How Great is Our God

This Sunday I will be showing a video by Louie Giglio called "How Great is Our God". The video will be the launching point for a new sermon series appropriately entitled "How Great is Our God". (I'm not good at sermon series stuff, especially titles, so it's much easier to steal the title from someone else) I think you will really enjoy the video on Sunday, and I encourage you to invite someone new to come and watch it as well.

I hope you will begin to pray that God will open your heart to see more of who He is, and just how great He is!

Music memories

I'm always amazed at what memories can come flooding through my mind when I hear certain songs and artist. Music has an unbelievable way of taking me back in time to a specific year and situation. Allow me to share.

Late elementary school: Anything from Phil Collins and I'm immediately taken back to 5th and 6th grade. Just hearing any part of "We Built this City" by Starship and I'm back in the Portales skating rink that use to sit where Town and Country now stands. "It's a couples only skate, couples only" That's good stuff.

Junior High: The awkward years are immediately relived with the sounds of Poison, Whitney Houston (before she went crazy), Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Def Leppard, or Debbie Gibson. It seems like it was just yesterday when my mom was dropping me off at the Memorial Building for one of many junior high dances. What a scary thought, me dancing at the age of 12. It wasn't pretty.

High School: High school was my first exposure to Christian music, so Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant ( who I had a major crush on) fit in to this time period, however, nothing takes me back like Garth Brooks. The Dance, Unanswered Prayers, and Shameless are just the tip of the iceberg, or better yet, glacier of Garth Brooks songs that take me back to high school. Good times, really good times.

College: I immediately think of sitting in my dorm room at Texas Tech and listening to Blackhawk and Clay Walker over and over again. The Blackhawk song, "Every Once in a While", is a classic. College was also the time when Christian music became more than Sandy Patty and started to become more mainstream. Groups like Jars of Clay and Third Day became regular staples on my brand new portable CD player. (that's right I put "brand new portable" in bold, because that was a big deal then.)

I love music. I love the memories it can bring, good or bad.

Ramblings

Golf is the hardest game ever, but yet I love to play.

American Idol cracks me up.

Spiritual warfare is real.

I like the green kind of Tabasco sauce.

Did I mention golf is hard?

I love the movie "That thing you do".

We are like orange juice from concentrate.

Happy New Year and What do You Think?

Happy New Year everyone!

Now that that's done(I'm not good with the holiday greetings), I wanted to ask you what you thought about Sunday and the idea of serving on the last Sunday of every month. We wouldn't have church in our usually way, but instead would have church by meeting up somewhere and serving on Sunday morning. I know this is out of the norm and you probably have some questions, so feel free to voice your concerns, questions, and even your enthusiasm.

This cannot just be my desire, but instead needs to be the heart of the congregation if it's going to work. I look forward to hearing from you.


Some ideas for this are:
1. Putting carts away at Wal-mart (you knew that was coming)
2. Visiting the nursing home
3. Doing yard work for someone in need
4. Visiting shut-ins
5. Cleaning up a park
6. fixing a meal for people in need
7. Free car wash (no donations)
8. Free breakfast/brunch for one floor at the dorms at ENMU

Part of serving is that we may have to actually open up ourselves to places of need we have never seen or known of before. Also, this is not about getting people to come to Arch, but rather giving the people of Arch Baptist the chance to humble ourselves and see God in new and different ways.

Grace

For the last couple of days, I have been reading about grace on www.flowerdust.net, and I wanted to share the link with you. The website is a blog written by Anne Jackson, but she has had a guest writer,Cindy, for the last few days. I believe as of today, Cindy has written four different posts. Look for the one that says "A courageous tale of grace-chapter one" and start there.

I didn't know

I didn't know that saying "I wish we would stop doing church and start being the church" would cause such a stir, so I removed that post from the blog. I have been reading and studying about the "church" as the body of Christ, and overall I got the sense that Christians have lost sight of what church is supposed to be. That it is about the people not just our meeting time on Sunday morning. I was not applying this specifically to Arch Baptist Church, but to believers overall.

I understand that someone reading the original post would not know what I was thinking or what was on my heart when I wrote it. I apologize for that. I will try to do better in the future about not "thinking" out loud on the blog without sharing more of the background.

Gospel for Asia

I highly recommend reading "Revolution in World Missions" by K.P. Yohannan the founder of Gospel for Asia.

Check out their site at www.gfa.org