Agreeing to Disagree

How often do we agree to disagree and get to the real work at hand?

Something that has been on my mind, is our lack of unity in the American Church. Non-church people don't care if we are pre-millenial or post-millenial, Armenian or Calvin, denominational or non-denominational, they want to know do we imitate Christ in real life or not. That's the bottom line for many.

Let's put aside the rhetoric and get busy doing the kingdom work.

What is the kingdom work?

To share Jesus with the world and bring them into the kingdom. To do this I have a great list of contacts, almost everyone who gets our newsletter might be on the list. I know people who work in a great variety of jobs, with various knowledge bases, and they know people. I have a friend who put together a great outreach with the Kawaski motorcross guys, because that's where he works. Another person I knows, fixes computers just by speaking in Chinese to them (I'm kidding!). There are much smaller churches out there, with pastors who don't have a full rolodex or maybe deep pockets. What are they to do?

I think a database of people and what they have to further the kingdom work would be a great help. It could be something simple:
Joe can fix any car, 555-5555
Sue can type flawlessly at 150 wpm, 555-4444
Tom is a retired electrician, 555-3333.
One assumption that we should make is that requesting person cover expenses if applicable, unless a professional service is rendered under contract (it gets messy fast).

Actually this needs to start with a web designer, because I don't know the best way to build this list. I could do it in Excell or a chart on a web page, but there are better methods. I'm not a programmer. Somebody interested in helping? Somebody looking for a resource?

A New School Year, A New Beginning

To me, the fall is the time to start new things. The ministry calendar follows the school calendar. Implementing changes is a progressive thing, a good thing most of the time and when the kids start a new school year, a great time to change things in ministry to kids (teens & children).

As we head into the fall, we are looking forward to Joshua Revolution's Niagara 2007. A multi-ethnic, -cultural, -denominational, -national conference where teens meet the God. My wife and I took 7 teens in 2005 to the conference and they came back changed. God grew those seven into more and they have been reaching the neighborhood around the church. This year, I'm hoping to take even more teens and some other chaperones as well.

The big thing on the radar screen is Joshua Revolution. Their theme is Exodus: "Let my people go!" God is in the business of setting us free: free from the world, from bondage, from sin.

Its time for a new beginning. Even our church is going through a new beginning: a new senior pastor. Where we go as a church has still to be seen, but we have taken the first steps as God directs.