spotaneous declaration of a church planter

On August 16, I will be running in my first rugged man triathlon. My teammates are of course Jonathan and Andrew. We will be racing in downtown Pittsburgh. We will bike 12 miles, run 6 and paddle 2 miles on the Monongahela River. I have started training and am really enjoying it. You can follow my training regime by clicking on the urban race tab above. The biking part is not going to be a problem. That is my favorite part. The running is going to be a little more difficult. Frankly, I hate running, but I am going to suck it up. After all, its all about the team. I am also excited to be doing this with my brothers. If there is anyone out there who is in pretty good shape and would like to race with us, please let us know. We are looking for a fourth person. You can go here to get more details on the race.

Today, we started a new four part series called CONTENTMENT! We are looking at Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Great study! Today, we looked at Chapter one and saw how he was content even while in chains! We had 3 first time guests and 6 second time guests. Worship rocked as we had our three person band back in place. They did an amazing job. People were excited to be there and I loved preaching on not allowing our current circumstances to dictate our mood, but seeking to find contentment through Christ! We also had a membership class, work day at Andrews and our small group. Did I mention I love pastoring LIFE POINT. Talking through who we are and what makes us Life Point, really reminded me of how cool it is to be a church planter. (tough but awesome!) One great thing about where we are now is the fact that I don’t know everything that is going on nor have my hand in everything! Very cool to finally be in this state as a church. Stuff just gets done. God is absolutely awesome to us and I just want to thank the many of you who are praying for us to plant this church!

I swear I didn’t read this post by Ben Arment until after I wrote my last post. Check it out! It is a must read for all church planters, sending pastors, supporting church pastors and future church planters!

Jeremiah, Micah and I just finished planting some grass seed. You know the hardest thing was preparing the soil. Some of the soil was rock hard and needed some serious tilling. Just like Church Planting. Preparing the soil might be the one of the hardest things, especially in areas where there seems to be resistance. May we remember what our job is, tilling, sowing, watering. God always gives the increase!

Please pray for our church and our leadership team as we explore new options. We are in desperate need for more children’s area. The hotel wants to charge us almost twice what we are paying now for an additional room (very small). Oh how I love walking by faith. God has something in store. I know he will make something happen. Pray for me as I go and talk to the hotel management as well as explore other options.

Ben Arment hit the nail on the head in this post 

Having a girl is the sweetest. Thought I would share a couple of pics of her. She is the prettiest girl I have ever seen! (I am biased)

Well, as you can tell with the number of recent posts about CR, I have been totally consumed by it. City Reach taught me a few things and I would love to share them:

1-The gospel message still has power so just share it! Why do we become complacent in our faith. How can the greatest story ever told stop being the greatest story we tell? IT DOES!

2-I would take the students and leaders in the ABA with me anywhere and work with them. They are some of the best I have ever worked with. I mean that! The ABA gets trashed enough. Two thumbs up for our associated work. We live in an area with only three churches close by. I love the ABA!

3-I love WAPA and the people who live here.

4-Greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city

5-Being point man for CR is a crazy job, but I loved it! My phone rang off the hook! But it was cool.

6-Sports camp and the students who work with the kids have a huge impact on their lives. The conversations I have had with the parents of the kids who attended our sports camp was nothing but great!

7-Video Camp is a great way to reach a group of students we have never reached.

8-God blesses in the ways he choses. I think I know the areas through which God is going to grow Life Point, but he has his own plan!

9-I miss my friends from the south specifically Arkansas and Texas. I hung out with Tony Harp all week and he is the kindest most polite man I have ever been around. Its contagious.

10-CR has a huge impact on the local church!

Well, we had a great day yesterday. God brought 10 first time guests and we had the most people we have ever had at Life Point. We had 40 people.  It appears that God is going to bring the contacts from CR in slow increments, which I am O.K. with. I preached from Jeremiah 18 about the potter and the clay. Mark Clements preached about the potter from Isaiah one night during CR and it struck a chord with me. I actually bought some clay, a round board and a real clay jug. Everyone seemed to enjoy the service! We sat out fifty chairs and had to add five more at the last minute because all the rows were filled up (we don’t ever expect anyone to sit in the front, especially first time guests). God has some sweet things in store for Life Point. It is amazing to see God using people from all of the nation (City Reachers) to make it happen. Today we will begin making about 65 follow up visits from CR. The Sunday after CR was pretty sweet. Thanks God for bringing new people to Life Point. Please add them to our body!

The final day of City Reach was a great day. Started off the day by going to Sports Camp to watch the football game. While I was there, I shared the gospel with a student and a kids and lead one to Christ. Pretty sweet! Those students worked really hard sharing the gospel with the kids. What was truly amazing was how much the guy I lead to Christ new about Jesus and the cross. It was everything he had learned the entire week. Very proud of all the leaders and students who worked with them. Major props to Jason Sheffstall and Keith Lybrand for running a sweet camp.

I then had to run a bunch of erronds before lunch. Everyone had my number and since I was point man, I where everything was and got to take care of a lot of things. I definitely enjoyed it!

After lunch I went to car wash where I was able to talk to people while their cars were being washed. Pretty cool experience. No one every expects to get a free car wash. When they say there is nothing free in life, you say OH BUT THEIR IS! Salvation is free. The bill has been paid. I think I shared the gospel with at least 5 people. Awesome!

After we did follow ups from 4:30-5:30, I rushed over to the soccer fields to coach Jeremiah’s game! After the game I rushed home, ate supper and ran over to the worship service. The service was great. Mark Clements did a great job! David Story and CO. did a phenomenal job with worship.

After the service CR did some pretty amazing things for LIFE POINT:

1-Gave our wives, Allison and Renee five hours of free pampering and messages. (we couldn’t do this without our wives)

2-Prayed over our entire church. SWEET!

3-Took up a phat offering totaling $1650 to help our church - YOU GUYS ROCK

Thursday came way too fast. Thanks to everyone. I will post one more CR post on things that I learned and how I was impacted by the event!