That's right, I'm using every digital means possible to get help. Here's what we are looking for:
Invite as many people as possible to Lifehouse on December 6th,
Help us FIND some necessary props for Christmas decorations.
Here's how you can invite friends for Red Carpet Sunday:
To invite friends and family who are NOT currently in church, send them an evite from our website here or from Facebook here.
Get a bunch of flyers and pass them out to neighbors, co-workers, friends, family.
Ask them to "commit" to joining you for Red Carpet Sunday on December 6th at 9:30 for breakfast AND 9:45 to get seated for the 10 am service.
Once they commit to coming, fill out a ticket with their information and turn it in at the registration table, so that they can be entered into a drawing to win a VIP package of gifts.
follow up with them and encourage them to actually come on December 6th.
Here's what we want/ need for Christmas decorations BEFORE December 6th: (we would need to keep decorations for the whole month of December, so don't lend us your tree if you want it for Christmas)
3-4 normal size outdoor lamp stands- would like 2 with 3 lights and 1 or 2 with 1 light.
large wreath, probably at least 4 foot in diameter,
2- 12' Christmas trees (preferably pre-lit)
2- 9' Christmas trees (preferably pre-lit)
2 old fashion candle holders (the ones you see in movies that people would use to carry around their house and light a room)
Thanks for your passion and help. Keep inviting friends!
Sharing with you our steps in preparation for a new year (for church planters and pastors). I'm including in this several resources and links that might help you as you approach the end/ beginning of the year.
1. Evaluate/ assess the following: personal life, ministry life, church life. Goal should be to invite leadership team to honestly and candidly evaluate how they are doing personally, how YOU are doing as a leader, how their ministry is doing, and then, how the overall church is doing.
We have worked hard to create a culture that is honest, candid, and willing to embrace the brutal (in love) facts.
Honesty and candidness are two way streets. Usually, I have to be willing to take honesty and opinions on the chin several times before my team trusts me enough, that they'd be willing to hear my brutal honesty of their leadership and ministries.
2. Review all evaluations and condense them into one document. Here's ours from this year.
3. Leadership Advance or gathering point: we go away for a day and a half each November for prayer and planning. Here's what we do when we get away:
Spiritual renewal: as leaders, we're often working in ministry, that it's easy for us to start running on "E" and that leads toward burnout. So, I encourage and challenge our leaders to get renewed and refocused on their personal life.
Celebrate "wins": we take time to talk about the great things God did in us and through us this year.
Review the combined evaluation form to determine: what we need to keep doing? what do we need to stop doing? and what do we need to do better?
Cast vision for next year. Based on prayer, vision, and evaluation, we're able to make a fair and prophetic look at what God is calling us to do next year. This should certainly start in the heart of the leader and be embraced by the entire leadership team.
4. Theme for next year: as I just mentioned, it's my responsibility to hear from God, and determine the prophetic "season" or direction of our church as we transition into a new year. Couple of thoughts on themes and annual vision statements:
This isn't biblical, but it's also not unbiblical. Just realize that there are no expectations for having a statement or theme for every year. I have personally adopted a prayer focus as we approach closing out one year and entering a new one. There are times when I am confident that God gave me clear insight into what would happen broadly in the life of our church.
It's important to evaluate the "season" of the church. Like the sons of Isaachar, we must be people who "know the times and seasons".
The theme must be born of God and focus on the positive direction of the church.
A theme might not end on December 31, so ask God if you are to continue to point towards this years theme. Additionally, a theme usually builds on last years. So, if God has been "pruning" then it might be time for growth, then fruit.
5. Calendar planning. Take time now to look over next years calendar, look for important holidays that must be planned for and around. Pay attention to "pitfall" dates on the calendar. Determine when new sermon series will begin, and when is the best time for a Friend Day, baptisms, and vacation time.
6. Planning your preaching calendar. Nelson Searcy has an incredible resource on planning your 2010 preaching calendar (listen to it here). This should be done with great prayer and fasting. Believe and ask God to speak to you NOW about what to speak on throughout 2010.
Ok, gave way more content than should probably be dissemenated via blog or email. But wanted to provide the best information to those who need it.
What do you do as you lead out of one year and toward a New Year?
I'm really enjoying preaching the Gravity sermon series. The whole premise: just like there are basic "laws" of the universe and nature, that we must cooperate with, there are fundamental principles established by God to govern life. We don't have to like them, but we must cooperate with them.
It was fun to welcome 2 tree frogs to the stage and share the preaching platform with them. They did as good a job as I did, some may say better. I illustrated the "frog syndrome", explaining how we can adapt to destructive situations. Sin is out to destroy us.
Jesus used nature to teach some of the deepest principles of life and God's Kingdom. A kernel of corn or a grain of wheat can illustrate better than a thousands words that we must "die to live".
Just a thought:I present the toughest messages with the highest level of creativity and illustration. Why? I believe that creativity and powerful illustrations invite people to lower their guards and presuppositions about God, religion, and the Bible. Great illustrations are memorable, and when the TRUTH of God's Word is presented in a memorable way, the Holy Spirit has room to bring it back to remembrance in our hearts.
Privileged, favorite moments don't occur often but when they do, enjoy them. Revel in them! And that's just what we did at Lifehouse 2 weeks ago. We hosted our first raucous baptism gathering following our morning service. Here's what I loved about it:hundreds of people from Lifehouse were able to celebrate with the 10-12 that were baptized,
it felt more like a family celebration than a religious ceremony,
we screamed and cheered wildly for those who were making their public declaration of faith in Jesus,
the theater was transformed into sacred ground, a place where so many have made decisions to follow and grow in their decision for Christ. Now, it has become a place where we can also celebrate those decisions through the next step of baptism,
the water was warm (thanks Don for getting the gas-powered heater to warm up the water)
I love firsts, so it was cool that it was our first baptism at the theater (and only a week after the previous cinema company moved out,
I got baptized (well, not in a theological, sacrament sense, but in a chucked in the water like a play toy by Pastor Dave sense),
Here are some cool photos:
Congratulations to all who were baptized!
Some changes to our next baptism, coming soon:
I'd like to invite the person who invited the baptism candidate to share their personal story of how they met, introduced Jesus to the new Jesus-follower,
Invite the friend to baptized the candidate.
As the lead pastor, I want to give away to others this awesome moment, rather than holding on to it. Let's pass around the joy and victory.
There are elemental laws, forces, principles of nature and universe that "operate" to meticulous perfection. Mankind, especially scientists for thousands of years, has worked to discover “how” these laws work. However, they always work, whether we know or understand them. So, our goal is to not only figure out how they work, but more importantly, to cooperate with them.
All of these forces and laws are so finely "tuned" to perfection that to the objective observer, the whole of existence can be described as nothing less than the “Elegant Universe".
The force of gravity is perfect, but it didn’t have to be that way. Newton discovered and theorized gravity (the force of attraction between any 2 atoms). Gravity is usually undetectable, but with great mass can come significant gravity, i.e. on earth, which makes apples fall from trees, but also keeps the moon in orbit (9.81m/s2 or 32ft/s2).
Gravity on earth doesn’t change because the mass of earth doesn’t change, but what if it did? Exact pull keeps not only us from being thrown form earth as it spins, it keeps certain gases in our atmosphere in and others out. It keeps sea water in the ocean, and air breathable. That’s why if you go to higher elevations, it’s harder to breathe. Atmospheric pressure (based on gravity) is lower, which means fewer O2 molecules concentrated per unit of volume of air.
Newton figured out most of the formulas that we still use to this day, and he didn’t even know WHY it worked. Einstein came along and wrote theory, discovered laws of relativity, including gravity.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t get it.” That’s okay. Remember, you don’t have to understand the laws for them to work. Sometimes things do work as we think, like a bowling ball sinking in water. We certainly try to understand, more importantly cooperate with and live in harmony with these “laws”.
Then, there are times when these laws don't work as we expect. Then what do we do?
For sake of illustration, what about this 10 lbs bowling ball that floats? Not what we expect, right?
Explanation: density is the key (mass in volume). Density of water (about 1 g/cm3, or 8lbs/gal). If the density of the bowling balls are greater than the density of water, they'll sink. If less, then they'll float.
Don’t always work as we think they should, sometimes even want to fight them. We can try to resist, and become frustrated, or fight them to own misfortune and destruction.
Similarly, there are fundamental principles in human life that are always in operation, whether we know or understand them. And like the laws of nature, it is always best to live in harmony and cooperation with these principles.
However, sin messed up natural tendencies and instincts, reversed our innate understanding, more importantly to cooperate. Sin turned everything upside-down, broken.
Our sin nature is out to destroy us. Like someone with an urge to jump from high places, which everyone agrees is contrary to nature and a destructive tendencies (Psychologists would call it Masochistic/ Self-Defeating Personality Disorder).
The Bible states that sin fractured our nature, our understanding, and even messed up the whole of nature, by inserting death and sin into a perfect world.
Here's one example of how sin messed things up. When God designed creations, it was absent of death and destruction. However, through sin, death entered into our world, death led to the basic instinct of self-preservation, which leads to all sorts of evil, especially selfishness.
We are hard-wired by our fractured nature to be selfishness. Even my "perfect" daughters say things like, “I want” and "It's mine", too often. We are constantly looking out for MY needs. We want the last cookie.
This instinctive selfishness doesn’t preserve us, however, but actually destroys us and the relationships with others that we value.
When we follow our natural tendencies, it's similar to following the urge to jump from a cliff against the force of gravity. However, instead of protecting or liberating us, it destroys us and others.
Sin is always out to destroy us, and therefore, our nature is a destructive force in our life. Read John 10:10. Were not not alone, as soon as sin entered world back in Eden, mankind has been living under it’s cruel curse. Even Jesus’ disciples show the self-protecting, self-exalting cycle with all it's selfish instincts: Read John 13:3-8, 12-17.
This is a counter-intuitive model of life, that goes against everything instinctive and selfish.
Jesus came to restore our lives back to the original design, help us re-discover the basic principles of true life so that we would not live destructive lives leading to death, but so that we could truly live in cooperation with God and in harmony with His perfect plan. Now, read the full verse from John 10:10.
So, what can we learn from Jesus teaching that will help us prosper, live in harmony with God’s absolute principles of life so that we can experience true life and blessing, as Jesus promised in John 13:17?
Here's the Big Idea: To be first, be last!
No, were not in kindergarten anymore! So, we’re not pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line, well unless you're driving down the road in rush hour traffic... But Jesus wasn’t talking about trying to get to first place in line, but about posturing for fame, greatness, recognition, and self-preservation.
His completely counter-intuitive lessons challenge us to stop following our natural, sinful tendencies that lead toward the destruction of all things, and start following His way and listening to God’s Spirit inside of us, leading us toward a new way of living and thinking.
What does it mean to “be last”?
If we want to be greatest, become the servant of all. If we strive to be in charge as a master, then we must follow His example and become a servant in the most humble of circumstances.
This isn’t about looking down on yourself, or having low self-esteem or any lack of self-worth. Jesus had great self-worth and a knowledge of His value and position with the Father, as clearly stated in John 13:3-4.
Just the opposite is the case, when we’re aware of our true value and worth to God, then we stop fighting and posturing. We stop living so cut-throat, and following the self-defeating life that leads to destruction. Then, we can willing serve others, because we’re not looking out for our interests but God’s.
By trying to be first or greatest or most recognized or to be see as important, we fall into the self-defeating, destructive trap that destroy us and leave us as the least. We become a slave to sin and in bondage to the very things we seek. Money becomes a snare, fame a curse, and power a tool for destruction.
BUT when we take on the role of a servant (counter-intuitive), we reverse the forces of sin, and embrace a whole new way of true life that Jesus offers.
TO BE LAST means to serve others, rather than ruling over them. Preferring others ahead of ourselves. Wanting the best for them, as much as for ourselves. Lift others up rather than always wanting to puff ourselves up. To be humble and bend down, while others stand proud. To wash feet while others refuse to ever do the work of the slave.
Do you want to get ahead in this life? You may achieve it, only to arrive at that end, and discover that it gave you the opposite results as you expected.
Jesus’ teaching is NOT complicated. It’s just so contrary to our instinctive way of living, that it seems wrong, weak, “it’ll never work”. But we, and our world, are the ones who are broken, not this teaching.
Jesus reveals one of the most profound, yet basic principles of life. It's even taught in MBA programs, politics, business, consultation- servant leadership. 820,000 links on Google. It’s always at work, not matter whether we understand it or not, whether we agree wit it, or expect it to work as it does.
Jesus challenged His disciples, and in turn us, to live in harmony and cooperation with God’s plan for all life.
Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. John 13: 17, NIV.
