Beast Feast @ Beech Street

This past Saturday we had our 2nd annual Beast Feast at Beech Street.  We have a great team of men that organize this event for our church.  Lots of wild game and a couple of dogs made this years a huge success.  My Pastor posted about it on his blog, check it out www.adaysportion.com or (click here).

"Church Birth Control"

Title got you didn't it, it got my attention as well.  It was an article that Ed Stetzer did for Outreach Magazine that was published in their March/April edition.  It got the article off of Ed Stetzer's Blog.

I thought it was very thought provoking, read it for youself.

"Get your church off birth control & start having babies-- churches need to birth churches," Ed Stetzer.  Below is the article:

Church Birth Control

Seems to be that churches must be on some powerful birth control. They are not reproducing. And I don't get why.

It's natural. It's normal. It's essential. And we all know how to do it. But somewhere along the way, church reproduction and multiplication became unusual or strange in North America. And I am not happy about it.

The Church is the most powerful institution in the world. Where no electricity and running water exist, you will still find a church that is planting churches. When governments grow corrupt and economies crash, the Church still stands and plants more churches. Nothing in the world and nothing in the last two millennia of history can compare to the Church. It advances best by exponential and explosive multiplying. But not here.

The Church matters. It is God's agent of change for the hopeless. It is how He delivers transformation to a hurting world. Through the Church, God unfurls the banner of mercy and announces the kingdom of grace. He has assembled the Church to tell and model the most important issue in life--how to spend all of eternity with God Himself.

God has chosen the Church to make known His multifaceted wisdom to all in authority (Eph. 3:10). Whether a power in the heavenly realm or an authority on the earth, the Church is where God rolls out His message. It is used by God to speak to the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich, the hopeful and the hopeless.

We believe in the Church not only because of what we have seen, but because of what Christ can do next. He constantly amazes us at how lives are changed through the Church.

That is why church multiplication is so vital, and why I love church planting so much. Depending on how you count, I have personally planted five. Each time I learn about a church being planted, I get ready to witness lives changed. I prepare myself to hear about cities touched by God's grace. I feel assured that entire nations will be transformed by the Gospel. Church planting is almost the most effective evangelistic strategy in the world.

What's the most effective? Church multiplication movements. When churches plant lots of other churches, our witness advances exponentially. The Gospel goes viral. We need that kind of movement today. One that cannot be controlled, confined or contained.

[Church researcher and author] Warren Bird and I have a new book coming out in May called Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (Jossey-Bass). By our definition, a church multiplication movement happens when churches:

-Multiply at a 50 percent rate (100 churches one year become 150 the next year) -Reach 50 percent of their new people through conversion (they are reaching the lost)
-Multiply to the third generation of churches (parent, child, grandchild)

Yet I feel like a tired husband in yet another round of false labor. Everyone is talking reproduction, but not enough churches are having babies.

I hope and pray to see a church multiplication movement in North America during my lifetime. I love local churches and know that God is moving in them. But we need more churches that want to see more churches planted.

Conferences, books and articles can point the way, but only God can change the heart. We have a lot of right information, but we haven't made enough application. It will take a passion for reaching people far from God and a willingness to sacrifice for multiplication. It will even require a new kind of surrender. But I challenge you to take up the work of supporting, cheering and even boldly leading what becomes a viral church.

As Posted on www.edstetzer.com

Sunday @ Beech Street

For the past several Sunday's I have had the priviledge of baptizing a teenager.  God has been moving in our students lives and weekly we are seeing student accept Christ as their Savior and Lord.  As a result we are seeing these student follow through in Believers Baptism.  This past Sunday was no exception as I baptized one of our teenage girls that had accepted Christ.

This Sunday I also had the opportunity to preach, Pastor Craig was away preaching a revival.  I always appreciate him giving me this opportunity.  My sermon was based off of James 2:26, "Faith without works is Dead," then I used Peter walking on water to illustrate a Faith that's Alive.  If you want a Faith that is Alive you will be Called, then you must put it in Action and finally Worship Jesus.  God used the Word to draw another man to accept Jesus. 

God is doing some neat things in people's live and I'm glad to be apart of it. 

h2o live -Wed night

I finished up my series, "Becoming a Champion for God," this past Wednesday night.  I spent 3 weeks walking through David's encounter with Goliath.  It was very effective in students lives.  To conclude the series I preached on David killing Goliath and talked about how it's time to kill the Giants in your life.  So many times we sincerely want to defeat a Giant in our life, yet we do like the Israelite Army and march out to the battle lines, the Giant comes out again and we give into in and live in sin.  Why not just kill the Giant?  I ended the message by handing each student a small stone and asked them to kill their Giant with this stone.  The Spirit of God moved in and we had 4 students accept Christ and many others defeat Giants in their lives.

The stories I've heard from students since Wednesday night are simply amazing.  We were at one of the local High Schools on Thursday and several students walked up to me, pulled their small stone out of their pocket and said, "I'm killing my Giant."

I heard stories of students going home and talking with their parents about Giants in their lives that they were ready to kill.  Other students left things at the alter, some handed them into our adult leaders.  It one of those nights that students allowed God to move in their lives.  God is able to help us defeat & kill the Giants in our lives.

Adult Volunteers @ h2o

I believe one of the key to having an effective Student Ministry and a successful ministry is the Adult Volunteers that serve with you.  I love our adult volunteers that are apart of h2o student ministry.  This fall alone we have almost doubled the number of adults that volunteer with our Student Ministry. 

This always begs the question, "What do they do?" 

For me the #1 key for all our volunteers is that they love teenagers.  Our adults here at h2o have strong relationships with the teenagers, they love on them and they build relationships with them.  Our students know that the adults they see each week are there not because they have to be, not out of duty but because the care about the students.

Another key is for me, as the Student Pastor, to give them clear direction on what they are to do.  Volunteers want to know what their job is.  We meet with all our volunteers regularly and go over their responsibilities and where, when, what and how.  I have overall expectations and rules I provide to every volunteer and then I have individual job descriptions that I give to a volunteer based on the area/task they are assigned.  On Wednesday nights I assign our volunteers to areas of our building.  We have cafe workers, area monitors, door monitors, registration desk, recreations leaders for after our worship time and security.  Plus, we train people on counseling students that make decisions during the Worship time.

I encourage all our volunteers to build relationships with the students.  Even while they are serving in the area they are assigned to I encourage them to engage students.  Our adults here at h2o are very good at this part.  There are very few students that walk through our ministry that don't connect with an adult.  This may be the thing I appreciate most about our adult volunteers here, there desire not to just be there to help, but to invest in student lives.

As a Student Pastor I can't do all the ministry, care for all the students, organize and run all the events by myself.  That equals burn out and a small ministry.  My desire is to empower our adults.  The more volunteers I have engaged in our ministry the more students we can reach and the more lives are changed by Christ.

If you are one of our h2o volunteers and your are reading this, thank you for the job you do each week!