This morning at Murray Hill Baptist was awesome. Just to bring you up to speed in case you haven’t read my last blog or dont follow me on Twitter of Facebook… Our church recently started a project called Operation: Neighbor. A handful of people were chosen to lead a team and come up with a unique way to reach out to unmet needs in our local community. We had 4 weeks to plan and complete our projects, and this morning each group presented theirs to the church and gave a report of the event. We had teams who put together an outreach event for foster children, providing them with free haircuts, hygiene kits, food, and simply loved on them; teams who held car clinics for single moms; teams who cleaned up foreclosure properties in the area that had become eyesores for surrounding neighbors and businesses; and more.
Our team was led by Charis Axtell, who may be one the most mature 15-year-old girls that I have met. Our group consisted of mostly teens from our youth group, and so we decided to search for a need that is commonly unmet within our local teens. The project we came up with was to reach out to local pregnant teenage girls and hold a baby shower for them. We wanted to show them love and mercy, and provide many of the necessities for raising a newborn child that they may often have trouble affording. We sought donations and were greatly blessed with what we received over the three weeks of development. We held the shower for 5 girls, ranging from age 15 to 18. Each girl received everything from car seats, to diapers, to clothes, playpens, wipes, toys, and more. Each girl was so sweet and genuinely grateful and it was such a blessing to demonstrate the grace of God to them and show them that they are still worthy of our love and care.
I put together a recap video of the event that we shared with the church this morning, and I wanted to share it here with everyone else. God is doing some awesome things through the church family at Murray Hill Baptist, and I am so honored and excited to be a part of it.
“To reach people no one else is reaching, we must do things no one else is doing.” – Craig Groeschel
Our church (Murray Hill Baptist) has begun an outreach project called “OPERATION: Neighbor.” This operation consists of several teams, each developing their own outreach project to be completed over the next few weeks. Our team, the orange team, is being led by one of the students in our youth group, and is comprised of several other students and a handful of adults, including Katrina and myself. It took us some time to come up with a project idea, but we finally settled on one. And I am pumped up about it. Mainly because it is something that I have never seen done before with a church and it is such a great need and opportunity that is often overlooked. So what are we doing?
We are holding a baby shower for pregnant teenagers in a local high school. Yes, pregnant teenage girls. We are inviting them into our church for a baby shower. Why? Because these girls are so often frowned upon by church communities. They might as well wear a scarlet letter across their forehead. And these girls are headed down a very tough path and are in such great need for support, compassion, grace, and redemption. And that is what we want to bring them. The hope of redemption. This is not a celebration of the choices and actions that brought them to this point, but it is an opportunity to show them that they are still worthy of love and mercy, regardless of what they have done. This is an opportunity to show them that there is a church community that truly cares about them, instead of turning their nose up and spouting gossip about them.
Because of the burden of carrying and supporting a child while in school, many girls simply drop out. And many never really recover from this rough situation, as their life becomes a constant uphill battle. Most of them will be in a position to receive health benefits through Florida Medicaid and help with formula and milk through WIC, but there is not much help available for getting diapers, wipes, clothes, and other essentials for supporting a baby.
And so we are looking to provide all that we can for them. And we are asking for help. We need diapers, wipes, bottles, baby clothes, car seats, swings, and anything else that a young mother would need to care for her baby. If you are able to donate anything, please either Email me here, Facebook me here, Twitter me here, or if you live in Jacksonville, you can drop any items off at Murray Hill Baptist Church 4300 Post St. Jacksonville, FL 32205. You can also mail any items to that address if you do not live in the Jacksonville area.
Another way you can help out is by posting a link to this blog on your own blog, or Tweet it and ask people to re-Tweet it, or post a link on Facebook, or FriendFeed, or Tumblr, or Posterous, or email it. Whatever. Basically, just get the word out. Here is a shortened url that you can use to direct people here: http://bit.ly/hDchD.
I am so excited about the opportunity to minister to these girls, and I give my greatest thanks to anyone who can help.
I am pretty stoked about the Catalyst conference next month. I dont know what ticket sales are like this year in comparison to the past two years, but there seems to be a ton of buzz about the conference this year. Buzz that is to be expected when you have a line-up that includes Andy Stanley, Louie Giglio, Rob Bell, Francis Chan, Chuck Swindoll, Tony Dungy, Matt Chandler, Malcolm Gladwell, Dave Ramsey, and more; plus labs with Ed Stetzer, Perry Noble, Andy Crouch, Dave Gibbons, Chris Seay, Mark Batterson, Nancy Ortberg, Reggie McNeal, Carlos Whittaker, Anne Jackson, Margaret Feinberg, Aaron Keyes, and many more. How could there not be buzz about that sort of line-up on top of the incredible Catalyst experience, worship, and networking that everyone is looking forward to. Needless to say, I pumped. And I hope you are to (that is if you’re going, if not, you can be pumped for those of us who are).
Now here is the second thing to be pumped about. While you are at Catalyst, you will have the amazing luxury of enjoying the best cup of coffee you have ever tasted, for FREE… and ALL YOU WANT! Myself, along with the Land of a Thousand Hills team will be serving you a perfect cup of coffee throughout the entire conference. If you don’t know about Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee, then surely this must be your first time attending Catalyst. If you have attended and still don’t know what Land of a Thousand Hills is, then I will pray for you. You can check out their website at DrinkCoffeeDoGood.com. Along with serving you premium, small-batch, hand roasted, Rwandan specialty coffee, we will also be there to answer any questions you may have about the company, their ministry in Rwanda, and how you can start a coffee ministry in your church or organization that will have a lasting impact on the Rwandan farmers and communities that Land of a Thousand Hills works with. Come by and see us, and please, please, avoid the temptation to swing by that certain corner shop on the way to the arena. We’ll provide you with something so much better.
Also, just so you know, the official Catalyst hashtag for Twitter is #CAT09. Follow Land of a Thousand Hills on Twitter at @1000HillsCoffee. We’ll be updating live from the conference, so keep up with what’s going on.
Drink Coffee. Do Good.
I saw this commercial during the Barclays Golf Tournament. This has got to be one of the best commercials from concept to production that I have seen in a long time.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
Florence Chadwick was a competitive swimmer during the 1950’s. She was the first person in history to successfully swim across the English channel both ways. On July 4, 1952, Chadwick attempted to become to first woman to swim across the 21 mile wide Catalina Channel, from Catalina Island to Palos Verde on the California coast. This would be an amazing feat, as the weather conditions were hardly suitable for this kind of swim. The water was ice cold and the fog was so heavy that she could hardly see the boats with family and friends that followed her. She even had support boats shooting off sharks that came near. After 15 hours and 55 minutes of swimming, Chadwick asked to be pulled into the boat. She felt that she would not be able to successfully finish the swim. After giving up, she found out that she was only about half a mile from the finish point. Chadwick later made this comment to a reporter, “Look, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I know I could have made it.” The fog had made her unable to see her goal, and it had felt to her like she was getting nowhere. Two months later, Chadwick returned to attempt the swim across the Catalina Channel once again. This time, she made it, in 13 hours, 47 minutes, and 55 seconds.
You may have heard this true story before, but I bring this up to ask the question, “Where are you going?” What is your mission? What is your goal? What is the end that you are working towards?
In leadership, vision is everything. Without the right vision, it becomes so easy to lose focus of where you are going and to start feeling like you are just treading water. It becomes so easy to burn out and give up. Know where you are going, what you are doing to get there, and why you are doing it. Reduce the fog the clouds the end goal that you are working towards by keeping the vision out in front of everyone. Encourage your people, reward hard work, and celebrate the wins.
Too many churches are forsaking their uniqueness in order to imitate the ministry of another church of whom their leaders adore. This is a shame. The product of such movement is a melting pot of mediocrity. Everyone is trying to do the same thing and reach the same people. The problem is that not everyone is leading a church in the same region with the same demographics. So how can we all expect to incorporate ministry models from churches who are reaching an entirely different group of people than the ones that God has placed us right in the middle of? In the end, it really boils down to style and status preferences resulting from pride and ego, instead of examining who is actually in our immediate community and how we can reach them. I see a lot of church plants and church transformations today that are geared towards reaching one particular group of people, and it’s mainly middle to upper class suburban white families. Which isn’t all bad because they need Jesus as much as anyone else. But the problem comes when churches extend their reach past the trailer parks, and past the projects, and past the ghettos, and past the lower class families in their immediate community, to reach the suburbs and developments full of people who can help make their church trendy, and nice, and cool, and rich.
Here’s an example. I’m an advocate of family ministry. I buy in to the concept of partnership with parents and equipping them to be godly leaders in their homes. However, right now I am working in a youth ministry that is comprised of teenagers that mostly come from broken homes and screwed up parenting environments. It would be absurd for me to bring the family ministry tactics that I have learned into this environment and just focus on going in that direction with the ministry. Single parent homes, parents on drugs, alcoholics, broken families, etc. That’s some of what exists in the immediate community of our church. Now, at the same time a few more miles away, there are extremely wealthy families that live in multi-million dollar homes who home-school their kids and make them listen to Bach during homework time. We could pretend that much of what exists in our immediate community isn’t there and only try to reach the wealthy and trendy family community that exists just beyond our immediate community.
Or we, and YOU, could examine where God has placed us, and the people he has placed us in the middle of and we could do whatever it takes to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ for the glory of God, regardless of their social status, or income, or family situation, or sinfulness, or living habits, or whatever.
Stop reaching a target, and start reaching the people whom God has placed you in the middle of. Don’t settle for the mediocrity that exists within every other church that is doing the same thing as everyone else to try to reach the same group of people who aren’t even within their immediate reach. Embrace uniqueness.
There wasn’t much that Jesus said that really made everyone comfortable, so why do we try to do the opposite?
Life change is rarely birthed from a place of comfort. So if life change is what we are leading people towards, what good does it do to foster a state of comfort.
Let’s get uncomfortable. Let’s get real.
Jesus did.
For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart. – 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)
In ministry, it can become all too easy to put so much effort into building one’s outward appearance that you neglect the condition of your own heart.
I remember the first time I ever saw Anathallo perform live. They opened up for Underoath at the Murray Hill Theatre here in Jacksonville several years back. This was back when Dallas was still a member of Underoath. Anathallo had recently recorded their “Sparrows” album. Now you may or may not be able to picture this, but you had all these hardcore kids at this show and Anathallo takes the stage. Lead singer, Matt Joynt, takes stage in a pair of capri’s and no shoes. The rest of the guys looked like some kids you would find on a university campus somewhere. There were various horns and random percussion instruments and objects on stage. All I remember is the intro to “A Song For Christine” where the band begins by clapping in rhythm and each member phases from claps into hitting drumsticks or triangles or something else made to bang on, I cant remember it all too well. I just remember thinking, “this is the weirdest thing I have ever seen or heard.” It was indie/emo with horns and xylophones and a whole bunch of other stuff, being played by the oddest mix of guys you could expect to find in a band like this. But I was hooked. I couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t stop listening. These guys were really good. Needless to say, I left with the “Sparrows” album and I have been a fan ever since.
Anathallo’s latest release, “Canopy Glow“, which came out at the end of last year, is in my opinion their best work yet. They have grown and changed since the early days. This album seems to back off from the multitude of instruments approach and is more focused on playing fewer instruments and playing them well. Even the horns that they have been so well known for have been really toned down. If you think you may be disappointed because of this, you won’t be. Trust me. This is a superbly written and produced album that gives no down time for the listener from start to finish. This is a truly recommended listening.
