Joel Young Blog.com

I don’t know why, but my life has felt “forced” lately. I’m not really sure what I even mean by that, but if you have ever been in that place where nothing feels natural, even normal things aren’t easy, and you seem to be living in an extended period of “water-treading” then you know what I mean. Part of my feelings have been created by the natural process of life, and the fact that my wife is 9 months pregnant and could give birth any day now, but part of it is the way I have been forcefully plowing through my life in recent weeks.

If you’re like me, when you want something to happen you usually try to make it happen in a very forceful way. My desire to control my life has lead to a desire to control the outcome of my life, and if you’re a fellow “Type-A” personality then you can probably relate. The problem is, I’m not supposed to have my hands on the wheel. That stuff is supposed to be surrendered to Christ, and I need to be allowing His purposes happen through me.

This week at Horizon I issued a pretty steep challenge to our church. I commissioned everyone who is a part of our church to physically record the names of three people in their life that they are going to share the vision/mission of Horizon with over the next week. Then, hold ourselves accountable to the people they have committed to reach out to in this way. The hope is not that these people will be converted or inspired by force, but that through our actions we will open up a door and allow God to speak into their life through our church.

It’s very easy to view the advancement of the gospel as something that we need to force. To see it as something that will only happen if we say the right things and have the right answers. But really, all we have to do is show up and LET God make it happen through our simple actions. If we live in his purposes, then we will live in his power. Never forget that.

I’m just now coming off one of those weekends that serves as a good reminder of exactly what God has called me to do, and why I continually try to do it.

I saw people step out of their situations to generously give to people in need.

I saw churches unite under the mission of The Church for greater effectiveness.

I saw the Gospel change people’s lives and perspectives.

I saw people worship God with all they have.

I realize that not every pastor gets to see these things happen every week or even in their lifetime, and that I am incredibly blessed. It’s a blessing that God can fill my heart as I serve him because as my friend Mike reminded all of us at Horizon on Sunday, “He doesn’t owe it to me!”

Joy is a blessing, not a right!

Well, 2010 is officially underway. Our first gathering of 2010 at Horizon was very encouraging. It was great to see some new and familiar faces in the same place at the same time after the craziness of the holiday season. I love how new people always bring a fresh perspective to a familiar situation. In fact, I heard something last night that might have changed the way I view our church’s gatherings forever.

A mother and daughter worshiped with us for the first time this Sunday and after getting to know them a little we took them to our childcare area to see if the daughter would like to play back there during the service. We have toys, games, a tv, coloring books, and nearly anything else a 5 year old would want to occupy our her time. To me, it’s a “no brainer” that any kid would want to spend time here over listening to me preach. But what this little girl said in response will stay with me forever. She politely said, “I like it back here, but when God gets here I want to go out there.” What a novel concept. This five year old girl expected God to show up when she went to church, AND SHE DIDN’T WANT TO MISS IT!

Is that a stark contrast to the way you attend church?

Do you look forward to it with excitement knowing that God is going to show up?

Are you doing your part as a member of the body of Christ to make sure that people see God in the actions, gatherings, and intent of the church?

I happen to think that this little girl could teach us all a thing or two about what to expect when we encounter the church. If it’s not the norm, let’s make it the norm. If it’s not your church’s current reality, make it reality. Make sure that when your church gathers, God shows up!

I ran across a quote while I was doing some sermon writing and studying this week that I thought was worth sharing. Check it…

“The most destructive element in the human mind is fear.” -Dorothy Thompson

Not knowing who Dorothy Thompson was off the top of my head lead me to do some digging. What I found proved that she knew a thing or two about fear. Dorothy was an American journalist who spent much of her career in central Europe. in 1931 she actually sat down and interviewed Adolf Hitler. She later wrote a book book based on that interview called I Saw Hitler. After her book was published, and no doubt because of the content of the book and other related publications, she earned the dubious distinction of being he first American journalist to be kicked out of Germany. The German government considered her work to be “offensive”. In 1939 TIME magazine named her one of the two most influential women in America, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt , for her journalistic work.

You talk about staring fear in the face and speaking out against tyranny in a way that could have ended your life, and you’re talking about the career of Dorothy Thompson. It is amazing to think about the perspective on the emotion of fear that she must have had.

Then I think about the lives that most of us live. Fear is an emotion that most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about or interacting with. Or so one would think. You see, even though we may never stand face to face with the kind of fear that Dorothy Thompson did in her day most of us live with the constant presence of a self-induced fear. We worry about what our actions or proclamations to the world might say about us. We worry about how our actions might affect others opinions of us, and for most of us all it does is lead us to complacent inactivity.

This week I’m preaching on the “Miraculous Conception of Jesus” at Horizon. One of the key aspects of this story is the fact that Jesus’ adopted father, Joseph, almost allowed his fear to keep him from accepting who Jesus really was.

I don’t want to preach my whole sermon right here on my blog, for those of you that will be at Horizon, but let me ask you to do this. Think about the fear in your life that is keeping you from accepting who Jesus is. Think about the fear that is standing in your way of REALLY following him, REALLY giving him your life, REALLY making him your source of strength. Think about the fear that might be paralyzing your faith and squelching your passion, and very purposefully CRUSH IT!

God isn’t good, he’s awesome! That may seem like an overly dramatic way to communicate God’s might, but for me it fits perfectly. Last night I watched as my wife baptized one of her friends and D-group members, and was again amazed at how quickly people can realize the need for Jesus in their lives through real relationships and the study of scripture. Not through a fantastic music at a worship experience, not through flashing lights and fog, not through an impressive conference, not through a famous speakers, but through reading God’s Word and real people loving them. I’m not saying that those things are bad, but that was my baseline for this kind of life change for many years.

This is the second baptism in 6 months at Horizon, and while that might not seem phenomenal to most here are a few things that God has given me to get excited about.

• One baptism after 50 years of ministry would still make the work worth while because someone who was going to Hell now gets to spend an eternity in Heaven.
• Since the launch of our Discipleship Groups at Horizon we have seem major life change from everyone involved. Both mature believers and people seeking to figure out what Jesus is all about have seen a perspective shift. Real relationships and Biblical accountability change people.
• Over the last six months Horizon has baptized over 10% of her weekly attendance. That’s huge!

I’m thankful for every ounce of effort that God allows me to pour into His Church (not MY church), and today I’m thankful the healthy perspective he has given me.

Ok, I should probably know this by now, but when you talk about something publicly (i.e. expecting to be frustrated by the devil’s efforts to fight the work of God’s kingdom) then you usually become a target. And right on cue something crazy happened to our church once again this week. I showed up a couple hours early to our Sunday Gathering, as I usually do, to find that we had no electricity. There wasn’t a power outage…there wasn’t a down line…our power was straight up shut off. I knew that we hadn’t done anything deserving of our power being shut off, but that didn’t change the fact that we had less than two hours to power this place before people began to arrive.

Needless to say, I was pretty steamed. Thankfully, a few of our guys had also come over extra early to get some things ready and they helped me keep my cool (Yes, we preachers can lose our cool too. We’re not perfect!) as we sorted out the situation. We had a couple of our resourceful men round up some generators, but by the grace of God the power company showed up and sorted the issue out with just minutes to spare and we didn’t have to alter anything. A clerical error on the power company’s part had lead to our loss in power.

While this is yet another chapter in the book of what to expect when you’re a church planter it was also a reminder to me that if you become a visible threat to Satan, he will attack you. We went on to have one of the most powerful gatherings we have ever had. The room was packed, the Word was preached, and God was honored above all. Satan didn’t want that to happen.

It’s awesome to think that Satan sees our work at Horizon as a threat, but it’s still a frustrating thing to endure. I think I’ll be praying for patience and perspective this week.

I wanted to update everyone on Horizon’s facility struggles. If you’re lost, read my previous post: “Important Information about Horizon”.

Yesterday, God answered our prayers in a huge way. Not only did we find a place to meet, but this new place will be Horizon’s first permanent campus! That’s right. Not only did God bless us with a place to meet, but it’s going to be a place that we can make our own and use seven days a week. The facility is located in the community of Wilder, KY and we are very excited to see how God will use this space to enhance and expand what we do at Horizon.

The only thing left for us to do is finalize some paperwork and prepare the space for our gatherings so please continue to pray for these things, as they must happen very quickly. Thanks to all of you who have been praying and/or fasting this past week for our situation and God’s direction for Horizon. We know our family of supporters stretches far beyond Northern Kentucky and we are thankful for every last word lifted to God on our behalf.

Please continue to hep us pray as we prepare Horizon for great things.

Because many of the readers of my blog are also great supporters of Horizon I wanted to keep you all in the loop about the current situation of our church so you can join us in prayer. Below is the message I sent out to our community this morning.

Hey everyone. I wanted to inform you all of some very time sensitive information that was just confirmed this morning.

The facility that we currently rent as part of UK’s extension cooperative has decided to discontinue their agreement to allow us use of their building. Because of their policies and our rental agreement they are only required to give us two weeks notice which means that this coming Sunday (Oct. 25) will be the last Sunday we will be allowed use of the facility.

One of the greatest things about our church is that our church and our mission and morale is not tied to any person, place, or thing. This is our chance to live our the words Paul spoke to Timothy in his second letter (Something we preached through no more than two weeks ago) when he stated that the Gospel is not chained by our situation. Our momentum and passion is threatening Satan’s work and there is no doubt in my mind that this is nothing more than a ploy to distract and discourage us, BUT WE WILL NOT BE DISCOURAGED OR DISTRACTED! We will press on and seek the direction that God is taking our church and follow him wholeheartedly.

Our Leadership Team has already begun the process of searching for a new facility and we hope to have solid plans by Sunday. In the mean time we would like to ask every one of you to join us as we pray and fast for this search and God’s leading for our church. Feel free to conduct those things in any way that you feel is appropriate in your own life.

Stand strong church. Satan has already been defeated and God is still on the throne. We will move past this speed bump to greatness for the Kingdom of God.

No matter what your connection with Horizon is I hope you will join us as we pray and fast as we seek God’s direction for our church. I am confident that God will prove this to be more of an opportunity than an obstacle.

Alright, here’s the deal…at Horizon I would guesstimate that more than 75% of our regular attenders are smart phone or iPod touch users. Because of this I am VERY excited to say that starting this Sunday we will be taking advantage of one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in recent church history called YouVersion LIVE.

In case you’ve haven’t heard, YouVersion started as a free online Bible created by the guys at LifeChurch.tv where you could offer insights and perspective to the world as you study scripture. From there they have created apps for many different smart form platforms and many people, including myself, now read their Bible almost exclusively through YouVersion. It’s a great tool for everything from deep study to casual reading and browsing.

So, to ramp it up a notch they decided to launch a platform that would put this same idea of sharing to use during a church service. With YouVersion LIVE churches and organizations will be able to upload outlines for each service that include things like: Bible references, notes (with a special place where you can take your own and email them to yourself when you’re done), twitter feeds, polls, questions, links, videos, online giving opportunities, and prayer request forms. I’m sure I’m missing a few, but you get the idea.

Point is, this is a HUGE breakthrough in the way the modern church will be able to rely information and Biblical teaching to people. If you have a smartphone or even a phone with internet access you need to check it out and encourage your preacher to utilize this great tool. If you’re a part of Horizon, check it out now because it will be available to you every Sunday from this point forward.

Check out YouVersion LIVE

Sign up for Horizon’s YouVersion LIVE Group

Sometimes people, knowing that I’m a preacher, ask me this question. “Why don’t you take Monday off?” I guess more than probing into my personal life they just want to know why I don’t take a “break” after my busiest and more stressful day of the week. So, for all of you who are curious and might ever ask me that question in the future here’s the answer.

I remember things on Monday that I won’t on Tuesday.

I’ve posted several times before about my weekly process and how I start my process of preparing very lightly every week, but I think it is very important for me to reflect on what has happened on any given Sunday before I forget. I don’t do any “heavy lifting” as I work on Mondays, but use it more as a day of light review and preparing to prepare for the coming week. Sometimes I even jot down little notes to myself throughout the day on Sunday so I can reflect on them the next day. Things like…

• [insert name here] is doing a great job on [task]. Send them a note of encouragement this week.
• You need to do [insert task] less.
• Leave more/less time for [worship element] next week.

It’s not that I’m naturally forgetful, I just want to be very sure that everything we do, and don’t do Horizon and everything I do, and don’t do, as a leader is on purpose. So, I don’t allow a lot of time to lapse between an event and the review of the event. I like to go over the rocks (bad) and rubies (good) while they’re still fresh in my mind (that’s some old school terminology that Mike taught me).

As a leader it’s very important to keep your eyes on what you are achieving and what you’re not. This can be taken this to awful extremes, as I know I have before, when we worry too much about the bad and don’t celebrate the good, but early review can help you to pinpoint problems and capitalize on a job well done.