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Back to School again

Luke Layow, one of the guys who attends our church, recently became the Director of Institutional Advancement (in layman's terms, he raises cabbage for the college) at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and he invited me to take a ride with him for the day.

We had a great drive up talking through all kinds of church business. Shortly after we got here, we attended the chapel service where the President, Dr. James White gave an awesome message which contained some great material to steal for my own sermon this weekend.

I'm in the Great Hall now (pictured above) where I've set-up my makeshift office for the day. In another hour or so, we'll make the trip back to CT just in time for a quick turnaround before our leadership meeting tonight. It's been a great day for me to break up my routine and still get much accomplished.

And what a great seminary! One of my dreams is to go back to school again someday (are Jansport backpacks still cool?) and get my MDiv or even my DMin from place like this. With a wife, 2 kids, and a young church-plant, that seems like something far off in the future. I guess for now, as I sit surrounded in this collegiate setting by some really bright young men and women, I'll have to hope for osmosis!

The Real Deal

Today at church we continued in our "Center Stage" series with a message entitled "The Real Deal." The apostle Paul sums it up nicely for himself:

"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ." (Colossians 2:8, NKJV)

I referenced this article.

To hear the sermon you can click here to download the podcast from iTunes or click here to download it or listen online from our church website.

Church Plant Statistics Challenged

UPDATED 4.20.11: Click here to get a resource to help you succeed!!!

Many church plants fail...sad but true. In fact, most fail. Which is a sobering reality that keeps people like myself praying hard and working hard to get our churches to not only survive, but to thrive.

Knowing that, my friend Bob sent me an article the other day that was very encouraging. In it Ed Stetzer (co-author of "Breaking the Missional Code") asserts that the number of successful church plants is actually higher than most believe (80% failure rate is usually the # thrown around).

He also gives some shocking average attendance stats for church plants (hint, average attendance is much lower than most believe). As a church-planter, you read so many blogs where people start churches and they grow to hundreds and even thousands within the first year or 2, and you can get easily discouraged -until you realize that is way above the norm. In fact their stats show that the average church plant has about 80 in attendance at the 4-year mark. Which encourages me as our 20-month-old church had 79 attend this past weekend. Yes, I am encouraged, because while it's not stellar, it's still above average, and it reminds me that God is up to something in our church.

I share that because I think the reason many church plants fail is unrealistic expectations (in fact that's what Ed shares in the article). It's like we read everyone else's stories and we feel like a failure because we compare our church with the ones that are way above average and have had tremendous success with numbers. Church planting is a difficult enough undertaking so the last thing we need to do is add more pressure by having unrealistic expectations. I'm not saying don't dream big...just suggesting that maybe our big dreams won't happen overnight. Paul had a word that might apply to us church-planters:

"So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up." (Galatians 6:9, NLT)

"Eye of the Tiger!" I'm not quitting!

 

Humbling

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Why you should pray big prayers...

A couple weeks ago I got an urgent prayer request from Paul & Marcia Cowley (one of the missionaries we support at Calvary Fellowship). Paul & Marcia minister in Nairobi where they train pastors to lead churches in slums that Americans cannot comprehend. I still remember them emptying everything from their cushy Boca Raton home and selling it all on their front lawn as they prepared to leave.

One of the many sacrifices a missionary makes is giving up the best medical care. So, perhaps it wasn't a big surprise that as she gave birth to their second son in Africa, the staff didn't realize for quite awhile that she went into shock. By the time the situation was addressed, she had sustained permanent damage to her heart. Many people all over the world prayed. I just received this report and I had to share it to encourage everyone that God is still in the business of miracles:

"From Paul in Nairobi...

Thank you for your continued prayers, encouragement and support during the past 2 weeks. We last left you with an update on Marcia's health...saying she was over the crisis stage, but doctors told us to expect a long, slow recovery and permanent damage to her heart.

Tuesday this week she went to see the cardiologist...he did some extensive scans and then we met in his office. His eyes were the size of saucers when he said..."This is extraordinary! This is the most dramatic recovery I have ever seen in my entire career!" (He has been a doctor for 35+ years)

Sent her home....saying, "There is NOTHING wrong with your heart. Nothing!

In fact, you can stop all of your medications today." That was our Valentine's Gift from the Lord.

God is in the business of fixing hearts....and everything else. The power of prayer and intercession in the name of Jesus is real. Simple....yet nothing is more powerful. Call on His Name today. He answers every time, right on time, with the perfect answer.

 

And thank you for your fervent prayers, intercession, support, love and encouragement to us here...from over there! Onward Christian Soldiers!

God bless you.

Paul, Marcia, Isaac and joshua caleb"

Win, Build, Send

On Vision Night last month we talk about desiring to start some sort of ministry to college students this year. Today, I had a great lunch meeting that may have a big impact on this becoming a reality.

I met with John Vampatella the Campus Director for Campus Crusade for Christ at UCONN. I love Campus' mission (Win-Build-Send) and John's heart and passion for this ministry and the students it reaches. We definitely seem to have missional alignment.

UCONN's main campus is quite a hike from our church, but there are many colleges in our backyard with little or no Christian presence. We began to dialog about what a partnership might look like between us (and other churches) and Campus Crusade to effectively reach EVERY college campus in Connecticut. That is a big vision, but here are a some small first steps that our church can take with Campus as we begin the process:

• We plan to have John come out and speak at our church in the near future to cast the vision for Campus Crusade, and about outreach to college students in general
• We need to pray about a local college campus that we might be able to focus our efforts on as a church (any suggestions?)
• If there is enough interest and support in our church from people who have a heart to commit to this, then Campus can come out again and offer us some additional training and ongoing support to a small group of committed volunteers to establish a ministry in a local campus

I am very excited about the possibilities, and I welcome any prayer and/or input.

So what do you do for fun?

Life isn't all fun and games...but it is PART OF IT! Last year I realized the disturbing truth that there was very little I did in the way of proactive fun (hobbies, etc.) versus reactive entertainment (TV, etc.). So I've added 2 fun things to my life this year:

Snowboarding -I went for the first time this weekend (you heard the sad details if you listened to this past weekend's sermon). Suffice it to say, I injured my knee during the first hour and and spent most of the day sipping hot chocolate at the concession area. The upshot is I totally looked the part  (POSER) in all my gear whenever I was far-removed from the trails. It just really isn't normal or natural to strap both feet to a board and propel yourself down a snowy hill! However, I will try again!

Boardgames - I've always loved board games and card games. Unlike snowboarding, there isn't much danger of injury; perhaps the greatest challenge is keeping my competitive side in check! Our friends Jared and Bec introduced us to a German game called "The Settlers of Catan" that we've been playing with them lately. It's a totally geeky game; seriously it is a game that I could see Dwight Schrute being militant about! But it's not only the "strategery," I also appreciate enjoying the company of other people, and the opportunity to console them after their crushing defeats (OOPS, the competitive side is trying to creep it's head out...I've just recalled my snowboarding experience and I'm humbled again!).

Seriously, I think it's very healthy to build areas of fun and recreation into your life. So what do you do for fun?

The Main Act

This week at church we began our new series "Center Stage" (our brief tour through the book of Colossians) with a message entitled "The Main Act."

As we worked through most of Colossians 1, we discussed why Jesus deserves to be the main act in the spotlight of the center stage of our universe.

I had planned to discuss more content, but I simply ran out of time... maybe next week!

To hear the sermon you can click here to download the podcast from iTunes or click here to download it or listen online from our church website.

The power and the beauty of the gospel in 1 verse

"This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace." (Colossians 1:6, NLT)

Dark matter or cosmic glue?

What holds the universe together? By the laws of science...it simply shouldn't. Check out this article excerpt:

"Cosmologists had figured out how the most complex things were created, but unknown to them their  story of how we came to be lacked a crucial ingredient –a substance that had filled the universe since the very beginning and had completely evaded their detection.
                  
Back in the 1930s, a few number-crunching astronomers recognized that galaxies should have been thrown apart by their own masses, had they not been held together by something more than the gravitational pull of all visible matter. For decades they were reluctant to take the idea on board: that the gravitational forces in galaxies couldn’t have been sufficient to hold them together. There must have been something else; some kind of ‘cosmic glue’.

  Astronomers eventually called this cosmic glue ‘dark matter’. They deduced that the majority of the universe is not atomic at all, in fact nearly 85% of it is made from this mysterious dark matter. What they couldn’t work out is how it was involved in the story of our creation.

Unlike atoms, we know relatively little about dark matter.  It passes straight through atomic matter and emits no light or radiation, making it very difficult to detect or measure.                    

So far we only know it exists from its gravitational pull. But it was this extra gravity that had been lacking from the cosmologists’ creation story all along. Max Tegmark says it’s now clear that we need dark matter and its gravitational pull to form things like galaxies. If it weren’t for this extra pull we wouldn’t be here today..."

There is a verse in the Bible that makes a fascinating claim about Christ long before dark matter was discovered.

"He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together." (Colossians 1:17, NLT)
(We'll discuss this verse more this Sunday.)

Believing in dark matter takes much faith to believe in since it cannot be seen or measured (I'm not saying it isn't real, I'm just pointing out that even science requires a similar faith to religion at times). If the only proof of dark matter is it's effect (it keeps us from exploding), could this dark matter be more divine than natural?

What do YOU think?