Tag: Cross Community Church

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380 sermons down, 2 left

I am in transition. As I write this post, I am supposed to be helping my wife pack for our move to Minnesota. I am leaving my post in Florida as a local church pastor, where I have served for seven years and eight months. We have two Sundays left before we leave.

I have recently made the switch from preaching with printed notes to preaching with an iPad. The picture you see are my sermon notes from day one to last Sunday at Cross Community Church. Approximately 380 sermons. Most of them were preached three times because we have three Sunday Worship Gatherings. When I got home from church on Sundays, I would put the outline on the stack and get to work on the following week’s message.

Unless someone contacts me very soon, these babies are going into the recycling bin. I can’t imagine anyone wanting them now, but they represent a lot of hard work and prayer. Blood, sweat and tears. I think they were all Biblically based. I hope they were all relevant to the worshippers. I pray they made a difference. I trust I was faithful to God’s call on my life to preach His Gospel.  They reflect my heart for the special people in this church family.

Famous preachers have their sermons published. Wannabe famous preachers publish their own. Mine will be recycled – literally.

A turning of the page, or a tap on the iPad.

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from Guatemala this morning

A team of 28 people from three different churches are serving the children of Guatemala this week. I am privileged to be able to serve as leader of this team. Folks from Twin Rivers Worship Center in St. Louis, Missouri, Ridge Community Church in Dundee, Florida and Cross Community Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida make up this team. Member’s ages are from 15 to 50 something.

We are visiting and serving the children of Casa Shalom orphanage in San Lucas, El Amor de Patricia Orphanage in San Lucas as well as a nearby Hospice for children with HIV/AIDS.  We will be pouring concrete, painting walls, installing sofit and anything else we are physically capable of doing. We are loaded with several hundred pounds of new clothing, shoes, blankets and toys. The most important thing we are doing is loving the children. In each of the three locations, kids come from unimaginable conditions. They are now in a safe place and our job is two fold: share the love of Jesus with the children who are there and create conditions that are conducive for more children to be saved from deplorable conditions around the country.

This trip is being coordinated with the assistance of International Orphan Support. If you haven’t heard of or taken a look at what this organization does, please do so at iorphan.cc.

We would appreciate some prayer for the children we are serving, our hosts who work with the children full time and for our team members.

Thank you, everyone.

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a missional pooper scooper

Our church has a problem. We seem to be serving as the designated dog-walking park for our neighbors. We are blessed with some nice acreage. It is a park-like atmosphere. And since we are not a public park, many people think they can walk their dogs without cleaning up after them.

I complain regularly about this. It bugs me to look out my office window and see dogs running free, fertilizing our lawn. Most mornings when I come to the church and usually in the evenings when I leave, I see cars parked on our back property with dogs running wild. One night on the way to my small group meeting, I saw a guy allowing his dog to defecate on our front lawn. I actually stopped my car in the street and yelled out at him, “Hey! You are going to pick up after your dog aren’t you?!”. He sheepishly said, “yea”. I think he might have been lying. The whole thing just feels disrespectful to me.

We have a problem. But the problem may not be pooping dogs.  The problem may be our attitude. No doubt, we do not exist to provide a public potty for neighborhood pets. But maybe we should be more engaging of our neighbors. It may be a compliment that they feel at home enough to visit us so frequently. Maybe we should view this as an opportunity to serve, to fill a need. These people love their dogs. Maybe there isn’t another place nearby that is suitable for this use. Could this be a chance to show our neighbors that we care more about them than we do our lawn? Is it feasible that we could better fulfill our mission to change lives for Christ if we engage people right where they are? I am trying to look at this from another angle.

Because it is not an option for our kids to step in doo doo, maybe I need to make a part of my weekly responsibilities the picking up of dog waste. Is it possible that one of our most effective missional activities could be poop scooping?

If this is what is required, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to see lives changed!

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why Easter is bigger than Christmas

Without launching into a theological debate, I want to address a little thought I’ve been having. I think Easter is a bigger deal than Christmas. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ while Easter commemorates his death and resurrection from the dead. Obviously you can’t have Easter without Christmas. If Jesus had never been born, He could not have been crucified or raised from the dead. But also, if Jesus had not died and resurrected from the dead, we probably wouldn’t celebrate His birth! I believe, pound for pound, Easter trumps Christmas.

One of the things I find interesting is that Easter doesn’t seem to get the backlash that Christmas does. Aside from the Jewish observation of Passover, Easter doesn’t have a lot of rivals (and the two are certainly connected!). There seem to be very few complaints about the religious nature of the day. Obviously bunnies and eggs have their supporters, but the animosity that comes against Christmas is pretty much absent at Easter. Sure, many public schools no longer observe Easter break, preferring instead to call it Spring Break. But think about the opposition to Christmas. Every year, I dread the same conversations – about how we need to keep Christ in Christmas. I don’t think it helps when Christians spend a lot of time complaining about the commercialism of Christmas. It’s a shame that we even have to have these conversations. Over all, people just seem to go with the flow of Easter, without a lot of pushback.

That’s not my only point. I am using impact as my criteria for assessment.

My observation is that Easter garners a lot more real ministry activity than does Christmas. At least in my circles, this season is massive for reaching out to people who don’t know Christ and who don’t go to church.  Christmas Eve has its punch but nothing equals Easter when considering the number of people who actually go to church services.  It simply has a greater impact. I know that tomorrow, over twice as many people will come to our church than who attend on any given Sunday. There is something to this Easter thing!

Now my hope is that the impact of Easter will last longer than one day, or one week. We are praying for an eternal impact in the lives of lots of people.  In churches all over the world, the truth of the resurrection of Jesus will be told. Let’s ask God to change the lives of everyone who hears the message!

Nothing against Christmas but Easter rocks! What say you?

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Holy Week specifics

I have a special sense of significance about this week’s worship events. Our church needs Easter and the surrounding days to be deeply impactful. Yesterday, I used the phrase “do or die” regarding what happens this week. I am praying for “do”!

Here is our line up:

Vespers Prayer Service: Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 7:00 PM in the Worship Center of our Palm Beach Gardens Campus.  We will sing hymns, share times of corporate prayer, quiet individual prayer and Scripture reading.  The purpose is to focus our hearts and minds on the work of Jesus during Holy Week.

Good Friday Candlelight and Communion: Friday, April 6 at 7:00 PM. My good friend Travis Johnson will be our guest speaker. Travis is a passionate leader and will definitely challenge us with his message. Holy Communion as well as candlelight prayer around the cross will highlight the night.

Easter Sunrise Communion at the Beach: Sunday, April 8 at 7:00 AM. Palm Beach Shores Community Center.  This is an unparalleled worship setting as we will watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean on Easter Sunday! This one-hour worship event will include music, a message from God’s Word (a different message from our Gardens Campus) and Holy Communion.

New Life at Easter!: Sunday, April 8 at 9:30 and 11:00 AM at our Gardens Campus. These interactive worship gatherings will be life-changing for many people. Our Children’s Ministries Department has special plans for the day as well as egg hunts following both services.

On Easter, our church will conclude a very strategic preparation process, 40 Days to New Life. A lot of people have prayed, fasted, read the Gospel of John, served and invited people to Easter. I believe that all of this preparation will result in lots of changed lives.

For more information on any or all of this, please check out crosscommunity.cc

If you live in or around Palm Beach County Florida and do not have a church home, please be our guest.