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Monthly Archives: October 2008
WHIF Iceland Interview
This week I am in my hometown visiting with my family. I came down with the crud as soon as we arrived so I have spent the majority of my time here in bed. This morning the local Christian radio station called to ask if I would come in to talk about the Iceland project. I drug my self out of the bed and headed up to the station. I have some history at this station because I had a friday night raido show there between 1996-1998. Click on the player below to listen.
Membership
As promised here is the content to our new members class. Remember that this is the first draft of a class that will be in constant evolution. The document has been over several sets of eyes for editing but any help or suggestions you could give would be a great.
So this brings up another conversation… I grew up in a church that had church membership. We had about 1,000 people on the roll and about 300 there on any given Sunday. The rest were dead, in jail or home watching the game. I thought to my self, “What’s the point?”
Then I worked at a church that had no membership. They didn’t see the importance of church membership and said there was no Biblical precedent for it. The encouraged people to be involved but requested no formal commitment for anyone. They pointed to churches like my first example with disgust saying, “Why would we have church membership when it doesn’t really mean anything anyway?” I’m rather interested to know what you think about this.
Group Life
Our Church leaders have been working for quite some time now to put the final touches on our new members class. The series starts this week and we will take the entire church through it first. After that the class will be offered in three one hour sessions at the home of a member. Next week I will post a PDF copy of the finished product for everyone to critique but for now, until editing is finished, the cover art will have to do.
Week One:
1. What does it mean to be a Christian?
2. What is membership and why is it important?
3. How is Pillar governed?
4. What is the history of Pillar?
Week Two:
5. What is Pillar’s Purpose and strategy?
6. What does Pillar’s Future look like?
7. What affiliations and partnerships does Pillar have?
8. What are the essential beliefs at Pillar?
Week Three:
9. What are Life Groups?
10. How can I use my gifts to serve Christ at Pillar?
11. What will you expect of me if I become a member?
12. Can I tell you a little about myself?
Paint the Fence, Wax the Floor, go to Iceland.
There are those moments in life where all the dot’s don’t quite connect, like a few years ago, when God tells our church to go to Iceland… Like good slaves, we do as our master requests… no questions asked (at least out loud).
I have to say though, was feeling a little like the Karate Kid?… paint the fence, sand the floor, wax on, wax off? Why am I doing all of this? What is the point? Iceland seems so random… so obscure, so icy!
Last night I had a “Daniel Son” moment: (please forgive the bad language… don’t act so spiritual, you know you’ve seen the movie)
So my “Daniel Son” moment was when I read THIS ARTICLE.
After ministering in Iceland for three years, praying thousands of prayers for the Icelandic people and standing at the threshold of sending our first full time missionaries to the field. I get the since that God is up to something we couldn’t have dreamed.
Man I love following Jesus!
The pic is from Colby & Annie’s Commissioning for Iceland!
A Meeting of the Marks
So today I took 14 friends to a lunch meeting with Dr. Mark Dever. Dr. Dever is one of the most influential pastor/theologians of our day. A few weeks ago we contacted his office to see if he would consider having lunch with us. He quickly accepted and so today we met up with him. Here is a little run down on this day that I will not soon forget.
- When we arrived his assistant took us over to his house… (about 20 steps from the back door of the church) into his back door, up a long staircase and into his study. His study was lined with thousands of books 9/10′s of which haven’t been in print for a very long time.
- He had 6 intern’s in the room that were discussing what Dever called, “Bad Books” – his interns were to read the books this past week and advocate the position of the author. Then they took the last few minutes to share their actual opinions. It was a great discussion.
- Next it was lunch at Fudruckers for two hours of discussion. We submitted THESE QUESTIONS to him for discussion. Here are a few of my favorite of Dever’s quotes from the day:
- “When I say Biblical… I mean Calvinistic”
- “If unmarried men can’t be elders than that means that Jesus and Paul are disqualified… thats a problem.”
- “Everyone’s talking about their churches transforming there city’s with the gospel… thats never gunna happen. We are fallen, the city is full of fallen people. Your church shouldnt worry about transforming your city, rather worry about planting/pastoring a healthy church and leave the city up to God.”
- “We (CHBC) worry about the input… not the output” (input – the quality of what we do before God, output – the results)
Next we headed to the DC Mission house for debriefing… good times. The SBCV rents a house in the city for the spreading of the gospel there.
Next we went to Ebeneezer coffee house to spend the a few hours with Mark Batterson. These guys minister 5 blocks from one another and they couldn’t be more opposite. HERE are the questions we asked Mark Batterson.
The Following Guys Went With Me Today:
Naethan Hendrix, Chris Childres, Chris Rhodenhizer, Danfi Parker, Colby Garman, Bryan Scott, Jonathan Davis, Bobby O, Ben Cartwright, Josh Soto, Keilan Creech, Dave Fauth & Jamie Limato.
