Tag: Life

Ministry

Community Revival

Chris

Subtitle: How do you change the heart of a city/town?

I’ve made the move from big city to small town. I joined up in my current position almost two years ago now. There has been a lot of pastoral turnover in those couple of years, and as we all settle in and get the lay of the land, we’re noticing that the heart of our town is basically dead.

What does it mean to have a town that is dead? There is no heart, no desire to be more than it is, no spirit, no pride. The people in our town are like zombies, having any spark of life sucked out of them at every turn.

As pastors, having made this diagnosis, we now find ourselves trying to find out the best way to bring life back to this “valley of dry bones.”

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Bible, Christian Living

Blessed are the Pacesetters (3)

Chris

So what are my thoughts about being a pacesetter? If you haven’t read the previous posts on this topic, please go back and do so, as I can’t spend a lot of time on rehashing those ideas here. [ Post #1 | Post #2 ]

Come back with me to the analogy of driving on the freeway, and we’ll work a few of those ideas out.

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Bible, Christian Living

Blessed are the Pacesetters (2)

Chris

You might be wondering why I haven’t expounded on the Pacesetters yet. The truth is, I want to make sure that I word everything just right.

While clearing up my thoughts for the next post, I received my monthly email from the Catalyst team. (I sign up for a vast array of e-mail newsletters since I can’t exactly sit and browse for hours with dial-up. Also, I get to keep the headlines and links for future reference.)

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Christian Living

Bristol Palin: Confused and Confusederer

Chris

That’s where I’m at after reading CNN’s article on Bristol Palin, teen daughter of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who gave “her first interview since giving birth.” Chances are that the media and the professional bloggers will be all over this soon, if not already. But I just have to get it out there since most of my local readers won’t see it on CNN.

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Bible, Christian Living

Blessed are the Pacesetters (1)

Chris

Driving has become a vital element to our daily lives. Many of us commute to work, and though mass transit has found a greater role in recent years, we often still find ourselves driving a portion of the distance. We also drive to our supermarkets, Wal-Marts, shopping malls, sports events at professional and pee-wee levels, friends’ houses, family reunions, etc. Without our vehicles, we would be “trapped” within a short distance from our birth places.

Instead, we get to enjoy the open road. Of course, some locales are more open than others. You wouldn’t consider rush hour in any major city to be the open road. But you would find yourself in steep competition to get ahead, to move further in less time than the vehicle next to you.

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Bible

Reflections on Ezekiel 47:12

Chris

I had the privilege of preaching again on Sunday, January 25th. I had actually written the sermon for a service back in February of last year, but at the last minute decided that it wasn’t right for the audience or the setting. Instead, it became the jump off point for my latest book project.

As our pastoral staff prepared for the coming of 2009, our lead pastor was searching for a theme for the year. In October we relaunched our home groups program by team-preaching on three of the tribes of Israel. One of those sermons was about Joseph, and the topic of the message was Fruitfulness. Out of that message came three words: fruitfulness, increase, addition. From those words came our theme for 2009: Fruitfulness: Living lives of increase and addition. With the lead pastor ready to launch the theme, I found the opening I needed to preach a sermon entitled, “The Useless Tree.”

Now, I’m not going to tell you a lot about that message because you can listen to it if you’d like. Instead I’d like to share some extra thoughts that came out of a time of prayer this past Sunday night. We have started a four-week emphasis on prayer on Sunday nights, and I quickly found myself jumping into a routine that I enjoyed in a previous church. Out of that time of prayer came the following reflections on Ezekiel 47:12.

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