People Matter

People matter to God, therefore people must matter to me. If I do not like people and never want to be near them, then I probably need to check myself. If the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have (heart, soul, mind and strength) and the second is "like it" as the Bible says, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves, then this means we have a whole lot of loving to do.

The reality of this is sad. Sad for my life and the lives of people in our busy world. While there are some who truly take their time to love others daily, the reality is that the majority of people don't. In our fast pace society we are concerned about ourselves.

This afternoon my brother came over with my nephew and of course we fought each other, since he is a 4 year old boy. I had a blast playing with him, beating him up, letting him beat me up, beating his daddy up, letting him beat me up and so on. I sent them a text 2 hours after they left that said "Tell Malakhai that I had fun playing with him and tell him that I cant wait to play again next time". I want my nephew to love his uncle Justy (as he calls me) and I want to be an encouragement to him.

This is not just the case in Malakhai's life, but every one's life. I am starting to really think about people that I am close to and take a little extra time to go out of my way to help encourage them. Philippians says that we should not only look for our own interests, but also the interests of others.  Who could you pour your life into? Could you just send someone an encouraging text right now? Imagine all the people. Take out time and invest into people because they matter.

Wasting My Time

I have the potential to waste a lot of time. Well, we all do. I have been thinking lately how I can be more effective with my time and and taking action. Here are a few things that I am doing. Maybe if you are bad at time management some of these points may help.

I thought through this question: "What are the top 5 things that are important to me" Here they are and how I will rearrange my time to be more effective through my days.

1. Love relationship with God: This means I will take time daily and get to know the one that created me. Search Him out, study Him worship , adore and get to know and trust Him more.
2. Love my wife: Practically this means cleaning the house. She lives with 2 babies all day and can get depressed if the place looks like crap. I am taking action to help more and more.
3. Love my family: This means come home everyday and have designated time for them. Not for facebook, twitter, TV, Blah blah blah, but time just for them; laughing, playing, loving, teaching, leading and hanging out with them.
4. Loving people: Daily I think how I can love people. Now I will stop thinking and start doing more. Loving, encouraging, meeting and giving to different people daily and Speaking into their lives.
5. Loving My job: I need to plan out my week. I usually get up, do my thing, go to work and pick up one of the 25 things that I know needs to get done and start working on it. Instead of this A.D.D, ineffective method, I decided to plan out my days.

This is not just a good idea that I have had, but what God has been teaching me. Now I am changing things around so I do not waste my time.

The Gospel Apathy

Growing up going to many churches, I heard the gospel. The pastors would share the same message about Jesus and throw in something a little different to "spice" things up every now and then; it was boring, stale, dry. I actually think that hearing it over and over kept me from coming to Christ. It was to "traditional". It was too "what you are suppose to do". Because of this I knew about Jesus but I did not know Jesus. I never saw the love and truth of Jesus.

To engage in today's culture and churches, we must preach the full gospel of Jesus Christ. That God came into the world and submitted Himself, as a man, under the authority of Roman officials to be brutally beaten, scornfully scarred  and unmercifully murdered. This same God, Jesus, died, was buried and resurrected (if He did not rise, then we would be apart of the most embarrassing religion of the world).

If you call yourself a Christ follower, I encourage you to preach the full gospel, in love to people. Love them, engage them and lead them to Jesus. Many believers never engage in a relationship, conversation or even show care or concern for an unbeliever. I look at my life and it doesn't look like I have it all together either. Get rid of any apathy you may have. Embrace Jesus. Meet people. Share Jesus.

How to Start a Church

There are 3 areas that we are currently focusing on during this season at Awaken. They all gear around Sunday morning and they are; Connections, Program and Children. As I have been studying church planting, I have realized that these three areas must be done well or you will just have a mediocre church. (there area more areas, but these are our current focus)

Connections: Connections is connecting people to our church. What are you first thoughts on a church when you walk in? This has much to do with the Connections Ministry. Here are some questions we are thinking about: Do you have greeters in place? Do you give something to first time guests? Is what your giving them good enough? Is it too much? Do you greeters walk people to the worship service, kids area or the students area? Do we buy umbrellas and meet people at their cars when its raining or get a golf cart (that would be fun)? Do we have a follow up plan? DO we show love to the people that are walking through the doors? Do we have greeters that know how to greet or just let anyone who is willing do it? Much more...

Program: How is the service? How does the opening of the service work? Does the pastor welcome everyone or does another leader in the church welcome? Who leads worship? What kind of songs? How many songs? When do you do the songs; before, after preaching; both? How does the pastor communicate? Is the message thought provoking, funny, engaging, use object lessons, relevant, good, helpful, applicable and more? Do you have someone give a testimony, use media, play a special song, and do you have a reflection time? Much more...

Children: You could have the best welcoming/Connections team in your city and have a phenomenal program, but if you do not take care of peoples kids, then you have failed. Are our kids safe, have fun, creative, prepared? Have we done background checks, made T-Shirts, have a follow up plan? Are good effective people that love children in place to serve? Much more...

This is just the beginning, the tip of the ice berg. We are going to churches on Sunday mornings and studying these things. If you want to be a loving church that does things well, then you must make sure a lot of time and thought goes into each area of ministry. These things must be done well and have leaders that do them well. Poring your time into the things that matter show people in your community that you care about them. These are just a few things that we are looking into to start our church.

Take note: We have not launched our church. These are just observations that I have learned through study, asking questions to church planters, reading blogs, prayer, the Bible and more.

Take a Dump on You

OK, I know the title is a little "Middle School" like, but hey it got you here didn't it?

Imagine someone came into your life and just "dumped" a tone of resources onto your lap. Just say someone walked up and gave you a check for $50 and said I just wanted to bless you. Would that $50 change your life? Probably not. It may however, make your day or maybe even your week, but I will guarantee you this, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THE PERSON THAT GAVE IT TO YOU.

At Awaken, we want Jesus to look attractive to people. We want our community to see the love of Jesus. I was talking to a few people tonight at work about targeting a Trailer Park in the area where we are looking to plant our church. I said what if we hung out there for a few weeks and started to get to know some of the people. After a few weeks, we put on a little carnival for the children in their community. Get inflatables, icee's, funnel cakes, hand out t-shirts and love on them. Finally we give every family a gift card to Wal Mart.

We also will build relationships with the people in the community and start a small group Bible Study. We start to target and pray for each home in that community that is far from God and pray that God would change their lives.

After talking about this I asked some of the people that I was casting this vision to, "Why wouldn't it work?" This really started getting me excited about my purpose in life and the purpose for Awaken. Would all of these people come to our church? I am sure some would, but that is not point at all. The point is just to love them. Most of them probably believe that Jesus exists, but have just not seen His love through His followers. So we are going to do it.

What are some creative ideas that you have wanted to do, but just have not had a chance to do it before?

Identity Crisis: Jean Calude Van Dame is my Hero.

This morning Kylie, our 2 year old, had a great idea to make up a game. She started calling Faith, Mary and called me Carson and called herself Halle. Mary is my sister-in-law, Carson is her husband and Halle is their daughter. She liked to play and have fun with the thought that we were them. She thought it was funny. She made us, them

I remember being in Middle and High School wanting to be like someone else. It could have been a famous musician or and athlete or it could have just been someone I looked up to in my school. Don't laugh, but I remember wanting to be like Jean Claude Van Dame when I was 11 and I liked Deion Sanders. My favorite number is still 21.

I think many churches and church plants have an "Identity Crises". There is a great network within the church planting world. There is also a lot of copying. I see a lot of churches doing the same thing. That is not the total problem, because I can understand borrowing a series or two from time to time or using a good community outreach idea, but many have lost or never had their own originality and own identity as a church.

Many people want to just be like Furtick or Stanley(two of my favorites by the way), but do not want to do their own thing. One thing we have to do before we launch Awaken in August, is to make sure we are who we are and that we are not anyone else. We need to be who God has called us to be.

Practical, this Sunday Night

We are excited about this Sunday night. We have an opportunity that most church planters may not have the chance to do. We get to be apart of helping another church plant and launch their church to their community. Origin Church is planting a church about 25 minutes outside our plant in Ringgold, Ga.

Jeff, Origins Executive Pastor, will be coming by to train us on how they want us to work with Greeters, Children and lights for their launch on April 5th. We will be able to take invaluable experience through this process. We will be apart of a launch team before we launch our church, we'll be able to bless and help Origin Church, see some pro's (things that Origin does well) and hopefully few cons. I think Shane, a seasoned pastor, and his crew have things very well planned. If you are interested in seeing what they are doing or even live in the Ringgold area, I recommend you stop by the church. Here is Shane's blog.

Too Much Study

In church planting, there is a lot of studying to be done. I mean, come on, you are basically starting a business. Sorry for those who do not see it like a business, but on the business side of things, it is a business. So from demographics of your target area, to books on how to put together small groups; church planting is a huge field and there are lots of things to be covered.

The last few days I have thought to myself, "I have I studied too much?" Here is what I mean by that... I talk about reaching people that are not interested in church and maybe even not interested in God. I want to connect with those people. I want to serve them and show God's love to them. So, what have I done? I have studied many ways on how to reach them. There is one problem... I have not been with them. I haven't been in the bars, chatting with people at Wal Mart or Intentionally having the same waiter at Chilli's or changing my oil at the same place for the sole purpose of building relationships. There are so many relationships to be built.

Will I stop studying? No, because I need to know my culture and the people that I am reaching. But I will say that I need to take a break and go and be with them. I do not think Jesus read 7 books, 3 blogs, watched 4 sermons and prayed 6 hours before he went and spoke to the woman at the well. He just went. So should I. Studying; good, life on life, better. I encourage you to do the same. Go build a relationship with someone for the purpose of loving them and showing the love of Jesus to them.

Is Satan at work or do we just live in a sinful world?

Is Satan at work or do we just live in a sinful world? Well both are true, but I am trying to figure out which situations in our lives are because we live in a sinful world and which are from Satan and his demons.

I was in a wreck today; a guy ran me off the road. My Jeep might be total. Here is the kicker, the knife in the back, the irony of it all. I actually had a good friend and one of our supporters for Awaken tell me that he wanted to buy tires for my Jeep. He already had a few price quotes. I was thankful for the offer. Then got in a wreck. Praise God that I am alive after spinning out through three lanes of traffic on hwy 153. No one was hurt. God is good.

So, is this because of Satan and/or his demons or just from the reality of life in a sinful, fallen world? Many people blame things on Satan, but fail to realize that sometimes life happens and that we just live in a sinful jacked up world. Others blame everything on a messed up world and fail to realize that Satan really is prowling around like a roaring  lion looking to destroy our lives. And his purpose in coming is to steal, kill and destroy. 

What are your thoughts? Did Satan cause my wreck or was it just life? Tell me about a situation in your life. Did you struggle with why some things have happened the way they did?