Loud & Clear

discipleship: an opportunity, not a process

We’ve been having some conversations on staff about how we communicate the different things that happen at Clovis Hills. And there’s a bunch! Growth Groups, Core Classes, Crown Financial Classes, Personal Development Plans, Mission Trips, Super Bowl Breakfasts, Recovery Groups and on and on.

The conversations have centered on our need to change how we communicate these things. It feels like we’re pushing too hard. Instead of offering an opportunity we’ve been trying to sell attendance. And there’s a big difference between those things.

I heard in a recent video cast from a national church leader that we will never adequately defend the accusation we are not discipling people. And I believe it. You see, we can’t MAKE people be disciples. At some point spiritual growth is about each us, individually, pursuing a relationship with Jesus Christ.

As a church, it’s our job to create “irrisitable environments” (to borrow a phrase from another well known church leader) in which if you have any desire to grow, you will.

But getting you there… that’s up to you. You have to want to grow.

We’re not going to just give up trying to get you there! But we are going to try to stop pressuring you and begin inviting you, you to take a next step of faith.

How can we do that?

1. We can demonstrating how God is working in our life personally as staff members.
2. We can provide worship experiences that draw you into a real interaction with God.
3. We can provide messages that help you understand God knows you, loves you and has a plan to make you whole if you’ll follow him.
4. We can provide you opportunities to share your life, blessings and struggles, with other people like you in a committed small group.
5. We can provide you opportunities to stretch your faith in knowledge and action through Classes and Serving Opportunities.

After that? It’s pretty much up to you.

prop 8- the musical

You may find this offensive. You may find it heretical.

But how do you respond? How do you answer the questions?

Watch this and let me know what you think.

new ways of presenting the Bible

There’s been a growing trend with publishers of the Bible. It’s not just a translation you choose when you head to the book store to pick up a Bible. Now you get to pick from a myriad ways it is packaged according to your tastes.

So, I’m interested to know what you think about these two new packaging’s of the Bible.

Are these kinds of packaging wrong? Do they water down or disctract from the message of the Gospel?

Or do they create an opportunity in a possible void, reaching out to people who might not otherwise pick up and read the Bible?

It’s hard to tell true motivations behind the publishers from just an article, but my opinion falls in line with Paul’s in Philippians 1:17-18.

So, what do you think?  Good or bad?

Personally, I want to check out The Book.

protect your life work

In my time with God this morning, I read this verse in Philippians.

“Hold firmly to the word life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.” Phil 2:16 NLT

What struck me about this verse was that it wasn’t a question whether he was going to follow Jesus Christ. Whether or not he was a believer was not the issue. What he cared about was making sure what he did as he followed Christ mattered.

Who wants their life not to matter at the end? Who wants their life work to be useless? But apparently, simply believing and following Christ is not insurance enough to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Consider your life. How can you protect and ensure what you do really matters? The answer is simple but incredibly difficult to live out.

“You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.” v.5

It’s not enough to recognize Jesus was God come to earth to rescue us from our sin, giving us a new life in relationship with him and fulfilling our destiny as his adopted children. That recognition should penetrate every aspect of our lives. As we pursue him, we become like him. In attitude. In character. In action.

If we fail to do that, we may say we follow him. We may even work hard at doing the things he asked us to do and not doing the things he told us not to. But it won’t matter, because his goal for us has nothing to do with just doing things if our heart isn’t being transformed in the process. This isn’t religion, based on actions to earn salvation. It’s the other way around.

“For God is at work within you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” v.13

Are you a Christ-folower? Protect your life’s work and hold firmly to his call and promises. Live every moment in surrender to him. Take on his attitude of humility. Put others ahead of yourself. Become less when you could be more.

He will give you the desire and the power to do these things, if you let him. He said he would.

what if starbucks marketed like the church?

Sometimes, it takes looking at what we’re doing through a different lens to expose who we’re really talking to.

what if we did live q&a every week?

So this series has been amazing. You can learn a lot about a culture when you invite them to ask anything and remain anonymous. I think we’ve learned more about our church through this series than any poll, survey or study we’ve ever done.

But even more so, the live Q&A has been amazing. To be able to teach on a subject and give people the opportunity to ask questions about what they just heard is amazing. Instant feedback. Absolute clarity. Which got me thinking…

What if we had a live Q&A with every service, every series? Every time you came to church you knew that you’d have the opportunity to get ask the pastor what he meant by X or how you could apply X to your unique situation?

Our culture demands interaction and anonymity. It craves to be noticed but protected in safety. It wants real answers without the stigma of perception.

Live Q&A, every service. Every series.

I don’t think there’s a church anywhere that’s doing this. Like us, some may do it occasionally.  Could we be the first? It’s not up to me, but I think it could be amazing.

What do you think?

ask anything

I’m super stoked about this.

The church at large has a bad reputation and history of being a place where you shouldn’t ask questions. Not Clovis Hills.

We’ve done services like this throughout our history, where people could ask questions during the message and we’d answer them live at the end. No prep time, just Pastor Steve on the spot.

Well, inspired by what some other churches have done, we’re taking that to the next level. We’re going to do an entire series entirely based on the questions people want to ask the church.

So here’s the deal. If you don’t go to church, have a bone to pick with the church or God, or feel the church has let you down, go to askanything.clovishills.com and ask your question.

It’s completely anonymous. We’re going to spend the month of October answering the questions you ask. THEN, we’re going to take more questions during the service and answer them live at the end.

So go ahead. What do you want to ask? askanything.clovishills.com

Amazing Grace

I just walked into the green room from the auditorium where I got the rare opportunity to just be a volunteer during the Lord’s Supper. We’ve done this many different ways. Today, we had people come in rows forward to receive the elements. As each person pick up the cup, a volunteer  spoke a blessing about Christ’s sacrifice for us and how he has forgiven our sins.

I watched row after row of our people come forward. And I was wrecked. God completely overwhelmed me with how much he loved each person individually. And each person, through this act, was signifying their surrender to God, recognizing and accepting his gift of forgiveness. I watched families come through, generations of a legacy of following Christ. Fathers leading sons, mother’s their daughters.

What an amazing God we have. What an amazing church who loves him. What an honor I get to be a part of a place where God changes lives.

Leadership Summit favorite quotes

The Leadership Summit was awesome.  Here’s some of my favorite quotes:

Gary Haugen, CEO & Founder of International Justice Mission
“Just because I am leading, and people are following doesn’t mean I am leading them in things that matter.”

“Are Jesus and I really interested in the same things?”

“What’s God’s plan for making it believable that he is good? We are the plan. There’s no other plan.”

“People will take care for themselves the work that is easy and fun. Leaders must lead in the areas that feel frightening and really difficult.”

“Jesus did not come to make us safe. He came to make us brave.”

Bill George, Harvard Business School professor & former CEO
“People who fail, don’t fail to lead others. They fail to lead themselves.”

Wendy Kopp, Founder of Teach for America
“It’s your personal conviction in this that enables you to ask people to sacrifice to achieve the vision.”

“We channel the greatest future leaders against our greatest social injustice.”

John Burke, Gateway Community Church lead pastor
“The religious leaders didn’t like Jesus’ messy ministry. They wanted it to look clean on the outside.”

“Are we leading others to look at people through the eyes of grace?”

“Spiritual growth is scandalously easy. A child can do it. Are you growing your relationship with God?”

“Seekers aren’t opposed to truth… But what they are opposed to is arrogance.”

Craig Groeschel, LifeChurch.tv lead pastor
“You have everything you need to accomplish what God wants you to. Not having what YOU think you need makes you look for the thing GOD thinks you need to accomplish his will.”

“People say failure is not an option. I agree. Failure is a necessity.”

“You are not what people say of you. You are a child of God, gifted by God and led by God to have everything you need to do what God put you here to do.”

Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship Ministries Founder & prolific author
“Stop blaming the culture when everything goes wrong.”

“Culture is nothing more than religion incarnate.”

“We don’t impose, we propose.”

Catherine Rohr, Prison Entrepreneurship Program CEO & Founder
“I felt compelled to give them a solution where they had no option to fail when they got out.”

“My prayer was simple. ‘Bring it on, God. Bring it on.’”

“God doesn’t really need me. He just needs me to follow instructions.”

“I sacrifice a lot of privacy for accountability. And it’s worth it.”

“These guys understand what it is to be willing to die for something. And that does something special to our culture.”

“This isn’t about pity. We hope this is about compassion. Suffering with people and taking them to the next level.”

Mother Teresa’s commitments she made to God and never compromised:

• Say yes to God in everything.
• Respond to God promptly.
• Refuse God nothing.
• Seek to love God as he has never been loved before.

Clovis Hills: a redeeming church

We say it alot around here. There’s a church for everyone. No matter your dress style, worship preference, beverage necessity or preferred baptism method, there’s a church somewhere that fits you.

But what about Clovis Hills? Who do we fit? What’s our uniqueness?

Pastor Steve and I had a telephone interview this week with the Willow Creek Association. As we talked about our history, defining moments, biggest failures and most important learnings, one thing kept coming around.  We are a redeeming church.

I can tell you story after story of people who’ve come to Clovis Hills wounded, a jerk, abandoned, burned out, a snob or disconnected. We’ve seen marriages fall apart and end in divorce, yet both continue to attend here. We seen folks with huge abuses in their past come to health and be restored to life and ministry. We’ve had guys who were the meanest, nastiest guys you’d ever run into transform into the nicest, loving-est guys you could imagine. Totally different people! I still can’t believe it sometimes the transformation that happens around here.

Pastor Steve even once started a special growth group he called the X-Min (similar to the comic name) that was made up of about a dozen ex-pastors attending Clovis Hills. Some had simply burned out. Others made personal mistakes that cost them their positions.

I’ve always wondered where these guys went after they stepped down from ministry, especially those in disgrace. Apparently, they come to Clovis Hills. Here they are anonymous, just themselves and rediscover God’s love, grace and purpose for their lives. They’re in growth groups, in ministry teams (some are greeters!), and other areas. It’s amazing to me.

On September 7, we’re starting a message series called Redeeming Grace. One of these pastors is going to co-teach with Steve for two of those weeks, sharing his own story about his fall and his restoration. It’s going to be an amazing series!

Pastor Steve has said from the beginning Clovis Hills is about Changed Lives. And while some staff including myself, and perhaps even you, have managed to create some image in our own minds of what we think Clovis Hills should look like and be, and have wondered sometimes at why we aren’t everything we wished, Clovis Hills is still a place where life change happens.

So who are we? What’s our identity, vision and uniqueness?  We’re the place the broken, the bruised and the battered find refuge, God’s grace and purpose for their lives. What an awesome place to be!

Now let me clarify. Some will think that this shouldn’t qualify as a uniqueness. After all, isn’t that every church’s mission? Well, yes and no. My parents church is a missional church. Seekers don’t go to their church really. But they are constantly doing community projects, sending missionaries, equipping leaders. That’s their uniqueness. Other churches are discipling churches. Or worshipping churches. God seems to gift churches as uniquely as he does people.

Every believer and church should follow the Great Commandment (love God & people) and the Great Commission (teach them to follow Jesus). HOW they accomplish that exactly is part of their uniqueness.

If Clovis Hills isn’t your church home, what is your church’s uniqueness?