Dangerous Churches: Craig Groeschel

check out this blog from Pastor Craig Groeschel, someone I hold in high esteem.

I was talking to a guy on a plane about God. When I asked him if he went to church, he explained politely that he wasn’t interested. I asked him why he wasn’t and he said matter of factly, “Because I’ve already been and nothing happened.”

Maybe he went to a “safe” church.
In a safe church:
The message makes you feel better.
You’re never confronted about your sin.
No one rocks the boat.
You don’t have to change.
You may never truly encounter our Holy and Life-giving God.

When I read about the New Testament Church, it was filled with people with a dangerous faith. While we certainly should make our environments welcoming, our message should remain dangerous.
We’re called to leave everything to follow Christ.
We’re invited to believe God for the impossible.
We’re told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
We’re told that to find our life we have to lose it first.

There is nothing safe about that message. May our churches become a safe place to encounter a dangerous message.

What are some of the ways you offer a welcoming environment while presenting a dangerous message?

help me grow

my contact is james@mosaiccrestview.com.  

Please take the time and e-mail me the answers to the following questions if you are able:

If you are or were to be a leader of a church/business/organization and I came to work for you full time for free, where would you put me to work and why?

What areas would you see to it that I avoid and why?

In my current job where do you see a misalignment between my competencies and my responsibilities?

In what areas of my life do you see a misalignment between my passion and my competencies?

where is the feedback?

I was wondering why a lot of people say they read my blog, but no one comments on it. Maybe my readers are just not good with words, maybe their too lazy to comment, or maybe they just don't get technology. Then I was advised by a friend of mine that I had to change the settings because it was currently set to only let registered blogspot users have a say. What a simple thing I was doing to disconnect people from my blog.

I think this sums up most churches today.

They have a great message, but no one is responding to it. They figure out all the reasons in the world why people are not getting into what they are doing; a liberal culture shift, young people's attention spans, money, etc. They are completely unaware of the fact that they have shut the world out and are only interacting with those "inside". It takes some simple adjustments to change from being a gathering of people focused on self to being a living body that reaches out to a world in need. The message they have is compelling, it is what people are born to hear.

The questions is whether or not the Church is ready to respond to the world's response to the Gospel.

As a blogger I am now ready for your comments. As a follower of Christ, I am ready to see you respond to the message of Christ.

baseball and staff meeting

Last night I watched the Rays destroy the Red Sox. It was cool to see them so "in the game" after being defeated at home in game 1.

Every week, our paid staff (me, tripp, eric) meets to see how we can better lead the church. Our agenda is simple and as follows:

-Last week- victories and areas of improvement
-People of our church and their needs/what needs to be done
-Various items that concern the life of our church
-This week: Leaving the past behind, while learning from it. Moving forward towards the vision that God has given us!

We start with our past and what we can learn from it. We finish by focusing on the future and how we can be used by God.

I think that this is a great model for our relationship with God. It is great to celebrate our victories and repent over our losses, but we must always press on to the fact that God has given us tomorrow. While He desires our realization of how we may have struck out, He is more focused on our intention to step up to the plate for Him again!

Defeat does not discourage great leaders, it becomes a catalyst towards a higher level of intensity during the next at bat!

it's not about you

This is one of the most popular phrases in contemporary christian culture. "It's not about you" is the opening line in Rick Warren's best selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.

Since Warren wrote this book, it has been the desire of many Christians to get non-believers to come to the personal realization that "it's not about you." So you should stop living for yourself and join other believers in worship of the one true God!

Then, this person decides to check out a local church (maybe even an accepting, cutting edge, "seeker sensitive" church) and decides to stick around for a while. They give their life to Christ, they show others their new found faith, they start to get involved and grow closer to some of those who invited them for many years.

Then as they get to know these people they come to a new realization that is shocking, confusing, challenging, hypocritical, etc, etc! For those believers faith and church actually is all about you!

Now, instead of being part of mainstream society and involved with people they naturally click with more; They put aside their living for self and now attend a church with people (they don't even like that much) who are completely living for self.

Worship is all about the songs that they like. They sermon is all about whether or not it was deep enough (whatever that means). Giving is all about making sure their money is used the way they think it should be. Serving is all about the their personal agenda. Church is all about themselves!

I wonder why many people leave the church within their first year of conversion. Let's just keep blaming it on their salvation not being real - that way we don't have to change anything about ourselves.

I realize that their are some great people of the faith that love Jesus with all their heart. I serve at mosaic church of crestview alongside some incredible examples of this.

five needs

Since we are a church plant which has only been "launched" for 5 months, I get asked what the great concerns/needs that we have are often. Here are the top five...............

1. Musicians
2. Teachers and workers for our children's ministry/nursery
3. Improving upon our strategy of moving first time guests to committed members
4. Finances
5. Bettering our focus on first time guest

These are things that our church does not "have together". But Paul said, God's power is made perfect in our weaknesses. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.