On Thursday mornings I usually try to take some extended time to pray by going on a prayer walk. The majority of the time this means a trip to some of my favorite trails at Umstead State Park. Since my kids were out of school for the summer, I invited my oldest son to join me today (Leadership means you take someone else along for the ride, Mark’s obvious leadership tip #282).

I was not sure how today was going to go, because I pray along the trail like I am talking out loud to a friend. (I can do that there, because no one is around). A funny thing happened, when Jackson just joined in with me. We went from talking to each other, to praying, to looking at a tiny frog, and then back to praying. It felt like we had been doing this for years together. I don’t know if today was a monumental day for him, but it sure was for me.

Spirituality is meant to be a part of our everyday lives. Everything is spiritual. Spiritual parenting is simply letting your kids see a glimpse of God in the normality of life.

Deuteronomy 6:4-8

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ^[a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

I have been mulling over for the past month using twitter to build a prayer team.  I am think it is time to jump off the bridge and start the train moving.  If you are not fimiliar with twitter, it is an online free service that sends updates through text messages to mobile devices.  We will build a team of people that would be willing to recieve prayers needs from TrueLife Church via text message, and take a moment to send up the prayer towards heaven.

I have setup an account at twitter named: truelifeprayer.  If you want to be a part of this team: You can setup a twitter account, and start following truelifeprayer.

We will also be meeting once a month for a time of encouragment and prayer togther.  I will be talking more about this on Sunday.  My goal of this team is to challenge each other to build a Biblical life of prayer by having a lifestyle that is continuously praying.

How will I be using the twitter prayer team?

I will not be updating you with everything I am doing in a day.  (I just refilled my third cup of coffee on this Monday, but the twitter prayer team is not for updating that info).

Truelifeprayer will be twittering things like:

• Mark is about to  study for Sunday’s Message.  Please pray for God’s wisdom.
• John Doe’s gradma was hurt.  Please pray for healing.
• Pray for the lost in Brier Creek today.

Here is a video that walks through Twitter:

One of the best movie songs of all times was “East Bound and Down” by Jerry Reed from “Smokey and the Bandit”.  I feel that song this week.  We’ve got a long way to go & a short time to get there.   Let me take a moment to talk about being overwhelmed.  Three steps to dealing with feeling overwhelmed:    

1. Prioritize - because you really can’t do it all.  
2. Delegate - where possible
3. Release - things beyond your control.  

 I believe most people during this time of the year feel ovewhelmed because of overexagerrated expectations and over scheduling.  Matthew 6:34

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”   

“Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length” - Robert Frost

 

“How much stuff do you need to be happy?” - Larry the Cucumber, from  VeggieTale’s “Madame BlueBerry”  

I am currently reading a book entitled “The Progress Paradox” by Gregg Easterbrook.  His premise is that life is getting better and people are feeling worse.  People are living longer, and the average American is living like a historic king.  Yet, our vast knowledge of the human body and the societies around the world has not made us happy.  I tell my kids all the time, “You may not be able to control the situation, but you can control your attitude.”  That sounds like a great Monday morning pep talk for us all.  Don’t let your environment shape your attitude, let your attitude shape your environment.  

14“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)    

Halloween is one of my favorite events. I loved it as a kid, and I still like it as an adult. I know there are great Christian leaders who disagree with my enjoyment of the day, but let me tell you why I like it.

Reason #1 - One day a year (not on Christmas or Easter), my neighbors put down the draw bridge over their virtual motes that surround their home, and invite people to ring their door and chat.

Reason #2 - Grown ups and kids are smiling as they share gifts with each other

Reason #3 - I get to walk around with some great people and get to know them. Here is a listing of the people, I connected with while “trick or treating”.

• Karst
• Shelby
• Nadalia
• Stephanie
• Carla
• Yoli
• Jake
• Josh
• Brian

How can we be salt and light to people if we are not touching them to be salt and out in the darkness with them to be light?

Being employed as a full-time pastor for the past dozen years, I have always been in a multi-staff organization.  There were administrative assistants, pastors, book-keepers, receptionists, and maintenance people.  The office functioned basically like any small business with office hours from 9 to 5 (don’t start singing the Dolly Parton song), and a workroom with a demon possessed copier.

I am having to re-engineer my thinking on the paradigm of a church office.  If non-verbal communication (web, email, text-messaging, etc) becomes our primary way to recieve first level communication, how do we build a virtual church office that is effecient for the road ahead. What do you expect from a church office?  I would really like to hear from you on this one?  Most church offices build from the inside out, and therefore their offices function to mainly sustain the structure (whether healthy or unhealthy)

What do you value in a church office?

• A live person to answer the phone?
• quick email response?
• information?
• ?

There is always a risk in taking a relationship to the next level. Once you open up to someone to discover something new about them, they have the power in the relationship. Giving away control (i.e. power) is very difficult.

Did you go to your Jr. High dances? I loved them, but they were built for an awkward, over-confident extrovert like me to win. I was in junior high during the years of 1986-1989 where we “Walked Like an Egyptian” with the Bangals and tight rolled our jeans to the “Final Countdown” with my favorite 80’s band Bon Jovi. About 30 minutes into the dance the most awkward minutes in human history would be written: The Jr. High slow dance. Poison would start to slow rock with the 80’s style Power Ballad letting our early pubescent ears know that “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” We had no clue what it meant but we knew you couldn’t dance alone to it.

Just like your dances, all the guys were on one side of the grand canyon & all the girls were on the other. Being one of the first to brave that deep abyss was simply gut wrenching. To walk across in full view of all your friends, and give control over to someone else. Being asked to dance is great. Asking someone else to dance was like free-falling with the other person holding the parachute.

You have no control over how it is going to end: Rejection (I had my share), Acceptance (Had some wins), or confusing laughter (had one of those).

Taking any relationship to the next level of trust is risky. God knows how you feel:

Hebrews 4:14-16 (New International Version)

“14Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Here is the Bangals singing “Walk Like An Egyptian” (just for the laugh)

We have a big meeting tomorrow with the owner of “Pump It Up”  to try to work out a deal for renting their facility for our Sunday morning services.  We will send out an email tomorrow afternoon to give everyone an update.  Please be in prayer.

A couple of women from TrueLife were led by the Holy Spirit today in a unique way.  Robin and Madeline were in the mall today together window shopping when they “happened” to strike up a conversation with another woman in a framing shop.  In the course of the conversation, Robin and Madeline discovered that the woman to which they were speaking is the wife of the owner of “Pump It Up.”  Robin and Madeline excitely told her that they had been praying for them.  LOL

Way to go Robin and Madeline.  The Holy Spirit used you to be the church today.

Life is good, because God is good!

I spent the day today with Brian Hargett and the students of Chi Alpha in the brickyard on the campus of North Carolina State University. We were talking to students as another crazy preaching group yelled at anyone willing to listen that all “homos are going to hell.” We spent the time encouraging people not to give them the time or the video footage of a large crowd. The NCSU police did a great job keeping everything peaceful, but it was a verbal train wreck that will soon be on youtube as students were video taping with their cell phones.

  “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
I COR.  13:1

There are two extremes to confronting sin. Yelling at it with anger & Ignoring it in fear. They are as equally as harmful to the Gospel as one portrays God as a wrathful, hateful step-father, and the other as an absentee, uncaring Creator. The Gospel is neither a one way conversation nor an internal-only thought. The Gospel is to be a part of our everyday lives as we interact with people in the way Jesus would interact with them.

God, in His sovereignty, allows us to choose sin/death or grace/life. When others choose to sin, my words and actions are to be a reminder that the grace and life of salvation are still near.

Romans 2:4 “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance”

Here is a youtube of this group at another university. I will update it when a clip of the NCSU brickyard comes out.

That’s a weird thing for a pastor to say. “Don’t take church too seriously.” I have to record every Sunday, because I am not sure what I have said. For example, this past Sunday I made a reference to a pair of Oklahoma University boxers. No one asked for that much information. Unbelievable. Often times we take Sunday Morning Services way too seriously by subtracting from the service laughter & smiles.

Church atmosphere should be as diverse as the human emotion that God placed in each of us. There should be times of quiet reverence, times of somber reflection, times of jubilant singing, and even no holds bar laughter.
Let me give you three reasons why:

#1 The church is simply people, and we are flawed creatures. Collectively we make up the Bride of Christ, but individually there are a lot of us who look more like the bride of Frankenstein.

#2 How we “do” church is continuing to change. Worship styles have changed; Preaching Styles have changed; what people wear to church has changed. Get stuck on stylistic part of a church service, and you soon become the guardian of your spot on the pew in an empty church.

#3 It’s Christ inside the individual that matters! Take the inside of your life very seriously. Is the Kingdom of God alive in you today? It’s a Kingdom of Kindness; A Kingdom of Peace; A Kingdom of Grace; and a Kingdom of Joy.

Quit trying to go to church, and become the church.