Shoulder a Cross & Live 4 His Cause!

Happy 09-09-09!

Busy day for me yesterday was! Very productive… very encouraging! Worked with Dave Harman on the finishing touches for Destiny Family Center GO Outreach- phase one! Tonight at 7pm, we’re handing out the team leader packages… and we’re training the entire team… gonna break off into groups and do some role playing… it’s gonna be a SPIRITUAL BLAST! Try to come in person, or catch the LIVE internet broadcast @ seven EST!

I have to tell you guys, this GO Outreach has me more excited about ministry than ANYTHING else I’ve ever been a part of before! The idea actually came from my wife Emily… one day we were on the back roads running together, talking about how difficult it is to keep certain people from leaving churches. As you must know, this is a common problem in most churches today… and no matter how PERFECT a church is, certain people always find a few reasons to move on after a few years. This is because we are all human and we are all flawed… thus the greater need for a beautiful God!

Emily said, “Charlie, we don’t want to become like so many Pastors today. We don’t want to be the kind of church that once you get in, you cant get out. We must not spend our lives begging people to stick around. If people feel the need to move on, let them do this. Instead of building a huge wall around the ministry… and instead of sitting inside the church walls wondering whose going to be with us a year from now… let’s do ministry the way Jesus taught us to do it! Let’s GO out into the world and DO the Great Commission!”

Emily and I went back and forth for the next hour, talking about how EXCITING it would be if we mobilized our church around the Great Commission! I told her how this would take away the pressure of always having to tweak the church and make it more and more perfect so that nobody ever finds a reason to leave. We agreed that while many Christians want to know what the CHURCH can do for them… that God has to be saying, “Ask not what your Heavenly Kingdom can do for you, but what YOU CAN DO for your Heavenly Kingdom!”

It has become our observation, that todays modern Christian spends most of his spiritual time trying to figure out how God can enhance his life. He wants bigger and better spiritual encounters… and he’s looking for a church that will SERVE HIM like a rockstar! Because of waning church attendance, he knows he’s NEEDED and WANTED… and he thrives on the way pastors beg for his membership.

While churches should LOVE and SERVE people the very best they can and while ministers are commissioned to lead believers into spiritual maturity… I believe the American Church has taken our movement in a very dangerous direction.

Somehow, we have to delicately shift the hearts of our followers… we have to HELP our friends find the JOY of SERVING THEIR LORD. Somehow, we have to impart to this modern church, the real passion of its founder, Jesus Christ… that we too would “SEEK AND SAVE THOSE WHO ARE LOST TODAY.” That we too… just like the early disciples of the Christian Church, would care less about what we are GETTING from the church and MORE about what we are GIVING BACK to the church.

It really is time for all of us to stop whining over every little ministerial imperfection… and realize, that this salvation covenant is a TWO WAY covenant. While we are given the promise of Gods Holy Spirit, the privilege and right to worship him, the promise of his favor and blessing, the answers to our prayers, all the other promises of the Bible, and the gift of the church… we are called to SHOULDER A CROSS and LIVE FOR HIS CAUSE.

Luke 14:27 And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:21b-23 ‘Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ After the servant had done this, he reported, ‘There is still room for more.’ So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be FULL.

John 4:34-35 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest?’ I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”

So this is the direction we are steering Destiny Family Center… and the ENERGY in our ministry is OFF THE CHARTS right now! I hope you can catch tonight’s broadcast or drive up for tonight’s GO Outreach historical first training session!

I pray that todays blog CHALLENGES and INSPIRES each of you to focus less on the imperfections of the modern church and more on the RIPENED FIELDS of people all over our world waiting to rescued from the dark!

Dream big, live bold, make a difference… all day long! God bless you all!