Family
I am really excited this week because my family is going to be visiting this weekend. This will be the first time they will get to host all of them at the same time. We will have Dad, Mom, Jen, Jon, Jared, and Kim all staying with us. Our house is going to look like a motel! It should be fun though, I always like seeing my family and catching up. I really count myself blessed to have a family as strong as I do. Looking around our community it is getting harder and harder to find families that are still together. It seems like divorces are as common as oil changes… change your spouse every 3 years or 3,000 arguments. Sad, isn’t it.
A message to you husbands and wives… your responsibility is not to yourself alone. When you got married you took on a responsibility for your spouse as well. Your commitment was not only to them, but to God as well. You entered a covenant relationship which is not to be broken. I know that marriage is not always easy, I know it takes work, but remember that love is a choice, not a feeling. You either choose to uphold your covenant or you don’t. Don’t give up on your promises to God, embrace them, cherish them.
And if your parents didn’t set a great example for you, then choose to be different. Stay true to your promise. It reminds me of the lyrics to an Everclear song (not necessarily endorsing the band)… “My daddy gave me a name, then he walked away… Now I’m a grown man, with a child of my own. And I swear I’m not gonna let her know all the pain I have known.” Those lyrics speak to breaking cycles. Don’t let the mistakes your parents made in their marriage break yours apart too, choose to break the cycle, break the chains.
I thank God regularly that he gave me parents who held their vows. They set a tremendous example for me as a couple and as parents. I can’t thank them enough for that. Be that example in your marriage as well, my prayer is that I will too.
Priority
God has really been laying this issue of priority on my heart lately. We will be talking about it this weekend in the message and our discussion as a staff really brought it to the forefront for me.
One thing that many pastors deal with is their inability to put their life in priority. I believe that the bible gives us an order of importance that our life should fall into. Our personal relationship with God, our relationship with our spouse, our relationship with our children, our relationship with our extended family, our job, our church, and everything else after that. We make a huge mistake when we get these things out of order!
The problem for many pastors is that we can end up substituting our role as a pastor for our personal relationship with God. We spend so much time planning for the church, so much time investing in people, we begin to identify our relationship with God through our job as a minister. However, although the work of the church is important, it is not a substitute for our relationship through Christ. What often happens, as the pastors identity in Christ gets funneled through the church, the church gets put at the top of his priority list. I have seen way too many pastors make this mistake and the role as a pastor begins to take him away from his family more and more.
With our first son on the way, I have been thinking about this more than ever. As most of you know already, I think about the church all the time. It consumes my life. If I am not careful, I could work all day, every day.
But I have a responsibility as an example to the church to live a life of priority. That means that my relationship with God comes first, Jess comes second, JD comes third, and the church comes fourth. I know that is not what some people are used to, some people grew up with a pastor that put the church first, many times before his own family. I would be greatly regretful if I got to the end of my life, looked back, and realized that I had not lived a life of priority.
My challenge to you is that you is to live a life of priority. When you are with your spouse, turn your cell phone off. When you are with your kids, don’t check your email. Eat dinner with your family. Take a day off (and don’t do any work). Spend time with God… and not just on Saturday night or Sunday morning.
What a ride...
I have been a pastor for almost two years now and have learned more in that time than I think I did in all of the years prior. I have been constantly learning about God, other people, and myself.
Every one of us has differing levels of stress, responsibility, and reward in the jobs that we do. After the experience that I have had so far, I have come to the conclusion that being a pastor is probably the most rewarding position I can imagine because the rewards effect every area of your life. However, it is also the most stressful I can imagine (for the very same reason) because the stress effects every area of your life.
I can remember how apathetic I was about my last job. I worked 8-5 Monday through Friday, didn't think about work after 5 or before 8, just went in and did my thing. If things went well I didn't get too excited about it, and if thing didn't go well, I really didn't think much about it. My spectrum of emotions was pretty small, not too many highs, not too many lows.
All of that has changed now. We are in an environment as a church family that creates huge highs and huge lows. Now that I am pouring passion into something, my emotional spectrum has gotten bigger. I don't escape my work anymore, for the most part, I don't want to! High Rock is not just a part of my life, it is all of it. I eat, sleep, and breath God's work here. All week I think about you, how to bring more people into our family, how to make the worship service better, how to make small groups stronger, how to make the message more applicable to life, and so much more.
I can't even put into words the feeling of fulfillment we get when we have the opportunity to lead someone to the truth about salvation and have them accept it, or the elation when someone who we have poured our life into steps up to a new level of responsiblity. Or even to see God use us as a church in a distinctively bigger way that He had before. This weekend was unbelievable! I always think Easter is exciting because of what Jesus did for us, but this year was even more special because of the amazing way that God moved at HRCC. We opened a brand new campus in Kannapolis and saw brand new guests come in and worship with us in a middle school, we ran out of seats at our Bringle Ferry campus at the 10:00 service and had people sitting on the floor, and filled up our Denton campus with 175 people with two people accepting Christ for the first time on Friday night! God is good! I cannot imagine any drug that could get me higher than I am right now. Many of you feel the same.
However, we must continue to pray for each other for strength, and I will continue to pray for you, because the lows will come. But let's enjoy the highs while they are here and give God every single bit of the credit. He did it, He always does.
Here we sit, in the children's room at church...
Here we sit, in the children's room at church, looking forward to the next series... DOORS (to financial freedom). We will be talking about how to manage your money the way that God wants us to.
There are a lot of churches where money is not discussed, it is a taboo topic that noone touches. For some reason we compartmentalize that part of our life and say, "that's noone else's business!" You know what I have to say about that...?
RIDICULOUS!
Why would we say that we want God to be in control of every part of our life... except our money. Why do we hide that aspect of our life? Most of the time I think it is because we know that we have not handled it the way that we are supposed to. Deep down we are ashamed of how we have used the financial resouces God has given to us.
Of course we should talk about money in church! Financial problems are probably the number one thing (next to sin) that comes between us and God. How are we supposed to focus on God when creditors are calling? How are we supposed to focus on God when we are drowning in debt? How are we supposed to focus on God when we are wondering how we are going to make our mortage payment? Money consumes almost everthing we do, it drives almost every decision that we make. Of course we should talk about money in church! Let's get this money issue figured out in our life and then we can easily move forward to focusing on God instead of focusing on our checkbook.
Boot Camp?
Well it is Saturday night (technically Sunday morning) at 3:00am and I can't fall asleep to save my life. I have been laying in bed for hours with thoughts constantly flooding my mind of how much you all mean to me and how we can be everything God is calling us to be. Have you ever had one of those nights where you have something on your mind and you know that there is no way you will be able to fall asleep until you put it down on paper, or in this case, in a blog? Tonight is one of those nights.
God desires for us to be a community of love, one that cares for others with true authenticity, mutuality, sympathy, and mercy. A community just like Ronnie talked about tonight and will talk about tomorrow morning. We have accomplished so much as a body in this area and we are already learning to do this on a level that I have not seen before, but I also believe that we have lightyears to go. So much is left undone, so much left to learn. I believe that in order to achieve the level of community that God requires it is going to demand a complete change in thinking, both for me and for you. "The Table" has been taking us on a journey to discover the true purpose for our church and what our roles are. I believe that tonight God is revealing to me what the final installment of this series needs to address... being a biblical community of fellowship, not an institutional organization of programs.
On February 9 we are going to have our first Small Group Boot Camp. I have heard several people make the comment that the term Boot Camp seems a bit strange and even a bit scary, but let me explain why we chose that term. For those of you who are or have been in the military you know what boot camp is designed to do... break you down, strip you of your comfort, remove you old habits, remove the norm, and create new habits, new norms. We need to do the same. Many of us have been corrupted by experience. We do things a certain way because that is how we have always done them, well that needs to change.
If we are going to be the biblical community that God desires we need to strip away what we know of church and how it should operate and look at the unique design that God has for us. We need to search His Word and seek out what true community looks like and how we achieve it. This series and this boot camp are just the beginning of the journey, but it's time to go! Let the revolution begin!
God is awesome!
A lot of work went into making that service happen, from Lighting to Audio to Props to Drama. By Sunday we were all exhausted and just had to put it all in God's hands to make it happen... and He did! He worked through all of the elements and, by my count, brought at least 10 people into His kingdom. I am just too pumped up for words right now. It is so amazing that God allows us to be a part of that. Most of the time I don't feel worthy of such a great responsibility, but He calls each of us to do unbelievable things for Him. Go figure.
P.S. - Looks like I really need to pick up my blogging, Ronnie blowing me out of the water!
What is faith... really?
Faith is not believing with our whole heart that God will give us what we want, it is whole-heartedly wanting and accepting what God gives us. "...yet not my will, but yours be done. (Luke 22:42)" I have faith that if God plans for me to move mountains in my life, I will... I also have faith that if the mountain doesn't move, God has a plan.
God has a plan for me and for you and for our church. I don't know what that plan is. But I do know that it is perfect whether I like it or not.
