blog.arrowheadchurch.com

For a while today it seemed like the crowd was suffering from either a tryptophan or Black Friday hangover! It took a minute or two to get rolling, but the Lord did some powerful things today.

• Scott McMinn taught and asked the question from John 1: What do you want from Jesus? I know the Lord spoke to me and to Sara and we’ve heard so many great things about the message today. It was awesome to just be at church and hear from God. Thanks to Scott for letting the Holy Spirit move.
• We got to introduce Chrissy Johnson’s adoption process to the church today. As she continues to go through the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia, she asked us as a church to pray for everything to continue to go smoothly since adoption can be such a political battle in a foreign country. She also asked us to ask the Lord to bond she and her future child quickly. I’m trusting Him to work in both those areas. Would you pray faithfully for her? You can read more about her journey at her blog.
• Great morning of worship through music as well: Let the Praises Ring, O Praise Him, O Worship the King, Glory to God, and Above All.
• New series begins next week called Do You Hear? It’s gonna be a great Christmas series. Lots of fun stuff planned for the month of December. Don’t miss it.

Have a great week!

I have nothing original to say this Thanksgiving, other than to go public on the blog with my gratitude to God for:

-Life through His Son.

-My wife, who is the best friend and partner in ministry in the world.

-My son, who will never know how much I love being his dad.

-My parents, and how great it is living close to them.

-My sister and her husband, who are having a baby!

-My church. It’s God’s church, but you get the point.

-My friends. I get to share life with awesome people.

Thanks You, Jesus.

On December 4 & 11, we’re partying all over this town. 11 families in the Lakeway area are opening their homes to their neighbors just to say hello and to help support the Pregnancy Crisis Center and the Ministerial Association Temporary Shelter. Praying God builds some real community in our neighborhoods around the idea they might be able to serve someone together!

Absolutely wiped out after today. We wrapped up our Family Life series taking a look at the life of Joseph. He was wronged on the deepest levels by his family but still forgave and saw God’s purpose in it. My prayer for us as we enter the holiday season is that we could have that perspective.

• Great worship set today. Sometimes I’m reminded how obnoxiously loud and proud our worship is. Today was one of those days. I love it. I think a new generation of worshipers in this town will for years to come.
• Read Psalm 136 and went old school call-and-response with “his love endures forever.” Fun to worship that way.
• Incredibly fast setup and teardown today makes a good, people-focused experience. Rather than thinking about facilities and programming, I was able to focus on people. That’s more fun.
• During one of Tyler P’s guitar solos today I just started laughing at how fun this whole experience is. It has its hard days, for sure, but I’m so grateful for what the Lord has called Arrowhead to do.

Everybody have a great week!

Last week I wrote about a man who loved God’s Word. You can read it below or just click here. He also loves God’s people.

In the course of our conversation, which took place 30 minutes before our service, he grabbed my collar and asked if I was going to wear this to preach or if I still had to go put my suit on. I had on a button-down shirt and jeans. (Remember he is legally blind, not completely blind.) I responded, “I’m going to wear this. Is that going to be a problem?” I was thinking he may not stay or may think less of us if I didn’t put on my suit.

His response blew me away. “I guess you are doing this so people who don’t have a suit or don’t want to wear a suit will feel like there’s a church for them, right?” I said, “Yes sir. That’s exactly why we do it.” He teared up and said, “Whatever you have to do to reach people for Jesus, I say go right ahead.”

I’m tearing up right now as I right this. The stereotype that the previous generation doesn’t like our newfangled churches is too broad! Praise God that an older generation of saints may pray for God’s favor on the next generation.

Long, long day today. Great day, but very long. I got woken up this morning with a neighbor’s burglar alarm. That’ll get your head spinning quickly. Seemed like things never slowed down.

• We did tie our largest attendance ever today. That is always fun.
• Spoke to students today from a lesson from Rehoboam’s life from 2 Chronicles 10:1-15. It’s so easy to just listen to friends, but past experience is the best predictor of future success. It’s so hard for me to see teenagers choose a path for life that can be avoided just by listening to the right people. (That’s not just a life lesson for teenagers, by the way.)
• We talked some about our plan for student ministry. Students should feel like a part of the church, not an add-on ministry. They can come to church and serve just like adults, but we’ll also start some small groups and an event or two early in 2010.
• Great worship set today. Sabrina did awesome with Revelation Song. Loved it.
• So thankful for everybody who works so hard to volunteer every week. It seems like God reminds me of that every Sunday now, and I hope that never stops.

Have a great week.

It’s not every week that a first-time guest over the age of 60 stumbles into Arrowhead. Hard to believe, I know. So when a gentleman who looked to be around 90 asked to speak to me Sunday morning I was quick to get to him. He introduced himself to me as a pastor from Morristown and told me my grandmother had invited him, which was pretty cool in itself. He told me about his relationship with my grandfather, who passed away when I was 7, including how he used to help him prepare to teach his Sunday School lesson.

He also mentioned that he was legally blind. But, he said, “I still read my Bible.” I was puzzled, but he couldn’t even see well enough to see the look on my face. He said, “I just read it from memory.” Then he proceeded to quote enough of John 1 to give me the idea that he had the whole thing memorized. Then all of the Beatitudes and some of Matthew 6 and 7 to show that he had the whole Sermon on the Mount memorized. The man who brought him said he had the whole Bible memorized. He argued he didn’t. The other man said, “Well, most of it.” He didn’t argue with that. I also forgot to mention that he wept in several places as he quoted.

I’m not suggesting we must legalistically memorize Scripture or that it automatically makes us better Christians, but I am still in awe of a man who prioritized God’s Word and saw his cold heart transformed.

Question: Will my commitment to God’s Word today sustain me if He chooses to take my sight? Lord, help me.

As a part of our Family Life emphasis, we’re hosting an event at Carson-Newman called “God & Sex.” Join us Thursday night, November 19 at 9pm, in the Phoenix Theater. We’ll serve free food, worship with our band, study God’s Word as it relates to sex and purity, and take some time for text Q&A. It should be fun. I’m blushing already.

The wisest man who ever lived was a parent, and wrote a book about it. That’s great news. Today we summarized Solomon’s teaching from the book of Proverbs into 4 areas we should focus our teaching to our kids.

• 1 - Attain wisdom and discipline. 2 - Learn to do what is right, just, and fair. 3 - Listen to the right counsel. 4 - Obtain a Biblical view of sexuality.
• Tomorrow night is Gospel Parenting at Fun Expedition! It’s going to be great.
• Once every few weeks I get to hear from someone that they had almost given up on church and now they look forward to it every week. That keeps me going.
• We highlighed what we do in ArrowheadKids today in the service. I especially love it when we hear that kids drag their parents to church! That’s a huge win. Sara and our volunteers do an incredible job creative a fun environments for our kids to hear about Jesus.
• Acoustic worship today. I love the change-up when we are able to worship that way.
• Haven’t seen exact numbers, but I think we may have set an attendance record today. Tons of kids even in respiratory season!
• Met a man today who has pastored in our town for about 50 years. He’s legally blind but said “I still read my Bible, I just do it from memory.” Wow. I’ll post a couple of lessons I learned today from him this week here on the blog.
• Week 3 of Family Life is next week, and I’m excited already. We’re talking about a kid’s role in learning to listen and follow.

Have a great week!

We’ve said numerous times that we want Arrowhead to be a relational place. We believe in close community inside the church but we also believe we should be pursuing relationships all around us, representing Christ in our community and in individuals’ lives.

On December 4 we’re making an intentional effort to get to know our neighbors. We believe it’s crazy that most of us don’t know the people 3 doors down! And, we’re going to change that.

If you’re interested in hosting a drop-in party at your house, we want to help. We’ll help you financially with food and coffee (or eggnogg if that’s your style!), provide you with invitations, and do anything else you need.

As you invite people over we thought it would be a great idea if we could identify a Christmas need in our community or in the world that your neighborhood could meet together. If you know of a family that needs help with Christmas or an organization we can bless, let me know and we’ll assign those needs to each party/neighborhood and then we can party with a cause.