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Churches Don't Compete with Each Other, They Complete Each Other

Yesterday, Elevation Church gave us 10% of their offering to go toward our church planting center... Pastor Steven explained that since they have not yet formulated their international planting strategy, they wanted to participate in ours. I was struck by a phrase he used, "Churches often compete with each other; they should complete each other!" Well said, my friend.

We are grateful for the generosity of Elevation. Pastor Steven had me preaching there yesterday on "How is Fair that People Who have Never Heard about Jesus Go to Hell?" Talk about setting me up for failure. I told him, "When you preached at my church, I had you preach on faith and vision and get everyone excited. You give me a topic that is the equivalent of going to a homeschool convention and preaching against big families.

It was well-received. It is a tough topic, and I hope I magnified the staggering nature of God's grace in it... the true mystery is not that any of us are condemned, but that any of us are saved. After all, what will amaze us as we look backwards from eternity is not the severity of God's judgment, but the greatness of His mercy.

What really seems unfair to me is that those of us who have partaken of this undeserved, overwhelming grace would not, in response, pour out our lives to take the Gospel to those who have yet to hear.

Advance 09 Message

Porn to Purity

My good friends and fellow Summiteers Jeff and Marsha Fisher have put together a new blog and website called "Porn to Purity." They have an incredible story of pornography addiction, near-marital destruction, a fall from the ministry, and healing and restoration. They have really produced some good stuff in this site and blog.

Yesterday... Baptism, Isaiah 30:18, Twitter and Yesterday's Message

BAPTISM

We got to baptize a girl yesterday from one of the local coffeeshops we are seeing God move in. I went in there the other day, and a guy who DOESN'T go to our church said that they sometimes play our podcast in this Starbucks when they set up in the morning. That's pretty amazing. He brews.

ISAIAH 30:18

I just cannot shake this verse... I feel overwhelmed and enthused with new faith. The Lord waits (longs to) be gracious to us." He is just waiting to release His grace in my kids, my marriage, my church, my neighbors. God has so many plans, Summit, for your families and our community. Keep believing. This ain't rhetoric... we ain't see nothing yet. I believe that with ALL my heart.

ADVANCE

Please pray for me as I prepare for Advance this weekend. 2500 pastors and Christian leaders coming right here to Durham... for one of the year's best events! (I think there's still a few seats left!)

TWITTER

Also, I'm about to cave on twitter and do it... what do you think? I've been resisting, but I feel my resistances dwindling. What to do? I am really excited about telling jokes on Twitter which I'll call "Twittie Twisters." Yes, I made that up and I am DANG proud of myself. I used to be a youth pastor, and I guess some things never die...

YESTERDAY'S MESSAGE

I've gotten quite some interesting feedback from the message yesterday on Jesus' tirade against religion. I hope it wasn't too harsh... but as I tried to acknowledge yesterday, real love always has a severity to it. Jesus cares enough to call both the sinners AND "the righteous" to repentance. I think here in the South we have to call people to "repent" of religion.

• Religion believes it must IMPRESS God… God accepts us because there is something about us that makes us better than others. 
• Religion tries to USE God as a means to an end… money, admiration, a better life, a more secure life, a way to make sure you go to heaven in the afterlife.

Religion built on these two premises (which are ALL religions but the simple Gospel of Jesus) produce a certain poisonous fruit in your life… people who are religious are often fervent (busy people), but they are plagued with a perpetual feelings of insecurity (nagging questions of, "Have I done enough? Am I good enough?") This leads to constant comparison with others… trying to show yourself superior to them… and this leads to oscillating cycles of pride and despair: you proudly look down on others when you think you’re better than them, and despair when you think you’ve failed in comparison; Religion makes you judgmental, and condescending, and hateful toward others.

The Gospel contradicts religion on both accounts. Rather than an attempt to use God, the Gospel teaches that God is Himself the "reward."

Rather than thinking there is anything we can do to impress God, the Gospel teaches us that God must accept us only by His mercy, which God extravagantly poured out on us through Christ's work on our behalf. The Gospel absolutely shatters any pretense we have to superiority.

The Gospel produces an entirely different fruit in our lives. It makes us humble and generous. Overwhelmed by God's grace toward us. And it causes us to love God, not fear and resent Him (1 John 4:19). This is ridiculously attractive, even to a world in rebellion to God.

This Week...

Hey Church,

I just wanted to let you know that the blog will be sparse this week. I am spending some much needed time with my girls.

While I am out though, feel free to check out the blogs of our other Summit campuses. They have some great things going on, especially as we lead up to Easter.

See you Sunday!

CAMPUS BLOGS:

Brier Creek Evening Campus

West Club Campus

Cole Mill Campus

When Your "Quiet Times" Get Stale

It may surprise you, but sometimes it is still a struggle for me, as a pastor and a ph.d. in theology to have a rich, rewarding time with God each morning. Sometimes my “quiet times” (what a stupid name) are awesome, like God really meets me. Other times it feels like I am just going through a dry ritual.

It is important to maintain this “discipline” even when I’m not “feeling it,” because real growth happens by a “long obedience in the same direction,” not short spurts of inspiration and goose bumps.

I am always looking for good tools to take me through the Bible, and one I would highly commend to you are the two books by D. A. Carson, For the Love of God vols 1-2. Carson, one of our country’s best theologians, gives you several passages to read and then his reflections on one of them.

I heartily recommend them as a "quiet time" guide. They also have a good scripture index in the back which makes them good as a quick reference commentary. Carson usually has some pretty amazing insights so be sure to check it out.

Here is a link to buy the book if you are interested. (Here)

Life Update

Thought I would mix in a quick personal update in the midst of all the never-ending postmodernism, multi-campus discussion.

Last week I spent a day speaking at the Campus Crusade Christmas Conference. Pretty awesome time... got to meet up with a bunch of our students. I love those guys. Best college students in the world... just so ready to reach the world for Christ. They inspire me. One of them had her birthday in December and she told her friends and her parents that rather than giving her birthday presents she wanted them to give any money that they would have spent on her to the Christmas Missions Offering. She brought them to church and made them give it in front of her :) Seriously, how awesome is that.

On a less inspiring note, they put me and my family up in the nicest hotel room I've ever been in. It was 1800 square feet. Seriously. Rumor has it that Michael Jordan stayed in it previously. I even let my girls jump on the bed just as our little way of 'sticking it to the man.'

This week I'm teaching a class at Southeastern Seminary to a bunch of potential church planters (including a number of our own) called "The Gospel Centered Church."

This is going to be a great month as we at the church rev ourselves up for the mission ahead of us. We serve the most exciting cause, with the greatest and most exhilaratingly unpredictable Leader on earth. It also yields the greatest rewards, both in this life and the next. I thought about this the other day. I have faithfully invested in the Summit Church and my retirement account for 6 years now. My retirement investment has absolutely tanked, as has everyone else's, and I might as well have shoved it into a mattress. But my investment in the Summit Church is continuing to yield amazing div"idends.

Also, I wanted to let you know about a great thing coming up this weekend called "palingenesis, an art gallery reception we are hosting at our Brier Creek campus lobby this Saturday at 7:00, featuring many of our very own Summit artists. This is an opportunity to share not only an art show with them but a unique view of the gospel as well.  The way these artists have all explored the mystery of god's love in our lives is profound and it will have an impact on those who view it and read the testimonies and artist statements. This will present a great opportunity for discussion!

Christmas Card

My wife and I are not big Christmas card people (i.e. sending them, though one of Veronica's favorite parts of Christmas is getting them), but we did manage to get a *few* out to some family. Here is the 2008 Christmas picture we used.

"Why aren't you and Veronica in the picture?" Because no one cares about seeing us anymore.

Special thanks to KImberly Naranjo, a church member and owner of Evolve Studios, who took this great shot for us.

The blog funk

For those of you that depend on this blog for an excuse to waste time throughout the day, sorry for the spottiness of the last half week. The Christmas pressure is already here... and I'm still recovering from getting sick... and then I always remember about now that we have to have everything planned for the turn of the year... and then our car got broken into which has been a nightmare to fix, not to mention the GPS and Ipod stolen from inside it... 

So, I've been in a creative funk.

But then my daughter gave this little jewel to me that she worked on one afternoon. I was going to do a little contest to see if anyone could figure out what it was, but I'll go ahead and tell you. She's memorized the books of the Bible, and so she was writing them out from memory phonetically. Read it left to right, but each book is only half a line and then she goes down the page. The first line is "Mafu" for Matthew and then "Mrc" for Mark and below that is "Lok" for Luke and so forth... and then she starts at the top of the page with "Closn" for "Colossians." When she runs out of room she puts the letter randomly somewhere else on the page.

Small but irreplacable joys.

Getting It Done

This is a pretty hilarious video Pastor Rick put on his blog today.

And while we're at it, here's a great one called, 'What if Starbucks marketed like the church?' Funny.

Also, don't forget I'm going to be asking about 500 of you (at our Brier Creek am campus) if you'd be willing to move to one of our other 5 services for the first 5 months of 2009 to make space for the influx of new guests we expect... many of these people will be coming to hear the Gospel! That will give us time to make some plans to expand facilities and campuses!