love you guys.


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Categories : church planting, unplugged, worship

Blog Link

31 07 2007

Grant has a good blog on “prayer”. Check it out.


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Categories : Link

Post #100: "I will be with you!"

31 07 2007

Moses was confronted with the biggest task of his GREAT life. The Lord had seen the oppression of His people and heard their cry. He decided it was time to act. Who did He call to act on His behalf? Moses! But…But…But…was Moses’ reply. “I can’t go back to Pharaoh.” “What will my people say?” “Who am I Lord that I should go?” Basically Moses is saying “Why me?” He asked God “Who am I?” What was God’s response? I love this every time I read it. “I will be with you.” That was his response to who Moses was. What is God saying? “Moses, IT’S NO ABOUT YOU!” I am more and more convinced that the Scripture is trying to teach us who it’s all about. “But God what’s your plan?” “But God I need this.” “But God if you’d only do this.” “But God what about me?” God’s answer to us is “I will be with you.” That’s all we need to know. Whatever God is calling us to do. Whatever task needs to be done. Whatever word needs to be spoken God wants us to know, and to remember “I will be with you”. That’s STILL His answer. He won’t always reveal His plan. He doesn’t HAVE to explain Himself. He doesn’t NEED to butter us up with who WE are CAUSE IT’S NOT ABOUT ME! “I will be with you.” Should be enough for us. Whatever we face. Whatever we do, we are not alone! Couldn’t think of anything better to post for my 100th one. I read that story today in my devos and was encouraged again to know He is there.

In His Presence,

Jeff


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Categories : Life, discipleship, personal

Weekend Wrapup

29 07 2007

I’m excited about this week. Fun getting ready for our next preview service. Here are some thoughts about today and the upcoming week.

— Had 51 today at Unplugged. Again, had new faces. That is our constant prayer. Lord bring us new faces. Had several people gone today. We are currently touching about 70 - 80 lives regularly on Sundays through Element.

— Had our largest offering to date today. Our people generously gave over $1400. As people connect with mission and vision they begin to give more. I believe that people WANT to give to something God will do.

— Volunteers are picking up. We ran out of volunteer cards today. It was encouraging to see people and hear people talking about volunteering. Out of all the things in this process, that has been the most challenging to me. I feel confident we can get people to come see our “product” (I know bad word) but we MUST build teams well. If we don’t have good teams and systems it won’t matter how many come to our services. I tend to be a Maverick, wanting to do everything myself so again, I need to get better at that.

— I am excited about this Sunday. Getting back in the theater, preaching, doing some different stuff in our service. It is our 2nd preview so not doing HUGE stuff but showing a different kind of Element service. Got a drama, and video feature this week. Wanting to show a different side of us.

— I forgot to call my mom on her birthday this week. Didn’t call till today (just a few days removed from Thursday). I am now known as the “Bad son” and bad in this case does not mean good.

— We worked on building 2 more pieces to our stage today. It will be nice to have those added for preview.

— I am amazed at all of this. That people want to come to our church. That God would choose me for this. That the team I have wants to work with me. BLOWN AWAY! God is so good. I have learned so much and can’t wait to get started tomorrow morning early. Adam and I are meeting at 7 at the office tomorrow to finish the stage. Going to play basketball with a couple guys from the church.

— OK, that’s the update. Will blog some more this week about what God is teaching me and Element stuff. Thanks to all who follow!


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Categories : Weekend Wrapup, church planting, updates

35 Days: 10 Hours: 12 minutes Until…

28 07 2007

OU KICKOFF! 98 posts on my blog and this is the first one about OU I think. Can’t wait for College football to start. I like NFL but I LOVE the Fall and college football. A chilled Saturday morning, College Football Gameday, McDonald’s breakfast with my kids, all the kids sporting their OU gear. LOVE IT! For those of you who want to watch the countdown (I know nobody does) you can watch it here. I know…I know… I’m sick! But I admit it.

Sooner born and bred,

Jeff


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Categories : personal

Why wait?

27 07 2007

God waits sometimes, you ever notice that? I mean, it seems sometimes that He waits until the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND to come through. Why does He do that? I’m working my way back through Genesis again (LOVE GENESIS)! I just read the story of Abraham and the faith He had in God. The story of being willing to sacrifice his own son. As I was reading I was again drawn to the verses in the story (v. 10 - 11). Abraham raised the knife to kill his son and “At that moment…” God spoke to him to stop. Why wait? Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego…When did God move? AFTER they were in the fire. Daniel? After he was in the Den. Paul and Silas? After they were in prison. Why wait? The waiting isn’t for God, who is it for? FOR US! I think so often we don’t step out and take risks for God cause we can’t see him working yet. What if, WHAT IF, God wants us to step into the fire first, brave the lions den, or be willing to sacrifice something of GREAT value before He steps in? And what if he doesn’t step in? Shadrach and the boys had it figured out. “Our God is able to save us from the fiery furnace. BUT EVEN IF HE DOESN’T WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN TO YOU OR YOUR IDOL.” They had a “Even if” faith not a “What if” faith. Why wait? For us! He waits for our benefit, so we can see our God come through!


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Categories : faith, personal

Thunderbirds, Serving, and Victory

25 07 2007

— Adam, Terri and I all served the local community college as volunteer ambassadors today at the annual Air Force Thunderbirds show. The show was AWESOME! I love air shows and watching that kind of stuff so it was cool to be a part of. About 12 - 14,000 people come out to watch. Thousands of cars, thousands are shuttled in and they literally shut down the major road to the college to get people out when it’s over. All lanes devoted to outgoing traffic. It was quite the site.

— Now on serving. What we did today really seemed pointless. I guess if anything the college knows that Element Church wants to serve. BUT, they didn’t really need us. When I go to events, I guess because of my personality, I always think of what could be done better. There were LOTS of things that could have been VERY different. As Adam and I were standing there being Ambassadors (doing nothing) we were brainstorming what we could offer the college next year to make it a better event. It’s one of those things where we stepped out and said “Let’s serve!” And it didn’t work. That’s going to happen. BUT instead of saying “That sucked let’s never do it again.” Why don’t we say “Man, you could do some really cool stuff at this event, lets do something that will make a HUGE impact.” I know this was a very small “step” but lots of churches won’t even take the initial step of trying something. Others try something and because it “fails” they’ll never try again. We won’t do that.

— Buckle up Maverick we’re about to take off. Now what my heart is burning over. I won’t go into the whole story of what caused this today but we got into a conversation with a tourist at the event about some spiritual issues. This guy was a believer and basically was debating with us that there is no victory in this life BUT the blood of Jesus is so powerful that it just overlooks who we are and finishes the work for us. I tell you what. I tried staying out of the conversation. Adam was very much holding his own but I had to jump in. If I hear another person, pastor, church, or movement talk about how we just can’t ever give our all, can’t have victory, have to keep on sinning cause we are so fouled up I’m gonna STINKIN‘ PUKE! Is the devil more powerful than the blood of Christ. Is sin so conquering in our lives that God can’t stinkin DESTROY IT! If there is no victory then I want out. I don’t want anything to do with a God who can’t fix my sin problem. Eve said “If we eat the fruit we will die.” The devil replied “NOOOO, you won’t die.” And guess what? He offers the same lie today! AND PEOPLE ARE FALLING FOR IT! No wonder there is no victory. No wonder people are left empty, unsatisfied, unfruitful and flat out depressed in their spiritual life. SIN CAUSES DEATH! My heart feels dead, empty and useless. MAN, I get fired up over this. The Life that Jesus offers is an abundant, overcoming, fulfilling, flat out DESTROY SIN AND KICK IT OUT kind of life. It’s high time that we LIVE our faith not waiver in it. That we let the blood FREE us instead of sin enslave us. That we show this dying world what it looks like to LIVE!

There, I said it. Man, that gets me going.

Fired up,

Jeff


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Categories : Serving, church planting, personal

Unplugged

24 07 2007

This Sunday Adam is speaking on our core value of worship. It will be weird for me to be at Element and NOT be speaking. I love preaching but I am very excited to hear Adam this week. We were talking in the office today about his sermon and then about what I’m speaking on at Preview on August 5th. We were both getting fired up about what God is going to say.

Had staff meeting today. Talked about developing teams and getting volunteers plugged in. That is really hard right now. Not only are we trying to just get people to come to our church, but when they come and feel connected we have to build teams. I assume for the “new” person it will take some time of building trust and ownership before they’ll jump in and serve in the church. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some GREAT people step up and serve already but to get where we want to go we really need to start building teams well. As we grow that is going to be vital.

That is definitely an area I need to grow as a leader. I can get up and preach a message every day but I need to work on building teams, executive issues, planning, etc. I like to dream and I’m not necessarily the greatest at planning that dream.

We talked a bunch about launch day and upcoming sermon series. I’ve been working on a sermon calendar. I’d like to have the sermon series ideas for the whole year planned out and then be several weeks ahead on having sermons (at least rough drafts) done. I think we are going to have some cool sermon series over the next year.

We’re going to have some very cool FTG (first time guest) follow up. Excited about what we’re going to do there. Also, I’m pumped about our launch day campaign. We’ll reveal that in the weeks to come.

Ok, those were random thoughts. (sorry Grant)


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Categories : Random, church planting, updates

Blog Link

24 07 2007

Adam has some good insight on worship today on his blog. Encourage you all to check out Adam’s and Grant’s blogs often. Just don’t skip mine okay!


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Categories : Link, team

Blog LInk

24 07 2007

Grant’s latest blog is really good. Both his and my latest kinda dovetail which is cool how God can work that out and place the same things on our hearts. Interesting!

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Link

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