Joel Young Blog.com

I have a case of the Mondays today. Not only am I already bogged down with work for this upcoming week, but I just found out that the alternator is totally shot in my car. There are some weeks, like this one, that make me wish for an extra day between Sunday and Monday to act as a buffer.

It’s a beautiful day outside so I’m staying chilled about everything, but I was just wondering: what is your worst Monday story? Maybe it even happened today.

Who knows maybe you’ll make me feel better about my severe case of the Mondays.

What are you gonna do about it? This is the provocative title for Sunday’s sermon. For the past month at Horizon we have been exploring what it means to be a church on the move according to scripture. We’ve looked at the mission Jesus gave His church before he left this world and the lack importance that actually plays in most churches today. And this week we’re making it personal.

Every person who walks through our doors on Sunday is going to have to answer the question: What are you gonna do about it? In light of what the church is called to do, and what the church should mean to us as believers what are you gonna do? For better or worse we’re going to put this question at the forefront of our thinking for at least the time we’re together and give everyone a chance to respond. I truly believe, and am praying, that there will be three reactions. Some people will give their lives to Christ and accept him through baptism. Some people will get off the fence and start to truly follow scriptures commands for their lives. And some people will leave and never come back.

I really don’t care what it does to our attendance average or offering statistics. I care what this does to our church’s ability to radically change the world we live in. Life is so short and I’m not going to lead a church that waits for things to happen while people go to Hell.

If you are at Horizon regularly, or even if you’ve never been before, go online and listen to the teaching from the last couple weeks and then show up on Sunday ready to become part of the movement God creating.

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One of the most unavoidable and dangerous things for any church, or leader, to do is compare themselves to someone else. Comparison can place the expectations of another place and time on your current situation, which can often unjustly inflating or deflating your passion.

As a pastor I struggle with this. Though I love getting together with friends and acquaintances who also lead churches its sometimes had to avoid the comparison game that some seek to play. You evaluate their age, to their success, or the beauty of their situation and comparison quickly turns to envy. It’s a very slippery slope yet it’s a position that many leaders constantly put themselves in.

Since the situation of a church planter is a constant comparison game from supporters, church members, and your ego I thought I would share some of the things I have been doing lately to keep myself from comparing Horizon to any other church or situation. I’m not always successful in doing these things, but I know they help when I do practice them. These can work for so much more than just church leadership.

Make sure you’re not holding back progress. Live your life in such a way that you feel confident that you have access to the full measure of God’s ability. Seek HIS will, HIS vision, HIS direction, and HIS timing.

Constantly remind yourself of your achievements. There is never a victory too small to celebrate. By remembering the things that have gone right you are more likely to forget about the things that have gone wrong. Feeling great about the progress you are seeing eliminates the need to compare.

Remember why you do what you do. Do you do what you do for the praise or approval of others? Do you do it for yourself? Or, do you do it for the glory of God? Never measure something done for God by human standards. Remember God’s standards for your work.

Stay away from people who force you to play the comparison game. If you know a friend or a colleague that constantly wants to compare your work against his/hers? If so, you need to guard yourself from that situation. Some people only want to compare work to make themselves feel good. Don’t puff up their ego and deflate your confidence simply to maintain that relationship. Either let them know you don’t want to talk about it beforehand, or don’t go around them.

Man, what a weekend at Horizon. It was a such a great weekend that it has given me an excitement hangover and I haven’t had a free second from dreaming and planning to blog until just now. Even though I’m pretty sure it would make me a basket case I wish every weekend was as jam packed with excitement as this one was.

Why was it exciting? I got to preach HARD on the subject of the church and how important our commitment to it is, we had one of our highest attendances in months, and to top it all off I had the privileged of baptizing a friend who is on fire for God. It just doesn’t get much better than that. Multiple people have just walked up to me out of the blue in the last couple weeks and said, “I’m excited!” AND THEY’RE ACTUALLY REFERRING TO WHAT’S GOING ON AT HORIZON!

Church planting can sometimes be a discouraging task, but when we’re able to get people excited about doing all the work that comes with starting a move of God, then that’s awesome.

If you attend Horizon regularly and have missed either of the last two week’s messages, you need to go check them out so you can show up on Sunday PUMPED and READY TO GO.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about what’s going on at Horizon right now, and what’s going to be happening over the next couple weeks. We are in the middle of a series called “A Church on the Move” where we are exploring what it means to be the church that God has called us to be, and ACTUALLY START BECOMING THAT CHURCH. We don’t care what that might do to other church’s opinions of us, we don’t care what that might do to our current programs, and we don’t care what that might do to our comfort level. We only care about being what God wants us to be.

If you missed last week’s Sunday morning teaching, go online and listen to it before this Sunday so you can show up pumped and ready like the rest of us. It’s going to be a great couple weeks coming up, and I know our future as a church will be different because of it, but YOU NEED TO BE THERE. See you Sunday!

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This is an exciting week for me. Almost every day this week I will be deeply involved in mentoring or being mentored by someone else. Today I have the opportunity to get together with eleven other guys who lead local churches, like myself, in our area and I am so looking forward to gleaning as much from there knowledge and experience as possible. Some of these guys have been ministering in this city for over a decade and some are less than a couple years in like myself, and that excites me.

I also get a chance to sit down with a great friend and mentor this week. We don’t get together too often, because our schedules are always jam packed, but when we get together I always walk away more equipped to do God’s work. Either through encouraging words, or hearing about what God is doing in his life.

Then, as I do every week, I’ll get to close my week with the guys in my D-group. This has been one of the greatest blessing on my life in the last year. Knowing that there are young guys who are ready to go the next level in life and their relationship with God and are willing to give major time to see it happen PUMPS ME UP!

Side Note: This is not something I’m involved in, but my wife’s women’s group is getting their start this weekend and I’m REALLY, REALLY excited about it. My wife is an incredible woman, and if you’ve met her then you know that already, but she has never really taken a major leadership role before. So, for the first time she is stepping up to lead the women of our church in a way that she’s not exactly comfortable with yet, but she’s doing it anyway. People who follow God out of their comfort zone open the door of possibility in their life, and really get me excited.

God is doing a lot in me right now and it has a lot to do with the people and opportunities to learn He has placed in my life. Are there opportunities for discipleship, growth, and/or life change that you are passing up because you don’t have time? Here’s my advice….MAKE TIME, IT’S WORTH THE INVESTMENT!

Today I was grooving to a little Pandora Radio and some good old school Dashboard Confessional came across my playlist. Not only did this simple acoustic sound bring back a lot of old memories, but I made me think about what this band did in their time.

If you’re not familiar with Dashboard they are a band that had a very simple start. Chris Carrabba was just another emo kid singing lead for the popular band Further Seems Forever when he up and left their electrified and energizing sound to do his own thing; just him and an acoustic guitar singing songs about girls, breakups, and feelings. And so Dashboard Confessional was born. Sounds pretty cheesy, but anyone who tells you they weren’t digging the sound at one point in time is just lying to seem more like a man.

The reason I was always impressed with Carrabba is that he popularized his music without any frills. In fact, when he finally added a band his popularity seemed to wain a bit in the transition. One of the trademarks of his live show is that he would often back off the mic for extended periods of time to allow the audience to sing the words, which they all knew by heart. It was unlike anything anyone else was doing and it was engaging thousands of people with simplicity. His open heart approach allowed him to attract men and women alike to his music.

In all of this I think there is something for the church to learn. We don’t need flashing lights and fancy sets to engage people. We trick ourselves into thinking that people always need a “killer show” to maintain interest, when what they really want is a genuinely honest approach. There’s certainly nothing wrong with throwing down a quality presentation, but it all has to start with simplicity and honesty.

There are several things in life that are sure to change your life. Your relationships, your time, and your money. These factors, for better or worse, can change the make-up of the world you live in. They can be a help or hindrance very easily, but that is up to you.

Because of what we are going to be talking about over the next couple weeks at Horizon I have been thinking about this a lot. If our church could band together under the guiding principles of scripture in these areas, then there is no doubt in my mind that WE COULD CHANGE THE WORLD; not our community, or our city, but OUR WORLD.

Regardless of your current connections just know that you can change the world or the world can change you. What’s it gonna be?

This summer I will be attending several great conferences to help me better myself and my work as a church planter, but there is one conference I wanted to attend that just didn’t fit into my schedule/budget. That conference is the UNLEASH conference at New Spring Church in Anderson, SC. I keep an eye on a lot of things that New Spring does and have learned a lot from them over the last couple years. That’s why I was totally pumped when I saw this on Perry Noble’s blog yesterday.

New Spring will be broadcasting all of the main sessions of UNLEASH live on the internet. If you are a pastor, leader, or teacher in your church it would be worth your time on Thursday to tune in for a couple main sessions. I guarantee you will walk away changed.

Check out the live feed at this address. Sessions start tomorrow morning at 9:00am.

I don’t want to be an alarmist, but this is a very important issue that needs everyone’s attention. One that I, myself, have never given proper attention.

I read a Tweet from Pastor Mark Driscol tonight that terrorized me to the core, and lead me to read this blog post. The message simply said this: “Pastor Fred Winters was shot dead in the pulpit of First Baptist Church of Maryville, Illinois”. If you are a church leader or are simply concerned for the well being of the people on the front lines of spiritual warfare preaching the gospel then please, read this post and consider putting a plan together for your church.

Read the post: “Pastor Shot Dead in the Pulpit: 5 Questions to Heed”