Celebrate Recovery

I believe the vision that God has given me from the beginning for this church is that it is a place for the broken/hurting people. The broken and hurting pretty much include everybody. We want the people that nobody else wants. We want the folks who are burned out on "religion." God has made it obvious to me that we need to have a recovery component to our church. Many of the people we have been meeting are in recovery or are in need of recovery. My personal trainer buddy, Scott have been talking about starting Celebrate Recovery. The very day we were talking about it, my new friend, Steve who has been sober/drug free for the past seven months brought up Celebrate Recovery as well. Steve knows that we are starting a church and said that he would help us start one. In fact, Steve said that he has a few friends that would probably come. Please pray for this future ministry.

Neighborhood Association

Last Friday we had about 5 new visitors and one gentleman who showed up was somebody that none of us invited.  Charlie saw the sign in the front yard and ended up in the backyard.  Come to find out Charlie is the vice president of the neighborhood association.  He had seen the sign in the past and heard about some of the things that were taking place.  Charlie wants me to help him out with starting the neighborhood association.  We started kicking around ideas that very night.  Charlie stayed around after we talked and played cornhole.  He is going to come back next week and I wouldn't be surprised if he invites others with him.  This is exactly the type of impact we want to make.

The Shrieking Shack

A few Fridays ago, Darren and Lauren, who live near the house, were hosting one of their rock shows.  In the past they have fit about 70 people in the "shrieking shack."  They get local bands and out of town acts to come and play.  Our friend Joseph, who is on our launch team, went to Darren and Lauren's to introduce himself.  Before you know it he was on the schedule to play at their house a few weeks later.  I don't think Darren and Lauren are professing Christians but the neat thing is they are inviting people to come and eat at our house because some Fridays we have a lot of leftovers.  They invited a guy named Aaron and a few of his friends.  Aaron seemed interested in what we are doing and ended up showing up the following week!  God is sending us the missionaries we need to engage in this work.

Gatorade In The Park

The other Saturday a few of us went out to Woodland Park to meet people.  We handed out bottled Gatorades this time instead of iced coffee.  We engaged about 20 people, conducted surveys and invited them to our Friday night dinners.  It seems like every time we do this we are learning more about the diversity of our area.  There are so many different types of people that we are engaging at the park.  Of all the surveys we have done up until this point we have found that at little more than half the area is unchurched or has not had any church involvement within the past year.  I know Lexington has plenty of churches but they're are more than an enough souls to save.  We must be willing to go out as laborers into the harvest field and pray that God would show us who the harvest is, so that we can identify them.

Zeppelin

A few weeks ago while working out Andrew and I met a guy named Joe.  I had met Joe last year but hadn't seen him in a while.  Andrew and Joe struck up a conversation because of Joe's Zeppelin tattoo.  I was going to invite him to the dinner but decided to wait and ask him a few days later.  Joe is a bartender at a "nightclub."  A few nights later Andrew and I out decided to go on a late night rendezvous to the Hamburg Wal-Mart around 11:30pm.   While we were walking down an aisle we ran smack into none other than Joe.  I got his number and invited him to the dinner.  Andrew and I walked out of Wal-Mart amazed at what God is doing in our midst!

Our Theme Song

One Friday night after dinner my friend Travis was amazed at the types of people God is bringing to us. Travis admires the vision of our church. Travis pointed me to a song that he believes captures what we are trying to do.

"Come All You Weary" by Thrice

Come all you weary with your heavy loads
Lay down your burdens find rest for your souls
Cause my yoke is easy and my burden is kind
I’ll take yours upon me and you can take mine

Come all you weary move through the earth
Surrounded by rest stones and kicked out of church
A couple of loaves sit down at my feet
Lend me your ears and break bread with me

Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Find rest for your souls
(By the rest stones)

Come all you weary, crippled you lay
I’ll help you along you can lay down your canes
We’ve got a long way to go but we’ll travel as friends
The lights growing bright further on towards the end

Our Biggest Dinner!

This past Friday night we had our biggest dinner. All during the week leading up to Friday I felt like we were going to have a huge turnout. As usual, the team has been coming to the house about an hour early to pray, prepare the food, and set up. Pedro had the idea of getting a few more tables and lining them up. We had three big tables lined up from end to end. We had about 28 chairs. We everybody started showing up I knew we wouldn’t have enough chairs so I stood the whole time along with a few people from the team. We thought there was a possibility of running low on food but several people brought desserts (My neighbor Jimmy came over and brought his blueberry cobbler), salads, and Italian meats (from Enza’s Italian restaurant). By the end of the night we had 34 people who attended the dinner and 12 of them were first-time guests! It was our biggest turnout with a few regulars who were missing which we could have easily had 40 people. I am thankful for a team who is willing to go out and invite people to come. It was awesome to see people conversing, playing corn hole, and hanging out around the fire. This presents a good problem to have. If we were rained out there would have been no way to fit everybody in the house. We might need to move the dinners to a bigger space when it rains etc. Please pray for guidance in this area. We are talking about having our launch service in January of 09. Please pray for space, ministry leaders, worship leaders, and more members added to our launch team.

Divine Appointment

I hung out with a friend last night and we decided to go to Barnes and Noble. I was looking at some magazines when I ran smack into a guy named Chris. Chris and I first met about 4 years ago when I worked for GNC. Chris taught me so much about sales that he helped me become one of the top sales people in the store. I loved working for GNC because it was on outlet from living in Wilmore. Chris was raised catholic but was really turned off by the church. We got along because we loved working out and we both had a military background. Chris would drive all the way to Wilmore and we would workout together. We had some great talks and enjoyed playing around. I lost connection with him after I left GNC and spent the summer at Rhode Island/North Carolina for some training. We never connected again because we were so busy and in different stages of life. So you can imagine how excited I was to see him and tell him about the new church that is being started. I believe Chris is somebody that will not only come to the dinners but also play apart in the church.

Jimmy's Reading The Bible!

It has been great to get to know my neighbor Jimmy. Jimmy has shared a lot of his story with me. Jimmy says that he believes in God and that God saved his life. However he doesn’t what to get caught up in “religion.” He has done almost everything but come to our Friday night dinners. Jimmy has stood in his backyard and talked across the fence to a few people and myself, he has come over late at night to pick some leftovers and leave, but he has never stayed. This past Friday night he made catfish for the whole crew. Again, he didn’t stay but he made a meal for everybody else. I thank him for what he did and gave him a Bible that he wanted as a way to thank him. I gave it to him one afternoon this past week. That very evening he was on his porch reading it! The next morning Brady came over because we have going through the Pastoral Epistles together. We planned on doing some visits that morning. For some reason I told Brady that we were suppose to visit Jimmy. Within the next ten minutes Jimmy called me. Needless to say, Brady and I went to hang out with him on the porch (this is where Jimmy feels the most comfortable talking). Instead of starting with the Gospels, he started at the beginning of the Bible with Genesis. He had already read the first 18 chapters in less than a day! I was impressed. He has never really read the Bible in his life. After grilling me with questions about the Old Testament (I wish Pedro was there) we talked about him coming to dinner. I told him that we want a comfortable atmosphere for people to walk into who are afraid/turned off going into a church. After hearing that Jimmy told me he would check it out. Please continue to pray for him!

Dinner Conversations

A few weeks ago our Friday night dinner lasted longer than usual. A few people hung out after dinner and stayed till about 11:30pm. The topics varied from humor to more serious talks about Jesus. Some of us in the crowd were faithful Christians, nominal Christians, and atheists. It was the first time in our dinners where people started asking interesting questions about Jesus. Not only people who don’t have faith in Christ but those who have made a commitment but are seeking deeper understanding. I was able to tell the person who is an atheist that I was praying for him and that God is at work in his life. As I was telling him that his ears perked up and I could tell something I said got to him. He asked me why I thought God was at work in his life and it gave me an opportunity to point out blessings but how a community of people has surrounded him in love. The questions raised that night in our circle were tough questions…”how do you know that Jesus is the only way?” or “What makes Christianity right and other religions wrong?” I think these types of questions trouble people, people who even are Christians and it was awesome to have an environment that made people comfortable.