Category Archives: church planting

Sunday: Fall Back and Move out!

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Make plans now to be at actionchurch Sunday Morning.  It’s the “Fall Back” time change weekend, so set your clocks back Saturday night, enjoy an extra hour of sleep, and then come rested and prepared to rock our final week at club 19! 

Sunday I will be telling the story that started over a year ago, of how God has provided for us as a Church!  As the old mealtime prayer goes:  God is great, God is good…and even though good doesnt rhyme very well with food, the first two things are certainly evident in the story I have to tell you all Sunday!   Don’t miss it.  Don’t wait to hear about it on Facebook.  Don’t read wait to read about it on the blog.  Let’s pack the club on Sunday….and Oh yeah…we’d really love it if you helped us pack the moving truck with our gear after the service!  :-) 

The Band “33” will be back as our musical guest, and remember that due to construction at the club our toddler care area will be closed.

Faith like Frogger…

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Remember the vintage video game Frogger?  I don’t know how many quarters and hours I wasted as a teenager trying to get my electronic frog safely across the road and river.  It seems simple.  Jump as fast as you can across the obstacles.  Dodge the vehicles.  Look out for alligators. It sounds simple and logical to move forward as fast as you can ,but  unless you learn the art of waiting, you can wind up with a lot of dead frogs and not much success. 

The key to frogger is knowing when to sit still:  Sitting still on the banks until a the right log comes by.  Sitting still even in the path of an oncoming semi-truck until the right space opens up in the next lane.  Sitting still even as your floating log hurtles toward the edge of the screen and certain froggy death.  Successfully crossing to the other side in Frogger demands that you resist the urge to jump until the RIGHT spot…the spot created by the game designer…opens up.  (And when that spot opens up you better move fast…because if you don’t you’ll wind up kicking the machine and reaching for another quarter!)

Life feels a lot like frogger sometimes doesn’t it?    It’s hard to know when to “jump” and when to “wait”.   At times it feels like the “right” spot is never going to open up and allow you to move forward.   At times it feels like you are stranded in the middle of the road with no way to move forward or backwards…and a semi-truck hurtling toward your at full speed!

I read something in the first chapter of Joshua that reminded me of life…and Frogger…this week.  After FORTY YEARS of wandering and waiting,of “hopping” and stopping and starting again,  God told Joshua that they were going to enter their “promised land” in three short days.  He told them they would finally reach the other side of the Jordan River with these words:

7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.   Joshua 1:7  

God wants us to trust him.  To allow him to guide us into the “right spot” at the right time.  Just like Joshua, the only way we are going to successfully reach the other side is to trust God’s direction…to “hop” when he says hop….to wait when he said wait.  Our success in depends not only on being strong and courageous, but in “not turning either right or left” without Gods direction!

That’s the kind of Faith I want to develop…it’s what I am learning from our whole relocation process as a church.  I hope you’ll pray with me.  Pray for our great crew.  Pray for me.   Wait with us.  And most of all, be ready to JUMP…because I know that God has a “right spot at the right time”  for us all to get to the “other side”…

Halloween Multiple Choice.

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 Sunday is Halloween so here’s a little multiple choice quiz from blogs  past for you.   What do you pick?

Halloween is…

a. …a holiday celebrated in October best known for children dressing up in costumes and asking for candy.
b. …a celebration of satanism, occultism, and consumerism in America.
c. …an opportunity for seemingly “normal” guys to squeeze into some size 14 pumps and fishnets and head off to a party without be labeled cross dressers. (What’s up with that?)

The best way to share your faith at Halloween is…
a. …be generous, friendly and kind. What other time of year do your neighbors actually come to your door? No crappy candy, turning off the lights, or leftovers from your kid’s Easter basket!
b. …answer the door but tell everyone you don’t celebrate Halloween because you are Christians. (I actually saw this on a Wife Swap episode)
c. …Tracts, and only tracts! (NO CANDY) The scarier the better! Extra points awarded for those who mention the Spanish inquisition or name the Pope as the anti-christ! Enjoy getting the toilet paper out of your trees…

The best way for Churches to share their faith with their community…
a. … be generous, friendly, and kind at a community event. Get involved. Give away great stuff! Urge church goers to be the “most generous house in the neighborhood.
b. …have an alternative event. Call it a harvest party, Hallelujah party, or Fall festival. Bonus points if you feature gospel music, ban costumes, or give out prizes for reciting Bible verses. Great entertainment for the religious.
c. …ignore it! Only 196 days ’til Easter!

The best thing to teach your children from Halloween is…
a. …the joy of giving. How to be live out your faith in a post-christian world.
b. …the joy of taking…. Turn out your lights and take them to all the “best neighborhoods“. Grab as much candy as you can…make sure they split with you.
c. …to be scared of witches, Satan, and cultists. …that church Harvest parties are “almost as good as” Halloween parties. …that they can’t wait to grow up and be “normal”. 

What’s the “right” choice…It’s up to you.

 I choose “a”…but even though I know Sunday is halloween I will not be shopping for any Size 14 stillettos.   I do like to think; though, that actionchurch is a place that you could attend dressed as a star wars storm trooper and be welcomed…any Sunday of the year. :-)

 

Because of the cross…

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 Sunday I made two important announcements.

1.  Sunday November 7, will be our last Sunday at Club 19.  In fact I just got word today that the children’s area has to be dismantled tomorrow so construction can begin on the club.

2. We are STILL having difficulty closing a deal with Queensgate Theatres to meet there on Sunday mornings.  (Even though I’d been assured for weeks that there was “no problem”.)

Here’s what bothers me the most about having to make those announcements.  I’m convinced that God is not unaware of this whole situation…and has been all along.  I just HATE the fact that it gives some peoplereason to say that God is somehow “failing” us because we don’t have a new venue yet.  It bothers me that it seems like all of the faithful prayers of actionchurch people have been ignored. To be painfully honest it saddens me that after all our prayers of faith for God to provide an amazing place where we can impact York county in amazing ways…anything with four walls and ceiling is starting to be the acceptable description of the next actionchurch venue.  There seems to be no reason that God would allow such an embarrassing and stressful situation happen to people that genuinely love God and have sacrificed much to serve him by serving others.

Except for the whole Cross thing…

Because of the Cross it all makes sense. 

In the book Plan B, (Read it…Seriously), the author Pete Wilson writes about the cross being the most desperate moment in history.  The very moment that brings us Salvation was a moment of profound hopelessness for everyone who had put their faith in Jesus as their Savior.   Jesus died.  God allowed it.  Evil rejoiced.  Those who had said that Jesus was a fraud… and not the Son of God… were “proved right”. 

God allowed the people that faithfully followed him to suffer what seemed to be a crushing defeat…because it paved the way for a miracle they couldn’t have even imagine.  That’s the story of the Cross.  That’s the central story, the primary example, of our Faith.

Because of the cross, I’m sure that no matter how much you feel like your life is “over”, how much you feel it is “destroyed”,  God can make it more fulfilling and beautiful than you can imagine.   Because of the cross, I can trust that our present difficulties as a church are not the end…but just the beginning of a better story than we can even imagine.  Because of the cross, I can be certain that even though things seem to never turn out the way I “plan”, I can be glad because my plans, dreams, and wildest hopes pale in comparison to those of God.

And it’s all because of the Cross…

and that’s good enough for me.

Sunday Recap: By the Book.

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For some reason Garrett decided to click away at me during the sermon…which brought to mind two things.

1.  I forget to suck my gut in while I preach.  Come on…if you are a 40+ year old dude you KNOW what I’m talking about. :-)

2.   The most powerful thing we can do as a church is make God’s word clear and accessible on Sunday morning-and put it into practice during the week.  Period.   The words on the screens are more than “information”.  They are not “theory”.  The scriptures on the screens are direction for all of us, both as a church…and as individuals.

Living out scripture is messy.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.   God’s ways often seem “unreasonable” in 2010.   I believe they are still the ONLY way to successfully navigate life. 

If you’ve missed the last two weeks of the “So help me God” series let me recap it for you.  Nehemiah became concerned with what God was concerned about.  His heart broke for the things that broke Gods heart.  He prayed to God and acted on his prayers.  God blessed him with all the resources he needed to build the wall around Jerusalem.  The work began “with great enthusiam”.  Everyone wanted to be part of the cause.  Then all hell broke loose.  Opposition came. Critics critiqued.   The volunteer builders became tired…discouraged.  They were afraid that their efforts would be for nothing…that there was no way they could finish their monumental task with such a small number of people.  “The Middle” is a very tough place to be.  Even the MIDDLE of a Miracle.

I believe as a church we are in the middle of a Miracle.  I’m staking everything on the fact that God has always provided for us as a church in the past  (the fact that we exist as a church is amazing in itself!) and will continue to do so in the future.  We need a new place to meet.  God will provide.  We will proceed “By the Book”.  

I know from some conversations I had this week that many of you are also “in the middle” in situations in your lives.   Let’s pray for each other…support each other.  I don’t think for a moment that this current study of Nehemiah we are going through is just about finding a new venue!

After the service I got to meet one of the organizers of the prayer event that is happening at Sovereign Stadium this Friday.  It was amazing to hear the story of a real life “Nehemiah Mom” who felt like a prayer event needs to happen in York…gathered some friends…and made it happen.  Check out their story.  It’s happening this Friday

I am so excited for the five people that have now asked to be part of the Baptism next week!  There is nothing more beautiful that folks taking a step of faith and making their Faith in Christ public through the act of water baptism!  We have “room” in the tank for more…  info@actionchurch.com

Thanks to everyone who makes actionchurch possible each week.  Your creativity…sacrifice…and hard work is NOT unnoticed or unappreciated!