Who's accountable?

Caroline and I have been participating in small group meetings in our home that are sponsored by our church.    These group meetings give members a chance to get to know each other better, learn more about Jesus and pray for each other.  Our last group was made up of about 12 men and women.  Our church is starting a new program that will encourage men to meet with other men, and women with other women in group of only two or three.  These groups are designed to promote more sharing and higher intimacy and accountability.  I am excited that I will be meeting with two other men next Tuesday morning.  If you have experience with a similar group that you would like to share, please feel free to post or send me a private message.

Who’s the hero?

With all the chatter this week about heroes, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to post my own entry.  I love music, and these two superstars singing about a hero make me happy.  Some of the lyrics hit home with me.  “I don’t want to be your hero.  I want to fight like everyone else.”  “Your masquerade - I don’t wanna be a part of your parade.”  Very timely.  Very true.  Please excuse the advertising up front.  When 11 million people want to see you, somebody needs to make a buck.  Nathan and Eva, thanks for being my kind of heroes.

Cultivating the vine

I have been attending The Vine Church in Braselton for the past 7 years.  I have loved worshiping under the leadership of David Walters, our teaching pastor, and Jared Strong, our worship pastor.  They are young, full of energy and full of the holy spirit.  I have watched the church grow under their care.   David announced last week that we would be adding a second campus to our church.  The building is located immediately adjacent to Flowery Branch High School on Spout Springs Road.  The two campuses will have similar services, but we will be adding a second teaching pastor that will share responsibilities with David at both locations.  David has encouraged us to pray for the people that will serve at the church in preparation for those that will meet Jesus there for the first time and to pray for those that already know him and will learn to love him more.  I am asking for your prayers for all that God has planned to do there.

A soldier’s prayer

I feel fortunate that I have not been directly impacted by the heartbreak of losing a loved one who is serving in the armed forces.  I  cannot imagine the pain that would bring.  If that were to happen, I hope that I could have some since that that person died doing what they loved and what they felt called to do.  But, I can only imagine that.  For those of you that have suffered that loss, I pray today that your heart would be healed from the sorrow of your loss and that your memories of him/her would be full of joy.  I found this soldier’s prayer online and it gave me a glimpse of something to hope for in each one that is currently in service.  Click here for the prayer.

SkyFall

In case you were hoping for another James Bond movie review, sorry for the fake-out.    Pew Research Center makes a living doing surveys of what is going on in churches.  They released some findings this week that the sky is falling for Christianity and reported an 8% decline over the last 7 years in people claiming to be Christians.  That certainly sounds like something for all of our churches to be worried about.  Seeing the growth at my church in Braselton and the growth of other churches around the country, the statistic surprised and concerned me.  I was happy to find this counter point by Ed Stetzer which was published in USA Today and sure hope that he knows what he is talking about.  In case you don’t have time to read the full article, his theory is that people who were raised in a Christian home that used to check the “Christian” box on surveys, are now checking the “None” box, indicating that they are not really practicing any religion.    The percentage of people going to church has actually remained fairly stable with the number of people identifying themselves as evangelicals increasing by 2.4 million people.  All of the survey questions pale in importance to the one question that matters the most: “What am I doing to become more like Jesus today?”

Gathering The Troops

For those of you that follow my blog at SpotOnTheLake, you know that our team loves the lake and loves our work.  With my son, Michael, working with me, it makes it that much harder to get our whole family together for some down time.  Last week, all of us made it down to Daytona for some time together without work (mostly).   Janet did an amazing job keeping the business thriving while we were gone.  The Atlantic offered us the opportunity to try surfing on real waves (very limited success) instead of on a wake behind a boat.    Of course there was plenty of fried seafood, books and some board games.  Most of all, it was just fun having everybody together with time to relax and no schedules.  Caroline didn’t make the photo shown.  She was probably up in the condo making sure that everything was perfect for us before making her way down to the beach.  I love that we have kids and grandkids that love being together.  I understand that is not a given these days.

Toy Stories

Almost everyone has seen or heard of the Disney series of movies featuring a young boy, Andy, and his assortment of toys which come to life to help protect Andy and themselves from a world full of danger.  I was reminded of the movies this week as our small group continues with CS Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity. Towards the end of the book, CS Lewis tells a similar story. The boy, who I will call Andy, has a collection of tin soldiers that one day come to life, but their life is conflicted because they cannot understand the new world into which they have been born. They reject the feel of their soft flesh and yearn for the strength of their armor.  Andy sees their struggle. His love for the new creatures is unimaginable.  He wants them to know all that the new world has to offer them, and he wants them to love him in return. But the only way for him to do that is for him to become one of them. The gut-wrenching part is that Andy knows that some of the tin soldiers will reject him and likely kill him. But out of his love for them, he goes anyway. The toy story plays out as expected.  Many of the tin soldiers reject all that Andy has to tell them about the new world, and they conspire to kill him, and succeed. But a small group of soldiers believe, understand and love Andy. And from that moment on, they become a sort of secret society, infected by the knowledge of what Andy has explained to them, with their only mission being to tell everyone they know about the new world that they were meant for.