Archive for the ‘vision’ Category
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Yesterday I posted about the people of Noah’s time. The people that made God so unhappy with humanity that he decided to “wad up the entire earth and throw it across the room” by destroying everything with a flood. They were completely self-absorbed in their own lifes and oblivious to how corrupt, violent, and sinful their society had become. They lived the ultimate “do not do” list.
So what should we do to please God? What is God’s ultimate “to do” list for us? If you ask religious folks, be prepared to get LOTS of different answers. Be prepared for your list to contain everything from how to wear your hair, what to wear, what to drink, and what songs you should listen to on your cassette walkman. (I’m pretty sure there is a religious type somewhere that finds ipods to be sinful).
It’s confusing. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what pleases God…what to put on your “to do list”. Even people who look to the Bible as the authority on how to live, find it difficult to agree on exactly what it is that pleases God.
I think there’s room for loving disagreement. There are many things not specifically addressed in the Bible. I think there is room to follow your conscience and decide to abstain from an activity that “seems” sinful to you, without judging and berating other followers of Jesus who don’t feel the same way.
I also think it’s probably simpler than we try to make it. At actionchurch our ”list” is to Love God. Love People. Take action. Personally, I try(and fail) to live by this verse.
No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
What’s on your “to do” list?
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
This Sunday we announced that “Love God. Love People. Take action.” would be our new creed/motto/tag line for actionchurch. Obviously, the “Love God. People.” part comes from these verses that we talked about every Sunday in the month of February.
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37
So where did the “Take action.” part come from? Is it just a clever tie-in to our church name? Not exactly. The name “actionchurch” started out as a joke…a reference to a heated rant about church that I once delivered to my wife after a particularly frustrating elders meeting. Long before I even considered starting a church or being a pastor, I said “if I ever ran a church it would be called action church, and we would actually DO THINGS instead of just having meetings about them.” My wife reminded me of those words when we were thinking about what to call our new church start up. Be careful what you say in anger, because to this day whenever I am tempted to just “talk” about what the Bible says instead of doing something, the word actionchurch reminds me of my words. 
More importantly though, Jesus taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that being religious, knowing the scriptures, even being a religious leader like the priest and the temple assistant is NOT ENOUGH to fulfill Gods commands to “love God with all your heart-and your neighbor as yourself.” The only person in the parable who actually pleased God was the hated Samaritan. He was the one who took action…the one who stopped to help the injured man…the one who took it upon himself to insert himself into a “messy” situation.
If we Love God and Love people…Jesus taught that the only way to PROVE IT is by taking action.
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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Sunday I announced that our new “tag line” for actionchurch was changing from “church for people who don’t like church” to “Love God. Love People. Take action.”. All future advertising, invitation cards, wearables, etc will be tagged with the new line.
How it all started: Two years ago when actionchurch launched at Fat Daddys Nightclub, I struggled to find ways to describe what our little “church in a bar/nightclub” would be like. Some of our early taglines were original (re-think happy hour, No cover charge-no dress code-no joke,) and were funny and/or lame attempts to describe what was going to happen at Fat Daddys on Sunday morning. “Church for people who do not like church” was not original (numerous other churches have used it) and not part of our initial launch. After moving from Fat Daddys to Club 19 in October 2008 we begin to us the “church for people…” tag line exclusively because none of our “bar-related” tag lines seemed relevant to our currently non-alcoholic venue.
Why make the change?: Several months ago our creative team (currently Jerry, Josiah, and myself) met to talk about how we could let more people know that a place like actionchurch exists here in York, PA. Since then we have been working on finding new ways to “explain” and remind people both inside and outside of actionchurch why we exist. Being a “church for people who don’t like church” may describe some elements of our Sunday morning “style/flavor” but it simply does not describe who we are as a church. We needed a new descriptive tag line.
Is this a new direction?: Nope. actionchurch began because we Love God, Love people, and took action when we realized that there was not a place where some of our friends would be accepted, loved, and pointed to Jesus in our area. Because a place like actionchurch didn’t exist we took action. It’s why our great volunteer crew work so hard to prepare for Sunday mornings. Because we Love God and Love People we take action when students in our schools need coats, a family needs a fresh start, people suffering with cancer need our help, etc. etc. Loving God, Loving People, and taking action are in our DNA, in our history, in our name…and in our future. I can’t think of a better way to discribe what we do, who we are, and where we want to “go” as a church!
Tommorow: The ”scoop” about how the name actionchurch came to be.
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