As we get our plans together to start our next location, pray for this church that’s opening a new campus on November 9th and making it known in a unique way -

Shot Glass Church Gives Away Free Gas Cards

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In another step of its “Give Us A Shot” campaign to mark the opening of its Mint Hill Campus, Next Level Church is mailing out vouchers for FREE GAS. The church, which received national media attention for its distribution of shot glasses inscribed with the church’s logo and the phrase “Give Us A Shot” is opening its third campus at Crown Point Elementary School at 10:30 AM on Sunday November 9th, 2008.  

Todd Hahn, Lead Pastor of Next Level Church, says “The free gas card give away is our next step in letting everyone in the Mint Hill area know we are here and that we want to be a great and generous part of the community.” The Mint Hill Campus is located at Crown Point Elementary School and will be led by Pastor Doug Irvin.

The opening of the Mint Hill Campus is a continuation of Next Level Church’s ambitious goal to begin a church campus near every exit off of I-485 in the next ten years. According to Hahn, “Project 485 will insure that no resident who lives near the belt loop highway will have to drive far to get to a place that is committed to meeting their spiritual needs and letting them know how much God loves them and wants them to experience a great life. This is an exciting step in our strategy to be one church in multiple locations as we transform the spiritual landscape of Charlotte.”

Each campus will feature full service ministry for youth and children and will offer Next Level Church’s trademark style, which Hahn describes as “equal parts rock concert and coffeehouse.”

Just three years old, the non-denominational Next Level Church has launched a video campus in the Charlotte Stone Creek area (Polo Ridge Elementary School) and plans to send 125 of its Matthews Campus members to help launch the Mint Hill Campus located at Crown Point Elementary School.

Beginning November 9th, service time at the Mint Hill Campus is 10:30 AM, service time at the Stone Creek Campus is 10:00 AM and Matthews Campus times are 9:30 AM, and 11:00 AM.

 Sunday we start a new series – one that we have been waiting to get to for more than a year. Inititally slated for last fall, we decided to bump it to the spring. A couple of things that happened then threw us off schedule, so at last we now begin to take a real good look at what God is like.

To help people in Old Testament times understand him better, God revealed himself to them through a number of very significant names.

The first of them we’re going to look at is one that will set a heck of a lot of people free. I’m ready for it to be Sunday already!

Fifty people came for help from our food pantry this morning – a record. This evening’s session will take our numbers through the roof for any one Thursday.

If you’re part of our church or within reach of us and can get some groceries our way, we’d really appreciate you standing with us.

We’ve been getting calls just about every day lately asking about our food pantry and I’m wondering what kind of a crowd is going to hit Kerry and her team when they open up tomorrow morning. On an average Thursday they have been helping up to forty families, but last week that number suddenly jumped to sixty and by the time tomorrow’s done, heaven knows what the tally will be.

And heaven does know!

It’s a good thing and a Christ-like thing to offer help to those that are hurting. Jesus made a pretty strong case for that when he said that to serve others is in effect to serve him. On the flip side of that he said those who didn’t feed the hungry, visit the sick or clothe those in  need should go directly to hell, without passing go or collecting $200.

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is stretching us. Sixty families works out at more than 250 people we’re providing food for, so it’s flying off our shelves at an alarming rate and there’s not a ton of stuff there to start with.

One thing that’s encouraging is that well into our seventh year of operating our Grace Care Food Pantry, we’ve always had enough to give and have never turned anyone away.

Seems like when you’re doing Jesus stuff, he supplies what you need to make it happen.

It’s important for us to know the people we are trying to reach, so we communicate to them where they are actually at as opposed to where we think they are at.

How about the results of this survey for starters? -

Non-Christians aged 16-29 years old were asked, “What is your current perception of Christianity?”

• 91% said antihomosexual
• 87% said judgmental
• 85% said hypocritical
• 78% said old-fashioned
• 75% said too involved in politics
• 72% said out of touch with reality
• 70% said insensitive to others
• 68% said boring
• 64% said not accepting of other faiths
• 61% said confusing

So that’s where they’re at – now all we have to do is deal with those huge negative mindsets and then we can possibly get our message across, because God knows we clearly haven’t been doing that so far!

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m still wasted – thankfully my friend Gary Lamb – www.garylamb.org – penned some stuff today that’s better than anything I could have put together!

http://www.garylamb.org/2008/10/27/change-or-die

+ I’m wasted by the time Sunday evening comes around and tonight is definitely no exception.

+ Dropped Jonathan off at JFK this evening at the conclusion of his brief weekend visit with us – it was great to have him around. Our relationship is one of the chief joys of my life.

+ We went to the Curry Club for lunch today, but I managed to be restrained when faced by their buffet.

+ Eight days until I leave for India. A lot to do this week prior to setting off.

+ This morning was the finale of our 10th Anniversary celebrations – The Anniversary Exodus. We had an abbreviated service and then moved out in four different directions to undertake projects in the community, serving those around us.

+ Once we finished up at the theater, I visited the team of around 30 people cleaning up the large traffic triangle at the intersection of Ronkonkoma Avenue and Hawkins Avenue. By the time it was all done, there were loads of bags of leaves, the grass looked good and the flower bed was 100% better with the plants Chris and co planted there.

+ A shorter service meant shorter teaching, which I don’t do well at of course. I had to ditch the last part of what I had prepared and while it wasn’t a classic message, I hope it encouraged folks to continue to focus on serving others.

+ Used a good quote from Craig Groeschel’s book It – he calls it the national anthem of church hoppers … I’m just not being fed, I’m not being fed, I’ll leave every church in town and I won’t stop till I’m dead!

+ May watch a bit of baseball, but there’s no way I’ll stay awake long enough to see the end – Go Rays!

I’m still pretty new when it comes to voting in elections. This is only the second Presidential race since I proudly became a U.S. citizen in December of 2000. So you’ll have to pardon me if I’m still a bit overwhelmed by the process.

When I mailed in my absentee ballot last week, I  was challenged by what appeared to this political novice as a choice between an arrogant novice who is a brilliant communicator and a faltering old man with a foul temper and a worse mouth who seems incapable of stringing two sentences together.

I don’t fully understand all the implications of the economic programs they hawk daily at campaign stops, nor do I know why they both think it’s a good move to throw more money the country doesn’t have into making us more financially sound.

I think I have grasped their takes on Iraq, but I still have the feeling that there’s a lot more to that war than the biased viewpoint we are handed out by the media.

They’re both going to give us money, but I’m not sure who gets what and who actually provides the cash they’re going to dole out. Sounds a bit like trying to buy votes to me, but as I’ve said, this is all new to me.

So what did I do with my “X”?

I ignored personalities, rhetoric and promises that probably won’t be kept anyway and here’s what I did -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwLY_HRt-AM

I VOTED MY VALUES – NOT A BAD BOTTOM LINE REALLY … I THINK!

+ Can’t believe we were discussing our Christmas series this morning. Did I miss summer somewhere? Not sure if we’ll get our theater for Christmas Eve, but we’re checking into it.

+ Had a great response to the breakfast I arranged for local pastors yesterday so they could meet State Senators Caesar Trunzo and John Flanagan. About 35 pastors showed and will be subtley passing on word that it’s imperative we see these two conservative politicians returned to Albany.

+ We’re gearing up for our Anniversary Exodus this coming Sunday. A load of people have signed up for the projects we’re going to be getting into right after our abbreviated service. It’s all about serving!

+ Encouraging responses to Sunday’s vision casting. You can listen to what I had to say here – http://www.churchatthemovies.com/podcasts/feedReader.php/ - or just sign up for the podcast of course.

+ We’re talking about two different locations for the first new campus – one east and one west. Who knows!

+ Disturbing week for one of our ladies. Her brother was murdered on Monday. We’re emailing funeral details to our church folks tomorrow.

+ Two weeks from now I’ll be in India at Covenant Blessings Church’s annual church camp at an old mission hospital in the hills near the city of Pune. Camp is a little basic, but it’s a blast – four days with the English-speaking congregation and then four days with the Hindi speaking congregation.

+ I’m flying on November 3rd, so have voted already. Neither of the presidential candidates would be my first choice, but since Obama scares the pants off me, the old guy got my vote.

Perry Noble preached for us in June as part of the One Prayer series – via video. Here’s his report of the first Sunday for anew campus they have just started out from New Spring Church -

Yesterday we launched our new location in Florence, SC and had 189 people show up…which is WAY more than we were anticipating.

For those who don’t know…we do not have a permanent facility down there…we do the load in/load out thing…and the service yesterday was a “preview service.”  (We will have another one in two weeks.)

SO…after our 11:15 service in Anderson I called Michael Brown, our campus pastor, to see how the service went.

He picked up the phone and said, “Hey man, I am SO sorry–have you been trying to call me?”

I thought that was a weird way to begin the conversation…so I said, “No, why are you asking?”

He said, “My phone has been blowing up but I haven’t been able to answer it because I was meeting with a guy who came to our service this morning.”

I then asked him how things went and he said, “Dude, the MOST exciting thing that took place was the meeting I just had with the guy who showed up today.  This was the first time he’s been to church in 20 years…and I just led him to Christ!”

I about ran off the road!!!  Seriously…I was so excited that I literally lost my awareness of how fast I was driving!  THAT ABSOLUTELY PUMPED ME UP!!!

Because…

You must understand that we are launching Florence in a unique way.  Sam, our worship pastor, led worship with just a microphone and an acoustic guitar…no band, no drums…just Sam.

AND…we showed a video of a message I preached at the Anderson campus in January of 2007.  (To which Michael said everyone was interacting with!)

All that taken into consideration…and a guy who hadn’t been to church in 20 years met Christ!

Our vision for Florence is to one day see NewSpring Church in a permanent facility; however, the way that a vision is accomplished is one step at a time–and today the first step was taken in planting a church in that area of the state that has a passion to see people far from God come to know His Son and have their life changed forever.
Florence…he’s the first of thousands in your community that are going to have their lives changed!!!  Keep on praying, serving and inviting your friends…God has great things in store.

Does video teaching work?  There’s a guy in Florence, SC that is now going to spend eternity in heaven because a church refused to believe that church has to be done the way it’s always been done!  I am sure he would say he’s thankful!!!

God is doing great things THROUGH technology…and I can’t wait to see what happens next!!!