- Awesome night tonight
- Started off kind of rough as tonight’s topic was one I wrestled with all week and struggled to make it attractive and convince everyone that it is a need to listen to
- I told Paul before the service, “I don’t have any hook, I just have the Bible”
- Amazing how that is always enough
- One of my favorite parts of social media is seeing what people say about church on twitter and facebook and what they’re learning
- The band nailed the song “By Your Side”
- Wow
- It was definitely a holy moment after that during communion
- Had a great time with the kids at a Halloween party last night
- I went as a surfer
- Got to pray with some hurting people in our church tonight
- It is humbling that God entrusts us with the people he does and it is overwhelming what people are going through
- Tomorrow were having a Halloween dinner with a bunch of our neighbors and then going trick or treating with them
- Regardless of what you think of Halloween as a Christian, it is a great chance to meet your neighbors and build relationships to share the gospel
- Don’t miss this opportunity
- Curious about the music I listen to or what new albums to buy, check out Music Monday
- Narrowed down what we’re preaching at the beginning of 2011 this week, James and then Judges
- James is by far one of my favorite books of the Bible
- Can’t wait to preach through Judges, so many good stories in that book
- Love the next steps people take each week
- It is amazing to me that every week we have people who take the step of becoming a Christian, or taking the step to start honoring God with their finances
- It is awesome to see
- Katie is taking a retreat day this week, so I’m hanging alone with the kids on Monday
- Excited to be with them and for her to get away
- We’re having a baptism on November 13th
- If you want to take this step, email Chuck Tommervik to get signed up
- My dad and sister are coming out this week to see us, pretty excited to have them
- Had my phone interview with Acts 29 this week
- Can’t wait for Revolution to be a part of the Acts 29 Network
- I’m excited about a day of football watching tomorrow
- It is the first Sunday in 6 weeks that I’m not preaching somewhere
- Definitely need the down time
- T-minus 9 days until Katie and I get to spend 4 days in Phoenix without any kids
- Thank you Jesus
- Right now we’re working through our plans for 2011 at Revolution, would definitely appreciate your prayers for wisdom as we talk through budgets and what we feel God is calling us to in the next year
- Excited about next week as I’m talking about “Religion is Crap”
- It’s gonna be awesome
Archives
All posts for the month October, 2010
Never make fun of your spouse. My wife Katie has been doing a series of blog posts on our relationship rules and this one is broken by so many spouses. This one change would make a world of difference in your marriage.- All you need to know about church planting in 3 minutes.
- Ron Edmondson on Addressing a porn generation.
- 4 lessons from Martin Luther on Marriage. This is a great article.
- Dave Bruskas on What I’ve learned from raising daughters. Dave is a pastor in New Mexico and has raised 4 daughters so I’d take that as being an expert on the topic.
- Gabe Lyons on A third way for the ‘Christian nation’ debate.
- How to leave a church well. Sometimes people leave for good reasons and leave well, but often they leave for poor reasons and leave the church by throwing rocks. Love the example from the book of Acts, maybe that is why churches today don’t see the effectives they did in the book of Acts.
- Pastors who suffering from relational anorexia. Pastoring is one of the loneliest jobs on the planet, but there are some things you can do to fight it.
- Tony Morgan on Signs you have a vision that inspires. These are right on, the clarity at Revolution has inspired people and repelled people. Vision divides and that is okay.
- Who needs porn when you have MTV? This is crucial for parents to keep in mind as they raise kids and what they allow on TV. (Note: there is a semi-explicit photo accompanying the article).
- 10 easy bible verses for kids to memorize. We have a verse of the week at our house and it has been awesome to see the kids start memorizing scripture.
- Loving our Muslim neighbors. This is a great video panel discussion with J.D. Greear and Thabiti Anyabwile.
- Christopher Wright on The biggest obstacle for world missions is idolatry. This is a convicting article.
- J. Oswald Sanders on Are you ready to be a leader? These are great questions to work through if you want to enter into leadership or have a desire to take on more leadership in your church or business.
When someone becomes a Christian or gets on track with their faith at Revolution, we challenge them to take their next step and that step is baptism. Baptism is going public with their faith and we love celebrating this step with people. Here’s a few reasons why you should be baptized after you decide to follow Jesus.
1. Jesus was baptized. (Matthew 3:16). Jesus is always our example, and he modeled baptism for us. One of the first steps we can take in following Jesus is to be baptized.
2. It’s an amazing picture of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. (Colossians 2:12). When you go down in the water, it’s a picture of Jesus being buried. When we lift you out, that’s a picture of the resurrection. When you’re baptized, you’re literally preaching the gospel to people.
3. It’s an amazing symbol of new life in Christ. Baptism doesn’t make you a Christian; it’s a symbol, much like a wedding ring is a meaningful symbol of a marriage. (Romans 6:4).
If you’re a Christian who has never been baptized, then you should be. The Bible is full of examples of people going public with their faith through this meaningful ceremony. Here’s a list of FAQ that describes baptism at Revolution Church in a little more detail. If you’d like to sign up for the next one on November 13, just email Chuck.
Many times, one of the reasons we get frustrated as a Christian or get turned off from following Jesus is because we see obeying God as a duty, something we have to do. Much like a toddler who doesn’t want to eat broccoli. I will often hear people say, “But if I really follow God, what if he calls me to do something I don’t want to do. Like go to Africa.”
Many churches and Christians for that matter have made the Christian life all about duty. Serve more. Read your Bible more. Pray more. Go to church more. All because, God expects you to do it. There is some hope that maybe this will pay off, we’ll get a gold star or at least God will answer our prayers more often if we are doing what we think He wants us to do.
What if, that isn’t the point? Not what we do, but why we do it. What if God wants us to do all those things, not because we have to, but because we get to. Because we want to.
I think Saturday night has the potential to be a night of unbelievable freedom. It has the freedom to set free what you think following Jesus might be like. I believe it will free you to understand what it is all about and for the first time enjoy following Jesus and have the passion that He dreams for you to have. It can also free you to feel the love of God for the first time. Not a love that is conditional and based on what we do and if we do enough, but a love based on God’s love for you simply because He loves you.
It is going to be a powerful night.
So, do whatever you have to do to get to Revolution this Saturday night (and bring someone with you who doesn’t know Jesus, let’s run out of seats this week)! And come expecting to see God move and do something huge in our lives.
Remember, we meet at 5pm at 6620 E 22nd St.
See you Saturday.
Love the video stories from I Am Second. Here is one from baseball player Josh Hamilton.
I put a quote on facebook the other day that I figured would anger a few people, and sure enough, it did. Matthew Barnett, lead pastor of the Dream Center said, “You know you’re in trouble when a worship leader stops singing, pulls out a Bible and says, “I have a word.”
Here is the point, this doesn’t mean a worship leader should never say anything. The problem for many worship leaders is that they say things on the fly, not planning them out, in the emotion of the moment AND very few worship leaders have the gift of teaching. When they talk, they are actually moving out of their gifting and not serving the church well.
As a speaker, there is nothing more frustrating than getting off stage just to have the worship leader stand on stage and recap your message in 5 minutes. In fact, I have had worship leaders say, “I bet Josh would say that” after I spoke. The problem is that I didn’t say it.
Think about it like this. If Paul got done with a set at the end of the night, I walked on stage, picked up his guitar and started playing it and said, “I just love that song, why don’t we sing it again?” That’s what it is like when most worship leaders talk in a service.
This is one of the things that I appreciate about the relationship I have with Paul, we both do what we are good at. Let me say this, I could not do what Paul does. I have no desire to do it, but I know that if I did it would not serve God or our church well. I believe that worship leading is like a sixth sense. It takes amazing skill to be able to put songs together, to lead people in worship, to help them understand what worship is and how to worship God instead of themselves. He spends hours every week working on the 30 minutes of the service that he is on stage and all the details that go into that when it comes to sound, video and lighting. In the same way, speakers spend 10 – 20 hours a week working on a sermon.
What this gets into is the the teamwork that a pastor and worship leader have and living in their gifting to serve the church well together.
I had heard about Hugh Halter and Matt Smay’s book The Gathered AND Scattered Church for awhile and it even sat on my shelf for several months before I picked it up. I’m glad I finally did.
The premise of the book is to look at the discussion many pastors and leaders have when it comes to church: Are we missional or attractional? I have always found this conversation kind of pointless because I believe the church should be both. The goal of this book is to show how a church of any size can be both, hence, the AND.
They start off with a great question, “What could God do with entire generation who loves him but won’t settle for stale church anymore. What could God do with an army of kingdom peasants who have no interest in safety, religion, or money, but who want to help people experience the presence of his kingdom in the here and now?” It is a great question. I think the answer if God could do so much more with people like that than what is happening in many churches around the country and in the lives of many people who sit in those churches.
Chapter 3 “Consumerless Church” is worth the price of the book. If there is one thing holding back the church in America, it is consumerism. Think about it, the number one reason people leave churches is because “I’m not getting fed.” “They don’t have the programs I want.” Our culture is so consumer driven that we expect our faith to be the same. Yet, Jesus over and over called his disciples to die for him, to lose their lives, to take up their crosses. Not sure how we get consumerism out of that. What happens in churches is that we strive to have as many programs and ministries as we can possibly have (the thinking is to have more than the church down the street). What that leads to is a church that just takes and takes instead of serves and gives. As the authors point out, “A consumer is not a disciple, and a disciple is not a consumer.”
The problem with the consumer church is that you fill up your calendar with church things and then you are never loving people into the kingdom because you only know people who attend your church. I often get asked why we are simple and don’t have a long list of ministries for people to plug into. The answer is, “We want you to grow in your faith and the best way to do that is through Saturday night’s, small groups, serving inside and outside of the church, which then leaves time for you to build relationships with people who don’t know God. One of the best lines in the book articulated what I have seen in so many people’s lives, “People don’t need most of the stuff we give them. In fact, there seems to be a direct correlation between providing too much and the immaturity that develops when people are given the chance to overindulge.”
Here are a few other things that jumped out:
- The church is beautiful because it is endowed with the purpose of giving herself away wholeheartedly to the world God desires to redeem.
- How “missional” you are is largely determined by the extent to which your people model the life, activities, and words of Jesus.
- Church happens when a group of people decide to go on mission with God together.
- Engaging culture isn’t as much about doing evangelism as it is incarnating the presence of Christ in every relationship we form.
- Church is God’s people intentionally committing to die together so that others can find his kingdom.
- The more missional you want to be, the more incarnational you’re willing to be, the more you release your people out into the world, the more you desire to equip and empower young leaders, the more effective and faithful you want your church to be…the more you’ll have to die to your self.
- Whatever you give your best to will grow.
- Love this one: Pastoring is as much about protecting the flock as it is about growing a flock. It’s about pushing them and challenging them instead of pandering to them.
What this means practically is the philosophy we’ve had at Revolution from the beginning. We want our gathering times, whether that is Saturday night or small groups to propel us to scatter and be on mission in the world we inhabit.
Definitely a book worth wrestling through, regardless of your belief on the attractional or missional discussion. It will definitely stretch your thinking.
