Highland Oaks friends, here's your mission for the week:
Identify someone in your workplace that you don't often associate with. Your reasons for not talking much with them may be good (you don't see them much) or not so good (you just plain don't like them). Reason doesn't matter; your job is to spend 5 good minutes with them.
In case you're looking for a way to start that conversation, here's a couple of ideas:
1) Look for something in common--anything--to… Continue
In Bible class today, I described two activities you could choose from this week to step outside of our "sheltered" Christian lifestyle and invite others to come with us.
1) Find a friend who doesn't know Jesus. Ask him/her how you could pray for them. Pray on the spot. Then, with their permission, take it to the prayer team at Highland Oaks and ask them to add this request to the prayer list. You can reach either Donna King or Diane… Continue
Here is where you can come to discuss our class for the next eight weeks. I'll have a new blog post up each week with a question, and jump in to the conversation. Week One:
Is it our job to call people into Christian community?
"People may forget what you say, people may forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel"
See photo above. It's my son Devon and his teacher.
Today was the first day of school for Devon. He's started 3rd grade today. It was the first time that I met his teacher. I was only at Devon's school for just a few minutes this morning. I quickly noticed that Devon's teacher made everyone FEEL important,… Continue
I am a large, un-hip 48 year old guy. I have been involved with “marketing and promotion” since I was 19 years old. I am not an extremely intelligent guy. I barely made it through high school and I partied my way through college. I didn’t walk out with a degree but I did become an expert at drinking beer. At first, this whole social media marketing thing seemed a bit overwhelming. Why? I’m the dude voted most likely to think that “The Dukes of Hazzard” was a documentary. I just learned to use a… Continue
I am very excited about the opportunity to speak at the High Pointe church in McKinney, TX this Wednesday night. (August 5, 2009 7:00 p.m.) Ephesians 3:10 will be my text. I will present how the church is God's choice to bring his plans to fruition and that He might ultimately receive the glory that is due him. He will reach "through" us to reach the world. Remember the word "through". And when the world is reached He will be glorified and we rejoice because of the word "through". Please be… Continue
Here's a great article by friend and colleague Tom Clegg discussing the intersection of coaching and evangelism (article runs from pages 64-67). I wonder how many more of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers would be following Jesus today if we took Tom's approach of "asking" curious questions rather than sticking with our traditional approach of "telling" people about Jesus?
The article explores evangelism and discipleship, exploring what is "hot" and what is "not" in these areas. While I'm not a big fan of the "hot" or "not" terminology (our approaches to evangelism and discipleship ought to be based upon more than trendy ministry), the writer is very in touch… Continue
I thought I would make my public announcement here on MON as I find myself surrounded with many friends. After a natural partnership formed between World Radio and Genesis Alliance, I found a new friend and associate in Sixto Rivera. Sixto has a feverish and contagious attitude and passion for the Kingdom and its growth. On July 1, 2009, I am making the move over to Genesis Alliance as the Director of Development. My passion for World Radio will never wane while a new and greater challenge… Continue
Mary & I were on our way home from OK City after sharing our testimony and casting the vision that recovery is in fact for everybody, when we were stopped dead in our tracks at one of those times in life when all you can say is, “WOW!”
We were getting off the plane in Dallas and as we entered the terminal all we could hear & see were hundreds of people standing around our gate clapping and cheering. Now this can be pretty intimidating when it seems that you may be the focal… Continue
For some time now Chris and I have been in conversations regarding the difficulty of cultivating authentic community - where people are actually invested in one another's lives and attempting to live beyond merely transactional relationships. This is a fundamental part of our vision for church planting.
And yet we've sat around the table with other church planter friends listening to their stories of community…
A book that I recommend for church leaders to go through together is Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal. Reggie McNeal is a part of Leadership Network and is a nationally known missional leader. I also have an affection for him as one of my teachers in the D.Min. program at Fuller Theological Seminary.
I owe a lot of my ideas for the practical outworkings of missional theology to Reggie. (He also is a… Continue
Does anyone have any experience with an ESL course at your church?
What material did you use? How did you set it up?
I have experience with Let's Start Talking and the Friendspeak program but we are looking at something with a different teacher/student ratio at this point. Maybe you have some thoughts on that.
I have asked some people but no one has gotten back with me so I thought maybe someone out here might be able to help.
This week Newsweek came out with a front page article entitled "The End of Christian America."
This article was prompted by the recent religious survey of Americans that we recently reported on. This survey showed that the percentage of Americans that identified themselves as having no religion has doubled in the last decade to 15% of the US population. This is but one of many signs pointing to the… Continue
On Sunday, we had an "Easter Eggstravaganza." We invited the community to join us for an Easter egg hunt, a meal, a petting zoo, and a bounce gym. We had a great turnout, with numerous people from the community. I met guests that our members had invited, and one woman from the McKinney paper advertisement.
Becki and I were able to engage guests in conversationa and invite them out to Easter and our new sermon series: "The Office: Spirituality at Work." We had our newly printed invite… Continue
[The following is on ESPN.com The website is http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=25774
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Welcome to The Show! On Friday, we'll have a special guest coming to SportsNation when Oakland A's closer Brad Ziegler stops by to chat.
Ziegler stormed on to the MLB scene last year, when he set the record for most scoreless innings… Continue
On Monday, a new religious study was released that showed that 15% of the US population defines themselves as belonging to no religion. Here is an excerpt from the American Religious Identification Survey—conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College. "The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15…Continue
This article in Newsweek recently made me think. http://www.newsweek.com/id/185850
Do we really believe that a person can read the Bible for themselves without a Bible degree etc. and find the truth? Is the truth in scripture able to be clearly understood by a honest seeker?
Can such a person read Luke and Acts and understand gospel and then obey it?
I know the Ethiopian eunuch said that he needed help understanding Isaiah 53 and needed Phillip to interpret it… Continue
Hi guys. Bobby Ross, who does great fair and balanced reporting for the Christian Chronicle, has made a blog post on social networking. He is seeking input for a possible story on this subject for the Christian Chronicle, and he sites Facebook, Where the Saints Meet (which, from the content and participants, looks to be a very conservative site), and ours… Continue
Added by James Nored on February 22, 2009 at 2:00pm —
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Genesis Alliance from Clint Loveness on Vimeo. Here is a brand new video for Genesis Alliance, a Hispanic church planting partnership with several sponsoring churches. The Hispanic population is growing phenomenonly fast in the US, and yet most fellowships are very underrepresented in the Hispanic population. Genesis Alliance seeks to plant Hispanic churches… Continue
"Father in the name of Jesus Christ restore mobility back too her life restore ordor back and finally This will make a Differance in her hold life Give her you father for my sister Kishinev Davis and my sister tanksley Dovie. Amen"
