confessions of a church planter

Jacob Burson wants to know: Can someone be a committed Christian and not serve in the local church?

Short Answer: NO

Now let me explain! First, I think it’s funny that we use the term “committed” to describe Christianity. The first Christians were being insulted. In Scripture, the word “Christian” isn’t used that often and when it is, it’s derogatory. It was meant to describe one who is a slave to Christ. To be Christian means to be committed. It means a person’s life is owned by Jesus! Second, if you’re a slave to Christ, then you do what Christ did. If there’s one thing that Christ did, it was serve!

In John 13, Jesus is having his last real hang-time with the disciples before he dies.  John records him as saying that he wants to show them the greatest extent of his love.  He wants them to know the fullest measure of his love.  One of the most interesting things about that chapter is that Jesus clearly wants to show the extent of his love to those who are his.  How does he do it?  He washes the disciples’ feet.  Now, that was a task reserved for hired slaves.  It’s clear Jesus is making a huge point.  Slave-like service=Fullest Measure of Love.  Now check this: “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.  I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.  I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”  That’s a quote from Jesus if you didn’t catch it!  It’s pretty clearly that when it comes to those who are HIS, we’re called to serve one another with radical love.  At our church over the summer, I challenged people to out-serve one another on Sunday mornings!  Not that we need to, but let’s move from Jesus to Paul.

Paul says that each person who belongs to Jesus has at least one spiritual gift and that gift is to be used for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7).  Spiritual gifts are given for the building-up of the Church.  If we aren’t serving within the Church, then we’re neglecting our spiritual giftedness.  If we’re neglecting our spiritual giftedness, we’re neglecting the Holy Spirit, which is the same Spirit in Christ.  So, bottom line is that we’d be neglecting Jesus Christ.    One last thing: Paul says that we’re all members of the same body, the body of Christ.  As a member of the body of Christ, we belong to each other.  If you’re reading this blog and you’re a follower of Jesus, I belong to you!  Now before you go crazy on that one, remember, you belong to me too!  If one part of the body neglects it’s role, the whole body suffers.

*There’s one exception to this answer: The person who has just given his/her heart to Jesus Christ.

Can a person be an uncommitted Christian?  Nope.  Can a person be a committed Christian and not serve?  NOPE!

Tomorrow’s Blog:  Kent asked “Why Women Can’t Serve as Pastors (or can they)?”

Need to confess?

Confession: All week I had a strong feeling that someone or someones were going to accept Jesus at The Vine this week. Add that to the fact that I asked our staff to pray earnestly for the salvation of folks who don’t know Jesus Christ, and I was completely stoked about this morning. Turns out that the prompting and the prayers were dead-on. Our serve teams at The Vine are ridiculous. We gathered at 9:00 for prayer and asked them to pray right there and throughout the morning for people who don’t know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Well, drum roll please…at least four people recognized that they made a decision to place faith in Jesus Christ. That’s awesome! That’s why we exist! That’s why we wanted to build-out a bigger facility!

The second cool thing is that at the 11:00 service we had to bring out more chairs. That’s two weeks in a row. Just to be clear, we didn’t move back the chairs that we moved out last week. So, that means we had more people show up this week at 11:00 than we did last week. Ridiculous. If you go to The Vine, keep it up. If you haven’t been to The Vine, come and check-it-out! It’ll be worth your time I promise.

While I’m certainly fired up about what’s been going on at The Vine, I’m also fired up about what’s going on at a number of churches recently. One of my dear friends (that sounds weird) is a pastor at 12Stone. They’re just down the street from us. Here’s a quote from his twitter: “My fav way to preach is soaking wet from baptizing people the service before. Today was spontaneous goodness all over.” Apparently, over 300 folks were baptized today. What? That’s ridiculously awesome. Keep it up Kevin and 12Stone.

Add that to the people who are going to be baptized at The Vine next week and that’s a good addition to the Kingdom of God!

Need to confess?

Confession: I felt like we just birthed another church. By the way, planting a church is not an accurate term for it. Birthing is a more appropriate description. Planting, I could do by myself. Birthing requires the help of a whole lot of people. Well, that’s what happened the first-go-round and that’s what happened on Sunday. If you haven’t heard, The Vine opened a new, 10000 sqft facility. Our launch team was about 3 times the size of our original launch team, and we were better equipped for it. My wife, who also doubles as Kidzu Director, had an amazing team of folks working almost non-stop for 2 weeks to pull-off an amazing kid’s experience. In fact, here’s a picture of the worship taking place there on Sunday:

The crazy thing about Kidzu is that we double the amount of kids in one week! All I know is that my kids loved it. One woman who filled-out a first-time guest survey said that her best impression was that her 7-year-old wanted to return! That’s awesome.

We actually double the amount of adults worshipping with us as well. We had a ton of first-time guests worshipping with us. Their overwhelming first impression was the amount of greeters and the quality of being greeted! That’s what I love to hear. One of the things that I harped on before we launched was the theme of hospitality to the foreigner that is prevalent throughout Scripture. Well, looks like we had that in place on Sunday. Thanks to all who served in Guest Services. One lady responded on the survey by saying that she was blown away by both the hospitality and the awesome coffee. Put those two things together and you’ve got a winning combination. The actual worship experience was great too! The amazing thing is that the “best is yet to come.”

That night, the new facility was crawling with teenagers! They got to enjoy the new blu-ray lounge. I wish I had a picture to show you b/c it was legit. Tucker preached a funeral for “Mr. Clique.” He was hilarious and it drove home Gus’ point that cliques aren’t acceptable in Christ. I’ll add to Gus’ message and spin Colossians 3:11 by saying, “Here there is no {clique}, but Christ is all and in all.”

Oh yeh, the best thing that took place on Sunday was that a young woman gave her life to Christ! That’s what this is all about.

As I’ve stated in my previous posts, a person, a church, and a nation cannot predict revival nor produce revival. Only God breathing a new breath of His Spirit can produce revival or restoration to life. We can, however, set our sails to catch the wind of heaven or open the airway to receive that new breath! The last post dealt with prayer. In this post I want to deal with confession. I know that’s everyone’s favorite subject. It’s certainly mine! Well, I confess, I just lied. Confession is tough, but as Charles Finney said, “a revival is near when Christians begin to confess their sins to one another.”

Confession is a tricky subject. Some Catholics love the discipline. Some former Catholics despise it. Some Protestants think that it’s only something you do once and your ticket is punched to heaven. Others, view it as a healthy discipline of accountability and important for healing. That’s how I see it. I believe that if I confess my sins to God, God is the only one who can forgive me (1 John 1:9). Not only does God forgive me, but he cleanses. However, I also believe that when I confess my sins to another Christ-follower and he prays for me, then healing takes place (James 5:16). That’s why most Wednesdays you’ll see me with a few other guys drinking coffee and confession. Hey, coffee and confession-that’s a good combination. When it comes to confession, we’re responsible for confession about 5 specific areas:

1. Walk with Christ-We share how we’re doing in the areas of prayer and Bible study. Usually this is an indicator of how much we’re going to have to confess concerning the other four areas.

2. Diet/Exercise-Christ calls us to complete stewardship, which includes our bodies.

3. Thought life-If there’s anything that trips-up men more than anything else, it’s their thought life. So many pastors lose ministry b/c of adultery or sexual immorality. A lot of people think it starts there, but it actually starts with one’s thoughts. So, whether it’s a computer screen or someone live and in person, we need to capture all thoughts captive for Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Your head always directs your feet!

4. Marriage-Are we loving our wives like Christ loved the Church? That’s a hard question b/c sometimes we (pastors) neglect our wife for the church. That’s backwards, isn’t it. Christ died for the Church so my marriage doesn’t have to (dude, that’s good and if you quote that, please give me credit). None of the guys in my group want to lose our marriages to gain a few more in the church.

5. Church-Are we serving the churches we serve? That’s a good question. It’d be easy for churches to end up serving their pastors, but we’re called to do the opposite. Your definition of serving might be different than mine, but in principle, pastors are called to serve their churches. I just read about a church building/land in Decatur being sold for $17 million. The reason it was sold is b/c the pastor was being served by the church (and it wasn’t healthy service either), not the other way around.

If you can establish some type of honest confession with someone who is trustworthy and be specific in your confession, you’re setting your sails for the wind of heaven. Watch revival come!