Off To Columbus
Jess and I are about to head out to Columbus, OH to spend a few days with family. We will also be celebrating Jessica’s birthday tomorrow! We always have a great time in Columbus. Hoping to get a little golf in as well!
Worship This Sunday
I’m looking forward to co-leading worship this Sunday with Matt Cooper. While I know that God has primarily called me to preach, he’s also given me a passion for leading worship.
Before Matt started leading our worship ministry I was leading worship and preaching every Sunday (and it was too much… even though I loved it). Matt’s doing an awesome job and I’m so glad that God has brought him to us. He’s even developed a website for the worship department that you can check out here.
I can’t believe that its been almost 6 months since I’ve led worship at ACC! I was feeling a little withdrawal so I decided to jump back in for a week!
New Series: Better Together
Modern research tells us that Americans are more socially disconnected now than ever before. Isolation and loneliness are a major problem eating away at our society.
Join us over the next few weeks as we dive into God’s word and learn how to overcome these tendencies through deepening our community with one another.
Wild Goose Winner
I will now proceed to declare the winner of the free book Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. And the winner is… drumroll please… Daniel Day! Congrats man. Enjoy the book.
Annoying Christians
This post is kind of a follow up to this post which talked about the idea of the church being a hospital for sinners rather than a museum for saints. The focus of that post was on the need for the church to be outward focused on reaching the lost and the hurting and not an inward focused club.
On a different spin however, I think that if the church is going to be a hospital for sinners instead of a museum for saints, then it stands to reason that the church will be filled with a lot of hurting, broken, imperfect, work-in-progress types of people. This is to be expected just as hospitals are typically filled with lots of sick people needing medicine.
One of the main objections to Christianity that many people voice is: “The church is full of hypocrites.” What they mostly mean is that there is often a big disconnect between some people’s profession of faith and their actions. If the church is doing its job then this is to be expected. It means that people who are far from God are beginning to experience his power at work in their lives even though they have a long way to go. But the truth is we all have a long way to go.
It would be good for us to realize that everyone is at a different place in their spiritual journey. This way we can learn to have grace for the Christians who annoy us from time to time. We can never expect the church or any other gathering on earth to ever be a group of completely perfect people that we will never have a problem with.
The fact is that even in the church we will be annoyed, rejected, hurt, and let down by others. I believe however, that as we learn to walk together as the family of God (and every family has a little dysfunction if you know what I mean), learning to love our neighbor as ourselves and bear with one another in love we will progressively see God at work in each of our lives transforming each of us from annoying Christians into true Christlikeness, from glory to glory.
Fall Community Groups
I’m really excited about the start up of our Fall Community Groups! Our small group leaders and hosts gathered this morning after church for some fellowship and training.
Our church exists to help people experience God, excel in spiritual growth, and express God’s love to the world. Small groups are our intentional strategy for spiritual development. We feel that relationships are the best context for spiritual growth. Sunday morning services are wonderful and important, but community groups allow people chances for more in-depth study, fellowship, care, and encouragement.
Get ready to jump into a community group next month. Groups will be launching the week of September 21. The various groups will meet in different locations at different times during the week. More information will be forthcoming in the weeks ahead as well as a new sermon series called Better Together.
Win A Wild Goose Chase!
Just finished Mark Batterson’s new book Wild Goose Chase. You can visit the official book website here. The publishers have given me an extra copy to give away on this blog. I’m going to post some quick thoughts from the book and then give one lucky winner a chance for a free copy. Here’s a summary from the introduction:
“Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit–An Geadh-Glas, or ‘the Wild Goose.’ The name hints at mystery. Much like a wild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger, an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to follow the Spirit through life. I think the Celtic Christians were on to something…”
The book is written to help Christians rediscover the adventure of pursuing God by coming out of various “cages” that tend to hold us back from achieving God’s purposes for our lives. These are the cages of responsibility, routine, assumptions, guilt, failure, and fear.
The Cage of Responsibility
“I’m not convinced that your date of death is the date carved on your tombstone. Most people die long before that. We start dying when we have nothing worth living for. And we don’t really start living until we find something worth dying for.”
“Here is the mistake so many of us make: we start out pursuing a passion and end up settling for a paycheck. So instead of making a life, all we do is make a living.”
“Your greatest responsibility is pursuing God-ordained passions.”
The Cage of the Routine
“change of place + change of pace = change of perspective”
“You can do the work of God at a pace that destroys the work of God in you.”
“Hurry kills everything from passion to creativity. And when you’re in a hurry, you don’t have time to get out of your routine, do you?”
The Cage of Assumptions
“The smartest people are the people who know how much they don’t know.”
“Children do not know what cannot be done…The only limitation they know is their God-given imagination.”
“Faith is trusting God more than you trust your own assumptions.”
“It’s never too late to become who you might have been.”
The Cage of Guilt
“If you focus all your energy on past failures, you’ll have no energy left over to dream kingdom dreams or pursue kingdom purposes.”
“Through his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the evidence against us… Not only does our sin get paid for out of his account, but all of His righteousness gets credited to our account.”
The Cage of Failure
“Failure handled improperly can be devastating, but failure handled properly is the best thing that can happen to us.”
“Getting where God wants me to go isn’t nearly as important as becoming who God wants met to be in the process.”
The Cage of Fear
“Most of us are far too tentative when it comes to the will of God. We let our fears dictate our decisions. We are so afraid of making the wrong decision that we make no decision. And what we fail to realize is that indecision is a decision. And it is our indecision, not our bad decisions, that keeps us in the cage.”
“We need people who are more afraid of missing opportunities than making mistakes.”
“Too many of us live by default instead of by design.”
Ok, so if you’re still reading this post and would like to be the one lucky winner of a free copy of Wild Goose Chase then post a comment about why you think reading this book would be amazingly beneficial for where you are currently at spiritually and situationally in life. I’ll cover the shipping costs. The winner will be announced next week on this blog. (I tried to think of some kind of cool competition to give it away, but I have no creative juice left in my brain at the moment 
.
Mark Batterson is the pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C., a church with 6 services in 4 locations (3 of which are movie theaters). I had the privilege of meeting Mark when he was in town last year to speak to a group of area pastors.
New Series
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after…” How would you finish this sentence? The answer has the power to affect your entire life.
Join us over the next 2 weeks as we begin a new series all about the one thing.
Block Party Pics
Had an amazing time at the block party last night! We had over 450 people in attendance and gave away about 300 backpacks filled with school supplies. Praise God!
City Reach Rocked This Year
This year’s City Reach was amazing! We were blessed with great music from Aevory Nash and David Santistevan as well as some great messages by Fmr. Globetrotter Seth Franco and Swedish Evangelist Daniel Elvelyk.
The total combined attendance from the three nights was 796. We also praise God for a total of 37 decisions for Christ! I have enjoyed every minute of City Reach this year and I am so thankful for all of the ACC’ers who volunteered their time to assist with the outreach.
Statistically businesses and churches function by the 80/20 principle. This means that roughly 20% of the people do 80% of the work. This year we had over 70 volunteers from ACC sign up to help! This is about 45% of the church! I’m so proud of each and every person who put time and effort into making this year’s City Reach a great success. Looking forward to the Block Party tonight!
Wild Goose Chase Blog Tour
I’m excited to be participating in a small way with the blog tour for Mark Batterson’s new forthcoming book Wild Goose Chase. Our assignment is to read the book and blog about it by August 19.
Mark is the author of In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day and Lead Pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C.
Just received my 2 free copies! Looking forward to posting the review… Stay tuned!
City Reach Bands
We’ve got some great bands lined up for City Reach this week. They will be playing nightly at ACC Tuesday-Thursday at 7:00pm.
Aevory Nash will be performing on Tuesday, Aug. 12 and Wednesday Aug. 13. Aevory Nash is a Christian indie rock group from Grove City, PA. You can check out their sound by visiting their virb page here
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Also, David Santistevan will be performing on Thursday, Aug. 14. David has a new album that will be released later this month. You can listen to some of his songs by visiting his myspace page here.
The Church… A Museum For Saints?
After concluding our God Of This City Series expounding on our mission as a church in this community, I’ve been reflecting on a statement I came across in Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God. On page 54 he quotes an old saying which says,
“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”
I completely agree with that. I think that when the church loses focus on its mission it inevitably morphs into an inward-focused club for religious people (which is a major bummer and very sad). I think this was what Jesus was getting at when he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
I pray that we would never be a church so focused on ourselves that we neglect the hurting people Jesus has called us to reach. I think that as we continually put our preferences aside to reach our culture, we will increasingly know the joy of participating in the ministry of Jesus.
New Staff
We have been blessed with an incredible staff at ACC. This past Sunday we formally introduced some of our recent staff additions. Our new Children’s Ministry Director is Annie Jensen. Annie moved here in January from Chicago. At the time we could not afford to pay her a salary. She decided to come anyway on faith. We were able to bring her on staff in May.
Our new Worship Ministry Director is Matt Cooper. Matt is incredibly gifted musically and has a tremendous heart for worship. Matt is currently a student at Geneva College majoring in Youth Ministry and Music. Prior to joining our staff, Matt served as a worship intern at North Way Christian Community.
Who’s Speaking At City Reach This Year?
Glad you asked! Our guest speaker on Tuesday, Aug. 12 will be former Harlem Globetrotter Seth Franco. Check out his website here. Seth Franco has played for The Court Jesters, The Harlem Wizards, and in 2003 became the first Caucasian Harlem Globetrotter since 1942! Seth has an amazing testimony of God’s power in his life. He will be sharing his story with us as well as some sweet basketball tricks.
On Wednesday, Aug 13 our guest speaker will be Daniel Elvelyk. Daniel and his wife serve as the national coordinators for Mission SOS- Sweden. As a gifted communicator, Daniel has a passion for sharing the gospel with unreached people groups all over the world.
Our final guest speaker will be yours truly. I’m looking forward to sharing from God’s heart on Thursday night!
City Reach Prayer & Training Night
If you have signed up in recent weeks to volunteer at City Reach this year make sure to show up at the church this Wednesday at 7pm for an evening of prayer and training (we have over 65 people signed up to help this year- Praise God!).
We will take some time to join our hearts together in prayer and huddle for a little vision casting and practical training.
If you’re new and are not sure what City Reach is all about you can read a good explanation of it here on Jeff Leake’s Blog. If you would still like to get involved, just send us a quick email here.
Revelation Song
Had two amazing services this morning! Today the worship team introduced this song. I love it!
