Mr. President,
Congratulations on making history as the first African-American President of the United States of America! I admire you for your courage, passion, and tenacity. Additionally, you have proven that you are an effective leader because you assumed leadership when our country was on the brink of collapse. However, with these achievements, there is also some not so good news.
The longer I serve as pastor of a thriving church, the more I realize how VITAL prayer is! Prayer is the link to a vibrant and fruitful ministry.
What if God granted you an opportunity to go back in time and speak to the wisest people who ever lived (people such as Moses, Apostle Paul, Solomon, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Fredrick Douglass)? However, once you reached your destination, you sat at their feet and proceeded to do all the talking? Would it be a worthwhile endeavor? Did the aforementioned people need to know all you had to say? Upon leaving would you wish you had talked less and listened more? Incredibly, many people enter God’s holy presence in prayer and then do all the talking!
What God has to say to us is infinitely more important that what we have to say to Him, yet we generally monopolize the conversation. God already knows everything we plan to tell Him, yet we continue talking rather than allowing Him to tell us things we don’t know. Why? Our American individualist mindset tricks us to believe that we can dominate our conversation with God. Prayer is two-way communication, but it is not communication between two equal parties.
Tonight (7PM) we’ll gather @ the Mars Hill Baptist Church for our 1st Wednesday Worship. This worship experience allows us to spend more time worshipping God and listening to the Word. During tonight’s service, I will pose 5 Questions that will revolutionize the prayer lives of those in attendance. The questions are as follows:
The North American Church is in decline and there are plenty of conferences offering their latest & greatest pitch to stop the church’s decline.
Each year we’re invited to hear “celebrity” pastors share God’s plan for the church and how we ought to adopt it and be large and successful like them. Frankly, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a venue to really address how and why churches grow. Many pastors & church leaders make their annual pilgrimage to Saddleback, Willowcreek, North Point, Fellowship, New Birth, Greater St. Steven FGBC, The Potter’s House, etc. and come away excited and delusional with unrealistic expectations. Ed Stetzer of Lifeway calls it ministry pornography. According to Ed Stetzer:
God used these churches and their pastors for a specific time and in a specific place. Unfortunately, that experience is rarely duplicated. If you were to take the aforementioned churches and transplant them in other areas, the results would be drastically different. Can you imagine Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, or Andy Stanley leading an inner-city urban church? Or, can you see Bishop T.D. Jakes screaming “Get Ready…Get Ready…Get, Get, Ready” at Saddleback or North Point Church? Simply put, God rarely does the same thing twice.
May I Offer You A Few Suggestions to break your addiction to ministry porn:
So, what’s your next step? I’d love to hear it!
“It was the best of times, the worst of times…”
The opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, referring to the time of the French Revolution describes the economic reality of today. The question that’s on everyone’s mind, but, seldom asked is: How are you doing? The answer depends on your individual circumstances, of course – but also on your perspective. The glass is either half full or half empty for many of us today. This morning when I woke up, my first emotion was profound gratitude. Even though my financial worth had been decimated by the events of the last three months, I realized that nothing could touch the things that are most valuable to me.
I also realized that I have a choice: I can focus on what I have lost or I can focus on what I have. I started making a mental list:
And the list goes on. I could name a hundred more things, but you get the idea.
My guess is that the Economic Downturn is going to get worse (I pray I’m wrong) before it gets better. You and I have very little control over what happens in the external environment. But we do have control over what happens inside our hearts. It all depends on our mental focus.
Question:
What do you have that the Economic Downturn can’t touch?
FYI – I want to thank my friends from Facebook for sharing their tips. If you would like to read more, please click here.
Free-wheeling capitalism has always been the heart of the US Economy but the recent $700 billion bailout, a level of government intervention not seen since the Great Depression, is hardly unprecedented. Historically, the Federal Government has not only taken stakes in banks, steel mills, and coal mines but have even seized control of everything from railways to savings and loans. Unfortunately, when it comes to you and I, we would be hard pressed to make their list. Consequently, If you STILL believe the government will bail you out – think again!
So what does the bailout mean for me? The word power occurs 57 times in the New Testament. It is a word used to describe the most powerful bailout that ever happened, an event that separated A.D. from B.C. That event was the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Consequently, that resurrection power is available to change your life! So, please join us this Easter at the Mars Hill Baptist Church and experience a heartfelt worship experience coupled with a timely Word from God. Additionally, we will unveil our “new & improved” video venue which is additional worship experience using video technology to reproduce our live worship experience.
Friday, April 10, 2009
12 Noon & 6:30PM
Sunday, April 12, 2009
8:00 AM & 10:30 AM (Live)
8:00 AM & 10:30 AM (Video Venue)
In 1991, Spike Lee released his fifth feature-length film Jungle Fever. The plot centers on the interracial romance between a successfully married Black, played by Wesley Snipes, and an Italian woman played by Anabella Sciorra. The lovers come under intense pressure from their friends and family as a result of their interracial relationship. It’s no secret that even today, interracial relationships are still under intense scrutiny – even when it comes to attending church.
For most of white America, the black church is an alien segment of the nation’s culture, hidden behind the plain facades of large brick churches, the rude clapboard of country chapels, the salvation-emblazoned windows of tattered storefronts. It is a montage of impressions, some real, some misleading the low-moaning spirituals, the clapping and the shouted amens; the phenomenon of a Bishop TD Jakes and the curious charisma once possessed the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell; the prophetic, nation-shaking philosophy of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the pragmatic, neighborhood-building politics of a Rev. Jesse Jackson.
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