The CCJ Blog

Check out this article on Relevant, After Da Vinci Comes And Goes.

A snippet:

We can be certain that challenges to the story of Christ will come and go. In fact, one of Christ’s promises to the Church was that dissenting voices would always be around us and even among us. Such “battles” are as old as the conspiracy theory the Roman soldiers and religious leaders dreamed up in Matthew 28. The sobering reality is that even if we “get rid” of a Dan Brown, we will probably have to deal with someone like Michael Baigent (he’s the gentleman who sued Brown for supposedly stealing his ideas). Give me a Brown, and I’ll raise you a Baigent. Already the secret Judas documents are stealing the headlines. Who knows who else or what else is coming. One thing I am sure about is that this is ongoing and unending. Another thing I am sure about is that we can do more to make sure it never gets to this silly an extent again.

Check out the whole article & feel free to comment.

Please pray hard over the next few weeks for our associate minister’s search. We are going to really start examining candidates these next few weeks. We will be forming this week a hiring team to help us in this area. This process is very important and we have taken it slow to this point. Now things speed up a bit. We just want God’s leading to guide us to the right person.

I read about some of this in ESPN the Magazine and then I read this from Mark Driscoll a preacher in Seattle.

http://theresurgence.com/rednecks_turnbuckles_and_the_lord_jesus_christ

Here is a trend for you; A gloomy rainy Saturday usually means a great Sunday at CCJ. Don’t know if it means much but we will see tomorrow.

A day after the final day of Spiritual Renewal came to a close I have some random thoughts about the week.

I feel renewed. The extra worship and being preached to really revived and energized me.

I am extremely please and proud of CCJ people. Yes I would have loved to fill the place up and I am sure many more people of the church could have come; but over all the attendance was good and it increased every night.

Once again Narrow Path was great and demonstrated service at its best.

I really am very thankful for my friendship with Phil. By the way he got his Turkey at 7:15 this morning.

CCJ smacks all trends in the face. Not only do we operate a church in a warehouse but we host a revival type event in a time when they are dying and God makes it work big time.

It is only going to get better and better.

First off since no one will comment and even fewer post I am just going to talk (That means type.)

High school is the great universal American experience. Just me saying those words invokes all kinds of different emotions. Fun, sadness, anger, loneliness and all kinds of stuff. I loved that time in my life. That being said I was a dork. (Okay Jim, I still am). Maybe even a nerd. I think that is why I (and so many others) loved Napoleon dynamite. Napoleon was just a big dork who lived in his own world. That was me minus the funny part. I just lived in this imaginary world. I was a dork but a well liked dork. You see my school was not like a lot of others. There were not really that many factions such as the jocks over here and the skateboarders here. For the most part everyone interacted. There were actually football players in the band. Anyway back to the subject at hand, I think many of us can relate to that high school kid. We all at times feel like that displaced lost kid. We long for acceptance and approval. High school is that traumatic rite of passage yet we still go back there as adults often.

Maybe if would get a better understand of who we are in God we could truly be more happy with who we are period. You see we are His. He created us, loved us and like the husband in the Old Testament bought us back out of our prostitution despite that fact that we willing left His for it. He is constantly drawing us back. He sent His one and only Son to die for us. Jesus went through the hell we deserved to give us the heaven we don’t. That is who we are in Him. Really since He feels that way about us why does it matter what everyone else thinks. Outside of living a good life to be a positive witness and example it makes no difference how the world looks at us.

Dork, you better believe it but I am a redeemed dork and that is good enough to me.

CCJ’s band, Narrow Path, leading worship with On Our Side at Jasper Middle School. Easter Sunday, 04/16/06.

“On Our Side”
CCLI #4403382
Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves
© 2004 worshiptogether.com songs (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing), sixsteps Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing), Alletrop Music (Admin. by Music Services)

I don’t really want to know what kind of underwear you have. It is a figurative question. Let me explain. As a lot of you know I really love the show 24. I look more forward to Monday nights than any other weeknight. It is a nail biting and exciting show. The main character in the show is Jack Bauer. He is the agent that saves the day. He is amazing and can overcome anything in the best superhero form. Let me put it this way, if Jack Bauer were real then there would be no Osama. At least not at the end of a 24 hour day.

Last week one of my friends who watches the show says, “Even Superman wears Jack Bauer underwear. It was a funny reference to the fact that as kids many of us wore underoose of our favorite Superhero. Mine was Superman.

We all have our heroes. While we don’t buy themed undergarments we all have people we look up to and people we aspire to model. Obviously the greatest to model is Christ. But Paul says follow me as I follow Christ. Who are people you look up to?

If I was to tell you there was a way to make this happen would you be interested?
kurt

Have you ever stopped an looked back at the past and realized in hindsight how much God takes care of us?

God is so good. I love the spring with exception of one thing, April 15th. Tax time is always bad for me and my family. This year as I look back however I see how really awesome God is. We had a Christmas gift. We had a lady hit one of our cars and only do cosmetic damage yet her insurance company paid a lot more then I thought it would be. I told the agent, “I won’t even get this fixed.” He said it did not matter his company owed me the money anyway. Both of those things added to our savings helping us pay Uncle Sam without going in debt.

Our lives if we think about are filled with times when out loving Father takes provisional care of us without us even realizing at the time.

“Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.” Genesis 22:13

Thanks to Glenda for sharing these clips:

One of the major causes of disillusionment among young Christians is the shocking discovery that Christians fight. “I thought we were supposed to love each other and get along as Christians,” the rookie believer mutters. Sometimes he even gives up on the church. It is true that sometimes (maybe most times) intra-church conflict arises from immaturity among the members. But conflict occasionally occurs for another reason. A good reason.

Conflict arises because church people take their faith seriously. People who don’t care, don’t argue. Apathetic persons rarely bicker. What they believe means so little to them that it isn’t worth fighting for. I say all of this to say that if you are attending a church that compromises the word of God or know of a teacher of the Word who does the same, then by all means that is time for loving conflict. The Bible tells us to speak the truth but to do it in love.

Jesus said He came not to bring peace but a sword. Paul told Timothy to rebuke as well as encourage. They were willing to risk a friendship over what they were convinced was true.

Those who laugh last laugh the loudest.

Every year I try to do a little something different for Sunrise service. This year we had a goat. However the goat was not just some gimmick but a teaching tool about a part of scripture we don’t study much. We don’t like to study books like Leviticus but they really pave the way for understanding why Jesus had to go through what he did to save us. You can read about the scapegoat in Leviticus 16. All through the Bible there are countless stories that are left untold that can help us learn about life, God’s will and can help us understand God’s world view instead of ours. Later this summer we will have a sermon series from the prophets which will do some of those very things.

God is so creative yet because our culture no longer spends much time in the word, a large part of his message gets ignored. Let’s make it our goal to learn and grow in the whole counsel of God.

I just want to praise God for the great Resurrection day we had. CCJ at the middle school far exceeded my expectations. God is great.

Thank you to everyone who planned, serves and attended.