Announcements from this past Sunday's worship at OMPC

If you happened to miss this past Sunday at Oak Mountain, then you missed this explanation as to why we are now doing all worship announcements by video.

And if you like that, then here are the video announcements from this past Sunday's worship service.

Utilizing people's gifts and abilities in all areas of creation for the glory of God. Gotta' love it!

Scott Roley on the money

Scott Roley is the Senior Pastor at Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN. Pretty cool thoughts. The money quote for me?

"There is nothing wrong with us sharing the good news, but when it becomes something that is a manipulative tool to force someone to think like I think, then I don't think that's Christianity."

Many "church folks" I think would (sadly) disagree with this statement at first blush. But this simply reveals our misconception that Christianity is merely a slight adjustment of a persons moral values. Christianity is not moral philosophy or behavioral-ism.

Good stuff for us to wrestle with.

Sometimes, it gets complicated.

I was over at a friend’s home in our neighborhood recently for a small social gathering. This family, over the past year, has actually become some of our closest friends in the community. Our kids play together. We eat meals together. We attend local events and concerts together. We just enjoy being together. It is actually kind of a unique deal in that I am a pastor and this family does not attend our church. This family actually does not attend any church.

Part of my role, my calling in my job here at Oak Mountain is to encourage and to help people think through aspects of our calling as believers, as followers of Jesus Christ to build relationships with non-Christians for the sake of the gospel. Honestly, I love this part of my job. I get totally fired up by watching people catch a vision for their neighborhoods or their communities and coming up with creative ways to integrate the gospel into their everyday lives and interactions. I “heart” non-Christians.

I was reminded, however, at this recent friendly gathering of neighbors, the majority of whom would likely feel more than a bit uncomfortable walking into any church, of at least one of the reasons why so few us who claim to follow Christ do this “relationship with nonbelievers” thing well. It is simply so much easier at times to surround oneself with others who look, feel, act and think just like we do. It just gets plain awkward at times. And we don’t do awkward very well. It offends our illusion that we are in full control of what is going on around us. Our twin idols of comfort and safety are rocked from their place on the altar, and that makes us really nervous.

Allow me to display exhibit A.

We arrived at our friend’s home and waded in. Good food, music, kids playing together. It was awesome. Eventually the fella’s ended up congregating outside while many of the wives remained inside with the younger children. The expected subjects were all covered, sports, weather, etc. And then suddenly the conversation took a turn. It all started with, “Hey, I heard this joke.” And we went downhill from there.

And there I was, Mr. reformed pastor dude who loves non-Christians, backed into the corner of a crowded deck, with no way to discreetly evacuate myself from the situation. A flood of thoughts ran through my mind. Everything from “Wow, the way that guy just put together all of those assorted words in a colorful and illustrative word portrait was actually rather linguistically impressive.” to “Okay, do I make a scene and leave, running the risk of injuring this relationship I have worked so hard to foster?” to “Is my presence here condoning to topic of conversation?” and “Am I completely ruining Christ’s reputation for being here?”

In truth this whole scene only lasted a few moments. Fortunately one of the small children wandered outside and, to everyone’s credit, the conversation quickly righted itself. Whew! Later on, as my cold sweats and I were replaying the evening, I was struck with how awkward it can be at times to relate with those who operate from a different foundational basis for life. And yet we simply cannot expect those who have not been made new in Christ to live their lives as if they had, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

So should I have left immediately? Did I “ruin my witness” in those few moments? First of all, I thankfully serve a sovereign God who is able to expand his kingdom quite in spite of my fledgling efforts fumbling around at how to do this whole “love people well in the gospel” thing. And secondly, I’m not so sure there is a hard and fast rule that is going to apply in every one of these situations. Loving people, pursuing relationships with people is messy. Yes, our goal is that they will see and hear the gospel and be drawn to the beauty that is Christ, our Savior. But this assumes that there is an actual relational context upon which to frame this gospel truth.

So dive in, expect the awkward and experience the inadequacy. If you are anything like me, these will become some of the all too rare times where our veneer of self sufficiency is adequately deconstructed to such a degree that we begin to depend upon God as we should have been doing all along.

No more cable?

So let me go ahead and lay my cards on the table first thing. I am by no means a member of the "No TV" movement. For verification, just ask my wife. Honestly I have kind of felt at times like many in that camp were of the "all culture is evil and should be avoided at all cost, even if it means that we are completely out of touch with any and all reality" type people. (Okay, I am employing hyperbole there. You know, literary device whereby one purposefully over exaggerates a point in order to make a point. Relax.)

But the following article has me thinking. What if the time I spend watching TV every day was committed to thinking for, praying for and acting on behalf of my neighborhood and for the sake of the gospel. Forget the financial savings (which the author estimates to be a little over $800 annually). What resources am I wasting relationally, both with my neighbors and with my wife as well? Good stuff to at least think through.

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What’s the smallest change that’s made the biggest difference in your life?

That’s an easy one for me: We canceled cable.

One phone call. Big difference.

Becky and I didn’t do it because of some profound philosophical shift we underwent. Nope, what happened was we sat down to watch X-Files one Sunday night - as we were in the habit of doing in those days - and got bored. The show was never the same after that molten metal guy from Terminator took the place of David Duchovny you know?

And so, with our first child sprawled out sleeping mouth-open on my legs, one of us said something very percipient like “TV sucks.” We turned it off and watched our girl suck an invisible pacifier while she dreamed. Like I said, not the most profound reasons for doing it, but it had a profound effect on our lives. Here are just a few of the benefits of going cable-less we’ve accidentally discovered:

1. Time. A neighbor asked Becky once where we got the time to hang out in the front yard every afternoon. “I don’t have that kind of time,” they said. We once thought that too but we were wrong. In 2008 Americans, on average, spent 2.3 hours a day watching television (that’s 16.4 hours a week or two nights of sleep or 900 miles of travel by car). That’s less than we spent on television during the pre-Facebook and blog days but still a big chunk of time. We got those hours back when we tossed the TV. (Source)

2. People. Reality TV is an oxymoron. In college I spent a good chunk of time watching something called the “Real World” while in the real real world I claimed I didn’t have time to study, work, call my parents, exercise, volunteer… Now we have 16.4 more hours every week to spend on real life - a lot of it with those two-legged organisms the scientific community calls “people.”

3. Morality. Forgive the simplistic analogy, m’kay? Imagine I took in a house guest. And let’s say that guest regularly told my kids I was stupid, hung pictures of half-naked women up on the walls, constantly told my kids the opposite of what I told them and routinely asserted that God is a liar. How long would it take me to kick that guest out of my house and change the locks? There’s some innocuous stuff on television, sure, stuff I miss. But most of what I watched portrayed fathers as incompetent idiots, told me it was OK to disrespect people, and contradicted the teachings of Christ in subtle and not-so-subtle ways over and over again. I have 16.4 fewer hours with a destructive house guest now.

4. Money. The average cable bill in the back half of 2008 was $71. The average for satellite was $74. (Source) And that’s on the rise - up 7.5% from the previous year. So imagine my confusion when folks tell me after a concert that they’d really love to provide food, clothing and health care for a child in the third world (with a hefty does of Jesus) but, dang it, they just can’t afford to. To which I always respond, “Do you have cable?” When we canceled cable we were spending $68/month. That’s $816 a year - or enough money to meet the spiritual and physical needs of one child in the third world and still have money left over for that gym membership I said I couldn’t afford, or that annual weekend getaway I promised Becky.

5. Silence. Constant noise keeps me from knowing myself, knowing you and knowing God. And I’m addicted to it. So I try to rehabilitate myself with intentional times of silence throughout my day. And I’m better for it. At the peak of my noise addiction I was afraid of silence, afraid of what I might discover, what I might have to face. It was an escape from reality and that was fine for thirty minutes, but I didn’t stop there. I couldn’t. I kept pouring myself another glass, and another, I kept escaping and, like an addict, I never stopped to deal with the real me, the real world. Right now the only noise I hear are my fingers clacking on a keyboard and after I publish this post the only sound I’ll hear is silence. In the silence I’ll have to hear my thoughts. And maybe, I’ll get to hear God.

5. Happiness. As if we needed a study to prove it: The University of Maryland (among others) has found that happy people watch less television than unhappy people. Happy people spend time outside, socialize (face-to-face in the real world), go to church, have hobbies, etc. Unhappy people sit on their butts and watch other people live...er, pretend to live. (Source) Scientists are quick to point out that they don’t know if unhappy people watch television because they’re unhappy or if television makes people unhappy or both, but either way, it’s not a good connection right? Just because we don’t have cable in our house doesn’t mean we’re perfectly happy, of course. But we’re happier.

So, what’s the smallest change that’s made the biggest difference in your life?

Missions and Community

The following is a post from another blog I stumbled across recently which includes some intriguing thoughts on living our life, even the mundane stuff, with full-on gospel intentionality and motivation.

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Missions and Community Through the Ordinary

The gospel must be lived out in everyday life. Community building can’t be merely regulated to a mid-week small group meeting and a Sunday morning service. It must extend far beyond these events to fulfill all the great “one another passages” of the New Testament. Moreover, the work of evangelism (mission) can’t be accomplished through mere door knocking, tract passing, or making sermons more “relevant to the unchurched.” Our missionary methods must extend into the ordinary activities of our routines if we are to follow the New Testament model. We must intentionally evaluate and reform our everyday lives around the the gospel. We’ve created a simple exercise to help the folks at our church move away from a primarily program-based way of “doing” the Christian life towards a more natural way. Maybe you’ll find it helpful as well.

First, simply list out all the activities that make up your daily, weekly, and monthly routines. You should write down everything in these routines even if they seem mundane. Your daily list might include things like eating meals, go to the gym, driving to work, walk the dog, and play time with the kids. Your weekly list might include things like watch football, go to the park, grocery shopping, trip to the library, and play basketball. Your monthly list might include things like see a movie, take trash to the dump, get a haircut, camping, and budgeting. I would recommend opening up a Word doc and revising it as your routines shift over time.

Second, begin to assess all these ordinary activities through a tri-fold lens of community, mission, and gospel. You want to consider whether or not you can take these activities and add each of these three components. For example, let us consider the universal routine of grocery shopping. It is quite easy to add a communal and missional component to your weekly trip to the grocery. The first step would be to invite a Christian from your local church and a non-Christian friend to join you in this common routine. The second step is to bring the gospel into the activity. The gospel component can be added in a natural but intentional way as you converse throughout the activity. Shopping will bring up very important topics such as stewardship, family, and health. These topics can easily be used as a path to explicitly talking about the gospel. The third step and perhaps the hardest is to try your best to make this more than an one time event. You want this to become part of your weekly shopping routine. Just think how the kingdom would expand if you took as many of your routine activities as possible and disciplined yourself to include these three components! Moreover, you aren’t adding yet another event to you already crowded routine but rather sanctifying your everyday life!

In conclusion, I understand that this is exercise doesn’t answer everything. Some of your activities are meant to be solitary. This certainly is acceptable. However, it is probably a different issue altogether if the lists you have constructed don’t include about dozen activities that can be reformed to include all three components. I find people prefer programic evangelism and community life (if you can even call it that) because it doesn’t invade their personal space. That is irreconcilable with the life of Jesus and implications of the gospel. We must change.

America needs more churches?

from Ed Stetzer's Planting Missional Churches

In 1900, there were 28 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 1950, there were 17 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 2000, there were 12 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 2004, there were 11 churches for every 10,000 Americans.

In 1900, the Census Bureau counted 212,000 churches. In 2000, the number of churches that existed in the United States was 349,506. In other words, the number of churches increased just over 50% while the population of the country has almost quadrupled.

Another interesting stat?

Today, one in ten Americans was born in another country.

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So what does this tell us about the need for planting new, gospel-centered churches? How does this inform our thinking? How does the fact that 1 out of every 10 Americans is actually foreign born change our ideas of what these new churches should look like?

Too often we are lulled into thinking that, because we live in North America, we are a "churched" nation. These statistics by the Director of Research for the North American Mission Board with the Southern Baptist Convention seem to point us to a different conclusion. We desperately need an explosion of churches across North America.

Christ Community Church

As you have probably heard by now, Oak Mountain, in partnership with Altadena Valley PCA, is going to be planting a new congregation in the Pelham / Helena area. Or as a friend put it, we are looking to plant a church in the greater “Pelhenabaster” region.

Why in the world do we feel like the South needs another church? Phil Chambers, our current Missions pastor and the church planter for this new congregation has some great answers to that very question. I would encourage you to contact Phil and buy him a cup of coffee. Get ready though. If you ask, he WILL talk. You will leave with absolutely no doubts as to his passion for Christ and the expansion of Christ’s kingdom.

In addition to taking Phil to coffee, the following is a recent blog post with some good thoughts on the issue. It kind of challenges our assumptions regarding America’s long term prospects of remaining the center of the evangelical world.

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The Need for American Church Planting
by Doug Roman

Here are two statistical reasons why American churches need to be concerned with planting churches in the United States:

The US population continues to grow rapidly.

David T. Olson’s writes in his 2008 book, The American Church in Crisis,

Alyzandra, or ‘Aly’ as her parents nicknamed her, was born in Chicago on October 18, 2006, just before six o’clock in the morning—near the exact time the Census Bureau predicted that the U.S. population would reach 300 million . . . Whoever was the 300 millionth America, his or her arrival made one thing perfectly clear—at a time when the populations of most developed nations were stagnant or declining, the United States was growing at unprecedented numbers (David T. Olson, The American Church in Crisis, 34).

As the population increases, we need to be more committed—not less committed—to establishing gospel-preaching churches in the United States.

The number of churches in America is not keeping up with the need.

4,009 churches are started every year but when churches that closed are factored in (3,700 every year!), we are simply not keeping up. Again from Olson’s book,

Unfortunately, the 3,700 churches that close per year reduce the impact of the 4,000 new churches that start, leaving a net yearly gain of 300 churches in the United States. A net gain of 3,205 churches is needed each year for the American church to keep up with the population growth (David T. Olson, The American Church in Crisis, 146).

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We often wrongly assume that if we can maintain what we have, if we are not loosing members, then we are doing well. Or even if (praise God) we are in a particular church that is growing, then we assume we are doing all we can for the Kingdom. Yet there are many individuals and families that, for fear of size or possibly lack of identification with an established churches perceived socio-economic status, will never consider walking into a larger, established church. Church planting is an incredible opportunity for reaching out to those in our communities who may not be comfortable with what is being offered at a larger church, or also for reaching those who may not be churched at all.

Redeemer PCA in Manhattan has the following response to the question of why they are committed to planting multiple churches throughout the city.

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Why does Redeemer put a priority on church planting?

The Biblical Mandate

Jesus' Great Commission was not simply a call to "teach" and "make disciples" but also to "baptize". Baptism in the New Testament meant incorporation into the worshipping community where there would be teaching, administration of the sacraments and accountability. (Acts 2:41-47)

Practical Wisdom

New churches best reach the unchurched.

Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its members (60-80%) from among people outside any worshipping community, while churches over 20 years old gain most of their new member (0-20%) from people moving from other congregations. Therefore new churches are 5-10 times better at drawing new people into the Body of Christ.

New churches best reach new residents, new generations and new people groups.

New residents are disproportionately found in new congregations because newcomers do not need years of tenure before their voices are heard or before they can gain real leadership and influence in the church. New and younger generations are found in large numbers in new churches, because there is greater openness to new ministry approaches and to new leadership. Newly arrived groups of people are found in new congregations because of a contextualized approach in evangelism, worship and discipleship. (Language, cultural sensitivity, worship styles).

Labor Day is coming

Mark your calendars, Labor Day is coming. Typically this is a long holiday weekend, the last hurrah before the Fall kicks off in full swing (or for those of us in the South, before Summer continues its strangle-hold on all of creation until that one week time span we refer to as “Fall” finally shows up around the end of October.) The point is that it is a brief respite in a typically overloaded schedule. Some of us may even now be thinking through a last minute trip to the beach or the lake. I have an idea. Why not stay home and throw a party?

Think about it. Most of us with kids are diving into school in the next week or so anyway. You are in town. Many of us don’t really have the money (come on, take a “Dave Ramsey” honest look at your accounts) to do a last minute vacation anyway, so why stress out the credit card? Why not stay home and invite 2 or 3 or 10 or 20 neighbors over and introduce everyone to each other? Imagine the gospel impact in your subdivision just by throwing some burgers on a grill!

Steve McCoy over at The Subtext has the following great thoughts on this subject.

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Last weekend we had a cookout. It was mostly community friends we’ve connected to through local school involvement, but we also invited a church friend or two and a visiting couple from the previous week’s worship service. We had about 40 people there, some I knew well and others I met for the first time. It was a blast. Here are a few things you should do to make your cookout a hit.

- Introduce people. If you are bringing folks together who don’t already know each other, and you should, make sure you introduce them so they all feel comfortable.

- Have plenty of good food. We had too much food because we wanted to be generous. Nothing like a cookout where you feel underfed. And make it good food, please. I don’t want to come to your house if you are going to buy the hot dogs with the highest amount of rat hairs and bone chips. Not all hot dogs and hamburgers are created equal. Get quality stuff. And spice it up. We got burgers at Sam’s and then added a layer of Famous Dave’s burger seasoning. People raved about the burgers, though most of them didn’t know why. You want your neighbors happy.

- Let people bring something if they want to. Sometimes people feel obligated. Sometimes they really enjoy bringing something. Don’t presume on people and don’t ask them to bring something. But if they want to bring something it can be a good thing. It makes them feel like they’re a good neighbor too. For our Memorial Day most everyone insisted. Some brought a dish, or chips and soda. One family brought a ton of Edy’s ice cream they got for free in a contest. It added a super-charge to the cookout that none of us could probably afford otherwise.

- Have plenty to do. We had more games we didn’t use than we used. You are providing opportunities, not a schedule. We had kids playing baseball in the church field, jarts, football, a fire pit as it cooled off in the evening, lots of lawn chairs, sparklers for kids after dark. And think of the little things, too. We fogged the yard before people came to kill most of the mosquitoes and then we had several cans of Off available. We had sunscreen. We had music. We tried to cover all the bases, though we learned a few bases we didn’t cover as well as we will next time.

Make this summer a great one, one where you grow in your relationship with folks around you by participating in the life of your suburb, serving your neighbors rather than waiting for someone else to serve you, and firing up the grill to bring people together.