Apologies to all. It has been way too long since my last post, and to be honest...I kinda feel like a let down. A lot has happened in the last 3 weeks, way too much to be able to put it all into words but I am going to try my absolute best.
2 weeks ago our church held a celebration event to honor our Pastor and his family for 20 years of service to our church and community. Russ Taff, a Grammy and Dove award winning Christian vocalist came to hold a concert for the community that saturday, which was a huge hit. Pastor Scott Jones, from Grace Church in Houston also attended as the guest speaker for this event. Scott is Tricia's cousin, and has been through alot of the same things that NLT has with the big splits and removing themselves from the UPCI. Russ Taff and Scott Jones both played significant roles in the success of the weekend with great music and great speaking. Pastor Scott got up there and talked about how our words create our world. What does that mean exactly? It means that if we say that our church will grow, pray that our church will grow, act like our church is going to grow, and tell others about our church growing that our church will indeed grow. Genesis 11:4-6 That if our congregation binds together and says one thing all at the same time, then world watch out. What an awesome, awesome topic to speak on, especially to our church that is growing at a rapid pace. Staying focused and determined, no matter the circumstance is what being a christian is all about. He also talked about all of us having to plug in somewhere and build the strong foundation that we need to build a great church on. He used Luke 17:6, which just says that genuine faith is a lot of faith. That if all of the members of our church had faith only the size of a mustard seed, but we were genuine about it...the possibilties were endless. To conclude this service we all, as an entire congregation, went to the front and prayed together...speaking at the same time, our visions for our church. You would not believe the overwhelming feeling of God that was in that room with us.
This past weekend was the Realife Youth Leadership Conference at JRA in Ozark, Missouri. Like most of the other 19 or so that went, I was wondering the whole way there what I would get out this whole thing. It was more for youth pastor's, not youth leaders. Whenwe got there we were blown away by the size of this building, and everything that they had going on inside of it. The worship was unbelievable, and you just got a feeling when you walked in that this weekend was going to be something special. The second day that we were there was when all the activity was scheduled to take place, workshop after workshop for a group of 700-800 youth leaders that didnt get enough sleep the night before. Each workshop that I went into brought something different to my attention. My first workshop was a Junior High workshop, that was kind of like a quick run through of what a Junior High service goes like there, as well as some key things that have made their Junior High ministry grow from 10 to 300 in less than 20 years. Here I learned just how important it is to have a successful Junior High program, 72% of all people make their decision to live for God by the time they are 16 years old, with the remaining 23% making that decision by their 19th birthday. That was astonishing, basically every single kid that I meet or teach, I along with the Junior High staff are going to play KEY roles in their decision to live for God or not. My seriousness level about this Junior High thing was just turned up about 1,000 notches. My second class was called "Putting the Heart of God in the Heart of your Ministry" with Monty Hipp. A wonderful class, more of like a self and leadership-evaluation class, that really did wonders in helping me get me and the Junior High leadership on the same page. My last workshop was "Establishing Core Values", also a leadership-evaluation class that helped me determine the direction we were headed vs. the direction we needed to be in. Finally was the "Big Workshop" with the Pastor from 180 youth in Tulsa called "Reach-Relate-Renew". This class was focusing on the keys to reaching kids outside of the church. All served as wonderful jump-starters for my brain and to get all my ducks in a row to take the Junior High and/or entire youth department to the next level. The entire youth staff is a piece to fit into our church puzzle. Through the day our pieces were being edged by God, and that night when we were in service He chizzled away the rest of the pieces that were in the way. Finally we all got the picture, we had to bind together and become ONE whole, and be on the same page in order for our church to go to next level.
The entire way home from the conference we talked about ways to raise money, or ways to help make our church more a community building then just a church for sundays and wednesdays. Ways to move the mountain, which was the whole theme of the conference. When we walked in on sunday to church, Tricia informed us of a possible investment into the kingdom worth enough to pay off the land and then some. Then as soon as Pastor got up on the stage he talked about moving a mountain, why is this crazy? Bcause they said all of this without any of us talking to either of them about what had happened to us at the conference yet. Like I have said before, it is crazy sometimes how God works without us even knowing it.
I strongly encourage all of you who read this to take some time to evaluate yourself, and figure out what you are or aren't doing for the growth of the kingdom. Establish the vision and play until the whistle.
Happy Readings!
