CRV Prayer Newsletter

Hello Prayer Partners,

It’s that time again. I can’t believe it’s so humid in Virginia Beach already. I’m hoping this isn’t a sign of things to come for the rest of Spring and Summer. Oh well! At least the heat makes people come outside, especially after a very cold Winter.

We had a really good series after Easter. You may have been praying for The Cross but I changed it on you. I can never settle on one title until it’s in print. The series was called The Icon. It was pretty good series for us as a church and people received a lot of prayer. Our goal is for people (churched, unchurched, and dechurched) to have an encounter with God every week during our service. I really believe that happened during this series. I’m looking forward to Mother’s Day, a series on Pride & Humility, and a series I’m calling Generations. We are seeing a few new people each week, which is always uplifting. There were a few weeks where no one new came in. However, that’s just a part of church life. It is what it is and we just keeping rolling with it.

Our outreaches have gone well. I delivered 15 Easter lilies to different businesses and organizations in the Salem area. This was very cool! Everyone was very surprised by the gesture. Our annual Easter Egg Hunt was amazing. We had close to 300 people come out. It was truly a good time. We’re ramping up to do more outreaches. I would like to do at least one outreach a month. Pray that we can reach that goal.

God really blessed our family recently. We haven’t had a dryer since late November. Our dryer broke and I couldn’t fix it. So for the past 6 months I have spent about two hours each week washing and drying clothes. A few weeks back our neighbor asked if anyone in the church could use a dryer. I immediately said, “Yes!...Us!” So we got a free dryer. It’s not new but it dries clothes. That’s the only thing that really matters. Praise God for his provision.

That’s about it for now! Thank you for your faithfulness!

So please continue to pray for the following requests:
~Protection for our family (immediate and extended)
~Attract families with children to the church
~New people to come in our doors and we retain them.
~Continue to grow 226 Street volunteers (children’s ministry)
~Implement our church wide communications strategy
~Growth in our Life Groups and identify the next Life Group leaders
~Open doors in Salem and Green Run for the gospel
~Finances for outreaches and operating budget; giving has slowed down … pray that it picks back up
~Ideas for outreaches
~My (André) personal growth and reading plan
~Implement some of the things I’m learning
~The discernment to know which things to implement as a part of our strategy

See you in a few months!
The Jenkins Family

Making A Difference

Yesterday I was invited to a dinner celebration for the Virginia Beach City Public Schools. It was a time to hang out with other volunteers and school administrative staffs. Our church won an award for being a Model Partnership with Salem Elementary School. It was great to receive this award on behalf of our church. I didn't win the award, our church won the award. I just happened to be the talking head that cast the vision and made the challenge. That was the easy part! The rest of the church stepped up and made the real sacrifices. Being in a poor economy makes this award more special to me. I also learned a few things last night.

I learned that there are tons of people who tirelessly give their time to help school administrations, teachers, and students. They devote tons of hours without batting an eye. This realization confirmed to me that people are starving to make a difference. They want to make an impact in their community. They don't complain and they work hard. What if the church provided the same opportunity? I think we do but we don't cast the vision for making a difference. Instead we cast a vision for needing help or needing a warm body to 'babysit' or make coffee. In order to capture people's hearts and passions we have to show them how much their contribution of time will impact their community.

I also learned that we need more guys to step up their games. I was overjoyed to see guys get awards for volunteering in schools. However, we probably only made 2-5% of the overall school volunteer force. So guys, STEP UP YOUR GAME! One or two or even three guys is great but we still need more. The children need more. They need to see men who give them a solid example of what being a man is all about. Who knows...you may be the only godly male influence in their lives.

The celebration was closed with a short video of a 13 year old African-American kid who is volunteering his time at an Elementary School. I had to hold back the tears because at thirteen he has already learned the two things that I learned last night. That kid got the message.

What are your thoughts about volunteering in the community? How about your church? Do you volunteer in your faith community? How can church leaders get better at recruiting people into service?

Laying It Down

This past Sunday really excited me. We discussed being weary and burdened down by life and religion. We contrasted the way of religion and the way of relationship. Of course Matthew 11:28-30 was our teaching passage. Jesus was contrasting the way of religion and the way of relationship. He was contrasting the religious leader's form of discipleship and his form of discipleship. His audience needed a new vision for life. They needed a new vision for their religion. One that was less burdensome.

We need a new vision for life. We need a new vision for our religion.

At the end of the message we wrote our burdens down on an index card. Then we laid the index cards at the foot of the cross. It was a very powerful moment. As I walked up to lay down my card, I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to tears. Yes...I get all misty eyed during our service. Not all the time...just sometimes. This past Sunday we all encountered the living God. I love encountering God!

What gets you excited during your services? When was the last time you encountered God during your service? What will you do this week to encounter God?

Afterglow: The After Easter Reflection

Ever since our first Easter Service in 2008 I have spent the following Monday reflecting on the weekend's festivities. This is the main reason why I decided to always work on Monday instead of taking it off as a sabbath day. Just in case you're wondering, I take Saturday off.

Our Easter Egg Hunt went really well. We had tons of people come out and join us. There were people everywhere. I also took the opportunity to do a community survey. My survey was a way to find out how our church can be more effective in helping the community. I got an amazing response. 33% of the adults present filled out the survey. 55% of those surveyed don't attend a church or are looking for a church. This was great for someone looking to reach people who don't currently attend a church.

Our Easter service went well too. We tried something a little different. We had the bulk of our music at the end of the message. I know some pastors who already do this but we don't. This was huge for us because we don't want to be tied to one way of doing our services. If the Holy Spirit says music at the end then we want to be obedient to His prompting.

Here's where the afterglow really kicks in. I went to Wal-Mart after the service to buy food for our Easter dinner with friends. I saw tons of people in Wal-Mart. There were people everywhere. I wondered out loud, "How many of these people attended an Easter service that morning?"

I know you can't tell if they went to service by their dress but I didn't see very many people dressed up. I think there were way too many people in Wal-Mart for them to have gone to an Easter service that morning. So then I wondered if people really go to church just because its Easter Sunday. As an unchurched person, I never thought twice about going to church just because its Easter. I wonder if church leaders are operating out of a false assumption that people will come to their church just because its Easter. I know I didn't! I guess now I need to come up with a survey that will capture this data next. I think that people are more likely to come to church on Easter when invited by a friend. However, just showing up because its Easter, I'm not too sure about that anymore.

What do you think about my reflection? Where did you go after your Easter service? Did you think a lot of the people attended a service that morning? Do you think unchurched people really come to church just because its Easter?

A Shift In My Thinking

Well, that time of the year is upon us. It's the Easter season and many church leaders are expecting lots of people to check out their churches. Many of us are spending a ton of money to put on a huge production. Will you reach our goals? Are you going to be effective?

Yesterday, I read a blog by Tony Morgan that talked about reaching people at Easter. He pondered whether we're really reaching the unchurched. I've served in the church for over ten years now. During that time, I have never thought about this question. Are we really reaching the unchurched? I just assumed that we were reaching people who don't go to church because our auditorium was full.

Morgan maintains that we are probably reaching the churched and people who are already connected to our churches. I will have to pay more attention this Easter. I want to see if we're really reaching people who don't go to church. I don't want to be the kind of church leader who assumes that we're being effective because we have full auditorium. In my mind we're ineffective if we have a room full of people from other churches. Jesus didn't call us to recycle, he called us to disciple.

What do you think about Morgan's blog? Is he accurate in his assessment? How will you pay more attention to people who show up this Easter?

You Play To Win The Game

"You play to win the game!" is now a legendary soundbite in the sports world. Then NY Jets coach, Herman Edwards, went on a tirade about playing and winning football games. These words echoed in my mind as I traveled home on Sunday after church.

Our male youth leader, Michael Coffin, preached on Sunday and did an excellent job of preparing people for our prayer ministry part of our service. All of our prayer teams were busy praying for people. We had people who haven't come up in a long time. We even had a few people who were 1st timers that got prayer. The song the band sang coupled with the message made our ministry an encounter with God.

Here's the tie in! We don't do Sunday service just to do Sunday service. We used to do that but not anymore. Our Sunday service has a purpose. We want people to encounter God every Sunday through music, the arts, multimedia, and a biblical message. All the elements in our service are designed to lead people into the ministry time. The ministry time is the high point of our service because this is everyone's opportunity to respond to their encounter with God. We 'win' when there are people responding by coming up to receive prayer. The 'win' tells us when we're successful. Everyone wants to be on a winning team!

Sunday was a win for the CRV corporate worship service. We play to win the game!

If you're a pastor or church leader, what's the purpose of your corporate gathering? How do you know when you're successful? If you're in the business world, how do you know when you're successful in meetings? Do your meetings have a purpose? Do you spend a lot of time wondering why your in a meeting?

Leading With 20/20 Vision

I really enjoy hearing someone else clearly articulate my thoughts. I just finished listening to some audio from the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. The talk was about communicating your vision convincingly. Two of the three points I already incorporate into my leading with vision.





The three points were:

Define the problem you vision will solve (CHECK)

State your vision as the solution (CHECK)

Answer the questions: Why us? & Why now? (NEEDS IMPROVEMENT)

By nature I'm a problem solver, a troubleshooter. You can call me crazy, but I get a natural high from solving problems. So the first two points come naturally. Unfortunately, I never think about asking those last two questions. People have to see why they need to be part of the solution and why the problem needs to be solved now. It's important to get them to feel the burden of the problem. This is one of the few times when feeling a burden for something is a good thing. Bill Hybels calls it holy discontent; which at its simplest level is no more than having a burden to fix a problem. Of course, the assumption is that your burden is God-driven and not man-driven or just plain ol' bellyaching.

When I followed the first two points, I saw amazing results. The last time I remember doing this well, is when we launched our first membership class last year. I did a message about church membership.

Problem: It's not good for man to be alone

Solution: God has adopted us into his family

Needless to this was our highest attended membership class. It also helped that it was our first but the point was made.

Recently, we placed more emphasis on our prayer ministry time at the end of our service. I don't think I stated the problem or the solution well enough. It's something that I will need to work on. I'm also looking at some changes in our Life Group structure. Its time to put into practice the things I have learned.

Casting vision has a lot to do with change. People don't like change and rarely see a need to changed. This is why communicating your vision is so important.

Are you a problem solver or a goal setter? (According to Bob Biehl most leaders fit into one of these two categories.) How do you cast vision convincingly? What tips would you give someone who is about to cast their vision?

Lights, Camera, Action!!!!!

Yesterday I got the opportunity to do a camera interview for the Virginia Beach City Public School system. The interview was related to our work with Salem Elementary School. Last year because of our work with Salem we were asked to become a Partner In Education. We humbly accepted even this invitation. Our invite marked a second step in our ever growing relationship with Salem.

The purpose of the interview was for us to tell what we do for Salem, why we do it, and tell others about getting involved. We do work for Salem because we want to be active in our community. It's important for us meet the needs of our community. We meet these needs spiritually, physically, and emotionally. We decided before we can meet needs spiritually and emotionally, we need to meet physical needs. Meeting physical needs helps to build our relationships and it builds trust. Jesus modeled this wherever he went. He didn't only meet spiritual and emotional needs, he met physical needs as well.

Our philosophy is pretty simple. If you want to really impact a community for the long haul, then reach out towards the children and youth. They have their whole lives ahead of them. It's like brand new candle versus a candle that only has 1/2" of wax left. You can guess which one is the child and which one is the adult. Our aim is to put life back into our community by impacting our community's children and youth. Help us to make this impact.

What is your long term plan to put life back into your community? Who are you intentionally trying to reach and meet their physical needs?

Doing Life

One of the biggest reasons why we place a high priority on Life Groups in Crossroads Vineyard is because we know the power of community. God said early in the Bible, "It's not good for man to be alone." This was the first time He said something wasn't good.

In our groups you get the opportunity to read the Bible, learn about the essentials of the Christian faith, and grow deeper relationships with people in the church. Many times people come to a group not knowing what to expect but they leave feeling connected to others.

There's a connection through like thought or like experiences or even like attitudes or like upbringing. You simply can't duplicate this on Sunday mornings. Don't get me wrong...Sundays are important to the life of the church but it's limited. It's hard to go deeper on Sunday. But during the week we can go deeper. We can get our relational needs met. We can get others to pray for our seemingly bleak situations.

I will always advocate being in a small group of people to share my life with!

Cluster Group...What's That?

Last year I read a book called The Big Idea by Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, Eric Bramlett. It wast a very good book, I highly recommend to it to church leaders. After reading the book, I found that we already do a lot of the stuff in the book. This was a huge sigh of relief. Then I began to ponder the idea of going full steam with the Big Idea concept. Then I ran across a guest contributor to the book Hank Brooks of Coastal Community Church. I was overjoyed that he was in Virginia Beach as well.

I met with him and began to discuss the concept of the Big Idea. After some time he invited me to check out a cluster group for church planters. I couldn't have been more excited to accept such an invitation. Last week I went to the cluster group and thoroughly enjoyed it. For me it was an answer to prayer. I was already praying for some kind of coaching/mentorship. God used the Big Idea to lead me to this group.

I know your wondering, "What exactly is a cluster group?" I got the same question when I posted on Facebook that I was at a cluster group. Here's what the group is in a nutshell. It's a group of pastors, church planters and established churches, who come together once a month for teaching, lunch, accountability, idea sharing, and coaching. The teaching is based on the homework, a book, from the previous month.

In our first meeting we had the teaching and then we did introductions. Our homework is reading Effectiveness By The Numbers by William Hoyt. This has been an excellent read. I can't wait to discuss this book later this month. MAN!! This is a serious answer to prayer!!

The accountability consists of four questions:

How are you doing as a person?

How is your relationship with Jesus going?

How is your ministry going?

How is your marriage doing?

This is a closed, confidential group and what gets said there, stays there!! As a man, it can be hard to share this kind of things out fear of being seen as weak. The confidentiality is important.

Thank you Lord for this blessing in my life. You continue to give me what I need, when I need it!

As a leader in the church or marketplace, how are you doing in those four areas above? You don't have to share here but at least begin to think about these questions. Where do you look for mentorship/coaching and accountability in your life?

Moving Into The Next Chapter

We finally had our first formal leadership meeting. We've had launch team meetings and Life Group leaders meetings but never a leadership meeting. This first meeting served as an opportunity for us to let people know what leadership means to us and how we see leadership in our church context.

We base our leadership on the following three (3) principles:

Leadership is a stewardship

Leadership is temporary

We are accountable to God for how we lead


Anyone familiar with Andy Stanley knows these are the principles he teaches for leadership. These three principles break leadership down to its simplest form. Leadership opportunities and authority are given to us from God. He establishes leadership and authority in our world. He uses this leadership and authority to perform his will in our world. Since, leadership is given to us, it can be taken from us. He gives and takes away! Additionally, we move on to other things while this leadership journey. Its imperative that we never leave leadership voids in our ministries. We should look for our replacement from day 1! Finally, since leadership is given to us by God we're held accountable for the way we lead. In everything we do in this life, we're going to be held accountable to God and the gift of leading others is no different.

What leadership principles guide your life? How is God using your leadership gift to impact his Kingdom? What are some characteristics you look for in leaders?

In God We Trust

I really wish this were true. You may think that I'm going to talk about the state of our society in America in reference to this statement. You may think I'm going to talk about keeping this statement on our coins. However, I'm not going to talk about either of these things. Instead of looking outward on this statement let's look inward.

Let's start by changing the statement to 'In God I Trust.' Then let's ask the following question: Is this REALLY true in my life? When I take away the lip service and the cool (not really that cool), catchy (not really that catchy) but highly overused (this is definitely true) Christian slogans, what is left? Are the slogans merely something that's printed on the front of my T-shirt? Or is it actually a part of my life? Are the slogans merely words to play Buzz Word Bingo so I can impress my friends at church? Or do I really living these slogans out?

I love asking myself questions like these. Questions like these, when answered honestly, can help me to grow by leaps and bounds. Answering them dishonestly really limits my opportunity for growth. I have come to the conclusion that I don't trust God very much. This is evident by my actions, not my words. I may sing songs about trusting God and talk to my friends about trusting God but the true evidence is found in my actions.

Over the past few years, my trust in the Lord has been tested by the fires of starting a new church. About 6 months after going to weekly services in September '08, I lost my 'other' job. This was the job that helped to pay the bills and take care of my family. It allowed the church to have 0 on the payroll. This job represented my way to take care of myself and my family. That's not a bad thing unless I begin to rely on myself and not God. After losing my job, I felt like I was placing too much trust in myself and not enough in God. This job also helped us to build up some savings. Now, I find it a little hard to touch those savings. Recently, I discussed this with God and got that feeling that I'm back to relying on the savings instead of Him.

So, it seems that I need to start taking risks again. NO RISK...NO REWARD!! (This is better slogan!)Its time to start placing my trust in the ONE and not myself. Risks always require faith. More importantly, risks always require trust. My trust won't grow unless I take more risks.

What are your thoughts about the questions above? How do you measure up on the trusttest? In what ways are you being asked to trust more? In what areas of your life do you need to build up more trust?

Immovable Objects

Are we willing to move when God says move? Church planting is an endeavor where you really find out what people are made of. Personally, I think it shows how much we're willing to be obedient to God and the call he has to reach people who don't have a personal relationship with him. There's the planter and their family (if they have one) that is given the call. Then of course there is the team of people that the planter tries to gather. Everyone involved has to have a heart totally set on God.

A heart set on God lives in tents not houses. The writer of Hebrews says in the "Hall of Faith" chapter that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all lived in tents. The casual reader would pass over this statement without thinking twice about what this means. The patriarchs of our faith lived in tents. A tent can be torn down just as quickly as it can be set up. Let's call it tent-living. Tent-living means we set up shop where God tells us to. But when he tells us to move, then we can move. Tent-living means that we can uproot ourselves when God calls us to move on. This is one of the reasons why I hold folks who are willing to move across the country to start a church in such high regard. I admire their team members even more. I'm usually their biggest cheerleaders, pom-poms and all!

Tent-living is only metaphorical. Does that mean we shouldn't buy houses? ... NO! We should buy houses. We should attempt to root ourselves in our community. However, we don't get so firmly rooted that we're unwilling to move when God calls us to move. By the way, this includes leaving one church to start another one. In my opinion, this is one of the only few reasons someone should leave their church.

What are your thoughts about tent-living? Are you REALLY willing to move when God says move?

How Goes The War?

So, how goes the war? This is a common question I want to ask fellow church planters and pastors. Unfortunately, I don't ask it because I feel that it may be taken out of context and I will have to explain what I mean by the question. So here's what I mean by that question.

The Bible is pretty clear that we're in a war. This war has been going on since sin entered our world. God said that there would be conflict between the woman's and serpent's offspring. Scholars also consider the ten plagues against the Egyptians to be God's attack on their false gods. Job experienced an attack on his faith. The angel Michael reported that he was being held up by the 'dark side.' Jesus entered our world and did battle with disease, sin, death, and demons. Paul talks about spiritual battles. John in Revelation speaks of a final war. There seems to be an overarching theme of war in the Bible.

By asking, how goes the war? I'm asking, are you winning or are you losing spiritual war that is going on around us all the time? Are you advancing the kingdom of God into the dark places of your city and community? Are you pushing back the gates of hell in your city? Are people experiencing life change through meeting corporately on Sunday and throughout the week in Life Group? Are you seeing people healed spiritually, physically, and emotionally?

Let's get personal. Are you winning the war with your mind (pornography and other sexually explicit material)? Are you winning the war with your mouth? (or are you letting your words fly without much thought about the consequences.)

So, how goes the war? Are you winning or losing? If you feel like you losing then remember that you're on the winning team. Don't ever forget this! Also...let me know how I can pray for you!! We're in this war together. I GOT YOUR BACK!!

It's Complicated!!

Question: Are you in a relationship? Answer: It's complicated! That seems to be the popular response nowadays amongst people who are in relationships. I'm not sure when, where, or even why this answer was used but I find it pretty interesting.

We were created for relationships (friendships, dating, & marriage) with each other. I wonder if we are complicating our relationships. Are we making our relationships, especially dating relationships, more complicated than they need to be? I think we are.

I wasn't raised in church. Therefore, I wasn't taught that sex is more than a physical encounter. I wasn't taught that sex was more than an activity. As I look back on my life one question comes to mind. Has my life been easier or more complicated as a result of premarital sex? Of course, my answer would be the latter and not the former.

Truthfully, we don't need to believe that the Bible is true to know that premarital or extra marital sex doesn't make our lives easier. All you have to do is look at your life and ask the same question. All you have to do is look at our society and ask if it's making marriages last longer. There's a whole list of questions that can be asked about our society. I doubt very many of them would be answered positively.

When we reflect on our current culture we can easily see that our sex has made our lives more complicated. Tiger Woods would be a prime example. One of the world's most adored athlete's life was brought down in flames because of extra marital sex. If Woods were to answer our question, what do you think he would say? I doubt he would say that his life is easier. If this causes the break up of his family then this will affect him in the later stages of his life.

The Woods story is just one of many that have surfaced over the years. Unfortunately, we don't see that sex before marriage doesn't make our lives more complicated now. In most cases it affects us in later stages of our lives. What we do or did in our teens, twenties, and thirties can come back to haunt us in twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and even sixties.

Sex within God's design can be truly amazing. His design was for us to enjoy sex within the context of a committed relationship called marriage. God's design for sex was not for the context of a complicated relationship called dating or friend with benefits. His idea for sex was show how a man and a woman can create an intimate connection through a physical activity. The act of sex begins with the physical connection and then it extends to a spiritual, emotional, and mental connection. It's the deepest connection we can make with the opposite sex.

Life gets complicated when we make these connections with many different people. It's very hard to break these connections or bonds once they are formed. We carry this bonds into our future relationships. We call this relational baggage. Hurts or pain from past relationships is the reason we guard ourselves in new relationships. Each connection we make outside of marriage causes our intimacy factor for our spouse to become lower and lower and lower. If you're married and are struggling with an intimate connection with your spouse, then premarital sex may be the reason. Again, our lives were affected in a different stage of our lives. Unfortunately, it is affecting the marriage stage of our lives.

At least this has been my experience in life. What has been your experience? Has sex before marriage made your life easier or more complicated?

So....I Was Reading 'Blogging for Dummies'

The "(Fill in the Blank) for Dummies" books are all the rave. Only can a book legitimately call us dummies and we still pay money for it. I figured reading this book would help me with this whole blogging thing. My main problem with blogging isn't topics or content. I mean...God is doing so much in my life that I have tons of things to talk about. My main problem is being a full time student.

Please...allow me to explain. I'm no longer in college but taking online classes for has had a major impact on how I write on the Net. Online classes require you to make posts and respond to other student's posts. Usually, I had to respond to at least two other people. I also had to respond to the people who responded to me. Furthermore, I had to add quotes from the textbook or outside sources. Of course this also meant adding footnotes in the MLA or Turabian style. I love schooling!! I'm one of the biggest proponents of education. Unfortunately, though...my experience with online classes has seeped into my blogosphere world.

My problem is spending too much proofing the blog. Checking and double checking my references. Sometimes I even want to add footnotes. I know this may be a little overboard but let's face it. I'm a knowledge hound...I'm the kind of guy that hated to be sick because I would miss a day of school. This side of me has made blogging very difficult because I spend too much on them. I don't had have the bandwidth to spend a lot of time writing a blog.

Recently, I heard a friend quote her husband as saying, "If I can't write a blog in 15 minutes then I'm not going to do it!" Now I must fight the urge to annotate my quote!! :-)

That being said...it's time to take his philosophy for blogging. If it takes too long then I won't do it! I simply don't have the time. However, if I really keep it to a certain time limit then this can be a great experience for me and hopefully for you!! Therefore, some blogs won't be grammatically accurate. Some will have misspellings but I will make every effort to clean all that up before I post. Until next time!!

Microwable Upon Request

It took Coach John Wooden 15 years to win his first NCAA Men's Basketball championship at UCLA. Once he figured out how to win, his teams were unstoppable. Would he be allowed to develop his program into perennial winners in our society today? I seriously doubt it. Most coaches get about 3 to 4 years to turn their programs around. If it doesn't happen during that time, then it is time to move on to another coach. In our 'want it now', microwable culture we expect results now. If Coach Wooden were to coach now, he would be given three years and he'd be out of there!!

Patience is a virtue that we've lost in our fast paced world. We're not patient with our children, we're not patient in when dining, we're not patient with people in our lives, and we're not patient with our spiritual growth.

It's important to remember the Christian life is a series of decisions and not merely one decision. It's a journey not a destination. The journey will have some highs and some lows. Personally, I try to be even keeled. I try not to get too high or go too low!! In those lows our patience will be tested. Will we trust God enough to ride through the lows? Will we take the reigns ourself and guide our own life? Abraham is a great character to study for this topic. God made him a promise. He took matters into his own hands. He got it wrong. God was still there for him. He still received his promise. "So after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised." Heb. 6:15

I encourage you to wait patiently. Don't take matters into your own hands. Do the things that you can control. Leave everything else to God.

Community: Bounded-Set v. Centered-Set

At a church plant boot camp, I was reminded of how many Vineyard churches prefer to “do” church and build community. The speaker talked about bounded-set versus centered-set. Many leaders wish to lead churches that are the latter but unfortunately they end up being the former.

By bounded-set I mean a community where everyone has to conform to a set of standards or boundaries (if you will) in order to belong. The phrase “You have to believe ABC before you belong to our community” comes to mind. Not only does the would be family member have to believe in ABC they also have to exhibit XYZ lifestyle. In his book, Doing Church, Alexander Venter states this organizational form produces a “rigid, control-driven society.” These types of communities use the letter of the law to control who becomes a member and who gets to play. There are strict guidelines on who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside. There’s a we versus they mentality. Finally, the bounded-set community keeps itself pure and untainted by a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.

By centered-set I mean a community where everyone is accepted according to a set of values. The set of values are in the center of concentric circles. These values can be different from group to group. However, everyone knows where the group is going or called to. The phrase “You can belong to our community before you believe everything we believe” comes to mind. In this type of community one question gets asked about would be family members. Where are they going? Are they going toward the center of the set where are values are? Everyone gets to play in this community. Everyone gets to exercise their gifts, knowledge, skills, and abilities for their heavenly Father.

In the Vineyard, Jesus Christ is in the center of our set. We simply want to know whether or not you are going towards Christ or away from Christ. Your life doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to get ‘cleaned up’ before you can belong. As long as you’re moving towards Jesus, then let’s enjoy the ride together because we’re all on this ride for the long haul.

This kind of view on community is very hard to live out. You’ll always have your pharisees in the family that want to point out other’s faults and issues. At times, I even struggle with pointing out faults and issues. However, I’m always reminded of the things Jesus did and said in the Gospels. In fact, I read through the Gospels every Summer so I can be reminded about Jesus’ ministry. Additionally, you’ll always have your naysayers that will call us demon-possessed, drunkards, and a friend of sinners. Which can’t be all that bad since they said the same thing about Jesus!

Let's Sharpen Our Minds By Reading

Here's my book list for the rest of the year. I chose five topics: theology, leadership, church history, best practices, and relationship development. My goal is to read two books a month for the next six months. My challenge is for you to think about the different areas of your life and select books to read. Some may be fiction while others may be non-fiction. Additionally, set a goal for how many books you want to read over the next six months.

• Minister’s MBA
• Surprised By Hope
• The Perfect Leader
• Breakthrough
• Money Matters in Church
• Developing the Leader Within You
• Martin Luther Bio
• The Big Idea
• Contrarian Guide to Leadership
• His Needs, Her Needs
• Gracism
• unChristian

Building the BIG Mo'

How does one build momentum, big mo’? Dave Ramsey has a formula for building momentum. Ramsey believes that (Focused intensity / Time) * God = Momentum. Translation: Focused Intensity divided by Time multiplied by a Big God equals Momentum, (Fi/T)G=M. We see momentum building in our church. Our momentum is being built up by our events, our services, and our door hangers. The door hangers have done extremely well. So far we have done door hangers for the May, June, and July services. I cannot say they have done poorly because I believe that we’re in a seed scattering phase.

We should always scatter seeds but I recognize the season in which I find this young church. This phase will not produce immediate rewards, see Jesus’ parable of the sower. Some seeds will sprout immediately while others will not. The biggest question I need to answer is, What’s next? After our launch, what will be our way to continue to ride this momentum? Just like surfing, the wave can only go as far as the shore. Then you have to get on your board, ride back out, and catch another wave. I feel that door hangers are our wave. We will ride this puppy till the wheels fall off! Eventually, the wheels will fall off and I need to be ready to make some changes. I see the door hangers being effective during big times for our church. We really need to turn our attention to community involvement. It will be a slow process but focusing on the community needs is important in the kingdom of God.

One of the things I will do is have a meeting with the principal of our school. I want to talk with him about having an impact on the community and what are some ways he feels we can accomplish this. It will start out small and we have to be happy with that. The Bible exhorts us to despise not the days of small beginnings. I have been through small beginnings before. I remember the times I used to sit on my couch and gaze out the window waiting for people to show up for our small group. We overcame that! Now we have a small group of about 40 people. I find myself watching the window of the school and waiting to see who pulls up in the parking lot. Soon, I will no longer be doing that either. God will bring the people. We have to be confident in him and do our job at the same time. This is that tension in which we all live with. If there is no tension then you are doing it all yourself or you’re sitting by and expecting to do nothing while God does everything. God has given us the ideas for momentum. We walk in faith and to them. Then he works on our behalf! What an awesome God! Our God, is an awesome God!

Until next time…

Crossroads Vineyard Church