Most Popular Posts of 2010

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  Below are the top 10 posts from my blog in 2010.  As we look forward to next year, I thought I would share these with you readers to take a look back. 1.  Top 5 Bad Christmas Church Signs 2.  Passion Church?! Giglio and Tomlin Church Plant?! 3.  Top 5 Best Christmas Decorations 4.  It’s Official: Eli is Now …

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I Could Use Some Courageous Prayers

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This week, I am hunkering down and working on the Bible study curriculum for the upcoming movie by Sherwood Pictures, Courageous.  I shared on the blog a while back about how humbling an opportunity it was to work on this project.  As the Kendrick brothers are working on the production side of the film right now for a September 2011 release, I have the task of sorting through the movie themes, taking their direction, and working on some of the Bible studies that will be a curriculum for a church to go through to accompany the movie.

I’ve met 2 of 4 deadlines, but the most difficult are on their way.  One Bible study has been submitted for editing, but now I’ve got to work on the remaining 7.  The goal of this entire project is for men to step up and be the godly fathers that He requires.  There is no telling what God could do through this entire project to impact homes, churches, and even cities if the boys started rising up and become men of God.

As I lock myself away for the next few days, I would surely appreciate some prayer partners.  If you can pray once, or if you can put my name or the word “Courageous” somewhere where you will see it this week and remember to pray each time you see it, anything would be much appreciated.  This whole project has been bathed in prayer and I want make sure that every word that goes down on paper is from God’s leading!

Here’s specifics on how you can pray:

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Spoiled Rotten

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13 For you are called to freedom, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
(Galatians 5:13-15, HCSB)

Spoiled Rotten

As a parent, I have certain rules and stipulations by which I prefer my children to adhere. My wife and I have standards of bed time routines, dietary selections, and level of freedom bestowed upon our children. We want our children to have fun, but we have certain rules we prefer them to live by.

That is, until they go and spend time with their grandparents.

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Knowing His Work

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It was great to worship today in the middle of the great Greenwood blizzard.  We did experience some snow last night which meant the first snow for Greenwood on Christmas since 1963!  The roads were safe enough to come to services, so we posted on the City our plans and we had a powerful time as the church today!

We concluded the Jesus Loves Me series (the first part of Ephesians) with this big idea:

Knowing His Work (Eph. 2:8-10) – We know that Jesus loves us based upon the work of salvation.  Our salvation is all his work, and none of our good deeds influenced it, but once we are saved, our lives should be characterized by good works that emerge from a grateful heart.

Great message!  Such wonderful grace!  For those who had too much ice or snow on the roads to join us, the message will be here online this afternoon.

I was also thankful he made it through it.  He told me that a stomach bug had been going through his house and at 8:30, he was feeling a little funny on his tummy.  So, he told me to be on guard.  A couple of pauses of his caused me to start leaning up in my chair, but he made it through and brought it!

Today, we worshiped to:

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Stop Church Hopping

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There is a growing epidemic in the United States concerning church hopping. More churches’ membership numbers fluctuate not due to new converts but due to revolving membership doors. When someone becomes upset with music styles, church programs, carpet color, differences with another member, frustration with a staff member, or any other reason, people move their church memberships like they would …

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Knowing His Mercy

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Knowing His Mercy (Eph. 2:1-7) – We know that Jesus loves us based upon his rich mercy.  By not giving us what we deserved, we have a chance at new life due to his deep love.  The fact that Jesus loves us changes everything.

What a great Sunday as we continued through Ephesians.  Jeff’s message was such a clear picture of the gospel.

Today, we worshiped to:

We had some really special moments in worship today.  Having the band start out with a presentation on hope, mission, and the gospel to the tune of a Trans-Siberian Orchestra number was pretty fun.  It was more than a neat musical piece, with the media presentation put together by Jessica and Jamie, the experience was pretty intense.  I have never been more proud of our hard working band (you can see it on Facebook here).

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Dust of the Ground Video Shoot – Preferences

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Wednesday, we got to work with the talented group, Dust of the Ground.  Jeremy and Austin are the duo that make up this talented media company.  Since I’m friends with Jeremy (Jeff Lethco’s son), I’ve seen some of the fantastic projects they have finished.  When I saw how talented they were, I knew they might be the answer to an idea I had.

I’ve had all these worship instructional video ideas in my head for a while now.  3 minute clips that could be used in churches to drive home a concept concerning worship during a service or at the beginning of a message.  By taking a biblical principle concerning worship (true worship, lifting of hands, why we sing, etc.), and giving a mini-message through the power of film, I thought we might could go further faster on some of these areas which churches struggle.

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The City is Coming to North Side

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North Side is growing.  Praise the Lord.  While we are excited about numerical growth, we also are burdened to always grow closer as we grow larger.  As we continually get busier and busier, how in the world can we truly connect people to each other in the church?

As we prayed, we believed that God led us to an answer.

The City…It’s a new communication tool at North Side Baptist Church. The City has been implemented to allow the members of North Side to connect with each other. This tool provides a unique way for members to keep up to date with each other…as well as events, happenings, prayer requests and needs of the North Side family.

It really focuses on 3 key things:

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Knowing His Thoughts

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We had practice on Wednesday for Sunday, and everything went great except for the feeling I needed to change things up.  So Friday, I sent an updated list for this morning.  I wanted to scale things back and really let our voices fill up the room with praise for our King.  I’m so thankful for a team that doesn’t complain when I send them an email and say we need to go in a different direction.  Each team member jumped in there this morning prepared and knocked it out of the park!  Great job!

Today, we worshiped to:

In addition to a great worship time, Ken also gave us a word of testimony concerning how the City has already impacted him.  This is an online tool that our church is starting to use to communicate with one another.  If you want to join the early group getting connected on the City before our January 9th launch, go here.

OG (the David Denton) also gave a word of testimony for our church.  After losing his father this year, he went through shock and pain.  But OG chose to believe in the hope we have in Christ.  He cited that he was able to overcome due to the church surrounding him and caring for him.  Such a great word from such a sharp dressed guy in his shiny white shoes!

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Vocal Warmups for Worship Groups

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Last night for our worship team development time as we focused on capability – leading with excellence, I decided to bring in a vocal expert: my wife.  Amanda has her Master’s in music education and focused on vocal pedagogy.  So, she got us moving and thinking about some ways that we can use our vocals more effectively at the beginning of practice.  We had all our musicians and techies go through the exercises, because it will help everyone out.  Don’t worry, our vocalists are going to be working on the soundboard soon.

Here are some of her great notes that she gave us last night:

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Election, Limited Atonement, and Other Things That Make You Think

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After Jeff’s message on Sunday dealing with election and predestination, I have gotten the chance to have some great followup conversations with church members.  That means, people have had some questions.  So, I thought I would give you a brief summary of some of the conversations.

  1. God is God – If God says that to get into heaven, you have to stand on your head and cluck like a chicken for 475 days straight, you have to.  He’s God.  Get over it.  So the first rule before entering into this conversation is just because something doesn’t feel right or fair doesn’t mean it might not be reality.
  2. Election is in the Bible – Like it or not, the concept of election and predestination are in the Bible.  Are they as thoroughly explained as church discipline, the Great Commission, or Christ’s work on the cross?  No.  But the concept is there even if it isn’t explained in Scripture as thoroughly as we may desire.

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Worship Wars

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Many churches are involved in what church growth experts have labeled “worship wars.” Not wanting to lose a particular style of music, many churches find themselves in a battle to maintain their preferential style.  It’s more than contemporary vs. traditional.  It has to do with instrumentation, volume, genre, layout, lighting, etc.  Unfortunately, many churches split over such things. Question: how …

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“Sex is Evil, Sex is Sin, God Forgives, So Let’s…”

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15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! 16 Do you not know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, 18 and having been liberated from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.
(Romans 6:15-18, HCSB)

New Management

I was in a restaurant in Colorado eating dinner on a mission trip. This restaurant was one of those joints where it was encouraged to write on the wall to inscribe your name or your wisest thought. Among the walls of inscriptions, my eyes caught a glimpse of a poem that someone had penned: “Sex is evil, sex is sin, God forgives, so let’s begin.”

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Knowing His Gifts

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What a fun Sunday as we kicked off our December series, “Jesus Loves Me (This I Know)” as we started trekking through the 1st section of Ephesians.

Knowing His Gifts (Eph. 1:1-14) – We know that Jesus loves us based upon the gifts he has given us.  Through his work, he has reconciled all creation to himself and has united the church.  His immeasurable gifts are more than what we ever deserved.

Today, we worshiped to:

We are doing a really fun opener each week, and this week was the ladies’ week to get after a great gospel number.  They tore it up!  Next week, the guys are up.  All I’m saying is don’t be late…

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My Problem with David Platt’s Radical

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Like many people in the last year, I have read David Platt’s soul-searching book, Radical. Make no mistake, I was a David Platt fan before being a David Platt fan was cool.  I got the privilege to hear him preach years before his name got real big.  Back in the day, he loved Jesus and was committed to his mission.

Here’s a video preview of his book:

Pretty intense stuff.  The book is even more intense.  He unashamedly calls the American church to wake up from their pursuit of the American Dream and live out the gospel in their daily lives.  Russell Moore’s endorsement is right on: “Sometimes people will commend a book by saying, ‘You won’t want to put it down.’  I can’t say that about this book.  You’ll want to put it down, many times.  If you’re like me, as you read David Platt’s Radical, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably targeted by the Holy Spirit.  You’ll see just how acclimated you are to the American dream…”

My problem with the book is this: David Platt is living this out in the context of an existing Southern Baptist church.

And people are forgetting that.

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“That Was ‘Good’ Worship”

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I’ve been so humbled by so many comments from Sunday’s worship services.  People have gone out of their way to say how impacting the time was, how we should have just kept singing for a few more hours, how tears of joy were flooding their eyes as we sang to our King.  Most of people commented, “that was ‘good’ worship.”

I’m not gonna lie.  I thought we were about to sing the roof off that place all 3 times Sunday morning.  I personally almost sang myself back into tonsillectomy rehab cause I just couldn’t hold it back.  But was it really “good” worship?

Sure, I loved the song selections.  The band was smoking and played the dynamics just right.  The singers nailed their parts.  The choir sounded like an angelic force to be reckoned with.  The congregation was outsinging all the microphones on stage.  It was loud.  It was engaging.  It was powerful.

But was it really “good” worship?

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Show Them Who’s the Boss

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12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. 13 And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. 14 For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under law but under grace.
(Romans 6:12-14, HCSB)

Show Them Who’s the Boss

As a father of two two-year-olds (no, that wasn’t a typo), I am frequently having the conversation about who is the boss in the house. It is amazing to me that someone so little can have such audacity to think that the world obviously revolves around him. As a parent, sometimes I feel that I say “no” much more than I say “yes.”

I will regularly look at my sons and say, “You’re not the boss. Daddy is the boss. You obey what Daddy says. This is not a democracy. You don’t even get a vote.” I’ll never forget that one day I was telling my oldest two-year-old, Obadiah, that he was not in charge and that I was the boss when he interrupted me and said, “No, Mommy’s the boss!”

He was on restrictions for the next week.

When someone or something tries to be in charge when they shouldn’t be, things get chaotic. In a home, it results in bad behaved children, in a spiritual walk, it results in bad behaved adults. Sin does not have the right to rule in our lives, yet it does rule when we obey sin’s desires. As Christians, sin has lost it’s authoritative power over us. It is gone. Yet we give sin the throne when we give up the fight and yield to sinful desires.

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One Worship Team’s Task

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“And he [Jesus] had to pass through Samaria.” -John 4:4

It was the shortest of ways for Jesus to travel. Traveling through Samaria would be shortest distance geographically, but most Jews would bypass that city because of their disdain for the Samaritans. Racial stereotypes kept most religious Jewish leaders out of that city.

But Jesus had to go through that way. He had work there.

In that city, he didn’t feed the masses or heal numbers of people, he spent time with a loose woman by a well. She had been married numerous times and was living with a man who was not her husband at the time. As Jesus was sitting by the well, she came his way, and she would never be the same again.

In this amazing passage, John chronicles Jesus’ uncanny knack for reaching people far away from God. As he draws her in, she begins to realize she is not dealing with your average passerby. When she realizes this fact, she begins to discuss one of Scripture’s worship wars. These feuds about how worship should be done didn’t start when drums were brought into a sanctuary; they’ve been around a while.

“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do now know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:20-24).

Did you catch it? She was more focused on when and where and how worship should take place. Worship happens when it’s in this location in a certain type of way and it doesn’t happen when it’s different than what is expected. Jesus reveals that worship cannot be confined to preferences. It is not manmade. It is not manufactured. It is a lifestyle. It is on God’s preferences and not our own.

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One Worship

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Today, we worshiped to: The Longer I Serve Him The Heart of Worship – Matt Redman Sing to the King – Billy Foote Amazing Grace – North Side Worship How Great is Our God – Bethany Dillon How Great Thou Art – Paul Baloche 3 services, 2 buildings, 1 flowsheet.  One worship. Today was incredible.  After Michael George gave us …

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Family Resemblance

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1 Look at how great a love the Father has given us, that we should be called God’s children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know Him. 2 Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure.
(1 John 3:1-3, HCSB)

Family Resemblance

As a young boy, I would often hear from someone how one of my features resembled either my mother or my father. Some people could actually tell I was their child even if they had never met me. Now as a father, I always enjoy hearing from people who they think our boys look like. Sometimes I have left a room to have someone tell my wife, “I won’t tell your husband this cause I don’t want to offend him, but your children look just like you.” I always laugh at that. I’m not upset if my children look like their mother (I did choose to marry her, you know?).

It’s a fact of life: children share family resemblance with their parents. It might be the way they look, the way they talk, or they way they behave, but children often resemble their parents.

As children of God, we are called to do the same!

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Don’t Go in Debt on Black Friday

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Thanksgiving is this week and what does that mean for America?  We are already focused on Christmas consumerism.  We are getting ready to honor the incarnation of God himself by going into debt up to our eyeballs.  Dangerous stampedes will happen all over our country on Friday to obtain gadgets before others do on the cusp of a day to celebrate gratefulness to what we already have.

Maybe there is a different way.

Before going shopping on Black Friday, I want to offer you a few tips:

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You’re Not An Orphan Anymore

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8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him, 9 because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, no longer dies. Death no longer rules over Him. 10 For in that He died, He died to sin once for all; but in that He lives, He lives to God. 11 So, you too consider …

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One Family

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Over the years, we have been blessed to see numerical and spiritual growth in our congregation.  We are at a place where we are not experiencing disharmony, but we are experiencing detachment.  So how can we turn this many people into one functional family? It was a great day all around as we focused on One Family during our One …

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The Popsicle Fiasco

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I have been going through family footage this week during my recovery working on an adoption video, and I ran across a video of Obadiah from back in April right before I went to pick up Eli.  This routine was happening about everyday after nap time.  It wasn’t staged, it just was regular. Hope you enjoy the popsicle fiasco:

Worship Vocal Workshop

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Due to me being unable to lead worship practice this week, we had a guest lecturer, Paul Baloche, to teach on worship vocals.  As we are focusing on worship value #3: capability – leading with excellence, Paul provides some great tips on leading worship as a vocal team.  Hope you enjoy!

A Church’s Barriers to Growth

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I was told it was a bad idea.

Honestly, I was told it would never work. Young men in the ministry normally don’t find success going back and working at the church at which they were raised. Regardless of those people telling me it was a bad idea, I couldn’t shake that I felt God’s Spirit leading me back to North Side to serve as a minister when I graduated college in 2003.

As a young minister, I was eternally grateful to this church for what they had done to help me grow in Christ over the years. I wanted to give back as much as I could. At the same time, I began my seminary training through extension work.

In one of my classes, the required reading was a book called The Everychurch Guide to Growth by Elmer Towns, C. Peter Wagner, and Thom Rainer. With a large reading load that semester, I intended to rush through this reading but it didn’t happen that way. As I read the pages, I felt like someone had been watching my beloved North Side during the years that I had grown up here and chronicled some of the challenges we had experienced and had overcome.

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So Long Tonsils

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I’m going under the knife this morning at 9:30. When I returned from Ethiopia, I brought back all kinds of special bugs and germs from my time in the orphanage.  It’s kind of hard to turn down all these kids reaching for the white giant who can rescue them from their cribs.  One of the bugs I brought back was …

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One Doctrine

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[This picture was taken before soundcheck on my phone.  The light hit perfectly catching my two youngins eating breakfast and getting ready to jam out with Daddy and Mommy.] Wow.  What a huge day to celebrate Jesus and focus on North Side striving together for one doctrine. In an increasingly biblically illiterate society, we must commit ourselves now more than …

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Bad Church Sign: Come Hear Our Preacher

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It’s been a while since I commented on a church sign, and many people have complained concerning that fact, so it’s that time again: this is my bad church sign of the week! This week’s sign reads: “DO YOU KNOW WHAT HELL IS?  COME HEAR OUR PREACHER” Now what they probably meant was that their preacher was going to give …

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Pass the Microphone

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You may or may not have heard, but I’m getting my tonsils and adenoids taken out next week.   I was reminded why on Sunday.  As I woke up, my throat was so dry and painful that I could barely sing by the time I got to church.

The good thing was I didn’t have to sing that much.

As worship pastor at North Side, I really never sing “lead” on every song we do.  I’m only the lead on a few songs of our worship CDs.  Visiting ministers have asked me why, that as the worship pastor, am I not leading all, or even most, of the songs and everyone else singing backup?

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Christian Sightseeing is Not Missions

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I’ve still been processing Sunday’s message and praying for the next step concerning our church’s involvement in the Great Commission.  Since we are studying missions this week, I have something that God has really been teaching me over the last year: Christian sightseeing is not missions!

Let me explain.  I think over the years, we have watered down missions so much that we classify doing anything that is overseas or with people of a different race as missions.  If you look at many job descriptions of mission trips these days, you will unfortunately see watered down weeks that ask Christians to do simple tasks in order that there is minimal exposure to the gospel.  Rarely do I see job descriptions that say, “Come and bring your church’s best evangelists to share the gospel.”  It is pass out this, pray for that, play with this, love on that – but we seem it extreme simply to share the gospel.

I think sometimes we get caught up in traveling the world in the name of Jesus rather than the Great Commission.

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Sex is a Gift from God

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Marriages are under attack, and one of the ways that many fall is that the intimacy fails along the way.  Scripture gives married couples lessons to follow:

Drink water from your own cistern,

water flowing from your own well.

Should your springs flow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?

They should be for you alone and not for you [to share] with strangers.

Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.

A loving doe, a graceful fawn— let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.

Why, my son, would you be infatuated with a forbidden woman or embrace the breast of a stranger?

For a man’s ways are before the LORD’s eyes, and He considers all his paths.

Prov 5:15-21 (HCSB)

Many people imagine God as a fuddy-duddy in the sky who doesn’t want His children to have any fun or enjoy anything in this life.  People have a concept of God that says if something is enjoyable, He probably wouldn’t want us to partake of it. Those people have never read Proverbs 5.

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One Mission

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I firmly believe that today was the start of a whole new era of North Side as we began the One Initiative.  Today, we focused on what it would mean to have truly One Mission? Our church has always been faithful at engaging in the Great Commission.  But what could happen if we all focused in one direction to reach …

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Tis the Season to Be Involved

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Since Christmas decorations started going up in stores 3 months ago, I guess it’s time to start thinking Christmas time around the ol’ church house as well.  Our worship team has been doing some praying and planning as of late, and what we have realized is if we are going to pull off what we have in mind for the …

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Some Day Soon – Storytellers

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“Some Day Soon” is the last track on the Overcome album.  It is kind of a funny story how it came about.  One day, the power at the office went out.  We had no electricity, internet, or phone service for the day.  This was around the time we were trying to finish up tracking for Overcome.  I cleared the whiteboard and tried to finalize track listing.  As I came close to finishing, I realized there wasn’t a blatant song about the hope with Christ’s return and our trip home.  Elements were throughout the album, but it wasn’t explicit anywhere.

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The Difference 6 Months Can Make

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Today is a day to celebrate.  It is exactly 6 months since the day Eli and myself landing back at GSP airport.  6 months.  6 pictures (because a pictures says 1,000 words, right?).  Watch the difference 6 months can make: Ephesians 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, …

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The Pure: Joseph

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What a great day at North Side!  The picture above is of my two aspiring musicians during soundcheck this morning.  Obie walked in with his toy guitar today and said, “Play the guitar in the church house like Daddy?!”  Love my life.

Today, we worshiped to:

So humbling to hear and watch you sing out today.  It was great to see how a CD can lead in worship in that so many of you were singing out to songs we haven’t done on a Sunday yet but were recorded on the Overcome CD.  Love worshiping with you and pray that album is a blessing to you!

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Tolerating Mediocre Talent in Church

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We’ve all been there.  Sunday morning, the soloist gets up to perform the special music.  It’s not that it’s not your style, it’s the fact that it hurts.  This person simply cannot sing.  For whatever reason, they got the chance to sing a solo, and you are wishing they were singing so low you couldn’t hear them (sorry, I couldn’t …

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On Behalf of All Black Men…

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A few weeks ago, I was riding Obie and Eli in the Walmart buggy while Amanda was grocery shopping.  As I attempted to keep them occupied, we ran into some friends.  The boys started to hand out the high-fives to our friends when an older black man that I did not know came up and insisted on getting high-fives himself and then walked off.

One minute later, he came back and interrupted the conversation by pointing to Eli and asking, “Sir, excuse me, but are you mentoring this young boy?”

Before I got to respond to this funny question as this stranger pointed at my tiny 2-year-old, Eli looked up at me and tried to get my attention by saying, “Daddy?”

This man stated, “I’m sorry, is this boy your son?!”

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