This couple recently helped "Extreme Homemaker: Home Edition" with a project in NC. They just drove down, jumped in and started helping. They went for it and had a blast. They have a story to tell because they got involved. They are pumped. People they visit with about this experience are pumped. Serving and making a difference is a wonderful part of life. Get involved. Serve Christ in your local church. Give your life to Christ and serve. Thanks Jay and Crystal for your story and stories. Thanks for making a difference in NC and VA. Thanks for helping people in the Hampton Roads area accept JC and walk w JC. It is a privilege to serve w you guys and many other is SCC. Jay, "I got this." LOL. Monday, March 23, 2009
Involvement - Getting In The Game
This couple recently helped "Extreme Homemaker: Home Edition" with a project in NC. They just drove down, jumped in and started helping. They went for it and had a blast. They have a story to tell because they got involved. They are pumped. People they visit with about this experience are pumped. Serving and making a difference is a wonderful part of life. Get involved. Serve Christ in your local church. Give your life to Christ and serve. Thanks Jay and Crystal for your story and stories. Thanks for making a difference in NC and VA. Thanks for helping people in the Hampton Roads area accept JC and walk w JC. It is a privilege to serve w you guys and many other is SCC. Jay, "I got this." LOL. 
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Serve
1 Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. 2 It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. 4 So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, 5 and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.6 When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.”
8 “No,” Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”
Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.”
9 Simon Peter exclaimed, “Then wash my hands and head as well, Lord, not just my feet!”
10 Jesus replied, “A person who has bathed all over does not need to wash, except for the feet, to be entirely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not all of you.” 11 For Jesus knew who would betray him. That is what he meant when he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
12 After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? 13 You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. 14 And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. 15 I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. 16 I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. 17 Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.
John 13:1-17
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Serious Times - Day After St. Patrick's Day
SERIOUS TIMES Serious Times
Vol. 5, No. 5
May We All be Irish
It was a pagan world, outside the borders of the accepted disciplines and understandings of civilization. But spiritual. Deeply spiritual. The supernatural was everywhere, in places and days, people and events, filling their lives with images, symbols and ritual. The earth and all in it was sacred; gods and goddesses roamed the landscape; the world of magic was embraced; but there was no God who sat in Heaven, and no knowledge of a Christ who had come to earth.
Into this postmodern milieu, 1500 years before postmodernism was born, came Patrick, the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland (c. 5th century).
Patrick did not come to his task by choice. Kidnapped at the age of fifteen from his father’s villa in Britain, he was enslaved in Ireland and made to serve as a shepherd. There he came into the fullness of Christian faith, and after six years of praying, finally made his escape. But upon reaching his homeland, he had a dream where a man who seemed to come from Ireland handed him a letter titled “The Voice of the Irish,” and at the same time heard the voices of those who lived “beside the Wood of Foclut, which lies near the Western Sea” asking him to “come back and walk once more among us.” Patrick writes that he was “pierced to my heart’s core.”
Patrick returned to Ireland. Not as a slave, but as a missionary.
The legends surrounding Patrick are, well, legendary. He reportedly drove the snakes out of Ireland into the sea. Whether true or not, there are no snakes in Ireland to this day. Another is that he used the shamrock to explain the Trinity. There may be some truth to this; pointing back to Patrick, the shamrock is the national flower of Ireland. He is to have confronted and overpowered the druids; fasted for forty days and nights on a holy mountain; and openly challenged a king by lighting a fire for an Easter celebration in open opposition to the edict that only one fire was to burn in the land, and that for the pagan feast of Bealtaine.
What is most apparent is that Patrick looked for ways to connect the message of Christ to a pagan, but supernaturalized, world. In doing so, he imaginatively put himself in the position of the Irish. Looking for what they held in common, Patrick made clear that he, too, embraced a world full of magic. As Thomas Cahill noted, the difference between Patrick’s magic and the magic of the druids was that in Patrick’s world, “all beings and events come from the hand of a good God”. When Patrick arrived, the Irish were still practicing human sacrifice; Patrick made it clear that through Christ’s supreme sacrifice, such offerings were no longer needed. Patrick took an entire culture’s leanings toward the spiritual and led them to Christ.
During Patrick’s time, all who lived outside of the boundaries, or walls, of Rome were called “barbarians” (literally, “without the walls”), and were to be avoided at all costs. The Irish were barbarians. Cahill writes that Patrick was the first Christian missionary to a culture outside of Rome’s world; “The step he took was in its way as bold as Columbus’s.” Patrick simply wrote, “I came in God’s strength...and had nothing to fear.” As a result, Maire B. De Paor writes that Patrick “not only changed the course of Irish history but made Ireland the burning and shining light of barbarian Europe for the best part of the next thousand years.”
So on the day that “everyone is Irish,” let’s wish for it to be of the kind modeled by the saint whose name marks the day.
James Emery White
Sources
The Confession of Saint Patrick, translated by John Skinner (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1998). There are only two surviving works that can be attributed to Patrick: his Confessio (“Confession”) and Epistola (his “Letter to Coroticus”).
Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, (New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1995).
Maire B. De Paor, Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 1998).
*Adapted from James Emery White, Serious Times (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press).
Vol. 5, No. 5
May We All be Irish
It was a pagan world, outside the borders of the accepted disciplines and understandings of civilization. But spiritual. Deeply spiritual. The supernatural was everywhere, in places and days, people and events, filling their lives with images, symbols and ritual. The earth and all in it was sacred; gods and goddesses roamed the landscape; the world of magic was embraced; but there was no God who sat in Heaven, and no knowledge of a Christ who had come to earth.
Into this postmodern milieu, 1500 years before postmodernism was born, came Patrick, the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland (c. 5th century).
Patrick did not come to his task by choice. Kidnapped at the age of fifteen from his father’s villa in Britain, he was enslaved in Ireland and made to serve as a shepherd. There he came into the fullness of Christian faith, and after six years of praying, finally made his escape. But upon reaching his homeland, he had a dream where a man who seemed to come from Ireland handed him a letter titled “The Voice of the Irish,” and at the same time heard the voices of those who lived “beside the Wood of Foclut, which lies near the Western Sea” asking him to “come back and walk once more among us.” Patrick writes that he was “pierced to my heart’s core.”
Patrick returned to Ireland. Not as a slave, but as a missionary.
The legends surrounding Patrick are, well, legendary. He reportedly drove the snakes out of Ireland into the sea. Whether true or not, there are no snakes in Ireland to this day. Another is that he used the shamrock to explain the Trinity. There may be some truth to this; pointing back to Patrick, the shamrock is the national flower of Ireland. He is to have confronted and overpowered the druids; fasted for forty days and nights on a holy mountain; and openly challenged a king by lighting a fire for an Easter celebration in open opposition to the edict that only one fire was to burn in the land, and that for the pagan feast of Bealtaine.
What is most apparent is that Patrick looked for ways to connect the message of Christ to a pagan, but supernaturalized, world. In doing so, he imaginatively put himself in the position of the Irish. Looking for what they held in common, Patrick made clear that he, too, embraced a world full of magic. As Thomas Cahill noted, the difference between Patrick’s magic and the magic of the druids was that in Patrick’s world, “all beings and events come from the hand of a good God”. When Patrick arrived, the Irish were still practicing human sacrifice; Patrick made it clear that through Christ’s supreme sacrifice, such offerings were no longer needed. Patrick took an entire culture’s leanings toward the spiritual and led them to Christ.
During Patrick’s time, all who lived outside of the boundaries, or walls, of Rome were called “barbarians” (literally, “without the walls”), and were to be avoided at all costs. The Irish were barbarians. Cahill writes that Patrick was the first Christian missionary to a culture outside of Rome’s world; “The step he took was in its way as bold as Columbus’s.” Patrick simply wrote, “I came in God’s strength...and had nothing to fear.” As a result, Maire B. De Paor writes that Patrick “not only changed the course of Irish history but made Ireland the burning and shining light of barbarian Europe for the best part of the next thousand years.”
So on the day that “everyone is Irish,” let’s wish for it to be of the kind modeled by the saint whose name marks the day.
James Emery White
Sources
The Confession of Saint Patrick, translated by John Skinner (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1998). There are only two surviving works that can be attributed to Patrick: his Confessio (“Confession”) and Epistola (his “Letter to Coroticus”).
Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, (New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1995).
Maire B. De Paor, Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 1998).
*Adapted from James Emery White, Serious Times (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press).
Some Quotes
Quotes from The Christ Of Easter, Calvin Miller.
God's glory often lives in the deepest recesses of our pain.
For the Christian, weeping is seasonal, joy eternal.
To behold the Christ should call to life the wonder and worship lying dead within us.
No task to which the father has called you is insignificant.
God's glory often lives in the deepest recesses of our pain.
For the Christian, weeping is seasonal, joy eternal.
To behold the Christ should call to life the wonder and worship lying dead within us.
No task to which the father has called you is insignificant.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Fear and Doubt
Some say if only my fears and doubts will leave I will get to work. But instead you should get to work and then your fears and doubts will leave. - D.L. Moody
Thursday, March 12, 2009
First Century Oikos - 21st Century Social Networking
I have thought for about ten years now the 1st century church is needed in the 21st century. I do not know if I want to experience the persecution the early followers of JC experienced, but social networking is nothing new. - Neth
The Keys to Church Growth
author: Chip Arn
Chip Arn, president and CEO of Church Growth Incorporated, visited Group recently, and Rev! had the opportunity to sit down with him at length. This is a small excerpt from that discussion.
Between you and your father, Win, you've studied church growth and helped churches to accomplish it for 35 years. Our culture has changed a lot in that time. Are there some things that used to be true of church growth that we now need to unlearn?
It's important to understand that there's a difference between church growth principles and church growth methods. The methods change, but the principles are really timeless. One of the most important of them is as true today as it was in the New Testament: the social networking principle. In the hundreds of times I've surveyed congregations—a total of at least 50,000 people or more—and asked why each person became a Christian, there's a list of eight things that are always mentioned.
A special need arose in my life, such as a death or catastrophe. That's 1 percent to 2 percent.
A spontaneous walk-in—I just decided to go to church one Sunday. That's 2 percent to 3 percent.
I had a relationship with a pastor or someone else on church staff. That varies from 1 percent to 6 percent.
I was visited; somebody just knocked on my door. That's 1 percent to 2 percent and continually dropping.
I participated in Sunday school or some other Christian education. That's 4 percent to 5 percent.
Participation in evangelistic crusades, television, and radio ministries is less than 1 percent.
Church programs, such as special events or other advertised activities, drew 2 percent to 3 percent of those surveyed. If you've been following the numbers, the percentages are still very low and there's only one item left to list.
A friend or relative talked to me about Jesus. Of all the tens of thousands of people we surveyed, 75 to 90 percent of them said they're Christians because a friend or relative talked to them about Christ. That's not just a U.S. thing, that holds true from my visits to Korea and India as well.
The word that comes up often in the New Testament is oikos, frequently translated as household or house. In the first century that really meant a lot of people, such as extended family, servants, and servants' families. There's some indication that it might even have included work associates. So the timeless principle is that we need to be intentional about identifying and utilizing existing social networks.
It's amazing that the percentage is that high. How do you effectively utilize social networks?
That question really leads to another timeless principle: the principle of receptivity. When Jesus sent his disciples out, he told them to go to the towns and villages that will listen to you and shake the dust off your feet in the places that won't. Paul stayed much longer in places like Ephesus that were receptive, and less time in places like Athens that were resistant. So good church growth strategy says within your community there are different groupings of people, some of whom will be more receptive than others. And some people will be receptive to one church and not another, so you can't expect everyone to respond to your style. Look for receptive people and work there.
Another principle is to make evangelism a priority. It's a fascinating dynamic to observe the life cycle of churches. The general observation is that the longer a church exists, the more the people in leadership become concerned with self-preservation and self-service, and less concerned with their original goal of reaching people. Growing churches continue to focus on outreach.
Presumably the final principle is related to our conversation on assimilation (published in the 11/24/08 issue), so that once those friends do come to church they keep coming.
Exactly. Welcoming new believers into the fold and building community with them is a universal principle. It's not a natural thing for outsiders to be automatically welcomed into a new group. Effective growing churches will intentionally develop systems and strategies to build a consciousness in the congregation to welcome newcomers.
Chip Arn is president and CEO of Church Growth Incorporated.
© 2008 rev! properties and group publishing; all rights reserved
The Keys to Church Growth
author: Chip Arn
Chip Arn, president and CEO of Church Growth Incorporated, visited Group recently, and Rev! had the opportunity to sit down with him at length. This is a small excerpt from that discussion.
Between you and your father, Win, you've studied church growth and helped churches to accomplish it for 35 years. Our culture has changed a lot in that time. Are there some things that used to be true of church growth that we now need to unlearn?
It's important to understand that there's a difference between church growth principles and church growth methods. The methods change, but the principles are really timeless. One of the most important of them is as true today as it was in the New Testament: the social networking principle. In the hundreds of times I've surveyed congregations—a total of at least 50,000 people or more—and asked why each person became a Christian, there's a list of eight things that are always mentioned.
A special need arose in my life, such as a death or catastrophe. That's 1 percent to 2 percent.
A spontaneous walk-in—I just decided to go to church one Sunday. That's 2 percent to 3 percent.
I had a relationship with a pastor or someone else on church staff. That varies from 1 percent to 6 percent.
I was visited; somebody just knocked on my door. That's 1 percent to 2 percent and continually dropping.
I participated in Sunday school or some other Christian education. That's 4 percent to 5 percent.
Participation in evangelistic crusades, television, and radio ministries is less than 1 percent.
Church programs, such as special events or other advertised activities, drew 2 percent to 3 percent of those surveyed. If you've been following the numbers, the percentages are still very low and there's only one item left to list.
A friend or relative talked to me about Jesus. Of all the tens of thousands of people we surveyed, 75 to 90 percent of them said they're Christians because a friend or relative talked to them about Christ. That's not just a U.S. thing, that holds true from my visits to Korea and India as well.
The word that comes up often in the New Testament is oikos, frequently translated as household or house. In the first century that really meant a lot of people, such as extended family, servants, and servants' families. There's some indication that it might even have included work associates. So the timeless principle is that we need to be intentional about identifying and utilizing existing social networks.
It's amazing that the percentage is that high. How do you effectively utilize social networks?
That question really leads to another timeless principle: the principle of receptivity. When Jesus sent his disciples out, he told them to go to the towns and villages that will listen to you and shake the dust off your feet in the places that won't. Paul stayed much longer in places like Ephesus that were receptive, and less time in places like Athens that were resistant. So good church growth strategy says within your community there are different groupings of people, some of whom will be more receptive than others. And some people will be receptive to one church and not another, so you can't expect everyone to respond to your style. Look for receptive people and work there.
Another principle is to make evangelism a priority. It's a fascinating dynamic to observe the life cycle of churches. The general observation is that the longer a church exists, the more the people in leadership become concerned with self-preservation and self-service, and less concerned with their original goal of reaching people. Growing churches continue to focus on outreach.
Presumably the final principle is related to our conversation on assimilation (published in the 11/24/08 issue), so that once those friends do come to church they keep coming.
Exactly. Welcoming new believers into the fold and building community with them is a universal principle. It's not a natural thing for outsiders to be automatically welcomed into a new group. Effective growing churches will intentionally develop systems and strategies to build a consciousness in the congregation to welcome newcomers.
Chip Arn is president and CEO of Church Growth Incorporated.
© 2008 rev! properties and group publishing; all rights reserved
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
Saw The Watchmen
I went to see the watchmen yesterday afternoon with a friend and fellow leader in Sunrise. Interesting. Passionate, dark, cruel, philosophical, intriguing, and the list goes. Scread (scim and read) the graphic novel last night. Interesting read and even more striking was the way it is pieced together. Creative, to say the least.This led me to pull out "The Graphic Bible" I purchased years ago.
Read the story of Elijah and Elisha this morn. Thrilling, convicting, passionate, sad, hopeful, and on the list goes. The illustrations, script, lettering and story are compelling. Thank God for the guys who put this together. If you have children go buy this book. Read it your children. Read it yourself. It will inspire you to walk with God and be a little more creative in your life at home and work. Enticing.
Under Construction
SCC began a new weekend series on Sunday, 3-8-09. Under Construction is about God at work in our lives in in His church.For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
11And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17 Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." 20Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. Matthew 16:13-20
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Desire - Matthew 6:19-33
19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Monday, March 02, 2009
A New Heart
26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Ezekiel 36:26-27
XXX Church
XXX Church is a ministry that is helping people all over the world. They are Christ centered and Biblical. They want to help people live pure lives. This site is full of information and inspiration.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Baptism Celebration - Sunday Eve, 3-1-09
The Baptism Celebration was sweet. It is a beautiful privilege to celebrate Christ and new beginnings with people. Thanks to all who attended and brought a little bite to eat as a part of the celebration. Baptisms are sign of a church that is being the church and making disciples. Baptisms are important to the life of a church because they are testimonies of people accepting Jesus Christ, choosing to follow Jesus Christ and being supported by followers of Jesus in their faith walk. May Sunrise/Lee stay focused on helping lead people to become totally committed followers of Jesus Christ.
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