Here Is A Good Example Of What Church Is Supposed To Be

From an article on the Presidential Prayer Team website...

Leadership can be lonely. When you're the mayor, people who talk to you very often want something from you. That's why Portland, Oregon, Mayor Tom Potter was so surprised when one citizen - a prominent international figure - asked what he and his network of local leaders and activists could do for the mayor and the city.

"In all my years of public service," says Potter, "I rarely have people ask what they can do for me - and for our city. My answer, of course, was immediate - please help us solve the problem of homelessness."

The outcome two years later has been substantial. Over 25,000 volunteers have mobilized to tackle not only the area's homelessness but also medical needs, hunger, poverty, school cleanup and more. Their "Season of Service" (www.portlandcityfest.com/season_of_service) includes a dizzying array of projects to connect needy people with those who can help.

Luis Palau (www.portlandcityfest.com/luis_palau), the international Christian speaker who approached Potter, and his team have helped organize local churches to volunteer for the public good. Partnering with government and business leaders, the church coalition is producing impressive results.

Read more...

This is what I am talking about! The church being the hands, feet, and mouth of God here on earth. VERY COOL.

What Is Church?

We need to rethink our definition of “church.” When we come to “church” as an individual who is primarily a consumer we begin to view church as an “event” where we can consume spirituality or religion to meet our own personal needs. The alternative here is to move from church as event to church as family. When we approach “church” as individuals in a community where we are cooperating together for a common goal its almost impossible to think of church as an event. Instead a better metaphor for church, as we have talked about at The Well a lot recently, is “family.” A family cooperating together to care together for the individual needs, all for a common goal.

- Todd Hiestand pastor of The Well (From the Provocative Church blog)

The Path Less Traveled

Found this on one of the blogs I regularly read and thought it was so appropriate. Hope it stretches you!

"Nothing (truly nothing) hurts more than to see people reject the hard road in search of an easier one. We get lazy when things are too easy - and it's far too tempting to do that. It breaks my heart when I pass by someone's house on Sunday that used to attend our church - and notice that all of their cars are still in the driveway. Who knows if they are attending at an odd service time, but it still hurts to know that they could be missing out on what God wants to do in their life. It hurts to see a family teach their children that they are more important than God - by switching churches based on a kids program and not the leading of the Holy Spirit. It kills me to hear critics complain when they themselves have not shared the Gospel (much less invited someone to church) in years.... All in all, God wants our spirit to be broken so He can fill us with His. You cannot experience true brokenness while you are working to feed your own ambitions in life.... Sacrifice, risk, and the Gospel are partners that spend a ton of time together.... and they cannot be separated! "

- Patrick Gillen @ Active Pursuit

Holiness

Jim Laffoon has written an excellent devotion on his blog about seeing the consequences of sin and using those examples to create in himself a fear of God and a hatred of sin. It is a most worthy read. Here is an excerpt:

In my own life, God has allowed me to be involved in spiritual autopsies more times than I care to count.

Every time I have to face the horrible consequences of rebellion and sin in the life of a person I love, it makes me fear God and hate sin all the more. Whether it is the horrors and pain of sexual immorality, or the pride and insecurity keeping a man or woman of God from confessing the sinful habits which would later destroy them, these close encounters with God’s judgments have helped to make me a wiser man today.

May your heart be filled with the fear of the Lord and a hunger for holiness as you consider the message of this story.

- Jim Laffoon @ Our Daily Blog

We must be careful to not trample underfoot the grace of God or to take sin lightly. The wages of sin have always been death and will remain so, but Christ's sacrifice gives us the power to live holy lives through the Holy Spirit.

A Quote For You

I am being pressed forward in the Spirit to assume my position. How about you? Each one of us in Christ has a position that we MUST assume. His Bride must be ready for her Groom! We can't fulfill our life's mission if we don't boldly step into that rightful place He has for us.
- Deborah @ Thoughts Along The Way

You Have Got To Check Out This Blog

Last night I discovered a blog that you really must check out. It is called It's My Mission and it is incredible. It looks like Geoff Moore (remember him from Geoff Moore and the Distance in the early 90's?) is affiliated with the blog. These folks are really doing a great work. I'm pleased that Blogger named them a blog of note. Had they not, I probably wouldn't have discovered them.

Interesting Article

Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell.

- Bishop N.T. "Tom" Wright (Bishop of Durham)


Got this quote from an interesting interview between Time magazine and Bishop "Tom" Wright of the Church of England. It is about Bishop Wright's thoughts on Heaven and how different they are from many Christians' views. I found it an interesting, thought-provoking read.

Excellent Post On Servant Evangelism

You should check out this very insightful post about Servant Evangelism (SE). Chris Elrod is the author and he did a good job dispelling the myths about servant evangelism.

People who are really into evangelism don't typically get Servant Evangelism. The key concept to get is "NO strings attached." People who don't get this concept basically use SE as a means to draw attention to their church or try to entice people to come to their church. You can tell these people because they are typically bummed after an SE project that didn't produce a body count. It rarely does.

Servant Evangelism could also be called "Stealth" Evangelism. You are usually in and out before anyone realizes that they have been touched by your ministry. Churches that begin SE programs with the notion that people will come flooding into the church the following Sunday typically end up disappointed. They don't get it.

Steve Sjogren, the founder of Servant Evangelism and the man who wrote the book that this blog was named for once said that they saw very little direct growth from Servant Evangelism - in other words, few of the people that they had served came to their church. However, oddly enough, the Lord brought equivalent numbers of people to the church because of their faithfulness to serve Cincinnati.

Don't do Servant Evangelism to swell your members' directory. It will never work like that. Do SE to make your community a nicer place. Do it to get to know your neighbors. Do it to give someone a smile. If you do, you'll find that you and the people who do it with you will grow. Who knows? As a result of that, your church probably will too.

A Good Read...

Internet Monk has a really interesting series going on the church that would be worth checking out. In it he discusses the flawed but perfect paradox that we see in the Scriptures.

Quote Of The Day

Propositional revelation spells trouble for it takes the heartfelt convicted knowledge of Christ the Lord and the great acts of our covenanting God as marvelous, praiseworthy and celebratory deeds, and replaces it with submissive intellectual assent to authoritative teachings. Instead of preaching being an amazing “Fear not!” announcement of glad tidings woven throughout the older and newer testaments, it becomes academic lecturing. Because it is humanly impossible to wholly eliminate the aesthetic dimension from worship, the hymns and special music provide the back-door individualized sentimental spasm tacked onto the “means of grace”.

And what depressing exercises when propositional revelation dominates theological discussion. Competing sense-verifiable facts inject uncertainty and tension into discussions of Genesis because we have to make sure what can and cannot be maintained against secular biology, geology and astrophysics. By contrast, how very relaxing it would be if we stopped the word play and immersed ourselves within the paragraphs, chapters and whole books to “prove” creation. Instead of declaring by fiat one’s insight into the divine meta-language, or self-confirming one’s method by bad-faith process of elimination, why not turn to the Psalms and Job to understand the Genesis creation?

The consequence of propositional revelation for Bible reading is that the book becomes a bone of contention in God-talk disputations. Gone from our hermeneutics is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob while we waste our time in scholastic pursuits like determining the ipsissima verba of Jesus. It is the yoking of Scripture to an unchristian positivist theory of knowledge and truth that substantiates the charge of bibliolatry. If we search and use the scriptures to reinforce our jots and tittles then our myopia will be too all-consuming for us to point others toward the Lord’s rule.

- Joel Hunter (From: "Can I Have My Bible Back?" at Internet Monk)

A New Beginning

Well, it has begun again. January 1 has rolled around, and I finished my One Year Bible about 30 seconds after the gunfire began to erupt around my parents' house. (I live in a rural area where folks still get excited about making loud, booming noises at 12:00 AM on New Year's Day.) I think someone must have had a cannon going off, because I heard a few eruptions that sounded louder than the typical 12-gauge shotgun! In my opinion, New Year's Day is a pretty ridiculous holiday, but, hey, it is a day off, so who's complaining?

Anyway, as I was saying earlier, I finished up reading through the Bible about 30 seconds after midnight on the 1st. Now I am beginning again all over again. Last year I used the New American Standard version. This year I am planning to use the New Living Translation. I like to switch versions each year because it gives me a little different perspective each time - something that is helpful to someone who doesn't read in the original languages yet. Of course, it makes it hard to find verses using concordances sometimes, because I end up grabbing a word here and there from each version that I have read. It gets very annoying when you can't find a verse that you know good and well is in there!

Each year I also concentrate on one theme as I am reading. That isn't to say that I don't notice other things, but it helps to keep me focused as I am reading. It also helps me to get a good feel for what the Bible says about that topic "globally," which is one of the main keys to correct biblical interpretation.

Last year I payed particular attention to what the Bible says about the nature and character of God. How does God describe Himself in the Bible? What sorts of things will He do? What sorts of things won't He do? What is God like? It was a very good theme and I learned a lot - especially as I was reading through the prophets. This year, I plan to pay special attention to the theme of fear. What causes fear? What are we supposed to fear? What are we not supposed to fear? How can fear be defeated?

I am already a little bit behind, because I forgot to take my NLT Bible with me when my family went to celebrate Christmas (on New Year's Day) with my Grandmother, but it really won't be hard to get caught up. Each reading only takes about 15-30 minutes. I have also gotten a little bogged down meditating on the opening chapters of Genesis. I really love reading the Pentateuch. There is so much great stuff in there. But who am I kidding? There is a lot of great stuff in all of the Bible. The Word of God is truly a treasure. I wish I saw it that way even more than I do now.

If you have never managed to read the Bible through from cover to cover, I would heartily recommend it. The One Year Bible is a great resource. I like it because everything is already set up for you. Each day you get an Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage, a Psalm, and a Proverb. The good thing about that to me is that when I hit a passage that is dry to me or difficult, I know that it is only a little bit of reading until I get to something where the "fruit" is a little more accessible. Of course, if you can't afford one, there are daily Bible reading schedules that will carry you through the Bible in a year too.

Regardless of what method you use, I hope that you will make it a daily discipline to spend time in the Word of God this year. It will bring great dividends!

Happy reading!

A Useful Tool

Have you ever managed to read the Bible through from cover to cover? It can be a daunting task, especially when you are struggling through the opening chapters of 2 Chronicles! However, to develop the "global picture" of God's Word that is necessary to interpret the Bible correctly, there is no discipline more critical than the regular, repeated reading through the entirety of the Scriptures.

I have found The One Year Bible a valuable aid in achieving that goal. The Bible is broken down into 365 daily readings that include an Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage, a passage from the Psalms and a passage from Proverbs. So when you get to one of those passages that are more difficult you know that you will be gleaning from a different passage before long. It also comes in many different translations. I switch translations every year or so to get a different perspective on the texts. It aids my understanding and helps to keep things fresh.

I have a leather Bible that was given to me for my 21st birthday. I don't write in that Bible. However, I do make notes and write questions in my One Year Bible as thoughts come to me. I started using the One Year Bible 10-years ago, and as a result have managed to actually complete 5 trips through the entire Bible. There are also chronological versions as well although I think a different publisher produces them. I may take that up in the near future. It would probably help to draw better connections between people and events in the different books of the Bible.

Another strategy that I use is that each year I try to pick a theme and look for Scriptures that pertain to that theme as I am reading that year. It is a really helpful exercise. This year I was focusing on the nature of God. It was very enlightening.

So there you go. Something that might help you on the way!

Got A Light?

I recently heard the telling of a pastor who went to Salem, MA for a two week window during Halloween. Over 400,000 witches from around the world descended upon Salem within that two week window and 400 of them came to know the Lord as Saviour because he was simply willing to go and be a light in the darkness. He went on to say that one particular witch he encountered asked him many questions, but oddly never looked at him. When he made mention of this, she said the light that came out of him was too bright for her to look upon! (emphasis mine) GLORY! The Spirit within me leaps as I type this! That is what John 12:46 is all about! Oh that the world would SEE Jesus coming forth from our very beings --- impacting a lost and perverted world!
- Deborah @ Thoughts Along The Way

Isn't that AWESOME? I have been totally challenged and encouraged by this post. In another place she wrote:

I, along with my children, have started to experience something new when we are out. As I shared in an earlier post, I am (used) to people stopping me to talk when out and about because I sing worship songs as I go about my day. But, twice already this week I have been stopped in my silence and it has thrilled my soul! My sincere prayer is that this is happening all over in and through the lives of my brothers and sisters --- that the Spirit of the living God is moving among the people!

I hate to admit that it has been a while since I have had this happen to me, but I hope that it will again - and soon, too!

How are you doing? Is your light so shining before men that they praise your Father in Heaven?

As we serve our neighbors, friends, and family in the power of the Spirit of God, our light will begin to shine ever brighter. We will experience His joy and His glory as we seek to show it to the dark world all around us. Friends, it isn't a time for fear, but a time for boldness! Let's put our lamps up on a stand where all can see them. I am reminded of the words of an old hymn:

Brightly beams Our Father's mercy
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning;
Send a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

© 1947 Lorenz Publishing Company (a div. of the Lorenz Corporation)
Charles Francis Lane | Philip Paul Bliss

A Must Read

You really have to go and check out the new blog of a very dear friend of mine. It is called Thoughts Along The Way. You can click HERE to go directly there. I promise you will be blessed by what she has to say!