I am watching the Super Bowl right now and I must say that I have been incredibly disappointed with the commercials thus far…the best one has been Blockbuster’s mouse commercial. Heck…even the beer commercials haven’t been good! What’s going on?
I have to admit I am tired…it’s been a LONG two weeks…and today I felt like I had NOTHING when I got up to speak. Literally…at 4:15 I thought, “where in the world is this going to come from?” BUT God is so faithful…He moved in and made up the difference…just like He always does!!!
Today I spoke on personal evangelism…how God wants to use people to reach people…that’s the way it was in Scripture and that is the way it needs to be today.
I will have to admit that when people say that “my faith is my personal deal…it has nothing to do with anyone else” that I want to punch them in the nose!!! Seriously, where in the world did we ever get the idea that Jesus hanging naked on a cross and dying for us was something we need to keep inside and not share. Christians need to come out of the closet…everyone else has!!!
Today I was able to recast the vision of NewSpring Church…to reach the lost in this community for Christ…to take Jesus outside the walls…to see our entire community come to faith in Christ. In fact, today NewSpring launched our first “anti” campaign…we are “anti-hell,” we don’t want anyone to go to hell…and our campaign slogan is “Hell…NO!!!”
I love sharing vision…and the vision of NewSpring church is to reach the lost. We will never be a church where everybody knows everybody…that’s NOT what Scripture calls for. We will never be a church where the pastor knows everybody…once again, that is not what SCRIPTURE calls for. It can either be about me knowing everyone…or everyone knowing Jesus…and we are going with people knowing Christ because I can’t get anyone to heaven!!! I needed Jesus for that…and so does everyone else.
At the conclusion of the service today I challenged our church to get people to the service next week. I said that we have put together one of the most creative presentations of the Gospel in the history of our church…and that we believe if that we will all make the commitment to get people to hear the Gospel that God will do some amazing things.
During our invitation I asked people who were serious about getting people to church for the following Sunday to walk forward, take a magic marker, and write the names of the people they wanted to bring next week ON THE WALLS of our church. IT WAS AMAZING!!! People poured forward and you should see the names written all over the walls of our sanctuary—there are thousands of names…yes, we COUNTED because every one of those names represents a soul—AND THEY MATTER!!!
(Yes, we wrote on the walls of our building…you see, it’s just a building…it’s a tool to reach this community…it’s not a sacred cow—it’s not about how nice and neat we keep things—it’s about people meeting Jesus!)
Needless to say—that blew me away. (Pastors—trust me, do this…you can see the video of our entire service here anytime after Tuesday morning.) AND I am asking you to do three things…
#1 - PRAY!!! Pray all week long that God will save people this Sunday!!!
#2 - Invite everyone you see this week to NewSpring this Sunday!!!
#3 - Be at first Wednesday at 6:30 this week as we talk about God & the fact that He still speaks today…and we have a time of prayer for the names on the wall.
That’s about it…I missed the halftime show & now I am going to go back & join my wife on the couch to watch the rest of the game.
Oh yeah…mad props to Jack…the dude who sang “Saved” today—DANG…for a 60 year old man he had some moves!!!
ONE MORE THING…I will announce on this site on Friday whether “baby Noble” will be a boy or girl!!! :-) See you on Wednesday!!!