Last Night's Grand Opening

The service at Parc-Way was awesome last night.  Our pastor, who spoke last night, was on his "A" game.  He brought it hard and did an excellent job.  The teens loved him.  The freedom in worship was amazing.  I give it off to the youth pastors who have worked with them because this is a very mature group when it comes to worship.  They worshipped their hearts out last night and it made for a real fun time for us as well.  I would go back there in a second.  Pastor Alex, the youth pastor at Parc-Way, is doing a great job.  Their youth facility looks great and the as I said before, the teens there are just awesome.  I pray that God continues to pour out His blessings on that church and Fusion Youth Ministries.  Way to go Pastor Alex and I hope we can do it again sometime.  

Grand Opening

There is a church here in Indy that is having their grand opening for their youth facility tonight.  Our worship band is supposed to be playing there, I just hope all the snow that we are getting right now doesn't delay it or cause it to be canceled.  It will be an awesome service.  My lead pastor is preaching at it and it's always a blessing to lead worship for him.  Well, I hope everyone is having an awesome day and if you are experiencing snow just remember that spring will be here before we know it.

Communicate

I just had the privilege of speaking to our congregation last Sunday.  It was a lot of fun.  Here are just a few thoughts from Sunday's message on how to communicate with God.

1.  I Peter 3 tells us that in order for our prayers not to be hindered, we have to treat our wives well.

2.  According to Psalm 68:18-19, if we cherish sin then God does not hear our prayers.

3.  God simply wants us to communicate from our heart and to make our prayers simple.  Matthew 6      tells us more about that.  

4.  One effective way to pray is to P.R.A.Y.  Praise, Repent, Ask, & Yield.

This is a prayer model that I practice myself and helps out a lot in my prayer time.  I praise God for a while, then I ask for forgiveness for my sins, I bring my requests to Him and then I surrender my life to His will.  There are many ways to pray, but if you are looking for one that is simple and can help give you stuff to talk to God about then this is pretty effective.

The last part is Listen.  It's important that we don't talk the whole time.  It's important for us to just be quiet and listen so that we can hear the voice of God.  

Again these are just a few thoughts.  You can listen to the whole message at www.lifechurchfishers.com/Podcast then look for my message titled, "Communicate"

What's The Purpose of Church - PART TWO

I do appreciate any of the comments that are being left.  Now that I have read some of the comments via this blog and facebook, I realize that I should have phrased the question differently. The real discussion I was looking for was not the purpose of church (the body of Christ), but more like what is the purpose or what should be the purpose of a Sunday Morning Service?  Is it to solely reach the lost or is it to strengthen and teach the body how to reach the lost outside of Sunday Morning.  I ask this because some churches are seeking to reach the lost in their Sunday morning services and have done things to make services more friendly to the lost.  Some people have said that their purpose for Sunday morning is not to reach souls, but to train the already saved on how to reach souls outside of Sunday morning.  I am looking for comments and discussion on this.  Do you think Sunday morning's purpose should be evangelistic or discipleship in other words?  What type of messages should you be preaching?  Give answers and then explanation as to why you think what you do.  Thank you so much

What's The Purpose of Church?

I got into an interesting discussion today with some other pastors.  I want to give you details of the discussion; however, I will do my best to not give you my opinion.  I do want to hear your comments and see what you think about it.  Here it is:  "What is the purpose of church?"  Is it so that we can save souls?  Is it to strengthen the body of believers?  Is it to equip the people to do ministry outside of the church?  These are all good questions.  One of the youth pastors feels that it is not necessary for churches to worry about trying to get people saved in their Sunday Morning ministry.  He said that the place to get people saved is outside of the four walls of the church.  The Sunday morning should serve only to give believers the knowledge and wisdom on how to reach others and grow spiritually.  I find this to be interesting.  His feelings were that we forsake holiness in our church services in order to attract the world to our churches.  He doesn't feel as if the world is attracted to our churches anyway, so why lower our spiritual standards by allowing willingly sinful people into our services on an on-going basis if they aren't trying to change.  What do we do with the passages of Revelation where Jesus tells some of the churches in chapters 2 & 3 that if they allow people in their congregation who are practicing sin to continue to show up then God will remove His Spirit from there?  What do we do with the passages of scripture that tell us to beware of wolves in sheep's clothing?  These are all good questions.  Our fear is that if we react to this frame of mind then we become cold-hearted and unloving.  Is there a way to be both?  Can you be warm, loving and totally closed-minded to sinners who are fully embracing their sin?  Notice that I said, "fully embracing", this does not refer to sinners who are coming but want to change.  There is more dialogue to this conversation; however, I would like to hear what all of you think about it.  I am willing to give my input, but for now I would just rather hear yours.  I'm not saying that I agree; however, I am not saying that I don't either.  I'm searching at this point.  

Back to the Grind

As most people are already back in the grind, I am just getting back into the grind due to being sick.  I came down with the flu a few days ago and am just now getting better.  I hate being sick, it's no fun.  The only benefit is the weight you lose; however, you gain it all back the second you start eating again.  What a mean joke that is to your body.  Why can't you just keep the weight off?  Oh well, I'm not bitter.  I hope everyone had a great New Year's and I am ready to do something for the Lord in a big way this year.  I want to leave my mark on the world.  God help me to do so.

Results

The results from last night's service were great. There were 300 students there and around 15 decisions for Christ. Steve Jones spoke and did a great job. Our original song went even better than expected. All in all it was a tremendous service. Then to top it all off my two kids finally started using the potty today. We have been having trouble with Peyton using the potty, but maybe since Mikayla is using it he will be encouraged to use it. I would have to say that it is a good start to a new year. My resolution is simply this: Have my kids be potty trained before the year's end.