What would you get if you crossed
a Saudi Arabian prince, the President of the United States, Socrates, & Mickey Mouse? The wealthiest, most politically powerful, wisest, & most famous person in the world – that describes King Solomon. He reigned for 40 years as King of Israel and his life serves as a case study for FINDING MEANING. He tried it all and spared no expense in search for meaning and found it all useless. His full report is recorded for us in the book of Ecclesiastes. Here would be a good headline for this report:
“Can Meaning be Found in Life? 40-year, Multi-Billion Dollar Study says No”
Join us this Sunday at Bridge Church for week two of our study through the Book of Ecclesiastes called FINDING MEANING.
Home Works of America Coming Back to St Tammany
One of the many great partners we gained because of Hurricane Katrina is Hank Chardos and Home Works of America from Columbia, South Carolina. Homeworks is non-profit organization that empowers youth 14 and up and adults to do home repair projects in their community, specifically for those on a fixed income. I love Home Works because of the BEFORE & AFTER IMPACT. A Home Works weeklong session makes a huge impact in homes and lives. This years session will be July 10-17 and we have about 10 projects in West St. Tammany for this week, including yard clean up, roofing, light carpentry. It can be for four hours, one day, or all week. You could also help provide food for volunteers during their work week or donate $$ or supplies for a project. This year, some of the regular Homeworks volunteers over the past five years are working with Hank to start a permanent chapter here on the Northshore. You can get involved.
- Sign up to Volunteer or help out here.
- Contact Dave Saari – da.saari@gmail.com – about how to help start a permanent session on the Northshore.
- If you or someone you know needs Home Works to help you.
I Guess It Could Be Worse This Morning
Grateful for the sacrifices of a great generation. Remembering D-Day.
“We have as much of God as we actually want” ~ Tozer
“He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things” http://bible.us/Ps107.9.ESV.
“He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him” http://bible.us/Prov30.5.ESV.
What am I hungry and thirsty for? What do I take refuge in? These are the questions that determine how deep we go with God. Do we travel to church hungry to feel good about ourselves, to relieve a sense of obligation, because it’s what we do on Sunday, or out of a deep desire/hunger to know God and have him more active in our lives? Do I take refuge in my ability to provide a safe lifestyle for my family? in my home, behind my privacy fence? in my education? in my possessions? an addiction? or in a God that controls all of the above and more anyway?
The entire Tozer quote found here:
The degree of fullness in any life accords perfectly with the intensity of true desire. We have as much of God as we actually want. One great hindrance to the Spirit-filled life is the theology of complacency so widely accepted among gospel Christians today.
A Few Links I Liked and Learned from Lately
- “Is your church more interested in quality programs or quality people?” Excerpt from On the Verge by Dave Ferguson & Alan Hirsch. Reading this book right now. Incredible. “The promise that church programming alone will make your life better has been exposed. It doesn’t work. Everyday living is where spiritual development is worked out.”
- Learning from the Bible’s Unsung Heroes.
- Church Growth vs. Church Seasons. “Healthy churches go through life cycles of growth, pruning, decline, and blessing.” “You take care of the depth of your ministry; let God take care of the breadth.”
- 22 Ways to Overcome Discouragement.
- Are events killing the church? “If you keep people busy at your events, you may be preventing them from investing in their marriage, their children and their relationships with other people including people outside the faith. They think they’re becoming more Christ-like by going to church, when you could actually be pulling them away from what God has called them to do.”
- The Ultimate Guide to Twitter.
Finding Meaning
A 40-year study was conducted by the wealthiest man who ever lived, of every pleasure known to man, to see what would bring real fulfillment. His full report is known to us as the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. We’ll be studying through this book together this Summer at Bridge Church. Join us for our Worship Gatherings, Sunday’s, 10:30am at the West St. Tammany YMCA. Find the messages on our website here or look us up on Itunes.
Faith In Action Update
Another great Faith in Action Weekend last weekend with Bridge Church, including Friday night serving at the Columbia St. Block Party, then Faith In Action Sunday. Needs met across our area including at Oak Villa Mobile Home Park where our guys installed handicap bars and fixed a leaking roof for elderly residents, and cut problem tree limbs around the park. Some of our ladies completed projects for the Northlake Crisis Pregnancy Center. Then our Celebration for around 40 men, and their families, who completed our Recovery & Re-entry Program at the St. Tammany Jail.
A few things I overheard last weekend:
- from a community leader, “Every time I see Bridge Church you are blessing somebody.”
- from a FIA participant delivering baked goods to public servants, “You should have seen the tears running down her face when we prayed for her and told her how much we cared.”
- inmate family member at the St Tam Jail, “After you guys were here last August, this entire place was changed. I can’t thank you enough for investing in our lives.”
- Party Rental guy, “I think I’m the first person to ever deliver a bounce house to the jail!!!”
Church is a family On Mission together. I enjoyed being on Mission with my family last Sunday. Find pictures and watch for videos from Faith in Action Sunday on our Facebook Page.
Next Faith in Action Sunday will be August 28th and we will be participating in the National Faith In Action Sunday on October 9th.
And of course we topped it all off, with 6 Bridgers taking off on Monday for Chiapas, Mexico on a 10 day mission trip in the Lacandon Jungle. Can’t wait to hear how God will use them.
Bridge Church to Chiapas, Mexico
A team from our Church took off this AM bound for Mexico’s southern most state to work with missionaries & church planters, Sergio & Beth Matassa. Their work consists of raising up and training indigenous leaders among the Tzotzil Indians to plant churches in the 9,000 or so unreached, remote villages throughout Chiapas. Our team will go deep into the Lacandon Jungle to support the Church Planting movement there with free medical clinics, installing life-saving water filtration systems, and sharing the gospel via film and other means. Pray for our team. Chiapas is considered a Voice of Martyrs Restricted Nation (check out my personal picture that made it onto Voice of Martyrs cover in 2009) but much is needed to provide the gospel for many unreached peoples in Mexico’s southern most state.
Chiapas is a great place to invest people and other resources. You can learn more about partnering with the Matassa’s at their website gled.net. To partner with them on a Mission Trip check out there East-West Ministries page.
The Best Church IN the Community or The Best Church FOR the Community?
The Externally Focused Quest by Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw is another thought provoking book about changing paradigms for
church and how we see it in North America. In their book The Externally Focused Church they asked the question, “If your church were to close its doors, would anyone in the community notice ?” In The Externally Focused Quest the deeper question is, “How can we be the best church FOR our community?” As opposed to the internal, competing for market share, religious goods and services approach of being the best church IN the community. Not that anyone of us church leaders would admit to this attitude or say it out loud, but our program driven, service oriented, competition driven economy has opened the door for this thinking in the church. A slight preposition change, can change our thinking drastically. The book is well-researched, offering real-life examples of churches making this shift and statistics about the changing culture around us. How do you make the shift in thinking?
- Choose the window seat, not the aisle seat. Be an aisle seat church, focusing on what’s outside not just inside.
- Practice weight training, not bodybuilding. Don’t just grow to show off your size and strength. Purpose to expand the potential for serving and transforming the community.
- Live in the kingdom story, not A church story. The church doesn’t exist for itself, but to demonstrate the kingdom. Maybe the highlight of the book is the charts that compare church thinking with kingdom thinking.
- The few send the many, not the many send the few. Sending the whole church, not just the staff or super Christians.
- Build wells, not walls. Partnering and collaborating with other churches, ministries, and organizations for the good of many.
- Create Paradigms, not programs. Programs begin and end. A paradigm is a pattern or model that create a movement.
- Innovation, not replication. Seeing the opportunities, not being satisfied with the status quo, attempting difficult things leads to creativity and innovation.
- It’s about the game, not the pre-game talk. What happens once the sermon is over is as important as the sermon itself.
- Church is more than just a worship center or a mini-seminary. Rather church is the visible and visceral expression of jesus living among a people.
- Service has always been the DNA of Christianity, but for most people, it is a recessive gene in the gene pool.
- Quoting a 2006 Tom Rainer study – “nearly 95% of the churches’ ministries were for members alone…many churches had no ministries for those outside the congregation.
- we don’t grow until we begin loving, serving, and giving ourselves to someone outside of friends and family.
- real spiritual growth occurs when the physical, relational, spiritual well-being of our neighbor is as important as our own.
- Quoting the Willow Creek Reveal study: “Church activity alone made no direct impact on a growing heart…a stunning discovery for us”
- Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world.
- For many Christ followers, service and ministry are sentiments but no values.
- Externally focused churches are churches whose effectiveness is not measured merely by attendance but also by the transformational effect they are having on the community around them.
- How will people, communities, relationships, and cities be different if God granted you the desire of your heart?
- we often want to be inspired more than we want to apply anything.
- Also, found this list about How to Measure Success in Church in the book as well.
Lane Corley 
