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1. Preach the Gospel. The gospel message is needed because it has the power to save people. Established churches sometimes don’t preach the gospel and so they don’t see any transformation and become stagnant country clubs. If we want to see peoples’ lives changed and making a difference in our community, we must proclaim the Gospel, which is the very reason Christ established the church.
2. Love people. People want their pastor to care about them.  The challenge for young pastors especially is that we are often stereotyped into wanting to build up a huge church and do things for our own glory or like what we’ve seen somewhere else. I’m not sure why that is, but I know I’ve run into that. People think the pastor will care more about their ministry and plans, and will forget about loving and actually shepherding people.  I spent the majority of my first year at Central going out and being with our people. Just getting to know them and praying with them– showing them that I genuinely care about them.  As challenging as they can be sometimes, people are the reason God put pastors in place!
3. Challenge complacency. Many maturing Christians get to a point where they feel like they don’t have to grow any longer. A pastor leading an established church has to not only challenge complacency in the church’s life and ministry but also in each person’s life.  Urgency in ministry is often lost in an established church, so we must always keep people focused on what’s next for the church and in their lives.  If we don’t lead them somewhere, they will obviously stay where they are.  As everything else in the world moves forward, the church does not– this leads to the church’s decline.
4. Keep evangelism at the forefront. Many reasons why a church plateaus or is dying is because it has lost its fervency as witnesses for Christ. The longer a church lives, the easier it is for it to become focused more on itself. This was never the goal of the church, so if we are going to lead established churches to still be effective, we must keep that initial purpose for the church at the front of our thinking and acting.
5. Confront sin. Many established churches don’t do this, and then problems continue because they’re never dealt with. Confronting sin should be done according to Scripture – in a loving but truthful way. However, if the church ignores sin (attitudes, behaviors, actions, etc.), there will always be hurdles as it tries to move forward.

• Pianos are electronic, so the volume can be controlled and different sounds can be used.
• Words can be displayed on screens so hands are free to worship without holding books.
• Dropbox lets everyone who works on files for Sunday’s service to put them in one place to be accessed at one time to prep the screens for a service.
• Computers allow for videos and other media to enhance the message during the service.
• Sermons can be recorded and uploaded online to be listened to whenever someone wants to.
• Church Management Systems allow office workers to handle data and serve people more effectively.

This was our church’s Facebook page status yesterday afternoon:

So last week Pastor Ryan asked in his sermon why we don’t get as passionate about church and Sunday school as we do for ballgames. He said he didn’t see anyone tailgating outside before church talking about the big sermon and all fired up for church. SOOOOO we got the hint and we all decided this week it was time for a tailgate party! We are excited for Sunday School, for worship, for preaching, fellowship, and God’s Word!!! What a great time had by all!

I honestly couldn’t believe what I saw when my family pulled into the parking lot next to the church for our routine Sunday morning.  As we turned in, Nikki said “what are all these people standing outside for?”  My first thought honestly was that there was a fire inside of our building!

But then I realized that a good number of our church people acted on my joking statement in last week’s sermon about our being passionate about Jesus and what we do together on Sunday mornings.  I couldn’t stop talking about this tailgating party with Nikki most of the day yesterday!

This was absolutely incredible for a number of reasons.  Here are a few:

• People listened to a sermon!  Even if it wasn’t the most spiritual part, they still heard
• People kept it a secret all week from me.  Being surprised made it even better.  I’m really surprised that Camma didn’t let it out while working around the office all week!
• It was awesome to see young and old gathering like this holding up signs and wearing church apparel and simply being united together in their excitement of Jesus and our church.
• This was put together in a week and was really well done too.  Seriously.  The signs, the sound system set up outside with music playing, the grill for sausage, the crock pots with breakfast casseroles, the “Jesus Loves Me” stickers everyone seemed to have on their faces.  It was just a lot of fun because everybody took it seriously.
• Nikki and I both agreed how much we appreciated that our church family would do something like this.  They’re a bunch of fun people.
• The morale yesterday morning going into Sunday School and then worship was so great!  There really seemed to be more energy and excitement to be there, just like tailgating at a football game.
• Most people were wearing t-shirts, jeans, and stickers on their face all morning.  It’s nice to relax together.

It deals with some hard issues.

One- the Holocaust. As a history student in college I enjoyed learning about World War II. My grandfather fought in that war and he liberated concentration camps at the war’s end. He saw this devastating act of hatred by the Nazis. It’s amazing to me that people claim it never happened when there are plenty of people, pictures, and more proof that show it did.

Two- abortion. The act of murdering babies is completely deplorable and it’s sickening to know that it is still legal and still happening much today.

Comfort has been criticized for this documentary, mainly for some people feeling that abortion cannot be compared rightly with the Holocaust. I think Comfort’s response in the article I linked was well said to that criticism.

I wanted to make the 180 Movie known here to encourage you to think about the terror of abortion again. While I saw a positive note this week that federal funding will not go toward it in the new health care plan, we still seem far off as a nation to make abortion illegal again.

If you’ve seen this documentary, what thoughts could you share about it?

The most significant reasons I’ve read or heard about for a name change center around the word “Southern.”  The SBC is active outside of the southern states in the US, more than ever.  Some think the name misrepresents all of its churches.  Some argue that someone in New York would not want to join a “Southern” Baptist church.  There is much more to this current debate and this is not the first time a name change has been suggested.

I’m curious to hear the results of the task force’s research.  In the mean time, all SBC churches should not get hung up over this issue, but should be committed to the basic principle of the convention:  we are a missionary convention.  It has always been this way, so let’s do our part now in making Jesus known throughout our towns, states, and the world!

I’ve always said that I’m grateful that we have a convention who is Biblically sound, where the largest current issues are about methodology and not theology.  We’re not debating the ordination of homosexual ministers or whether Jesus is the only way to salvation.

What are your thoughts on a possible name change?

The Baptist Press article of this issue.

Al Mohler’s (president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) thoughts on a possible name change.

• There’s been brainstorming and new plans made for building up our Sunday School ministry.  The next phase of changes will be coming soon.
• Community Groups start this week, so the last few weeks have seen a lot of time going into final planning.
• With Back to Church Weekend this past weekend, there was a lot of time spent trying to reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a while.
• Pastor Jim Mayes, our Associational missionary, preached yesterday in our service.  Even from a wheelchair, Pastor Jim preached a powerful message that was part of a great service.
• Planning is happening for 2012–and that’s a long process of setting priorities and seeking God’s guidance for how He would have us go.

Today I served for a little while and many others from our church were there all day.  Two big conversations happened in that time with people on the sidewalk outside of our space:

Dean works the lemonade stand in front of our area.  I introduced myself to him early in my time there, but later he came back to me and asked me what the million dollar bill was I was holding (a tract we’re using).  I had the opportunity to ask him the “million dollar question”: where will you spend eternity?  Dean was from China and recently moved to America, so we talked a little about how he said China has no belief and that he doesn’t believe in anything.  I was able to share the plan of salvation with him, although he didn’t really respond to it much.  He thanked me for talking with him and went back to his work.

Ryan was a 9th grader who was sharing a lot of how he is learning in school that all religions view Jesus the same. He, a lady from our church, and I had a long conversation about who Jesus is, homosexuality, the Bible, the church, and lots more.

I hope this event is a reminder for our church people that people are willing to talk about matters of faith, and many times they’ll even listen.  Our responsibility as Christians is to tell We’ll hope there are great conversations in the next two days!

There are a few pictures of our space up at the church’s FaceBook page.

He liked what we were doing and wanted to adapt to his setting.  He asked if he could access previous reading plans and if he could have permission to use them.  Yesterday, I sent a zipped file of the whole folder containing every reading plan file we’ve used in the two years of doing this program, and committed to sending him the most recent plan for the next year, since our reading plan program goes through the whole Bible in 3 years (approximately).

Some observations about this situation:

1. It’s a good thing to share.  Some Christians and churches are reluctant to give away their resources.  It’s not wrong to accept payment for resources that you’ve put hard work into, but I think there is a heart issue with creating resources in order to profit off of them.  These reading plans aren’t an amazing creation that took so long to work on that we can’t just give them away.  I’m glad we can help.
2. I’m encouraged by a group of physicians being in scripture daily.  What a great way for these men and women to rely on the Lord in their very difficult work environments and highly stressful work.
3. The Word of God is everywhere and never returns void.  I know Georgia is not too far away from Ohio, but the fact is that what we do in Ohio can be directly translated to ministry in Georgia when it’s all about Scripture.  Why?  Because it means the same thing there as it does here.  Application might be different, but the meaning is the same.
4. It pays for churches to be online.  This is hopefully an obsolete statement by now, because I think most churches understand the importance of being online in an online world.  But if we weren’t online or only kept this program going “in-house” then this doctor wouldn’t have found it.

Ark Encounter

Answers in Genesis

New Noah’s Ark in Ky. aims to prove truth of Bible

HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — Tucked away in a nondescript office park in northern Kentucky, Noah’s followers are rebuilding his ark. The biblical wooden ship built to weather a worldwide flood was 500 feet long and about 80 feet high, according to Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry devoted to a literal telling of the Old Testament.

This modern ark, to be nestled on a plot of 800 acres of rolling Kentucky farmland, isn’t designed to rescue the world’s creatures from a coming deluge. It’s to tell the world that the Bible’s legendary flood story was not a fable, but a part of human history.

“The message here is, God’s word is true,” said Mike Zovath, project manager of the ark. “There’s a lot of doubt: ‘Could Noah have built a boat this big, could he have put all the animals on the boat?’ Those are questions people all over the country ask.”

The ark will be the centerpiece of a proposed $155 million religious theme park, called the Ark Encounter, and will include other biblical icons like the Tower of Babel and an old world-style village.

It’s an expansion of the ministry’s first major public attraction, the controversial Creation Museum. It opened in 2007 and attracted worldwide attention for presenting stories from the Bible as historical fact, challenging evolution and asserting that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago.

“The ark is really a different approach” than the museum, Zovath said. “It’s really not about creation-evolution, it’s about the authority of the Bible starting with the ark account in Genesis.”

Inside the ark’s headquarters in Hebron, a small team of artists and designers are working on the visuals at the new park, but once the project begins early next year, there will be hundreds at the creation, including a team of Amish builders from Indiana who will erect the giant ark. Many of the same people who helped design the museum are on board for the ark project, including Patrick Marsh, who helped build some of the attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.

Zovath said the ark will have old-world details, like wooden pegs instead of nails, straight-sawed timbers and plenty of animals — some alive, some robotic like The Creation Museum’s dinosaurs. He said it has not yet been determined how many live animals will be in the boat during visiting hours, but the majority will be stuffed or animatronic. At their count, Noah had anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 on board.

There are a handful of replica arks around the world, but Zovath said this one will be authentic inside and out.

“When you get to walk through the boat and see how big this thing really was, and how many cages were there, and how much room there was for food and water … our hope is people start seeing that this is plausible, that the account could be believed,” Zovath said.

A longtime critic of the Answers in Genesis ministry argues the attraction will bring in converts to creationism by challenging scientific findings about the world’s history.

“Many think that since creationism is so irrational and so unscientific that nobody really could believe it, but that’s not so,” said Edwin Kagin, a lawyer in northern Kentucky who is president of a nationwide atheist group. The new park will be “so slick and so well done, you can get people to believe in anything. Creationism, when you’re ready to believe anything.”

The Ark Encounter won’t be the nation’s first theme park inspired by the Bible, or the first with Noah’s big boat. A park in tourism-rich Orlando, Fla., features a portrayal of the crucifixion by actors six days a week, along with Jesus’ resurrection and gospel concerts. The Holy Land Experience opened in 2001, but the nonprofit park struggled with debt before it was taken over by Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2007.

Other replicas of Noah’s famous ship have been built around the world.

A huge fiberglass ark sits at the center of a Hong Kong Noah’s Ark attraction, and another floating ark in the Netherlands is being built by a Dutch man, who wants to sail it to London for the 2012 Olympic games. Closer to home, a church in Frostburg, Md., is building a to-scale ark supported by a steel frame.

But attractions with religious themes can be a risky venture, according to an amusement park expert.

“In some ways it’s a two-edged sword: If you go for the religious market, you already have something that is somewhat unique in the market, and that particular market is known to be willing to make a special effort, to drive an extra distance, to get the church groups to go out and make a special outing,” said John Gerner, managing director of Leisure Business Advisors of Richmond, Va.

“The problem with that approach is you always risk bordering on being disrespectful if not sacrilegious,” Gerner said. “There is a line as far as what you can do in this approach.”

Some in the state hope it will be a major attraction. A feasibility study on the Ark Encounter declared that the park would attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year, Zovath said. The smaller Creation Museum has attracted well over a million people since it opened four years ago.

State officials are banking on the park’s success and the 900 jobs it is expected to create, by making the project eligible for more than $40 million in sales tax rebates if the Ark Encounter hits its attendance marks.

Tying state incentives to a religious theme park has also attracted some criticism, though notably less than The Creation Museum, which received no state support. That facility was built on private donations.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based group, has said the park would run afoul of constitutional law.

“Noah didn’t get government help when he built the first ark, and the fundamentalist ministry behind the Kentucky replica shouldn’t either,” the group said in a statement. But so far they have taken no legal action.

Kagin said challenging the project in court would likely be a losing battle because of the way the tax incentives are structured.

“The legislation is so drafted that they will give this incentive to any organization that is going to increase tourism in Kentucky,” Kagin said. “And there’s no question whatsoever that this group will.”

Zovath said construction on the ark is expected to begin in the spring.