The official figures are in – for the three Sundays since our relaunch on September 10th, there have been exactly 25% more people worshiping with us than for the same three Sundays one year ago.
Whatever way you cut it, that is good stuff and it means we are definitely moving in the right direction as we look to bust through the next major church growth barrier of 500 people on a Sunday morning.
The word is that once you get past the 500 mark, the next 500 comes far quicker, so the extra effort now is going to reap huge dividends in the not-too-distant future.
Here are a couple more quotes from my current favorite book – Go Big -
Ask for explosive growth to happen and position yourself for it to happen.
Remember, if it’s possible, you don’t need God. If it seems impossible, God is probably waiting for you to ask.
Just finished our first small group meeting of this session – Living A Blessed Life. It’s a stufy in the Sermon on The Mount that runs parallel to our Sunday series on the beatitudes – Discover Recovery.
The group really was small, but it was a good evening as we talked about how those who realize they need God’s help (the poor in spirit) are prime candidates for his blessing.
The best bit of the night came as our guests were leaving and one of them admitted to having had second thoughts about being baptized Sunday because he didn’t feel he was good enough. Tonight reassured him that it’s actually healthy to be in that frame of mind and he reaffirmed he would be getting baptized.
With my normal pastoral compassion, I simply agreed, “You’r not good enough!” Nor am I and nor is anyone – It’s grace that brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home.
We are gearing up for our Celebration Sunday and with that in mind, I stole this from Dave Ferguson’s blog -
As I thought about our efforts to ask people to join us during this series I began to put people into categories and here are the people who I think are most likely to say “yes” if you ask them to join you at church.
1. Friends & Family – These are people that will say “yes” just because they like you and know it is important to you. I would not let that stop you from inviting them; if they will come who knows what God might do. Invite them to church and then out for dinner or more fun afterwords. You should definitely invite them.
2. Seekers & Searchers – These are the people that are spiritually searching and are very open to talking about God, religion and faith. These people don’t claim to have the answers but really want to figure it out. We are doing a series on relationship and most all seekers and searchers are surprised to learn how God can help them in this most important area of life. Now is a great time to invite them.
3. Hurting & Needy – These are the people who have recently gone through a loss. They may have recently gone through a divorce, had a big job change, experienced the death of someone near them or some other tragedy that left them hurting and needing help. They are looking at the whole world differently than ever before and are open to ideas that before were unacceptable. You know someone like this right now…invite them.
4. Divine Appointments – These are the people that God has almost supernaturally put into your life. The only reason that your path crossed with this persons path is because God set up a divine appointment and he wants you to share Jesus with this person. If God has put one of these people in your life, invite them this series!
Eighteen months ago I joined a gym and started going there every morning to walk on the treadmill for 20 minutes at 3mph. Believe it or not, that felt like quite the workout when I weighed 330+lb.
Today I did a personal best, jogging 6 miles in just over 55 minutes – quite a difference from those initial efforts at the beginning of 2005. But that won’t be good enough when I step onto the machine again tomorrow. Tomorrow’s target will be under 55, even if its 54 minutes 59 seconds – and so it continues, pushing myself continually (well, most of the time, anyway), looking to improve on a daily basis.
Move that same determination into every part of life and I’d be well on the way to being superhusband, superfather, superpastor, etc., etc.
When we think about church life we should never settle with today’s achievements. We always need to be fine tuning what we do and how we do it. We need to set our goals higher on a regular basis, pushing for more and in the process giving God more room to do what he does best, showing up, surprising us and accomplishing more than we could ever ask him or imagine he could do.
There’s always more that we can do if we set our minds to it.
This week I resurrected a framed picture that was too far away from me for me to read the tag line. I put it right beside me on my desk. The wording goes like this -
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Brookhaven Conservative Party has a new leadership team. Last night’s meeting went smoothly and our church’s attorneys, Richard Johannesen and Ken Auerback now hold the top leadership positions in the party, with two of our church’s members supporting them on the Executive. I’ll be assisting them too in the newly created role of Chaplain to the Executive.
The conservative line is worth anywhere between 7% and 13% of the vote in local elections, so the party has been kingmaker for a number of years.
But sadly that influence has been abused for almost two decades, so it is an enormous breakthrough to have Christians in the leadership positions now.
When the Conservative leaders speak, politicians listen.
And they are going to be talking loud and clear!
As I came out of Worship Central last Sunday morning, the Baptism Class was just finishing up in one part of the foyer of the theater. I looked at the folks there and was tremendously encouraged. I know them. I know their stories. I know a lot of what God has done for them over the past few months and where he has brought them from.
That’s why we call the day we do baptisms Celebration Sunday. We celebrate new life, new hope, forgivenness, wholeness, purpose. I can hardly wait for Sunday to roll around.
We will celebrate!
Warning!
If you do not have a sense of humor, do not – I repeat, do not! – open this link …
Finding A Church
I started my day-off this morning jogging my daily six miles at the gym and I ended it by eating chocolate chip cookies, brownies, some spice cake and a handful of chips (fat-free chips you’ll be glad to know, but I do have a big hand!).
Why should this be of any interest whatever to any poor soul wandering the internet who happens upon this page? The truth is, it probably won’t.
But for those who know me and have seen my journey towards health over the past eighteen months, it may serve as a reminder of the fact that we move gradually towards our goals in life and don’t suddenly arrive there. In fact, we generally battle every step of the way.
But the ultimate goal makes the struggles worthwhile – and thankfully one out of control evening doesn’t wipe out all that has been accomplished.
At least this proves I’m not anorexic!
Our email’s back up and running. Don’t ask me how or why – I did eventually get word from our webhosting company about what had happened, but since I don’t speak computer geek-ese I have no idea what they are talking about.
Seems all the emails sent here for the past four days have been bounced back to their sources, so feel free to re-send – except for you spammers who finally got a taste of your own medicine!
Most Towns/States don’t have a Conservative Party – other major parties take the conservative position. But here in New York, there was a vacuum, so the Conservative Party was established to fill it. Sadly they did not stick to the politics their name implies. But all that is about to change.
At the Brookhaven Conservative Party’s Convention on Tuesday evening the New Conservative Majority is set to take control of the party. With 340+ delegates to the old guards less than 100, the New Conservative Majority (for that you can read Chrustian leadership team) is set to have a new Executive established which will stick to Conservative and Christian principles.
They have asked me to act as Chaplain to the Executive to help them ensure that whatever they pursue is Biblical and will help the development of God’s kingdom in this area.
There is an interesting time ahead for local politics. Please pray for Tuesday night to go smoothly and for this new force in the Town’s leadership to have all the wisdom they need.
As I have written here before, their first demand will be that the Town Board revokes its restrictions on church buildings!
