Receptivity

So I’ve been noticing a lack of comments on this blog lately. That means one of two things –

1. Nobody really reads these anymore – the blog reading days have passed. Or…
2. Our content is not interesting enough and unworthy of comment.

I can understand this…I have read many blogs and thought, “I really have nothing to say to that”. To see what the problem is, I thought I would throw out an issue that’s worthy of discussion and ask for your thoughts, O faithful blog readers. What do you think about this…

“These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11

I think it’s a proven biblical fact that there are some cultures in the world that are more receptive to the gospel than others. The Bereans were obviously more receptive to the gospel than the Thessalonicans. I don’t think it was just that Paul ran into some people in Berea who happened to be open. I think that the culture in Berea was more receptive to the truth of the gospel and lined up Paul’s teachings against the Old Testament to see if his teachings were true.

Now that my best friend is giving his life in the service of poor and dying people in Uganda and having incredible success, I’ve often had this thought…

Is our time as evangelists (Christians who are obeying the great commission) best spent in the regions of the world that are most receptive to the gospel?

Should receptivity be a factor in choosing where we take our missions trips and plant our churches?

I’ll never forget a conversation that I had with missionary Richard Michalski on a mission trip to the Ukraine. He was pouring out his convictions on this subject in between spoonfuls of pasta. He told me that if you added up all the dollars spent on evangelism in a certain nation and divided that by the number of souls that were coming to Christ you would have a “cost per soul” ratio.

He told me that the cost per soul in the USA was around $10,000. So for every 10,000 dollars that we spend on evangelism in our country, 1 person comes to Christ. The shocking part was still to come. He said that in the Ukraine, the cost per soul was around $1. In Africa? A mere 10 cents. So if we sent our 10,000 dollars to Africa instead of reaping 1 soul in America, we would see 100,000 people come to Christ. He talked about how there are regions of the world that are under a “grace for harvest”.

Now I’m not sure where he got those figures and if they’re exactly accurate. But he does bring up an interesting point. Should we be focusing our money and man power endeavoring to reach a culture that is mostly closed to the gospel (like much of the western world) when there are millions of people in other parts of the world who have never heard the gospel and are very receptive to the message?

Or to make it even more personal – Why am I living in an area that is statistically unreceptive to the gospel when I could be living in a region and helping reap a massive harvest?

Should receptivity be a factor? Or should we be specifically commanded by the Spirit of God in every mission trip, church plant and choice of residence? Obviously he wants a witness in the hard mission fields of France, Germany, Spain, Japan and the like. Did Paul have the direct command of Christ to go to each city? Or did he just preach wherever he went? Sometimes that seems clear…sometimes not.

It’s clear that God’s plan is to redeem every tribe, tongue and nation. But does it make more sense to start with the receptive regions of the earth so they can be part of the army of missionaries that flood the unreceptive areas?

I know that I’m living in direct response to the call of God to live in Nampa, ID. But as FLC continues to grow in number and influence, I’m realizing that God is calling our church to have global impact. The question is…where do we begin?

I’d love your thoughts on this one...

2 Books

Due to the lack of posting on our book review blog, I'm going to continue reviewing books on our blog...did you ever realize you have too many blogs and need to downsize? Ha ha. Anyway, my two latest reads were:

The Local Church Today - Bill Scheidler

and

Communicating for a Change - Andy Stanley

Local Church was really great. The importance of the local church is one of my life messages that's been passed down from spiritual fathers in my life. People ask me all the time why I'm so passionate about it and how I see it so clearly in scripture. This book by Bill Scheidler really sums it up well. The 1st half is a study of the church in scripture and the 2nd half is a biblical analysis of elders, deacons, and the 5 fold ministry. It's all straight bible.

If you wonder about MFI and what we believe about the local church, church government, and church offices - pick up this book.

Stanley's book was a fun read for a preacher. He's pretty confrontational and challenging in his assault on boring preaching. I liked it. I think he comes across a little bit strong in some areas. You get the feeling that you should abandon your preaching style and use his models or be doomed to poor preaching. I'm going to take some and leave some.

His main controversial point is that all messages should only have one point. I'm not buying that part completely. I believe that we should preach the way that God leads us to preach - and that may change from week to week. I believe that the Holy Spirit not only can give us content but He can give us communication technique. But if you applied Stanley's system as a basic foundation and let the Holy Spirit breath on it from week to week, you would have some good things going.

I especially enjoyed his comments to preachers who hide bad preaching behind the guise of "that's just my style" or "I need to be myself". He has some pretty great stuff to say about the necessity of engaging your audience and not being boring. I'm stirred to preach more focused messages that have a clear take away - yet I'm going to continue to allow God to groom my preaching style and seek Him for direction, content and style.

Jamie's late night thoughts

I am not sure whether it is Danny's recent blog kick or the Autumn leaves and crisp breeze that have inspired me to write lately, perhaps both. Today, though, I have been writing all day long. Being a mother of a two year old, it has all been in my head of course. But now that David has drifted off to sleep and my house lies quiet, all that has been written during the day finds it way out of my mind and into my studies and now, this blog. I think blogs must have been invented for men who like to chronicle their daily revelations out of Scripture and women who need more avenues to use up all their words. (Or at least that is what this blog has been utilized for.) So, for whoever reads this, bear with me as I use up some extra words from today.
As the heat of the summer finally submits to the Harvest season, I find myself spending more and more time with a cup of coffee, my Bible and a contemplative spirit. Not that I don't contemplate in the other seasons, but in this particular season I seem to contemplate more that usual. I contemplate the Word of God, my life, how my life measures up to the Word, the church, parenting, and on and on. I am a firm believer in contemplation, especially with the Holy Spirit, as I believe it leads to accurate self evaluation and practical goals for the future. Anyways, today I was once again contemplating on the consistent war between faith and worry. For those of you that know me, you know that this has been a large battle in my personal life that started on the day that I realized that these two were opposed to each other. Ruth Bell Graham says it this way, " Worship and worry cannot live in the same heart; they are mutually exclusive." Today though as I was evaluating my faith level, the Holy Spirit led me to the revelation that just as faith and worry cannot co-habitate neither can disappointment and a thankful heart.
I have never really thought of myself as disappointed in anything in my life. I have an amazing husband, a healthy child whom I have the privilege of staying home with, I love my ministry, etc, etc. God has truly blessed us! As the Holy Spirit began to reveal to me the power of thanksgiving and the barrier that disappointment poses to it, I began to see with Him even the slightest areas of disappointment in my life. Areas that are not bad, but are not exactly the vision I had of them either. As one area popped up, others began to surface and before long I realized that in order to go where the Holy Spirit is wanting to lead me in my relationship with Him disappointment can have no place in my life, not even the smallest part.
Tonight marks a significant day for me just as the one did years ago when I decided to engage in the battle against worry and fear. Tonight I decided to engage the giant of disappointment in battle no matter how small the ground is that he would try to take in my life. I wonder at people who do not seem to live this Christian life with excitement and passion. I find it absolutely invigorating to realize the plans of the enemy and then partner with Christ in destroying them!!!

From them will proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who celebrate; And I will multiply them and they will not be diminished; I will also honor them and they will not be insignificant. Jeremiah 30:19

That is all for tonight. Word ratio is now satisfied. To the unknown blog reader or readers out there: Be blessed in your conquests this week!

The Fear of the Lord and Healing

"But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings..."
Mal 4:2

"Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed."
Acts 5:16

I'm praying for a culture in our church that fears the name of the Lord. It's incredible to see the power that comes upon a people who cultivate the fear of God and choose to live without double standards. The fear of the Lord came upon the church of Jerusalem after the Ananias and Sapphira incident. And the result? Great healing and deliverance.

People from all over the region heard about the power in the church. I can imagine them packing up their sick and demon possessed relatives and making the trip to Jerusalem full of faith and convinced that God was moving and was able to heal their loved ones. People will move miles away to experience a genuine move of God. It seems like everyone has a story about Toronto in the 90's. People are so hungry for an authentic and genuine move of God that is evidenced by his power. They will give up jobs and relationships and move to churches where God is moving in power. If it happened in the book of Acts, than it will happen today. I'm amazed at the stories people tell me about how they came to FLC.

I believe now more than ever that the power of God will draw people to hear the message of the cross. I believe the multitudes are coming. But I believe that power in the church is dependent upon a great commitment to a culture where we fear the name of the Lord.

Speed of My Heart

"O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!" Luke 24:25

How quickly does your heart believe? Do you have a heart that takes a lot of stirring to believe for the promises of God in your life?

I think God is ready to absolutely blow our minds with blessing if we would simply cultivate a heart that quickly believes him at His word. I honestly don't believe that God is wanting to wait forever to do unbelievable things through us to reach our cities. We're in days of massive harvest and increase. God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth and I believe that He wants to do this through us in a rapid manner.

I wonder how often God is limited by the faith that is in our hearts. Hearts that are slow to believe and our filled with hesitation limit the rapid miraculous movement of the Holy Spirit in our cities. God is speaking some pretty unbelievable things to our church right now - I'm praying for faith in the hearts of our people to believe God at His word and step out in bold obedience.

The Burden

God has really been speaking to our church about reaching our city. It's like He just stopped us in the middle of our plans and said, "Its time to care for the lost". I'm really feeling pressed by the Spirit to be more bold than ever before in sharing the message with a generation that so badly needs it.

One thing that Larry Stockstill said in the previously mentioned message is that at the core of Christianity there needs to be a strong burden for the lost. He put it this way (speaking to pastors)...

"Don't spend time discipling a leader unless they bleed for your city."

His point was that the burden is the thing that drives us to prayer, fasting, action, and results.

I found this scripture really hit home this morning...

"So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven." Nehemiah 1:4

For a long time I've thought that a burden for the lost must be a sovereign move of God on your heart. But if it was up to God to move on us we'd see a whole lot more burdened Christians around. I believe there is a responsibility on our part to cultivate our hearts to receive God's burden for His lost sheep.

Nehemiah had a heart that was ready to receive the burden from the Lord. The broken down wall in Jerusalem wasn't new news...it had been that way for 180 years!! I believe he already knew that facts about his homeland but that he had not yet received the burden God had for him...until that day in chapter 1. And the burden led to prayer and fasting. The prayer and fasting led to favor and action. Before you know it a whole culture was being transformed by a man with a burden and a vision.

So what can we do to cultivate a heart that is ready to receive a burden from the Lord?

• Pray for the lost
• Spend more time with lost people
• Ask the Lord for compassion and mercy
• Ask the Lord to make our heart like His heart - "God, I want to feel the way you feel..."
  
• Remember the kind of life that God saved you out of
• ???

Renewed Blogging Efforts

So it's been one year since we moved from Bend to Nampa. I felt stirred to renew my blogging efforts. My new strategy is to post more often with shorter thoughts and updates. The blogging public demands something fresh and it is high time I give it to them. So this is a new day for our blog and it comes with a fresh look. What do you think?

I'll be doing my best to continue to keep you updated on how ministry is going as well as our life apart from ministry. Jamie tends to feel a little guilty when the content gets stale, so she posts more often. But I'm working on the discipline of writing and will strive to be a good contributer.

Last week I attended the international MFI pastors conference along with Pastors Steve and Taunia and my good friend Troy. We had a fabulous time. There was great teaching all around but the top three messages, in my opinion, go to Bob MacGregor, Frank Damazio and Larry Stockstill.




I've never had an opportunity to hear from Pastor Larry. His slant on the 5 fold ministry and the importance of discipleship was absolutely inspiring. His church in Baton Rouge is exploding. The youth ministry led by his son Joel Stockstill is the largest in the US with over 5500 students in cell groups. I highly recommend listening to his podcast. Spending time listening to great leaders in the church is always good to stir my vision and passion. I'm excited for another year in youth ministry.

We've come a long way this year - there's a over 100 students coming to the NXT now every week and we keep taking strides forward. I'm proud of our leaders and all that they sacrifice for these people. Keep praying for us as we move forward into the God's plan for Southern Idaho.

Miraculous Provision

For those of you that have not heard yet, this past week Pastor Steve was in a serious accident. He was thrown from his horse while on a camping trip high up in the mountains. From the time that he was injured to the point when medical help arrived he had been up on the mountain for almost 5 hours. They life flighted him in to town and discovered that he had 3 broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a shattered spleen, a lacerated pancreas and liver and bruised kidneys.
The amazing thing has been how the grace of God has preserved his life clear back from time of injury continuing even now. On the mountain his vitals remained strong despite internal bleeding for that length of time, he never lost consciousness, once he reached the hospital his shattered spleen miraculously began clotting and surgery was no longer necessary.
Even as I am writing this he is recovering in his own home when the doctors told him that he would be in the hospital for at least 10 days. When the doctors marveled at the healing taking place in Steve's body, he was able to tell them about the power of prayer and the faithful hand of God.
So, in short, this has been a testing week for us here at Family Life Church. It has been a tough test but a good one. Last week in youth church we called the young people to fast and pray on Thursday for Pastor Steve's healing. Over 75 of them responded and we are still hearing reports from them about what God did inside of them this last week as they stepped out in faith to believe for healing. Praise God that He is continually moving the church forward into the picture of what He has called us to be!

Camp

I realize that you have been waiting for the camp recap blog, but this has been a tough project to try and somehow explain camp in words. Being our first youth camp, this year's camp will obviously always hold a special place in Danny and I's hearts. I think that we can easily say that all of our greatest expectations for camp were blown out of the water and we found ourselves consistently overwhelmed by the grace of God. Pastor Jonathon Owens was our speaker this year and brought such a great impartation to our youth ministry in the area of evangelism. Our theme was "Shout It Out!" and we saw God release a boldness into our young people as fear and timidity were broke off of their lives. One of the words that Pastor Jonathon most impacted us with was the ABC's of our faith: C- Confess, B- Believe, A- Action. I am still hearing testimonies from young people telling me about how they are putting action to their faith and refusing to live in fear. Pastor Jonathon also introduced our youth ministry to a whole new level of praise that pushed us past all limitations to worship God completely unashamed. It was fun to watch!
We also played some crazy games and had an overall really fun time! The first day of games though nearly killed all of us and our nurse was ready to pack up and head home. Probably our biggest lesson that Danny and I learned is how big the role of the nurse is during your week at camp. Down below you can see the picture of the final round of the Sock Game, which turned out to be more brutal than we anticipated. We had ten teams competing during the week and the goal of the sock game is to be the last team with your socks still on at the end. So obviously the goal for everyone else is to get your socks off. All of your Bendonites will appreciate this following story that occurred during the sock games: Trina was cornered and tackled by an entire team in pursuit of her socks. During the wrestling match that followed, Trina located a random calf that happened to be close to her teeth and chomped on it! When the dust settled, one of our young men was standing there with a look of bewilderment on his face as he examined the intense bite mark on his leg. Imagine the surprise of the nurse when we called her in to treat a counselor inflicted wound! Don't worry though, we instructed this young man to keep his calves clear of Trina's teeth in the future and he eagerly agreed to our counsel.

On the other side of camp, we have testimonies of 10 new commitments to Christ, over 20 people baptized in the Holy Spirit for the first time and countless young people walking past fear into faith and boldness to preach the Gospel to their generation. The impact that camp has made on our youth ministry is still untold as we are watching the seeds take deep root and bear awesome fruit.
Next week, we head up to McCall for our youth leadership retreat. It should be a great time of vision casting for the new school year that lies ahead of us. We will be keeping you posted on the NXT youth church as we continue to press in to the amazing things God has in store for Canyon County!

Shout it Out

We are right in the middle of a series on Battlefields right now at the NXT. Last night we preached on the struggle for power and the plan of the enemy to get our generation addicted to substitute powers rather than the power of the Holy Spirit. At the end of the message, the Holy Spirit added a demonstration to further drive home His agenda. A young man happened to be in church for the first time in his life last night. He has been addicted to drugs from a young age, he is part of a gang and as of last night he didn't believe there was a God because of all the bad things that happened to him during his childhood. We still don't know how he ended up in youth church or why he stayed since he spent most of the night mocking us. The day prior he had messed up his knee pretty bad playing football. The knee was swollen, black and blue and he obviously was in pain when he walked on it. So, Danny calls him up to the front and has our student leaders gather around him and pray for him. The guy thinks we are totally nuts and continues to mock us as we are praying for his healing. The snickering soon turned to astonishment though as he begins to freely bend his knee. Completely bewildered he tears off the bandages to examine his knee, now totally healed! Danny has to literally chase him out the door to catch him because the guy is so freaked out that he is booking it out of there. He ends up surrendering his life to God and is starting to meet with one of our leaders for discipleship today! It is nights like last night that make youth ministry all worth while. =)
By the way our summer camp is coming up next month and we are pumped. The theme is Shout it Out! Below is our postcard for Summer camp. I included it because mostly I think blog entries are more interesting if they have a picture. Deep, I know.

Back from Vacation

Again, it is I writing the blog update. Funny how it was Danny who started this blog and me who feels the guilt to actually keep it updated. Full time ministry has made me realize how much either Danny or I start something that the other one has to actually take over and finish. For some people they finish each other's sentences, for Danny and I; we finish each other's projects. Go figure!

Anyhow, getting to the real point of this blog entry and the part that you actually care about if you are reading this right now…life and ministry. Let's start with the life part:

Being fairly busy with ministry, our family time has become a lot more intentional and thought out. We are getting better at planning out time together to do fun things. We are not necessarily so good at creative ideas though, so if any of you have any great ideas of what to do as a family you should let us know. Right now, we mostly spend time in parks or on long walks. Sometimes we throw in a day at the zoo or a trip to the mall. See, not very creative!

Last week we were in sunny California for Keri's graduation from Biola. We went down a week early and spent some time in San Diego. We love that city by the way! We had dinner with Jonathon and Sandy in Balboa Park (Sandy and I finally had to drag our husbands away for the sake of her getting up for work in the morning and David needing his beauty rest, otherwise they may have talked all night long!) We also toured Seaport Village and Legoland. Pictures of the trip are on David's blog if you are interested. At the end of the week, we headed over to LA to celebrate with the graduate. Danny, Keri and I went to Medieval Times on Graduation Eve. It was a fun experience eating a feast with our hands and watching a magnificent horse show all while sandwiched in between drunken people on every side.

On to the ministry side of life…summer seems to be a major time of transition as graduating seniors head off to college, youth staff leave us to marry their beloved in lands far away, foreign exchange students head back to their home country, and students leave for the summer. Amidst the transitions we are gearing up for a summer of preparation in order to be ready for what God wants to do this fall. We have a structure for pastoral care for the youth that we are praying that we will be able to launch by Fall. We also have the School of Excellence starting this September. We are laying the foundation to be able to begin evangelizing the 12,000 young people that we have estimated live in this area.

Our youth camp is going to be in July this year and we will be traveling to Salem, OR for it. The weekend following camp, Dick and Edie Iverson will be here at the church ministering. We are looking at a power packed week for the youth that week!

Right now Family Life church is finishing up a series on Thresholds. Pastor Steve has laid out seven convictions that every believer must have for their prophetic fulfillment:

1. You must know what God is saying to you, and then say yes and amen to your promise.
2. The promise that God has for you must be incorporated into the overall destiny, for you and others.
3. We must be in the process of receiving prophetic revelation.
4. We must learn to do warfare with our prophecies.
5. We must have our authority and accountability structure in place for prophetic fulfillment.
6. We must have a persevering spirit and break through.
7. Prophetic fulfillment requires humility.

That is all for now. We would love to hear about what God is doing in your lives. Call us, send us an email or come to visit. =)

Update

It is hard to know just what to write about in these blog posts. So much seems to be happening and yet it seems so difficult to put into words. We are in our third month of the youth church and God is definitely "in a hurry" as Jack Louman is constantly reminding us about our work over here.

We were privileged to be invited to Winter Camp with Westside Church this month and the fruit from just that one weekend was amazing. The Decker's workshop on the spiritual world seemed to be especially impacting for our young people. The testimonies that took place through exposing the schemes of the enemy has been in turn bringing about freedom in other's lives that weren't able to be at camp. It has been really encouraging to see God doing such a quick work amongst our young youth church.

For all the challenges that come with having church in a Movie Theater, we have been seeing incredible opportunities to minister to the community every Wednesday night. We have had our youth staff pray with people as they are heading into a movie and stop to see what we are doing. We have had people actually buy a ticket to a movie and then come to check out church instead. This week we had a man from Puerto Rico who happened to stop in and check out worship before his movie and rededicated his life to the Lord! He is coming to main church this weekend. It has been a lot of fun to see all the opportunities that God has been putting in our laps.

We just finished our first series on "Identity" and are headed into a new series called, "Walk it Out." Keri is in town visiting us and she led worship for us this week. That was a lot of fun! We also just won first place in a poster contest for the Treasure Valley. The contest was to create a poster for the campaign against Meth use in the area. They were giving out a $1,000 to the youth organization who won first place. Great publicity plus great financial blessing!

So that is the short jest of what has been happening over here. God is definitely up to some crazy things! I just wanted to leave you with a thought from my personal time with the Father today:

The believers believe, that is what makes them who they are. They believe that God is who He says that He is, that He will do what He says He will do, that His body will function the way He has called it to function. They just believe! Whether it is concerning the big building blocks of the faith or the small details in their personal relationship with God; their function in life is to believe. Again, that is what makes them who they are; the believers! It seems so simple and yet the revelation of it hits my spirit with profound weight.

Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, "TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME." For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Hebrews 3:12-19 NAS

Unbelief leads to sin in our lives. When we drop the shield of faith we leave ourselves vulnerable to falling prey to the fiery darts of the evil one. We consistently quote, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6) and yet how many times do we examine our faith to be sure that it is indeed pleasing to God? Today, I am struck by the revelation that there are those who will not enter into the abundance of God not because they do not desire it but because they have not been diligent to guard their own faith. What a terrible day to discover that the condition of your heart led you not into the Promised Land but rather back into the desert to continue to wander. May we be consistently cautious to guard our faith in every area that we may walk with confidence into the perfect will of God!

Sunny Days

The High today is 59 degrees! I think that the weather is confused and doesn't realize that it is supposed to still be winter time. I am not going to complain about it though! And neither is David, he loves being outside with Danny. This morning they played and played until David was too exhausted to go on anymore. It was a great break from all the ministry activities lately.

So, we are heading into our fourth week of weekly meetings with the NXT. We are learning a lot, not just about relating and pastoring students, but also about lighting and sound effects inside of movie theaters! Jack and Libby Louman are coming over this week from City Bible in Portland to minister. They are planning a separate time to minister specifically to our youth team which has us really excited.

My major revelation this week has been about how vital your team is to your leadership capabilities. In prayer, I have been feeling the added pressure of stepping up to the next level as a youth ministry. Until now, we have been doing a lot of organization and preparation. We have been laying out curriculum and teaching major principles to our team. We have laid out the framework and now it's time to stand up the walls and start attaching some wood to this structure. We are seriously beginning to pastor students! At this point, we have to step back and depend upon the Holy Spirit to give life to this skeleton we have so prayerfully planned.

The other major dependence though is resting upon our youth leadership team. We have to trust that they are going to step up and be the leaders God has called them to be and carry this ministry. Danny and I cannot pastor all of these students on our own! It is really going to stretch this group of leaders as they set the pace for what God is doing in Canyon County. I believe in them to be responsive to the grace of God and be the amazing team that I already know they are but I still feel the huge weight of it all every time I enter into my prayer time with the Father. It has made me think about the other youth ministries that I know and recognize that there is no such thing as an amazing youth pastor, only amazing youth teams. Not that youth pastors aren't amazing, you know what I mean!

Ok, so here is a question of the week since Danny hasn't been on to post one for awhile:
What warm weather activity are you anxiously awaiting come Spring?

Launching

After building up to this point for the past few months, it is relieving to be on the opposite side of the long anticipated launch. Somehow though it has been difficult to relay in words what happened on Wednesday night. Perhaps because while it was a major climatic event for us, it was also just the beginning of long term relationship with the youth of Canyon County. It felt like the race that you train and train for and then once you finally get to the starting line you still have 30 miles to run. It was amazing to get here to this point of starting to run though. As I sat in the theatre and looked around at the youth around us, I found myself thinking about how grateful I was to be in that very position on Wednesday night. It wasn't the most perfect service ever, but I wouldn't have traded what we had in that moment for the most polished, trained team in the world. We have lots of places to grow and I found myself loving the symbolism between our young team and our relationships with the Lord; while it wasn't perfect, it was authentic and absolutely genuine!
Logistically we had 85 people show up for our launch. About 10 of those were parents who showed up to show their support, the rest were Jr High through Young Adults.
Trevin led our worship team, who were amazing for their first time leading a corporate service. Danny preached on becoming part of the NXT. He challenged our young people that they will be the next something, but it is their choice on what that next something is. Either they will be the next leaders of their generation in serving God or they will be the next drop outs or alcoholics or whatever. The young people responded amazingly. I really got a kick out of a few of them that went home and changed their My Space names to various forms of "Be the NXT". We also had a lot of opportunity to talk to people at the theatre who were just curious as to why all of us were there. We passed out a lot of touch cards for the church and youth ministry.
So here we go, we are setting in for the long haul. I can't explain how excited I am for this point. Thank you all who have been praying and supporting us from afar. Thanks especially to those who called or emailed us to encourage us this week. It has been so great to hear from all of you! We will continue to keep you updated and if you want to come and visit in person, we would love to have you!

Restoration

One of the major doctrines that churches in our stream carry is the doctrine of restoration. We believe that God is in the process of restoring to the church all the she had in the book of Acts and all that Jesus said she could have.

Our Pastor preached a great word this weekend on some specific things that God is restoring in light of this belief. I spent much of my prayer time this morning praying through this list and asking God to bring these things to our youth church as we launch tomorrow. I thought I'd share them with you all - pray through these and ask God to restore them to your local church as they were in the book of Acts.

1. Great unity

2. Prayer

3. Word foundation

4. Lordship

5. Relationship

6. Power of the Spirit

7. Judgment

8. Servants

9. Authority over evil

10. Spirit controlled government

11. Strong churches

12. Evangelists

13. Prophets

14. Teachers

15. Pastors

16. Elders

17. City wide revivals

18. Apostles

We're all ready for the launch of The NXT: tomorrow. We'll post in the next couple days to keep you all updated. God is moving!!

All Nighters and Reel Theatres

Happy Shake in the making: a happy meal blended to milkshake like texture.

Happy Shake being consumed while the rest of us tried not to vomit

2007 started with a youth all nighter for us. It was definitely an experience to remember! After 12 hours of lock in, it felt like we had been at camp all week with these young people. It is amazing what a little quality time does for relationship building. We had numerous testimonies of God opportunities that our youth staff had with students to talk with them, pray with them or just understand them better.
We were expecting a smaller night than our Christmas party because of New Year's options and the fact that we were locking them in a gym for 12 hours, however we had 19 new young people that we didn't have on the data base show up to hang out with us. They seem to be coming for all over the valley to find out what God is doing in this youth ministry that hasn't even really begun yet!
On that note, we heard from the Reel Theatre today that we are cleared to start renting a theatre from them starting on the 17th of this month! We are extremely excited! We are just waiting to hear about the rent prices before we confirm everything. So, we are two weeks out from the launch and have tons of stuff to wrap up before then. You can be praying for our sanity in these next few weeks and for supernatural wisdom in decision making.
In personal news, we had a great Christmas season with both sides of our family. And as some of you have already heard, we are expecting a sibling for David sometime around August of next year. We are pretty excited about that too! God has been so good to us throughout this whole move and transition in our lives that we are feeling overwhelmingly blessed right about now.

The Body of Christ

Romans 12:4-5 - For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.

1 Corinthians 12:18 - But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.

One of the tough things I’m learning about in full time ministry is the complete lack of unity that exists between churches in the body of Christ. Let me explain.

Family Church is just over 1 year old now. We are meeting in a middle school on Sunday mornings and are planning on launching our youth church January 17^th. One problem that we’re running into is finding a facility to meet in. We’ve asked all around and there seems to be nothing but closed doors.

The biggest disappointment in all this is the response that I get from other local churches here in town. I probably asked 12 larger churches in town if we could rent out their facility at any time during the week for our youth services. Not a single church was open to helping us get our youth ministry started. Most churches took a message and never called back. Others said they were just too bust to deal with anything like that. A couple highlights included the Lutheran pastor telling me they only help other Lutherans and another pastor telling me they would never have drums and guitars for worship in their building.

Here’s some good questions for us all – Who’s kingdom are we building anyway? Is the ministry all about us and the way we do things? Do we believe that we’re the only church that God wants to use to touch our city? Can we honestly care for every soul in our city or could we use some help from other churches?

Imagine if your left hand got caught under a heavy object but your right hand refused to lift the object off. Or if you were about to get a haircut (which was going to make your head look a whole lot better) but your legs refused (our of jealousy) to cooperate and did everything they could to resist getting in that chair.

These images well describe the condition of the Body of Christ. I’m asking God to brand into my heart and spirit Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17:11. Don’t forget that we need every bible believing, Jesus preaching church in the city to reach all the unsaved. There has never been a shortage of souls to win. I can understand having differences in doctrines and philosophies – but I’m determined at every chance I get to

consider one another in order to stir up love and good works

We have a responsibility to help each other and encourage one another in our pursuit of the call of God. The Body of Christ is not to be in competition with one another – but rather partnership. May God continue to conform His bride in the spotless one He’s returning for.

So here’s the big prayer request in light of our need for a building to meet in. We’re in communication with a movie theatre here in town that shows movies for $2. They supposed to be coming up with a proposal to rent out one of their theatres one night a week for our youth service. This would be a fantastic location – it’s right off the freeway, everyone knows where it is, and it’s a great place to invite youth to come to. We know there are students that won’t step foot in a church but might come check out what’s going on in a movie theatre.

Here’s some pictures of the place.

Pray with us that God would grant us favor with the corporation and that we would be able to work out an agreement with them to rent their facility. Our kickoff is coming up soon!!!

Question of the Week:

What was the last good partnership experience you had with someone from another church or stream of churches than your own?

Christmas Youth Party

Apparently my role on this blog is to post all the pictures and let you all know what is happening in our lives since Danny took the role of doctrine debater and asker of many questions. =)
Last night we had our youth Christmas party which was a murder mystery party where we had to discover who had killed Santa. Everyone got a character to play, except Danny, he was the host. We never got a final count but there was somewhere between 60-70 people crammed in our house. It was a blast! I, of course, was Mrs. Claus. Here are a few others that some of you may recognize:

Kailee, as the softball player with a few youth.

Trina, the motorcycle salesman. Lorelei, the businesswoman/mother. A couple youth girls.

Trent, the DJ and aspiring rap artist. Trevin, his agent. (At least I think that is what they were supposed to be!)

Trey, the ladies' man and a few of our youth.

Trent, Trevin, and Travis, the businessman. You guessed it, another youth.

Anyhow, the latest news is that we may possibly have an open door for a place to meet with the youth ministry. We are waiting to hear back from a Movie theatre that may rent us one of their theatres on Wednesday nights. Both Danny and I feel really good about this location in prayer so we are praying for a postive report come next week when the manager calls us back. Right now we are working on all the finishing details before we launch weekly meetings next month.
Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving for God's Favor

Time for a nice Thanksgiving blog. We had a great time on our trip to Bend for Thanksgiving.

When I take time to reflect on all the things I’m thankful for each year I can’t help but be amazed at the favor of God on our lives.

For You, O Lord, will bless the righteous;

With favor You will surround him as with a shield. Psalm 5:12

I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s favor lately. It’s amazing to me that just being in righteous relationship with the Lord brings his favor to your life. Just doing the basics of Christianity, (repenting of sin, keeping a pure heart, meditating in God’s Word, seeking to live a good life, etc) causes God to be so delighted in us that he pours out favor and blessing all over His children. Such simple responses on our part bring such incredible blessing from our Heavenly Father. It’s just amazing to think that anyone would ever want to live life any other way.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;

Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Psalm 34:8

What does this favor look like in our life?

Like family. We are surrounded by such a great family. Spending time with them, like we did this last week, has got to be our favorite thing to do. You know, we really did a whole lot of nothing. We just hung out for days. And reflecting on this week, that’s exactly how we love to spend every holiday time – just being together.

Like church. Not just Family Life Church but all of the body of Christ here in the Treasure Valley, back in Bend, Portland, Orange County, San Diego, Uganda, all over the world. Most people are thankful for their friends. But who knew relationships could be so meaningful and rich. When your relationships are a result of God’s favor, they surpass anything you can experience otherwise. I absolutely love being a contributing part of my local church. It’s the only place I can grow into the man God has called me to be and feel the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing God is using me to further His eternal purpose.

Like surprises. You ever get that feeling that His favor is just chasing you. As if life is so good and you don’t need anything more but God still just loves to surprise you with blessing? This week while in Bend someone gave me a Taylor guitar!! I couldn’t even believe it. I was pretty sure I’d never own one – my guitar worked just fine. I was amazed by how many people commented this morning after worship on how much better this new guitar sounded. And on top of that – Roger from My Chai in Bend gave me a jug of his chai concentrate for free! Like icing on the cake. Come on over if you want to try some of the best chai tea in the world.

(Not a real picture of the new guitar)

We have so much to be thankful for. Sometimes I feel like I must have more than everyone else, but then it hits me – God has no favorites. His favor is available to all who live this life. It pleases God when we take time to reflect on all that He has blessed us with.

In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thess 5:18

Question of the Week:

What does God’s favor currently look like in your life?

What does a youth pastor do all week?

That's a great question. I always wondered how my friends who worked at the church actually spent their time. When I was a banker - I did banking, helping customers 40 hours a week. When I managed the Coldstone - I made and served ice cream full time. But what do the hours during the week look like for a youth pastor, other than holding a youth service? I'll break it down for you...

1) Meeting with staff.

Right now that involves primarily Pastor Steve. But we have other all staff meetings and leaders meetings to get on the same page and head in the same direction. I'm loving these times so much. Sometimes we go over how best to help a certain family in our church, sometimes it's what computer we should buy next, sometimes it's what we really believe about prophecy. You never know what you're going to learn. I'm so blessed to be able to learn so much from our pastor every day I go to work.

2) Doing the little things

Someone has to figure out what prizes we want to give away at our youth events. Or do the research on exactly what video camera we should purchase. Deciding on graphics and event titles, sending lots of emails, getting your announcements in for the bulletin on time, etc. This is the stuff that seems to grab at your time and fill up your week. And it's all so random week to week. It's the stuff that causes you to look back on your week and ask yourself, "What did I get done this week?"



3) Hearing from the Lord

My favorite part of ministry is the hearing from God part. I try to give my mornings to hearing from God and taking down what I'm learning. Lots of that involves preparing messages to speak - I spoke to our youth, our youth pastoral staff and our worship team this week. When I was an intern I was so jealous that there were people who were paid to study the Bible...God has fulfilled the desire of my heart!! This part also involves big vision stuff - we just finished putting together a document that lays out our vision and values for our youth and worship ministries. Now we just need to put that plan into action.

4) Relationships with people

This is what pastoring is all about, eh? We spend time with our leaders, we spend time with students, we spend time with parents, etc. At this stage in the game this involves meeting new people every week and trying to build trust and respect with people that really don't know us. We're feeling out these people and being evaluated by them. It's really an intimidating process and not for the insecure. Thank goodness for the love of God and the call of God. It pushes us past awkwardness and fear and leads us to the most rewarding part of ministry - people's lives being touched and changed by God!

This leads us to our question of the week (we're diving deeper). I had a great little conversation with Corey this week about this and thought I'd throw it out to everyone...

In your opinion, what is the best thing a leader can do to gain trust and respect from the people he/she is leading?