Starting a New Church from Scratch: 2009 In Review
Bridge Church had a tremendous year which included 22 Worship Gathering @ the YMCA beginning on August 16th, 6 Worship Gatherings @ the St. Tammany Jail, 2 Faith In Action Sundays, over $10,000 given to missions around the world. 1,000’s of volunteer hours were put in at Northshore Crisis Pregnancy Centers, St. Tammany Parish Jail, Oak Villa Mobile Home Park, and various other projects around St. Tammany. We also gave away over $10,000 in money for benevolence and projects for the disadvantaged. And we’re just getting started!!! Thanks to all those who supported and prayed for and partnered with us. Looking forward to 2010. For more info about Bridge Church check out www.bridgenorthshore.com
Bible Reading Plans for 2010
“Any Christian worth his salt ought to read the Bible from cover-to-cover every year” J.I. Packer
Everyone’s got opinions about the Bible, but I would bet a very small percentage have ever read it cover to cover. Here are few great links to Bible Reading Plans that you can start on Friday.
YouVersion.com – This is one of my favorite sites for Bible Reading and study. They’ve got over 20 plans to choose from with options of having the daily reading sent to your mobile phone, email, or RSS feed.
ESV Bible Reading Plans – The English Standard Version seems to be the most accessible Bible version these days. I can get a nice leather bound for less than $30. I love the translation. They’ve got 10 plans available here with options to read online, get it in your mail box, RSS feed, mobile phone, print the plan, or for us Mac users download it directly into ICal.
Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plans – The plan I’ve used for years has been the DJ Plan. They have three time tested plans available here that can be downloaded and printed. You can also purchase hard copies here to give away to others. While you’re close by, check out the Navigators great illustration How to Get a Grip on the Bible.
Verse Card Maker – If you want to go to another level and add scripture memory to your goals for 2010, check out this site that will make up verse flash cards for you.
Still trying to decide which plan I’m going to go with this year.
Don’t Leave Jesus in the Manger…
Now that the Nativity displays are back in the boxes and properly stored away, we start gearing up again for the rat race of life and New Year’s resolutions regarding fitness, time management, saving money, more time off, etc. Question: What do you do with the baby Jesus? This time of year we need to be reminded that there’s a lot more to Jesus that the Nativity scene. The baby in the manger is comforting. It’s a wonderful story. It’s a warm picture. But what about the rest of the story? The rest of the story demands action. My favorite Christmas card from this year said it best: “Don’t Leave Jesus in the Manger. Let’s follow Him to the Cross.”
The story of Jesus is more than just a warm picture. It’s a divine rescue, a deliverance from evil, an eternally significant event. It’s the story of all that God has done for us through sending Christ. The Nativity is one aspect of the story. What are you doing with the rest of the story?
Jesus’ story includes His miraculous birth, His sinless life, His sacrificial death, His resurrection from death, His exaltation to the right hand of God. How can I complete His whole story with my life?
Few Pics from our Christmas Eve SERVICE
We partnered with a number of Northshore churches and with Brown Bags and Jesus, to serve a hot meal and pass out blankets and coats to homeless men and women under I-10 in New Orleans today. If you’re interested in getting involved in ministering to the homeless, contact Justin Hodges with Brown Bags and Jesus. They are there every Sunday afternoon serving brown bag lunches and sharing Christ. Thanks to all those who gave coats, blankets, and prayers.
Worth Reading – Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity
Earlier this year I discovered Mark Batterson’s first book, In a Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day, published in 2006. As a Church Planter in South Louisiana, I was drawn to Mark’s story of starting a church in a difficult place and the truths in the book have been hard to shake. It has stayed close to my desk all year. In June of this year, my wife Heather and I took an anniversary trip to Washington D.C. and had the privilege of visiting National Community Church and having coffee at Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse. Along with the coffee I was able to purchase Mark’s second book, Wild Goose Chase: Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God, and was equally inspired and challenged. I was excited to hear about the third book, Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul or Christianity, and was honored to receive an advanced copy to read and review.
Batterson’s books are easy to read because he weave’s great one liners with science, history, and Bible application. Primal is no different. As Batterson takes you through the Greatest Commandment, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” you learn about Ancient Rome, brain function and psychology, optometry, history of medicine, astronomy, and more. I have put down all of Batterson’s books with a much longer reading list than when I started.The book was born out of a trip beneath a church in Rome to the catacombs believed to be where early Christians worshiped in secret. Batterson’s personal challenge and call to us is to strip away the complexity of Christianity and bring back the kind of primal faith celebrated by the earliest New Testament Christians. Intriguing to imagine what that faith looked like. I believe this book does a great job diagnosing it as it calls us back to the four elements of Jesus’ Great Commandment – a heart of compassion, a soul full of wonder, a mind filled with curiosity, and strength considered to be primal energy.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
- before confronting what’s wrong with our culture, we need to be humble enough, honest enough, and courageous enough to repent of what’s wrong with us.
- Faith equals God-ordained risks in the face of fear. Obedience equals God-honoring decisions in the face of temptation. And compassion equals Spirit-prompted generosity in the face of greed.
- Obedience will open the eyes of your understanding far more than any commentary or concordance could.
- The way you master a text isn’t by studying it. The way you master a text is by submitting to it.
- It’s far easier to find something wrong with something new than to admit something is wrong with the old way of doing things.
- We need fewer commentators and more innovators. We need fewer critics and more creators. We need fewer imitators and more dreamers.
- Christianity was never intended to be a noun. And when we turn it into a noun, it becomes a turnoff.
- At the end of the day, God isn’t going to say, “Well said, good and faithful servant.”
- In God’s economy, breaking even is a total loss. The greatest risk is taking no risks.
- Most church problems don’t come from the abundance of sin but rather from the lack of vision.
Primal would make a great book to kick off the new year with. It’s available as of yesterday. Get it hot off the press and go Primal with your faith in 2010.
Also, keep up with Mark Batterson every day on his blog Evotional or by following him on Twitter and Facebook.
Christmas Eve SERVICE. No Really!
The #1 definition of the word service according to Miriam Webster’s Dictionary is “the occupation or function of serving.” In church circles we’ve turned to the #3 Webster’s definition of “a form followed in worship or in ceremony.” Both are necessary part of practicing faith, but FORM (the attractional, low participatory worship service) is definitely what we tend to be thinking of when we use the words service and church together today. The FUNCTION (being occupied with doing something to meet the need of another) is relegated to us professionals or those who are spiritually mature. This is another topic for another day, but it appears to me that the younger generation of Christ followers are looking for function along with (not instead of) form. I’m part of that generation so I’m really excited about the Christmas Eve SERVICE that my family will be a part of this Thursday.
On Christmas Eve, from 11am-3pm, we will join with several other churches in our region to SERVE the 100’s of homeless in inner city New Orleans. We will be partnering with Brown Bags and Jesus and New Orleans Mission to serve a hot meal and distribute coats, blankets, sock hats, along with caring concern, hope, love, Good News, etc. to homeless men and women who will spend Christmas in a shelter or on the pavement. Can’t think of a better way to worship on Christmas Eve or a better way to teach my boys about the incarnation of Christ.
One of my favorite Christmas passages is Phillipians 2:3-8:
3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
This is Christmas – Jesus Christ laid aside His privileges for the sake of my need and yours. Jesus took the form and function of a servant upon himself for the sake of others and He desires for us to do the same. John 20:21 says,
As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.
To be a sent servant of the Father is more than just attending a religious form. Who are you serving? Whose needs are you occupied with? I’m glad that God in his love, occupied Himself with our needs and sent His son who served and gave and rescued me.
If you’re in the New Orleans area, join us Thursday, 11-3pm. Click here for more details.
You’ll even have time to attend a traditional Christmas Eve Service that evening. Here’s a few I’d recommend in our area:
- Bedico Baptist Church, Ponchatoula, 5pm, Candlelight Service and Lord’s Supper Celebration. www.bedicobaptist.org.
- New Zion Baptist Church, Covington, 6pm, Candlelight Service. www.newzion.net
- First Baptist Covington, 4pm & 6pm. www.fbccov.org.
- First Baptist Mandeville, 5pm & 7pm. www.fbcmandeville.org
- Trinity Baptist Church, Hammond, 6:30pm. www.pumpkincenter.org.
How Do You See Christmas?
So much about life and truth and Christmas is determined by your perspective. Found this in some notes I had. Not sure where I got it, but I’m sure it’s not original.
In the world’s eyes…
- a peasant girl, probably raped by Roman soldiers
- a poor carpenter, dumb enough to believe her story about an angel
- a slave registering his family with the state for purposes of taxation
- an insignificant village with little to offer the empire
- a family that couldn’t even afford a room
- a baby that didn’t have a proper delivery
- a baby that would grow up poor and enslaved
- a group of shepherds, not even worth asking their name
- a meaningless event in a meaningless town
In God’s eyes…
- a young girl endowed with grace and conceived by the Spirit
- a righteous man willing to obey God at great risk to his own reputation
- a census that would fulfill prophecy
- a baby, God taking on human likeness (God with meat)
- a baby that becoming a man would change the world and the eternal destiny of millions
Digital Discipleship Tools
Here are a few things I’m using regularly that are helping me merge my life as a disciple with technological advance. Still nothing better than an open Bible and journal, but wanted to share a few of my favorite resources.
ESV Bible Reading Plans – Nine different Bible reading plans that can be accessed in six different formats. I’ve downloaded the plan directly into my iCal and I get the RSS Feed to my phone each morning. The RSS Feed includes a link to audio files, so if I miss a passage in my morning devotional time, I can listen to it on my way to work. Currently doing the Outreach Bible Plan. Probably going to switch to the Chronological plan in January.
YouVersion.com – Using this resource as an iPhone App as well as the website. Great for Bible Reading online, searching Bible verses, cutting and pasting Bible verses, looking up verses in other translations, and more. Developed by LifeChurch.tv, totally free, and by far the best digital Bible out there.
Verse Card Maker – If scripture memory is important to you, you’ll love this tool. Type in the verse references you want to memorize and it makes the cards for you to print and cut. Developed by a computer programmer turned Seminary student. Verses are only in English Standard Version at this time.
Please send others that you’ve found helpful. So many resources out there. There’s no excuse for not interacting with the Bible daily.
Loving in Deed and Truth
Pics from our final Faith in Action Sunday of 2009, which included
Our Next Faith in Action Sunday will be January 31st, 2010.
Faith in Action Sunday
Bridge Church began meeting weekly for worship on August 16th, at our local YMCA. This Sunday we’ll do something a little crazy. We’re moving our worship gathering to a local trailer park where we’ll rebuild a porch for an elderly gentleman, throw a block party for kids that will include a gospel centered lesson, have free Jambalaya lunch for the whole park (over 150 trailers), and other miscellaneous projects. We’ll also have ladies scattering out to the ICU waiting rooms in West St. Tammany with fruit baskets and encouragement. We’ve committed to do this at least 4 times a year (every time there’s a 5th Sunday in a month). It’s part of our outreach and discipleship strategy. Outreach because we’ll look to share the gospel and gather prospects along with meeting huge needs in the lives of unchurched people in our community. Discipleship because it gets our whole body engaged in putting what we’re learning into action.
As I’ve shared this idea with people across the spiritual spectrums, it has been met with tremendous support, usually with a statement like – “That’s what the church should be doing!” It just makes sense that servants of Jesus Christ should be out serving in some way. Our desire is to start a church that is a missionary instead of an amenity, a connection point to ministry instead of the consumeristic destination, and that is as intentional about practicing theology as we are about learning theology.
We’ll see how it goes…
Lane Corley 