Near and Far Faith

I don't believe that you can truly be thankful without acting on it. It's one thing to say " I'm thankful for..." but it brings clout to it when we give sacrificially. Thankfulness is recognizing that it's outside of yourself that your circumstances are comning together. When true love is laying down your life for a friend, we've gotten preoccupied with a selfish way of thinking that says "Whew! Glad I conquered that!" If there is not consistant sacrificial giving in our lives, then we are not truly thnakful.

It's great to see things come to fruition. I've been talking for a long time about letting go of responsibility to people who are better gifted and equipped. There are two areas where I've seen this come to pass recently:

Production Director. I got this idea from Los. Basically I've turned over a large part of my worship and communications responsibility to Dan as our production director. His role is directing the production that is Sunday AM. It's taken some transition time, but Dan now schedules all our music and our musicians. He tells me what to sing. As we move forward he has a great passion for events that I'm excited to see come to frutition as well (our Good Friday benefit concert last year? That was all Dan's idea). He's also deeply involved in the creative process. It's exciting. And he's a volunteer. What a great example of giving someone a task that fits their gifts to combat volunteer under-commitment.

SLT. Last week we met as a leadership team for Ignite Students and I started the ball rolling on so responsibilities for the Student Leadership Team. I've been encouraged to see even in the past few days some efforts expanding. For example - our website is never up to date. That's now in the hands of a few students. and just like Dan, now a couple of students schedule all our music and musicians - they even held auditions (they learned a lot through that one!). I'm also getting some students ready to teach on Tuesdays.

One thing I'm really pumped about is our focus for 2009 - the environment for Ignite Students. Our goal is to create an environment with an element of shock due to the care and effort put into just the surroundings... that can be built up and torn down every Tuesday. I already have a student gifted at staging (she's been helping produce Nazareth High's theater programs for years - even helped host Ms. PA this year) coming into help adjust our stage lighting. It's my area and I'm clueless.And our 1st Impressions team is getting more and more creative.

Just talking about this stuff fuels me up. I never want to hog responsibility and ministry. This success helps me keep that in the front of my mind.

We did it for the 5th time or so this past Sunday and it always blows me away. No matter how many people jump in... literally, it's always something that moves me. When you can combine the power of the gospel message with an opportunity void of excuses, something drastic is about to happen. We originally got the idea from Furtick and in August when they did it again at Elevation, then open sourced all their material. everything from Steven's talking points to instructions for the photographer.

If you've ever toyed with the idea of offering the opportunity to people to get baptized on the spot, download the file at the end of this post and check it out. It was very helpful.

What would have done differently? I think we need to change the feel of it next time. It's become redundant for the leaders. Fortunetly we have a lot of new people that haven't seen it as many times as we have, so they don't know any better. Next time I'd like to work hard at creating an environment that was more relaxing than a spa... somehow.

One thing that was huge this time though was passing off the responsibility to Marlene. She was A... wait for it... MAZING! She has a very blatant gift for caring and welcoming people and took this and ran with it. It's great to find people to do things that are better at them than you.

My dad was a church planter. He had 2 under his belt that he was deeply involved in. Neither were wildly successful in terms of numbers, but it was still very much a part of early life. In recent years Cher and I have developed a passion for church planting. No, we're not announcing any big move. At this point we simply love seeing people pursue God's kingdom with extreme risk and supporting them any way we can. Among some awesome ministries that we're involved with and know about are two church plants that I wanted to just highlight for a few minutes. I think both of these are going to change lives and communities on a big scale.

The Lehigh Valley Project (Legacy Church). I met with Richie Merritt about a month ago. He's coming from Forefront church in Virginia Beach to plant a church right here in the valley. He's got a persona and passion unmatched in the valley. He's from the area originally and he's coming back after years of being away. Why do I think this church will make a huge impact? I grew up in the valley and if Legacy Church is going to be anything like Forefront, there's nothing like it for 100 miles. It's a passion that echoes with my own heart of pulling out all the stops when it comes to changing lives.  I'm looking forward to being involved and networking however I can. It's exciting stuff for this area.

The Baltimore Project (Captivate Christian Church). Tally has been a trench buddy - one of the guys I mentioned yesterday. We've been through stuff together and watching each others ministry journey has been a ride. He hooked us up with the Charm City Church in Baltimore where we were this past summer. He's planting a church outside Baltimore with the goal of captivating that city. I'm excited to see God blow that up! Why I think he'll succeed: He's spending a lot of time preparing. In fact right now he's touring the south hanging out with, in my opinion, some of the coolest people around in church ministry with the intent of just listening. His passion for the city where he grew up will fuel life-change in a big way. He's got an awesome blog too - tallywilgis.com.

These are 2 church plants that are on my mind daily and I can't wait to have a part in in some way. Visit their sites and get to know them. This is time with spending on a cause worth dying for.

So... by tomorrow, i meant next week. I gotta stop doing that.

I want to wrap this group of thoughts up with this question: do we have a person or people in our lives that we can be our absolute true selves in front of and who will tell us what God wants us to hear?

This is probably the most uncomfortable lesson to learn, but it is coupled directly to growth on every level. Whether I'm in ministry on any level or simply human,  I am too close to myself to always see objectively my next step. Paul had Peter and Barnabas. Timothy had Paul. Moses had Jethro. And even Jesus had the Father.

What we can see in all these relationships is a degree of awkwardness and discomfort because these people were willing to confront sin and expose weakness for the others good. But even more than that, they remained close to walk the journey together.

I honestly only have 2 guys in my life right now who can walk that path with me (besides my wife of course). They have not only critized, but praised, guided, and encouraged through every step of my recent life. A couple of things that are key to this relationship are regular communication and conversations that go both ways.  I pray that we'd all have a person set on our mind right now that we could have a serious conversation with about growth and accountability this week. And when you do, be clear. It's not an opportunity for flatery, but for absolute honesty.

I'll get back to regular blogging tomorrow. It's been a nice break. After two and a half weeks, the twins are home. And no, it's not going to get crazy now. Now it's going to get normal and relaxing because we love our kids and especially love having them all home. Why do people keep assuming we either chose to have twins or hate kids? Anyway... happy family at home. (I've been waiting for 9 months for this first shot - the quintessential twin shot!)