Clutter

I love great quotes and collect them. Here is one I read the other day that I thought was profound.

“When the purpose of the room is lost, clutter inevitably follows”
Peter Walsh

Isn’t that so true? Rooms without a purpose become the junk room in our house. As a constantly recovering pack rat, I have to continually make conscious moves to remove the clutter.

This also happens in church life. When we have a sense of purpose we have to continually evaluate - Is this ministry, or project or new thing (or old thing!) really helping us fulfill our vision? Just adding ministries to add ministries saps the life out of our church and our best people.

This is probably true for our own lives and schedule and budget as well. Where is the clutter in those rooms? It probably collects easier when our sense of purpose is lost or becomes weak.

Good Stuff!

We had a great day in church yesterday. I know I keep saying this but worship is off the chain right now.

It felt really good to preach again. It’s been quite a few weeks because of One Prayer. I think I actually went a bit long. A little bottled up.

Our church is responding to our 99 Days of Serving in a humongous way. Teams are going all over Asheville doing good. It’s so cool. Our next Big Serve Day is coming up this Saturday, July 19. We’re going to help Habitat for Humanity.

BTW, if you are part of our church please go to this website and log in some of your experiences in serving this summer.

Catch Up

Summer and travel does something to my blog-o-rhythm. For those of you who do read this regularly, sorry for no past last week.

Here’s a bit of a catch up:

Had a great time ministering at Philip and Susan O’Reilly’s church last weekend – The Rock of KC. They are some of our dearest friends. Always great to be with them. Excited for their new building which should be ready by late September. Their church is doing so well.

We just finished of our One Prayer series yesterday. Ed Young laid the smack down! The whole thing was amazing. Lots of fun. Great response from everyone. Salvations every week. But I can’t wait to get back to teaching myself.

Worship is off the chain every week at church right now!

I am totally loving the new Coldplay CD – Viva La Vida. And I’m completely enthralled with Leeland right now.

My big thought from the word this past week – God’s normal is blessed

Tribal Gatherings

Suzette and I spent last week in Scottsdale, Arizona with a group of leaders called Integrity Leadership Ministries (ILM). This get-away happens once a year and is filled with some really great high capacity people.

There’s amazing worship, golf, shopping, eating together, hanging out, superb teaching sessions. But it’s mainly built around relational connecting.

I don’t think I heard one person say how big their church was. Even though a lot of these guys pastor very large churches, there is none of that spirit to this group.

We have grown to love going to this gathering. Every year we get to reconnect with friends and make new ones. It’s a tribe we really enjoy.

“Tribes” are an interesting concept. You can’t legislate them. It’s a mysterious, organic kind of thing. I have respect for all the tribes in The Church but I know I don’t fit in all of them. Some I just learn from, some I belong to, and some I just know there is not a fit. But we all have a need for a tribal sense of belonging.

A Great Weekend!

We have just had another amazing weekend at The Rock Church!

On Saturday, as part of our 99 Days of Serving this summer, over 70 people from our church showed up at Asheville Buncombe County Christian Mission’s (ABCCM) women’s facility to help upgrade some of the rooms. We had so many people we ended up spilling over into cleaning the kitchen, cutting the grass, fixing grout work and on and on – in addition to totally redoing 3 of their dorm rooms. We had a blast working together and the rooms turned out great!

They told us we were the largest group that has ever showed up to volunteer at their facility. Way to go Rockers!

On Sunday, we heard a great message by Dino Rizzo in our One Prayer series. He spoke on “Make Us Extremely Generous”. We also received an offering to help support an ambitious church planting effort through One Prayer partnership. The goal is 500 churches in China, India, Sudan and Cambodia.

We also had 21 people raise their hand to respond to Christ at the end of Sunday service.

Wow!

Get To The Point

So, last night I take Tori with me to see Rilo Kiley at The Orange Peel. For the record, I love Rilo Kiley and think they are amazing. This is my second time to see them and they are great live! And I’m not easily impressed.

The downside was – 3 (three!) opening acts. I think I understand the philosophy behind opening acts - exposure for the artist and more entertainment bang for your dollar.

But holy cow, get to the point. Give us a few minutes of openers and then let us see who we came to see.

I don’t want to be rude but I also want to make the observation – some of these guys are not very good and it can become torturous to endure them on the way to hearing what I came to hear. I know they need exposure and experience and all that but when they are categorically less skilled than the main act, please give us a break.

This makes me think about how we do church. We used to do 45 minutes of worship and hour long messages with tons of announcements. Now both worship and message have been cut in half – not in terms of quality but in terms of time. Our announcements are on video and run during our offering. We try to give a great experience (100 best minutes) but we value people’s time and get to the point.

We still have long worship and prayer sessions (mega worship once a quarter) but people come to that because they want to. And they know what they have signed up for.

Our philosophy is – one house, many rooms. Different rooms (meetings) for different things. Get to the point of why you are there.

Fast Forward

Today my amazing daughter, Tori, turns 20 years old.

Wow, it is so hard for me to believe that my baby girl is now 20. No longer a teenager. When people say it goes by fast they are not kidding.

Just yesterday, Suzette and I were packing all our belongings (which wasn’t much) and our just-barely-learning-to-walk little girl and moving to Asheville to start a church.

Push fast forward and now my baby has grown into a gorgeous young lady.

Tori is sweet, thoughtful, kind and talented. I am very proud of her. She will always be my baby girl.