Cravings Part 3 (Jesus Stalkers)

20 08 2007

…Here is the problem. God says “You’ve got these cravings in your soul. They were given to you by Me, to drive you to Me, for only IN Me can they be fully met.” So what do we do? We go everywhere else BUT God to have our cravings met. What does that create? Jesus Stalkers.

Our churches are full of people who are always around Jesus’ house. They’ve read all His material. They can tell you all about Him and even tell others that they know Him but if Jesus were to be asked “Do you know this person?” His response would be “I’ve never seen them.” They’re Jesus stalkers.

Jesus stalkers are AROUND Jesus but they’re not found IN Him. They like the benefits of being around Jesus but they’re not willing to surrender to Him. They enjoy the pleasures of the world and in turn aren’t producing any fruit.

Mark 4:18-19 in the parable of the sower describes the Jesus Stalker this way: “…all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.”

Notice this plant doesn’t whither or die like the first two in the parable. It just ceases to produce fruit. They love being “associated” with Jesus but they don’t produce a thing cause they don’t really know Him. There is still a “form” of godliness but their hearts are far from Him, and the danger is it will produce a DEAD plant if not taken care of.

Anyway, cravings…We all have them and they can only be met IN Him. I don’t know about you but I DON’T want to be a Jesus Stalker. I want to be found IN Him for then my soul is COMPLETELY satisfied.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Personal

Weekend Wrapup

19 08 2007

Wow! I know I say that a lot. One more week of Unplugged. It just doesn’t seem real. Here are a few thoughts about the weekend.

— We had 36 today. That is the lowest since we started on June 15th. There were several families gone today that we knew were going to be gone. We still had a great group and once connection card was filled out. It was from a couple who were a return guest and filled out the card for the first time.
— I don’t know what the offering was, Terri will count that tomorrow.
— MAN was it weird not having Grant and Terri there today. Grant has been 100% SOLD OUT to this since the moment I told him about it. I cannot imagine being here without him. We need more Christians like Grant in our churches. I mean that! Grants and absolute STUD for the faith!
— God has given us an AWESOME core group. Again, Unplugged served it’s purpose perfectly for us. It did what it was supposed to do. Next week we’re going to talk about how we take it to the next level. We need to take it to the next level.
— We are having our first “All church Potluck!” HA! We’re going old school. We aren’t having church on Labor Day weekend so a young couple opened up their home for us all to get together for a Labor Day BBQ/Potluck.
— AWESOME to have Adam back today. I stood in back for the whole worship set just blown away at what God has done and who God has sent to us. Again, having a worship guy you love and trust makes all the difference in the world.
— Keenan and Katrina get their weekend off this coming weekend. My how they have grown. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do through them. We wouldn’t have some key people were it not for them. I can’t wait to hire Katrina and let her REALLY focus on e:kidz.
— We’ll be revealing some cool stuff on here in the next couple of weeks. Be watching for it.
— OU football starts in 13 days. Can’t wait.
— Perry Noble had the entire Clemson football team in his church this Sunday, I wonder if I could get all of OU to ours? LOL

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Updates

Cravings Part 2

19 08 2007

…So we developed our Core Values. Later that Fall I picked up a book by Erwin McManus called Soul Cravings. It only confirmed the values we had stated. Erwin widdled it down to three areas that all humans crave but in those three areas he talked about all of our values.

Through that book and through my quiet time with God over the past year and a half I’ve come to understand one VERY crucial part of these cravings. These cravings of the soul. They can ONLY be met IN God. “In” NOT by Him. Rain is sent BY God. Money can be given BY God. Health can be given BY God. The cravings of our soul are only met IN Him.

We don’t like that. We want to have God but find our Life in worldly pleasures.
We want to have God but keep some of the “little” sins we enjoy so we don’t REALLY change. (Which doesn’t really make sense cause deep down we really long to be better. To not hold on to those things)
We want to have God but not commit to HIS family. We want to have God but worship other things in our lives. We want to have God and find our significance in our job, our title, our possessions, our accomplishments.

We want to have the “good” parts of God and hope he just GIVES what our souls craves. THAT CAN’T HAPPEN! We HAVE to give ourselves COMPLETELY to God. To find what our soul craves we MUST find ourselves IN Him. We use words like “SURRENDER” “DEDICATE” “DEVOTE” to describe this, but however you describe it it MUST be done to satisfy the soul.

The problem the church has is it’s full of Jesus Stalkers. What’s a Jesus stalker? Tune into Part 3 tomorrow.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Personal

Cravings Part 1

19 08 2007

We are finishing up today our look at the Core Values of Element Church. Hard to believe we only have one more week of Unplugged after today. I still feel so TOTALLY unprepared for what is about to happen. Almost seems surreal.

In March (06) Grant, Terri, Sabrina and myself sat down and started talking about this church plant thing. We had just “accepted” the call of God to come to Cheyenne. We didn’t know anything about church planting, didn’t know anything about Cheyenne and didn’t know anything about the people we would be reaching but we knew something. People CRAVE things.

Not like I crave White Castle hamburgers or how my wife craves Mexican food. Not how I CRAVE coffee in the mornings or how we crave our favorite of moms home cooked meals. Cravings of the soul. We knew that deep down within every one of us were things, the SAME things, that we all crave. Why not start there with core values. Why not make the cravings of our soul the core values of our church?

We didn’t even have a name for the church at that point. I still have the notebook from that March night when we started brainstorming core values and church names. We’ve wrestled over these values. We’ve tweaked them, changed the “names” of them and studied them. We came to the point of six core values.

Life – We all long to be ALIVE. We want to live. Not just physically, but we want to have REAL life. A life that matters. An abundant life.

Family – We all long to belong. We want to be a part of something bigger than us. From the earliest of ages we want to fit in, to be a part, to be accepted. There is a reason for peer pressure. We long to belong. There is a reason that young men/women call gangs their “family”. It’s a craving.

Change – We all long to be better than what we are. We want to be “good” people. No matter how bad or good a person is, deep down we want to be better than what we are. We want to change.

Worship – We all long to know something is out there that is bigger than me. Something or someone has this all figured out. Someone cares for me and knows me. I believe we all LONG to give ourselves to something/someone else.

Significance – We all long to be worth something. We desperately want a life with meaning, purpose and a sense of destiny. We all want our lives to mean something beyond the moment, beyond the day, in light of eternity.

Allegiance – We all long to be devoted to something. When we find a healthy sense of life, family, change, worship and significance, we find a proper placement of our allegiance.

Part 2 later today…

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Personal

EXCITED!

18 08 2007

The next few weeks are going to be fun. Adam and I sat down on Wednesday and made a comprehensive list of things that need to get done before launch. WOW! Lists are great but this one is HUGE. There is so much left to get done. We are in for some very cool stuff.

Keenan came and met with Adam and I on Thursday to brainstorm some video drama ideas for our CSI series. If we can pull it off it is going to be really cool. It will all tie into our launch day.

Launch Day — We are also planning some great stuff leading up to and for launch. It is going to be a blast. We’re working on first time guest stuff, promotions, worship, videos, etc. There is even discussion of another gas buy down. WHAT? Discussion still at this point.

We’re going to be launching a new website along with our launch day promotions. As the release of our promotion happens I’ll post some very cool graphics on here.

Two more Sundays at Unplugged, we’ll take labor day off and then IT begins. We’ll be in the theater full time starting September 9th. I’m loving it.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Random, Updates

Partners

16 08 2007

No, not like the cowboy lingo “Hey Pardner!”. Partners, for us, are going to be what most churches call members. Why? We wanted a term that was more active than “member”. A member belongs to something, a partner DOES something. A member GETS something, a partner GIVES something. We want people to become partners WITH us in ministry not members OF a ministry we perform. Now, I know there are PLENTY of churches with members who do a TON of ministry (HPCC), however, we felt for us and what we would be doing that the word “partner” meant so much more. Check out the definitions of the words:

member – a person, animal, plant group, etc., that is part of a society, party, community, taxon, or other body.

partner – a person who shares or is associated with another in some action or endeavor; associate.

Associated in some action or endeavor with another. That’s what we want. We sat down at staff meeting and developed steps to get people into partnership. Clear, simple, meaningful steps. To be a partner at Element Church it is going to be WAY more than “What you know about the Evangelical Church” (although we will teach it clearly). More than “What you know about our doctrine” (although we will teach it clearly) It will ALSO be what you do WITH us. A partner in Element Church will commit to 3 G’s: Groups (involved in a Life Group); Giving (financially to Element Church); and Gifts (Serving as a volunteer according to their gifts).

Partners! A person who shares with another in some action or endeavor; associate.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Partnership

What keeps us going!

16 08 2007

Church planting is hard! Getting people to come to a church that doesn’t really exist yet, as you can imagine, can be VERY difficult. Here is an email we received last week from an individual. I did not ask for permission to use it so I won’t include names or even genders but wanted to share this.

Hi my name is — and I have visited your church twice now and I really like it. The vision of your church falls in to an area that I am very passionate about. There are few churches today willing to step up and break out of the traditional noose, country club, everyone has a membership association. Sure inside the church walls are pretty and decorated so finely but, if you really want to draw people in you have to go out. Scripture says take up your cross and follow me everyday. I want to do that. I want to be a slave for Christ. I hope that I can visit with your ministry team in the near future. Until then I hope your day is blessed!

We received another email from someone that was cool…

I wanted to touch base with you on getting involved. I’ve been sort of stepping back and praying, but feel the “green light” from the Lord at this point.

This person has a couple of “passions” in ministry that they would like to get plugged in to at Element. God is good. He continues to bring us people hungry to serve and to connect and help connect people with life.

Following Christ

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Volunteers

Systems

13 08 2007

MAN! I’ve been thinking a lot about systems today. Doing A LOT of reading on systems. Researching systems. First of all, before anyone says, “The Holy Spirit grows a church!”, let me say that I believe the Holy Spirit grows a church. BUT, show me a church without systems and I’ll show you a church that probably isn’t growing. What we are doing that got us to 60 people will not take us to 120. What gets us to 120 won’t get us to 240. You get the picture. So tomorrow at staff meeting we’re talking systems.

— What is the next step for FTG’s (First Time Guests)?
— When someone begins serving what’s the next step?
— How do we keep multiplying Life Groups?
— How do we get people plugged into volunteering?
— How do we begin to multiply leaders?
— How do we do follow up and when do we need volunteers to do it for/with us?
— How do we train Life Group leaders?

Moses had to deal with it. (read this) He had to eventually bring alongside some men to listen to the people. Deal with issues. Judge what was going on.

The early church dealt with it. (read this) The apostles could only do so much. They had to decide that their most important task was to preach, teach and direct. They needed others to do the tasks of ministry.

Moses needed systems or he would wear himself and the people out. He was capped on what he could do. The apostles needed systems, the result? The word of God CONTINUED to be spread and the number of believers greatly increased. What if they wouldn’t have developed systems? Would the word of God NOT have spread rapidly. Would the believers not have GREATLY increased.

Element Church needs systems. Everything needs to have a process to get us to the next step. To get us to the next level. I’ve REALLY been feeling that lately.

I think many churches lack systems. SO, they get to the level their system can handle and they stop growing, they are capped. We must do our part to enable the ability to grow and the Holy Spirit will send the growth. I’m still learning this but I HAVE to learn it because I want the Gospel to spread and believers to increase RAPIDLY.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting

Weekend Wrapup

12 08 2007

45 today at Unplugged. We had a great service. Adam and Amber were gone so I led the singing while Katie (young lady in the church) played keyboard and Curtis (Air Force chopper pilot) played djembe. Katie and Curtis did great! I won’t say anything about the third member of the group.

— Like I said, we had 45. We had one new face at Unplugged today. A young lady who came to our preview service. No one was “brand new” today. We are developing a GREAT core group of people. Givers, servants, followers of Jesus. Great age range too. We have a plethora of kids and yet we have some in their 50′s and I won’t guess the ages of a couple of our older ones. HA!

— Next level! I started thinking today of the next level. I need to work on that this week. I feel like we’ve capped right now for what we are doing. Unplugged has DEFINITELY served it’s purpose. We’ve developed teams. Established relationships and cast vision for Element Church. But it’s time. It’s time for the next step and that step happens in one month when we “go live”! We’ll have 4 preview services through September and then launch day on Oct. 7th.

— Every church has it’s barriers. I truly believe we’re bumping ours. So, how do we go beyond the barrier. How do we break 100, 200, 500, 1000. I believe that is on the horizon. I don’t want to limit God and yet at the same time I don’t want to be cavalier in my assessment of where we will go.

— I love our people. Just had some GREAT conversations with amazing followers of Christ who God has sent our way. I told them today at Unplugged how honored we are that they choose to come to church with us. We seriously could not have got this far without the many people that have connected to Element Church to give and serve.

— Dude, my mind is filling with things I want to write out. I’ll have to let my brain ooze on here this week. Some cool things are bubbling up that we need to leverage for the Kingdom and for our church.

— Where will God take us. What can we accomplish. I often wonder if I get in the way of what God could do? He doesn’t NEED me yet he CHOOSES me to accomplish HIS task. That blows my mind. I don’t want to be a limiter. That challenges me. Convicts me. I hope I’m up to the task.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Updates

Sunday Morning Expectation

12 08 2007

I’m excited about today! I love Sundays. Today was a little weird cause it felt like we should be going back to the theater. I had dreams all night about setting up at Carmike so when we awoke to my alarm at 6 am I felt like I was running late. Last week was a 4:30 am rise and we met at the office at 6:30 am to get our stage pieces loaded up. Anyway, I’m excited about this morning.

Adam is gone (which I am NOT excited about) so I am helping to lead worship this morning with another gal (Katie) who is playing keyboard and our djembe player (Curtis). It’s been MONTHS since I’ve needed to lead worship and let me tell you…The difference a dependable, passionate, real, talented worship leader gives is HUGE! Quality worship makes ALL the difference, at least for me. It just sets the stage for everything in the service.

We are talking about the core value of Significance today. We all long to be worth something. To live lives that have meaning, destiny, and purpose. To accomplish God sized things. The problem is if we open the doors of churches across our country we would find countless “Christians” who are settling to survive when we are made to THRIVE.

I truly believe that as we were being formed in the womb God was also forming for us, in advance, things that ONLY we could accomplished. GOOD WORKS for us to do. (See Ephesians 2:10) The amazing part is that God DOES NOT need to use us, BUT, I believe He chooses to use us because it enables us to become people of significance IN HIM. He knows we CRAVE it so He let’s us live it. Significance is NOT something God gives me, it is something that He has ENABLED me to be IF I’ll follow Him completely.

Anyway, we see significance often as the world does. The world gives meaning, typically, only to the large monumental achievements. The cool thing about REAL significance is that we have it if we just live out what God intended for me, REGARDLESS of what it is!

I think this can REVOLUTIONIZE peoples lives if we can grasp it!

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting

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