Element Church Insider

Another weekend past, and four more great experiences at Element Church.  It was a HUGE Sunday as I shared the latest update from Impact AND preached on money.  OUCH!  Here are my ruminations on the day.

—  Felt VERY apprehensive about today’s message.  I’m usually nervous (I’d question anyone who isn’t at least a LITTLE bit nervous when preaching God’s Word), but this was different.  There was a LOT to share and I just felt really uneasy about the whole thing.  I think it ended up ok, but didn’t feel great going in.

—  My notes were an absolute WRECK.  Scribbles here, scratches there.  I think I adjusted the sermon all they way up to coming into the worship center, and even adjusted some on the fly due to time.

—  Typically I have 35 minutes in our schedule to deliver, this week I had 45 minutes and I used EVERY one of them and then some.  Apologies to 3rd service for my extensive talking.  HA

—  Since there was a TON to get through today, here is some of the Impact update I gave (You can watch the entire sermon on Tuesday HERE):

• Essentially we are in a state of pause.  Through the generosity of the people at Element Church, we have $500,000 in our Impact account right now.  This past Fall, we thought we were on the way to securing financing to start our remodel but it didn’t work out like expected.
• Essentially what it boils down to is we need more equity in our current property which we own.
• We have spent HOURS in prayer and discussion on what our next step is, and this is what I shared with the church.  As your pastor, I don’t know what to do next.  I simply don’t know.  But I am confident of this.  GOD DOES!
• We had initially decided to use the money that’s been given and START some smaller upgrades to our facility, but it just didn’t seem right.  I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit that we needed to wait.  So I’m asking you guys to join us in a season of prayer and fasting.  Starting this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, and continuing through Easter Sunday I want you to fast from something in your life and pray with us these two prayers every day:

1. For God’s wisdom.  Do we hold on to the money and watch how God provides the rest, or do we use what we have and start the project on a smaller scale?
2. This BOLD PRAYER.  “God, we need $2,000,000.”  Why $2,00o,000?  I was prayer walking around our property in December and just felt prompted to pray for that specific number, and now I’m asking you to join me in it.

• We are simply in a state of pause.  I don’t want to take matters into my own hands just because God’s not working on my time.  I want to do what GOD wants us to do.  More than anything, obedience is our success.
• So will you join us in prayer?  I’ll be posting more about this later this week.

—  We continued our sermon series called “Movement” today and talked about the 3rd mark of a movement…”Radical Generosity”!  Preached from Acts 4:32-5:16.  Here are some excerpts from the day:

• If anybody should talk about money it should be Christians and the church.  We have the ability to redeem it, put it into the purpose of building God’s Kingdom and making the name of Jesus famous.
• When we as Christians, together as the church, begin to live out these marks of a movement, we won’t have to TELL people about it, people will begin to TALK about us.
• The presence OF God prompted them to give LIKE God.  (They shared EVERYTHING they had)
• I don’t think giving is a HAVE to, I think it’s a GET to.
• The only reason we don’t want to give is because we believe it’s OURS in the first place.  IT’S NOT OURS!
• Here is the thing, it’s ALL God’s whether you believe it or not!
• God never intended for the government to have a welfare system, He intended for His church to look out for peoples welfare.
• We don’t GIVE money to God, we BRING it!  Why?  Because it’s already HIS!
• God doesn’t need money, but I need to give it because it shows that I’m putting Him FIRST.
• Tithing has very little to do with the church needing money.  It has EVERYTHING to do with you and your personal relationship to God.
• When I talk about tithing, I’m not trying to raise funds, I’m trying to raise your FAITH.  It takes ZERO faith to give out of what’s leftover.
• Most people CAN afford to give, we just have different affections.  If your affection is for Jesus you WILL give because Jesus is a giver.
• Giving is not a money issue, it’s a MINDSET.  It’s not a resource issue, it’s a RELATIONSHIP one!
• I could care less whether you ever give a penny to other people or to our church.  Ultimately, I care that Jesus is Lord of your life, and until you are faithful in giving to the Lord He is NOT the Lord of your life.

—  My prayer going into today was that SOMEONE would be set free financially.  Financial freedom has NOTHING to do with getting more money.  It has EVERYTHING to do with being free from the CONTROL of it!

—  Announced a gas buy down we have coming up on March 31st.  We will be pumping gas, washing windshields and paying down the price of gasoline by fifty cents a gallon to as many people as we can service between 10 am & 2 PM at TWO different locations.  The reason we are doing this?  JUST BECAUSE!  We want to lead the way in generosity to our community.

—  If you’d like to volunteer at the buy down you can do that HERE.  We are gonna need a BUNCH of people to help us serve our city.  Please take this opportunity to help us be the hands and feet of Jesus to people.

—  This past Friday we did what’s called a “stop and drop” at Dazbog coffee shop off Vandehei/Gardenia on the North side of town.  The AWESOME owners up there allowed us to pay for $1,000 worth of customers this past Friday.  They gave each customer a card that said “Just Because” on it from us.  I heard the line for the drive through was out of the parking lot.

— To close our service today I gave everyone a “Just Because” card and challenged us all to do something generous for someone this week and give them that card.  Buy someone’s coffee.  Leave a 50% tip instead of 15% at a restaurant.  Pay for someone’s meal behind you in the drive through.  Whatever it is, let’s lead the way in generosity.

—  We’d love to hear what you do for people with your generosity!  Let us know via Facebook or email how you served someone else with what God gave you.

—  That’s gonna be it for today!  Thanks for letting me share my heart with you guys today!  I love you Element Church!

Till the end,

Jeff

Powerful day at Element Church today.  Praying for HUGE things to come out of it!  Here are my ruminations.

—  All men, this is your friendly reminder that Valentines day is TOMORROW!  Hopefully you won’t be one of the guy’s crowding the aisles and picking through the leftover cards tonight!

—  Continued our sermon series called “Movement” today.  Trying to answer the question “What should be seen in a movement?” and today we talked about BOLD PRAYERS!  I was SO EXCITED for this message.  Was a HUGE challenge to me, and I believe it could be a GAME CHANGER for our church if we truly grasp it.

• How you pray and what you pray for, reflects what you believe about God.
• I don’t pray because God WILL answer, I pray because God IS the answer!  Prayer is more about seeking HIM than it is Him satisfying OUR requests.
• When I say “bold prayers”, I’m not just talking about words we speak in moments of desperation, but who we are every moment of every day.
• It’s prayer that sparks a movement and it’s prayer that will sustain a movement.  How will you know where the movement is going if you don’t seek the MOVER in prayer?
• God’s direction for our lives doesn’t typically come out of desperate prayers, but deliberate ones.
• The 1st church never pursued safety, they were CONSUMED with pursuing the Savior, and pursuing the Savior is not always safe.
• In the midst of pressure they didn’t pray for protection.  When faced with danger they didn’t pray for deliverance.  When their boldness threatened their life, they asked the Lord for MORE boldness.
• Their prayers weren’t defined by what God could do for THEM, but by what they could do for GOD!
• I don’t think God’s offended by what we pray for and how big our prayers are.  I think God’s more offended by what we NEVER pray for and how SMALL our prayers are.
• When we get to Heaven, we’re not gonna regret praying too big, we’re gonna regret not praying big enough.
• Prayer is not meant to manipulate God but to motivate me.  It’s not meant to convince God but to change my heart.
• We have to have a big enough faith in God we can ask Him for anything, but we also need faith in a BIG ENOUGH God we can handle Him saying “no”.
• Our prayers should be so big we don’t believe it can happen, but our GOD is so big we can’t help not to.

—  To conclude the service we had placed rocks on every seat in the worship center.  I talked about the Old Testament practice of building monuments to signify God’s answered prayers and promises fulfilled.  We used our rocks to symbolize what God CAN do and what we believe He’s GOING to do in response to our bold prayers.

— As the band sang the closing song we had people come up and place their rock in a tall glass container, somewhat building our own monument, and then we gave them another rock with Acts 4:29-30 on it. “Reach more people and do impossible things”

—  Starting Wednesday, February 22nd, I’m challenging our entire church to fast from something in our life and join together as a church in praying our BOLD PRAYERS through Easter Sunday!

— Wednesday the 22nd is Ash Wednesday, and signifies the beginning of Lent.  (46 days leading up to Easter Sunday)  It can be something that’s just practiced as a part of tradition, I want us to TRULY use it as a time of sacrifice and seeking of God.

—  If you are praying a bold prayer, we’d LOVE to know about it.  Facebook us or email us your prayer and we’ll join you in it.

—  This coming Sunday, I’ll be sharing a BOLD PRAYER that I’m gonna ask you as a church to join me on.  It has to do with our Impact initiative and facility remodel.  We’ll be updating EXACTLY where we are and sharing a HUGE prayer request with you.  If you are an Elementer you NEED to be here for that word.

—  Also, don’t forget that on Sunday March 4th, Lord willing I’ll be sharing a message on “How can I be and what does it mean to be a Christian”?  It will be a clear Gospel message.  Please be praying about who YOU can invite to come and hear about Jesus that week.

—  I truly believe that the enemy HATES a church that prays and the Lord HONORS one that does.  There is something special about a church that prays TOGETHER.  We see that in the first church in the book of Acts.  They prayed consistently, courageously and convincingly.

—  I have a Community group that focus’ on prayer!  Right now it’s just ME, but anyone is invited to come on Tuesdays to the worship center at Element from noon – 1 PM.  I’m there every Tuesday.  Some music is playing and I just spend that lunch hour praying BOLD PRAYERS for our church.  If you want to be a part of this prayer group, contact me HERE.  Enter through our office doors and around to the worship center.

—  Alright, that’s all I got.  My mom is gonna be in church tonight and then is staying the night with us.  Looking forward to hanging out with her.

Till the end,

Jeff

Typing up my ruminations here while watching the big game.  (Super Bowl that is)  A little disappointed with the commercials this year.  For the most part they are NOT funny and TOO racy.  (I know, I’m old.  But not as old as Madonna)  Felt weird coming home after 3rd service today and getting to hang out all afternoon long at home.  It’s only been 4 months since we added the 4th service but it’s hard to remember what it was like without it.  GREAT start to our new series today, here are ruminations.

—  Found out that TWO people said “YES” to Jesus and accepted Christ as Savior today! WOO HOO!  If only for the ONE!

—  Those two people were first time guests AND we didn’t even give an invitation.  LOVE it.

—  We were right at our average attendance today and packed everybody in to 3 services.  If you are a regular at Element and could attend either 1st or 4th service it would help us a TON!

—  2nd and 3rd service are BY FAR our most popular services, ESPECIALLY for first time guests.  Each seat represents a soul that can hear about Jesus!

—  As we’ve been talking about, we are offering extended worship in our 4th service.  If you like the music portion of Element and enjoy extra singing, that service would be a great opportunity for you.  If you are an Elementer, PLEASE at least consider attending one of those two services.  In doing so you really are helping us tell more people about Jesus!

—  Was glad we only had 3 services today.  Had a little bit of a cold or something this weekend so my voice was already rough coming into the day.

— I actually started seeing a voice therapist to try and help me prepare and care for my voice.  I’m a pretty aggressive preacher (if you haven’t noticed), and I want my voice to be as strong as possible.

—  We started our series called “Movement” today and asked the question “What should be seen in a movement?”.  That will be our big question for the whole series.  We’re taking a look at the first church in the book of Acts and the qualities that made them a movement.  The big idea for today was “Life Transformation”.  Here are some excerpts on the day:

• We may not use the word movement anymore to describe the church, but it’s really what we are, or at least what we should be.
• We’re not talking about the church you’ve always dreamed of, or a church devoid of problems but the church that God designed.  A church that God desires.
• We’re not gonna deny we have problems as a church, we’re just not gonna let them keep us from pursuing our God sized purpose.
• I want to pursue a mission and vision SO BIG that if God doesn’t show up we’re destined to fail.
• The Apostles weren’t satisfied with 3,000 people because they understood something.  They weren’t a mega church when compared to how many people STILL didn’t know Jesus, and that to them was a MEGA problem.
• God doesn’t want you to do what THEY did, He wants you to do what only you can do…and WHEN you do, people will notice you’re an ORDINARY person doing OUT of the ordinary things because you serve an EXTRAordinary God.
• When you hear about Jesus you might be taught about life, but if you’ve BEEN with Jesus your life will be transformed.
• If people watched the way I live, could they say “He’s been with Jesus?”.
• Without life transformation there is no movement, and where God brings a movement there WILL BE life transformation.
• It’s one thing to live the kind of life that MAN takes notice of.  It’s another thing entirely to live the kind of life GOD takes notice of.  (Job)
• A lot of us could talk a LOT about Jesus, the question is, would Jesus want to talk about me?
• I’m not talking about being perfect.  I’m talking about being different.
• I think sometimes we read the book of Acts and think “Well, that was then”.  But friends I’m telling ya…I read the book of Acts and think “WHY NOT NOW?”.
• We are gathered here today because 120 or so people were CRAZY enough to believe that God could actually do what He said He could do.

—  I’m SO EXCITED about this series.  This next weeks message could truly be LIFE CHANGING for many people.  I believe the five things we’re going to talk about in this series will be so inspiring, encouraging and challenging.  CAN’T WAIT to see what happens.  Trusting God for BIG THINGS!

—  Don’t forget, on March 4th, Lord willing I’ll be giving a CLEAR Gospel presentation.  Please be thinking about and praying for who you could invite to come to church that week to hear about the LIFE CHANGING message of Jesus.  (If God could save PAUL He can save ANYBODY)

—  I challenge you to read the book of Acts this month as we go through the series.  We will be in Acts the whole time and it would be a GREAT time to read Acts again, or read it for the first time.

—  Enter worship and prayer experience is this Tuesday night.  This is a GREAT time of community as we seek God in worship and prayer.  6:30 PM & childcare IS provided!

—  I believe the MOVEMENT of God is still going.  It’s just up to us whether we will join it or not!

—  Alright, I’m gonna watch this final quarter of the Super Bowl.  GO GIANTS!!

Till the end,

Jeff