The early days of LP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Pastor Jeff & Brad  and Daryl have twittered or blogged today about their remembrance of the early days at Lifepoint, it is ironic that I came across a Q&A on Holly Furtick’s blog. It sounds all too familiar of our own humble beginnings. WOW. I just read something pretty profound as a wife, ministry leader, and most importantly a Christ follower-

 

I think the same is true for ministry work (and really life in general).  It doesn’t get easier, it just gets different.  To all of you church planters out there who are thinking, everything will be better once we reach X amount of people, you are deceived.  

The good news is, God’s grace is sufficient no matter what stage of ministry (or life you) are in.  And you still need to be your husband’s main source of encouragement no matter how long you have been married or what his profession is.

~excerpt from Holly Furtick, Elevation Church (read the rest of her blog post here)

 

It’s hard to believe almost 4 years has passed. And granted Chad and I skipped out on this last year, and have recently moved back, the vision and the message is still the same. 

 

Jesus.

Love God. Love Others. Serve the World.

 

Life change never gets old, the power of God never gets old, and Jesus glorified never gets old.

We may have a few more material things than back then, but something Chad King said- 

“We are just as much ‘tools’ as all our fancy equipment is….Jesus will draw man unto himself…we just have to be obedient to His calling!”

All About the Fruit

All about the fruit. I’ve heard this thousands of times before, but it’s a good reminder. When my attention span allows me to sit and read a book long enough I can really soak up some new insights, or at least hear something that needed repetition anyway. I’ve been reading Christine Caine’s book Stop Acting Like a Christian- Just Be One.  She’s a great communicator and some of the concepts in the book can be hard to grapple with.

My dad has been a Music Minister in Baptist churches for about 30 years and I’ve been in church every time the doors were open.  As a person who has been involved in ministry my entire life, since birth pretty much, it can become easy to focus on the activities. Since middle and high school I have been on leadership teams, a small group leader, lead worshipper, youth/child mentor, creative teams, and singer on a high profile music group in college. This puts you in front of people alot which constantly keeps your character in check (or at least it should), but it also creates the obvious- LOTS of activity.

It comes in waves- we’re human. And I have found that some periods in my life I can get so caught up in doing, instead of focusing on being. Lots of activity in the Lord’s name, but at risk for my spiritual core to become weak. This sums up the book. Over the years I’m reminded of something Pastor Daryl has said- Worship on Sunday should merely be an outflow of what’s already happening on the inside during the week. A celebration of who God is and what He’s been doing in your life internally everyday.  Sometimes we can even focus on gifts of the Spirit when our soul need some work. My spiritual core needs strengthening just like any other muscle of my body.  My gifts and talents that I think I have cannot be a good measure of my “success” as a Christian.

Christine says it like this:

When the gifts of the Spirit on a person’s life are greater than the fruit of the Spirit in a person’s life, that life will begin to crumble…Regardless of how strong and whole we think we are, we must remember we’re all on the journey to Christlikeness and Christian maturity.

Other symptoms like unhealthy relationships, depression, addictions and insecurities surface when my inside doesn’t match my outside. And thus that maturity declines.

I want to be all about the fruit. I don’t want try hard to act like a Christ-follower. I will be honest, it’s hard sometimes, certain areas more than others. But I believe the natural outflow of living out these fruits of the Spirit will simply allow me to be one.

So what about you? Are you all about the fruit or the activity? Your gifts or the outflow of daily fruit?

Dinner FAIL

I’ll be honest, in our almost 6 year marriage (coming June 21st and I expect gifts!), I have not been the most proactive at some of the “wifely duties”. It was hard for me to make myself cook, clean and do laundry. I don’t know what it was. Sometimes I just didn’t want to do it, sometimes it was laziness I guess, sometimes busyness was my excuse and sometimes I just don’t know why. Not that it was always like this. I did cook some and have a few dishes I would always make, but that came in waves. (Just kidding on the gift thing)

Since moving into our own place I committed myself to being more “domestic” and planning meals in advance. Plus it’s better on your budget and health. I feel like doing the typical wifely chores is a necessity but also says I want to serve and honor my husband. Plus, if I don’t get into a habit or some kind of routine now, what the heck will happen when we have kids??

SO. Onto my Dinner FAIL of this week.

Don’t get me wrong, it tasted good, just didn’t quite look the way it was supposed to. It was supposed to be Marinated Tangerine Beef from BigOven.com. And I used freshly squeezed oranges and spices. Should’ve looked like this-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had good intentions to shop thrifty. How can I make this meal as inexpensive as possible? Some things you can’t skimp on. Instead of buying real steak, I bought 2 frozen packages of philly steak. But duh, you know what happens when you cook philly steak? Yes. It pulls apart and shreds as it’s cooked. Which is the whole point of philly steak. So it ended up looking like this-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I got to the angel hair pasta part and realized I didn’t have a big enough pot to cook enough for the 2 of us and a guest. So I called Chad and told him to pick up noodles ANYWHERE. Somebody should have some. Got Tofu Pad Thai entree. Not to mention his car broke down before on the way, and our guest had to pick him up, stop by for noodles, and get home.

So picked out the tofu, put the shredded beef on top of  the noodles, and we had Marinated Tangerine Mush with pasta. Tasted plenty orange-y although I think most of the flavor was in the noodles…Our single friend loved it though. Go figure. On the other hand, my meatloaf and homemade mashed potatoes Thursday night was a hit…

What would I do?

D-Strick had his own list of to-do’s  here if he were debt free. As we begin our own debt-freedom journey, I think of the things I’d love to do.

Start college savings fund for my kids

Sponsor some kids through Compassion International

Visit Prince Edward Island (Anne of Green Gables country), Grand Canyon, Italy

Donate a large sum of money to my high school’s performing arts department

Buy Chad a killer gold top Les Paul (the $18,000 one at Gruhn Guitars downtown Nashville)

Go on a cruise with my family

Adopt a kid

Go on an overseas mission trip

Record a worship album and a country album that sounds awesome, that i like

Buy a rental property

Bless our parents back monetarily

 

We started Joe Sangl’s track a while back and are just getting back to it now. Hope to get here one day. What about you?

Intentionality

Intentionality is big with me. Because it takes a bit of advance planning and preparation to do it. When that doesn’t happen, I get irked.

Now last weekend we moved into our new apartment, which I’m stoked to be having our own place in general, and it’s a nice complex. I couldn’t be happier with the apartment.

However, somewhere the ball got dropped with our move-in and I got very frustrated. I called the day before, to confirm lease signing and move-in for the next day. We get there right at 10:00 when they open, and the place is locked up. A girl shows up 15 minutes later looking like she just came from the beach. She got a mortified look when I told her what we were there for, and proceeded to tell me she does not have authorization to do the lease signing but could probably get us our keys to go ahead and move in. Keep in mind our rental truck has to be back by 2pm.

About 10 minutes later, our contact called saying she was running late and would be there to walk us through our lease signing. Nobody would’ve known she was coming anyway, had she not called. I assumed somebody forgot and the person scheduled to work was last minute. Planning. At every apartment signing we’ve had, and we’ve had a few, the leasing person has been ready with our documents printed out to verify, sign, and the check amounts we owe already prorated and calculated. Preparation. We sat for 30 minutes while this person dug out papers from all over and tried to calculate the amounts we needed to write checks for. It also looked like no one had been in our apartment to at least do a sweep and make sure everything checked out. It wasn’t. We didn’t have AC all weekend because it was broken. New carpet was not tacked down properly and got ripped up when we started to vacuum. Cobwebs everywhere. Maybe I’m a little high maintenance but this has been standard preparation for every apartment we’ve moved in…

I digress… Intentionality is one of my favorite things about Lifepoint Church. For the first time in 3 1/2 years, we actually didn’t park in volunteer parking and came through from front door and back. I got a chance to see what it’s probably like for first timers. Although not perfect, and always a work in progress just like any other church plant, the pastor and staff are almost always intentional  about everything they do. Every connection activity, every taping down of cords, every children’s story, every cover song, every giveaway in the service, every rock in the sink. Just about everything that is setup or done says, “SOMEONE WAS EXPECTING ME”. I love that!! Whether you are a newcomer, regular attender or Dream Team member. We know you can park your own car, but we’ve got smiling faces outside to ease any first time hesitancy. We have ushers helping you find a seat when it’s filling up. We have age-appropriate FUN activities and bible study for your kids. And we have team leaders and staff that make a point to communicate details AND encouragement to their volunteer team. Brad sends out an email just about every week THANKING every volunteer involved in his area, ENCOURAGING them, and telling a glimpse of what God did through that day. This is huge. People will sign up for awesome vision, but alot of them slip out the back door without constant thanks and godly encouragement. But that’s a post for a whole other time.

Takeaway: Intentionality says “Someone Was Expecting Me.” It helps create momentum for the mission Jesus has called us to. And it matters.

Thankful in a big way

My head is in a million places right now. I gotta say though, I’m totally blessed. We are reaching the point where we are coming out of “The Dip” at least for a while. If you read one of my earlier posts then you’ll understand The Dip was a 2 week series by Steven Furtick from Elevation that impacted our lives in a major way. I’ve listened to it multiple times since being at the first week in person back in March. I still keep the 3 R’s on my phone and eventually it will go up on my fridge and bathroom mirror again in my new digs.

I started a new job a couple weeks ago in Wilmington, Chad starts one tomorrow, and this weekend we finally moved into our own place after about 6 months with his parents. I heart parents in a big way- words will never express my gratitude for their crazy love to us. My parents have also been there for us so much, although far away in Texas. Both of our parents really model Christ and his constant and unconditional love. (The Joe Sangl debt free track also is about to re-commence and debt is gonna get kicked in the teeth, so YOU reading this hold us accountable!)

It feels so good to be “home” and not just near the beach and reconnected with great friends, but a part of Lifepoint’s vision to reach the Wilmington area for Jesus- that vision that’s been burning on our hearts for a year and a half. Were we “supposed” to move to Nashville? Maybe. Maybe not. Although I don’t necessarily think it was “in God’s will” to go sometimes He lets you “color outside the lines a little.” And the fact remains that God seemed to say, “Ok, you guys go your own way, have a little fun, but I will show you who I am and bring you back to where you need to be.” I wouldn’t trade the pain or mistakes for anything. Because I wouldn’t have learned anything from them. Sometimes you have to take yourself out of an environment to really see things clearly, see what’s important, see what you were, and we wrestled with some tough things this last year and a half. The Lord shattered our pride , showed us immense grace, and revealed to us that he has our plan mapped out. The incredible thing, is God gets to use OUR story for HIS glory.

So a few things I’m getting wrecked by- finishing up the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan, started the One Year Bible a couple weeks ago (and I’m really gonna do it and finish it this time), and Stop Acting Like a Christian, Just Be One by Christine Caine from Hillsong Church. I’ll post some more thoughts on these later.

Thanks and praise to God for who you are and what you’ve done. Thanks Pastors Jeff and Daryl for your love, support,  friendship, and most of all vision. Thanks to our C3 family back in Clayton for a place to learn and serve these past few months. And thanks to our new and old friends (you know who you are) for your constant prayers, letting us invade your space for 6 months, and  your dearly loved friendship.

The Lord Is My Rock

I was so excited to read the Elevation Worship Blog today… I hadn’t checked in a while.  When we visited  Elevation Church in Charlotte a while back during Pastor Steven Furtick’s The Dip series, they did this amazing song. It was so timely a song, and the words spoke loudly to me there in the 4th row. And I was somewhat bummed that I couldn’t find it anywhere on youtube or to download yet.  What a comfort that the Lord is my Rock.

It’s an Elevation original song. I hope they record a full band version soon, because it rocks! Check out the video of Wade Joye singing acoustic version of “The Lord Is My Rock” and check out the worship blog too.

 

Verse 1: [E F#]
When the waters rise
My hope is sure
When my world falls apart
I stand secure

When my way is dark
Your light breaks through
When i don’t feel you near
Your word is true

Pre-Chorus: [B - F#/A# - G#m - F# - E - F#]
Jesus your love surrounds me
You’re holding my life
Holding my life

Chorus: (2x) [B F# G#m E]
The Lord is my rock
And I won’t be afraid
I wont be afraid
You’re with me

Verse 2:
When the waters rise
My hope is sure
When my world falls apart
I stand secure

Bridge: [E F# E F#] [E F# E/G# F#/A#]
Oh God you carry us
You rise above
You lift us up

Dear God…

Dear God,

This week was good. Props to you for that. Since we are still unemployed I felt the need to get off my butt and go do something… Sure beats pity party and job applying and watching Clean House on the couch all day. (Not that it happens all the time) Plus, you know I’m a structure person. I need a routine. I need a basic map for the day, so I know what needs to be done and I’ll do it. So I made a point to focus more on my physical and spiritual core like Christine Caine says. I  got up to work out most days these week and I up’d my spiritual discipline this week. And then I served in the C3 office every day for a few hours. You know I like admin work, so that was good for me. I keep reminding myself what Pastors Jeff and Daryl say ALL the time- “You are never more like Jesus than when you SERVE.”  Plus it was a great positive environment. I met some new people.

As for the spiritual discipline… It can be hard to wake up and make time to spend time with you.  Just being honest. I don’t always have the desire to have a deeper and deeper intimate walk with you, especially when circumstances are crazy and crappy. Mostly it’s because I’m ADD, and there’s a little laziness in there too. But I want to.  I’m praying more fervently every day that you would put a burning desire in my heart for You and the things of You.  In all honesty I just want to serve You wherever. And I am finding that when I do, You show up and reveal who you are. You soften my heart. Again, I keep thinking of a brief talk in First Wednesday worship where Martha was saying when you are in a pit, when you are struggling, to PRAISE YOU ANYWAY, make an effort even when you don’t feel like it. Eventually the love and desire and the praise will come naturally, but do it anyway at first. He will honor that and will lift you up in the midst of your adversity.

I was left alone quite alot this week in the office. In the printing room or stuffing some-2,000 Strawberry Festival bags, labeling message Cd’s.  Alone with my thoughts. Alone to have conversations with you. It was amazing. I got to pray over hundreds of bags that C3 will hand out. I prayed You would reveal your love and hope and yourself to each family of that bag. I believe that you will. And in that time I felt You quietly and gently whispering to me your affection, your encouragement.

Aside from our tough financial situation, and the fact I have no idea when we will come out on the other side of some of these struggles, I am grappling with some tough questions – “Do I really seek You to know You intimately and love you more? Or do I mostly seek You to get a response out of you? To get You to do something for me?” That’s hard. I already know the answer to that most of the time. Some other ones that a friend is asking, that I am now asking myself- “Are you passionate about Me or are you passionate about using the gifts you believe you have?” Or how ’bout “If I never desire to put you in a place where the gifts you think you have are used and following me means that you live outside of your comfort zone everyday, am I enough for you?”

Yeah…that’s where I am. And you know.

Easter Egg-stravaganza

I am still reflecting on this Easter. It has by far been the best I’ve had ever. So fun, so engaging, and so moving. And the best part, many people got introduced to Jesus for the first time this Easter weekend and began a relationship with him!

Not only did we do an Easter egg hunt Lifepoint style (with 185+ amazing volunteers and dropping 30,000 eggs out of a helicopter), but well over what we expected to show up came out to Ashley High School. 10,000 adults and children! We had inflatables, games, giveaways, and face painting (aka the AWESOME TEAM – thanks to all 4 of my girls who painted and put a smile on kids faces NON-STOP from 9:30 to well past 12:30). I think overall everything went pretty smoothly and very organized for our first time. If and when Lifepoint Church ever does this event again, it will get even better. Some people will always have something negative to say, but that fact remains that we did it because we LOVE the community, we wanted people to have a good time, and it was FREE. See more pics here.

Check out the video Brad made that captured the whole egg-stravaganza:

I have to note that the entire service flowed so beautifully. Thank you staff and volunteers for making that happen. It makes a difference. Every element (that I saw in the 9am service anyway) flowed smoothly from one thing to the next. From song to bumper video to youtube video to message to an artistic painting. Drew knocked it out of the park with his team. They really did. I could not have imagined a more appropriate set list of songs that engaged the people, causing us to reflect and worship,  lifting high the name of Jesus, celebrating his sacrifice and resurrection!

The other thing. Pastor Jeff spoke on a subject that probably no other church was talking about. It’s not your typical Easter message. It was one of his best messages though. Really articulated well, and smooth. Heavy subject, but not over your head. He had a way of conveying the message in such a real,  compassionate AND passionate way- characteristics of God that is what is so compelling about the message and hope of Christ. Most people simply preach on Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. And that’s cool. We did too. But it was so much more to me. The message this Easter was taken out of Hosea. When God commanded Hosea to do something that made no sense whatsoever- to marry a whore and stick with her even when she ran around on him and didn’t even care. This is not a pretty story by any means, but God wanted to show Israel how they ran around on him, were ungrateful for his provision, and worshipped other gods. The same way that Hosea bought back his wife at her very lowest, when nothing good was left- God did the same for us in buying us back. And Jesus was the currency of the day. I can’t get over that. I hope those of us that know Christ never get over that. In my own life I am filthy, ungrateful, and focus or even worship other things. But “God demonstrated his own love in this- that while we were still sinning, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

God desperately desires a relationship with us, he keeps pursuing us even when we don’t want him. Because he loves us. And it’s FREE. It’s a free love. And it’s always AVAILABLE. We don’t have to earn our way into that love, we simply get to accept it.

I did something stupid

How often do we do something stupid? Like real dumb, and don’t consider the consequences? I was reading Proverbs 25 today on recommendation from this guy. Check it out.  And it got me thinking about something I did a couple weekends ago. I was hanging out at Firehouse Subs for lunch after church with some of the Lifepoint staff and a couple new friends who just moved to Wilmington. The cheesesteak was awesome, but something there may have impeded my urge to go back… and left a bad taste in my mouth. Literally. It may seem kind of funny now, but wasn’t at the time…

A few people were trying a tiny dab of this John Boy & Billy’s Three Pepper Hot Sauce. I think the bottle on our table was actually the Extra Hot. I wasn’t really paying attention to the fact that Jeff was reading a cautionary disclaimer printed on the bottle. Now I like spicy stuff. I usually upgrade to hot on my Thai food at Indochine. So I thought, what’s the big deal? Everyone’s a wimp. Let’s see how I can impress my table. So I slopped about 2 teaspoons onto my sandwich and chomped into the whole bit. It took a second, but eventually I was sweating a little, felt warm, and had this fluttering in my chest. They said my eyes were red and bloodshot. Not to mention I was a little hoarse already from allergies all week. My throat was on fire. My lips were tingly. As long as I kept chewing and drinking, the burning sensation was kept at bay. But the minute my mouth and throat got still, it’s like raging inferno radiating heat from my esophagus. Although I didn’t feel sick to my stomach, the fluttery feeling in my chest after about 5-10 minutes led me to excuse myself to the restroom. And I threw up my lunch. Twice.

I don’t know if you can permanently do damage to your throat or vocal cords pulling a stunt like that, but what if? That would really suck if I couldn’t speak well or ever sing again. What if the habanero overload ate a hole in my stomach lining?

Ok so maybe these are drastic scenarios, but still. Every choice we make has consequences. I remember 1 Corinthians says something about everything being permissible but not necessarily beneficial. Seek wisdom from the Lord, and think first so you make the right choices. Pay attention to instructions or disclaimers in your life. Oh, and know your spicy limits.