Posts filed in ‘Church Stuff’
Exciting News
Well, today the very long pause on my blog in recent days will be fully explained. After MUCH thought, consideration, prayer, and research I have decided to leave River Valley this summer to lead a church plant in Highland Heights, Kentucky. The church will be called Horizon Christian Church and will officially launch on September 7, 2008. The church will be a very modern and contemporary effort to reach the young adults and young families of the surrounding communities, and I feel very strongly that God has called me to step out a lead in this specific way and am excited about the opportunity.
We are currently building support for the church and hope to find as many missions minded people who will be dedicated to reaching the lost of this world to join us in the endeavor. Please be in prayer for our entire team as we work to get this church off the ground.
There will be more Horizon information to come in the very near future so keep an eye out.
It’s Hard to Let Go
There are many things I have already learned from being a father, but something happened recently that sticks in my mind. My son is getting old enough that he is starting to do things by himself. He can sit up by himself, hold his head up by himself, and is even using a sippy cup to eat out of which he holds by himself. He seems to be needing our help less and less as parents. Now, while I realize that is a good thing, kids are supposed to grow to become independent, I have had a really hard time with it. I loved holding him and feeding him, but now he wants to do it all himself and he gets upset when you try to help. It’s just been hard for me to let go of those things.
And you know what? I think a lot of us as ministers have the same types of feelings about our church members. We know that they are supposed to learn and grow and eventually get to the point where they don’t really need our help with the spiritual basics, but sometimes we don’t allow them to because we won’t let go. It’s hard for us to hear that someone no longer needs our help to grow in their relationship with Christ, but we need to constantly place challenges in front of the members of our church to challenge them and allow them to reach that point.
I know it’s hard to let go, but if we aren’t building disciples of Christ who can grow their relationship with God without someone holding their hand, then we aren’t doing our job correctly. Building true disciples of Christ should be a top priority for every church leader.
CreativeMYK.com
If you are involved in graphic design at your church or are always on the lookout for free Christian graphics resources then look no further than creativeMYK.com. This is a fairly new Christian based resource sharing site that allows people to submit original graphic work that they have done to share with the world. I’ve found it very useful in the few weeks I have known about it and have even submitted some of my original graphic work to the site.
Back to Bethlehem
I haven’t done much blogging in recent weeks due to the massive production that our church is preparing for in the coming weeks. It is going to be called “Back to Bethlehem” - A walk through the epic event of Christ’s birth, and it is a guided tour that takes you scene by scene through the events that lead to the miraculous birth of Christ. It has caused me much stress, but I know we will pull it off and it will be awesome. We literally have hundred of volunteers working on this simultaneously. It’s pretty awesome to see. People hurry around putting forth their best effort to make something happen. There just seems to be a sense of urgency in everyone’s mind.
I think it’s great that an event like prompts people to jump into action, but more importantly I think that the fact that there are people in our community dying everyday with out Christ should cause a sense of urgency in all of of ALL THE TIME! Not just for an event or program, but EVERYDAY! I hope that when this event is over and done this sense of urgency remains, and I would encourage everyone at River Valley to keep this feeling going!
If you aren’t busy, please come and check this event out. We have it running two nights December 13 & 14 from 7:00pm-9:00pm.
RVCC History Video
I just wanted to let everyone know that I have posted the new RVCC history video online. You can view is by visiting our new site. It is a pretty neat video with interviews from the founding members and pictures from way back when. I’m especially pleased with how decent it turned out since I did the whole thing, filming and editing, in three days after most of the original footage was TAPED OVER! Just thought you all should check it out.
RVCC’s New Site Launched!
I am very excited to announce that I have finally finished RVCC’s new site and it is now fully launched! It has many cool features that will be useful both to members and people who know nothing about the church. Things like: streaming sermons, church calendar, program and ministry information, direct contact with staff and ministry leaders, and all the information about the church and its purpose you could want.
A special thanks goes to my cohort on this project, and big brother, Josh Young. He is a vet with web design and acted as my “web-design-guru” on this venture.
Take a minute and check it out!
Vision, Passion, and Leadership
Today I was reading an entry in Tom Rhoade’s Blog called 5 vital signs of healthy leadership and I was really hit hard by some of the comments made about the vision a leader projects. Since I’ve been in college, having a great vision for my ministry has been something that is very important to me. When I have a vision of what I want something to be or where I want it to go, it fuels my passion for that vision, and hopefully I will follow that up with pouring my passion into the people around me and enlisting them to work towards the overall vision. But it’s not always that easy.
I think the NUMBER ONE problem in churches today is that our ministers are poor communicators of their visions. And though that might seem to be a negative statement, and it is in one way, it actually is positive. This is due to the fact that most ministers actually have a great vision for their ministry, but they don’t know to relate it their church body or their staff if they are a senior leader.
Now, I’m in now way, shape, or form saying that I can do these things well because I find myself constantly struggling to keep my passion for my ministry alive, but I feel that many times we substitute good planning for passion. Ministers need to spur one another on to continue to be passionate about what we are doing, and how we are doing it. If we were to put some passion behind our visions and make sure our church’s know about both of those things, great things will happen.
Jr. High Believe
This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Jr. High Believe conference with our church’s Middle School students. In the course of my life I have probably attened somwhere in the neighborhood of 10 CIY conferences with probably 4 of them being Believe conferences, and this was by far the most fun I have ever had at one. I think for one it was because I was going as a sponsor and not the youth minister in charge. I mean I didn’t have to worry about going to the adult meetings or registering everyone or none of that. I was just able to let loose and act like a Jr. Higher again. And as a CCU alum it seems like every CIY conference is a big class reunion so that was nice to see some of my old buds a hear about what they are up to. I mean, where else can you play hacky-sack, run around in blow up obsticale courses, and leave worship in a shirt soaked with sweat? The answer is NOWHERE!
But more important than all the fun we had doing those things I was really able to see some kids change their attitude about the way they are living their lives. I truly saw 6th graders interested in changing their lifestyle to become a more passionate follower of Christ. We prayed together, we worshipped together, and now we get to try to live out those ambitions together. If that doesn’t make your day, then nothing will. This weekend was truly awesome!