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Miracles

  I blogged a few weeks ago about our Miracle Offering at the Island Campus and being a part of something amazing...CLICK HERE to read the update from Todd on our Island blog.

The verses that keep coming to mind as we walk this unbelieveable path of faith are ones that confirm God's promises to to provide.

"Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this." - Psalm 37:5 (NIV)

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart...in all your ways acknowledge Him and HE will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5 a,6 (NIV)

My faith as a Christ-follower has increased in ways I have never experienced. I truly believe God is guiding and leading in ways that only HE can make a way. It will not be in any human strength. His power alone...and this is a GREAT place to be!

Reflections from #unleash11

This was my third time attending Unleash and in my opinion, it was the best! I was able to take my WAM Staff with me and we had an unbelieveable 48 hours together - dreaming, sharing, and getting to know one another. Here were some highlights:

Five things to get our vision right - Perry Noble - from Matthew 25

1. We must make Jesus the END GOAL of all that we do.

2. We must be more concerned with the outsider than the insider.

My favorite statement of the day... 

"We must not organize ourselves around the preferences of the already convinced."

3. We must help people establish a new identity.

4. We must be patient with people.

5. We must make it our mission to proclaim freedom in Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel  14 - Every leader faces fear - Perry Noble

I loved this story of Jonathan and his armor bearer from 1 Sam 14:1-23. Go read it here. Perry started with John 14:12 and Christ's promise that we would do "greater things." He gave three stages of a leader being able to do greater things:

1.Preparation - vv. 1-4 -God has not called us to play it safe.

2. "Perhaps" - v.6- Perry said that everytime he reads the Bible, he sees that it is perfectly normal to not know what happens next. As Jonathan said, "Perhaps the Lord will act on our behalf..."

3. Partnershp - v.7 -You can always submit to godly authority and trust God for the outcome. As Jonathan's armor bearer said "Do all that you have in mind,” his armor-bearer said. “Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul."

Other thoughts...

Shane Duffey - Creative Arts Pastor - In his breakout session, I love what he said about creativity...

"We must be committed to process and product but married to the vision."

The worship was terrific...Lee and the team led with such authenticity and energy. I was so encouraged! It is such a treat to be led in worship. I just took it all in!

Thanks to ALL the team at NewSpring for their fabulous volunteers and a great day of encouragement!

It's not about us

I'm reading "Teaching Kids Authentic Worship" by Kathleen Chapman and I couldn't wait to do a book review on this.  There are WAY too many nuggets as I am reading that I have to share!

She talks in the first couple of chapters about how the post modern world is "indoctrinating our children into believing everything is about them." As a parent, I confess that there are times that I contribute to this problem. In my attempt as a parent to "connect" to my children with their unique personalities and passions, I go overboard at times. It's very important to be in tune with our kids, but at the same time, we have to help them understand that the entire world does not revolve around their happiness, life being fair, or getting everything they desire.

In context to worship, we have to teach our kids that worship is about God and not about them. "Worship is one-directional. Worship is focusing on God and giving all glory to Him only, alone, singulary, totally - just Him," she writes. Even as an adult, there are time that I forget that when I worship, I am focusing my heart and mind on God and Him alone...not what I need or want...just Him. To really teach our kids to worship God, it has to start with them understanding it is not about them.

Kathleen quotes Ken Hughes, Senior Pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois saying...

"The unspoken but increasingly common assumption of today's Christendom is that worship is primarily for us - to meet our needs. Such worship services are entertainment-focused, and the worshipers are uncommitted spectators who silently grade the performance...Taken to the nth degree,this instills a tragic self-centerdness."

Wow. That hit me. How many times do we do this? We rate our corporate worship experience on how much WE liked the worship leader, the song choices, the message...the stuff. Our kids are listening and learning what worship is by the way we talk about it. Are we teaching them that we worship because worship is really about them? or about God?

More to come...

Join me on YOU VERSION!

If you are a part of the LowCountry family, join me on Youversion this year! CLICK HERE for our group, share what you are learning from God's Word with others at LCC. I look forward to reading the Bible with you this year and learning new truths from God's Word.

I have better things to do on Sundays

I read this recent article in Parade. Here is the main paragraph that stuck out to me...

"As a concrete measure of religious commitment, nothing beats counting how many bodies show up to worship every week. So how often do Americans attend religious services? Thirty percent said they attend once or more in a given week. But keep in mind that academic researchers who actually count the number of participants believe that only up to one-half of those who claim to be in their houses of worship are actually there.

Twenty percent of respondents said they go to services anywhere from once a month to a few times a year. Combine them with the 50% who rarely or never attend, and an interesting contrast appears. Although 45% of respondents considered themselves religious, 70% of them said they participate in organized religion sporadically or not at all. That means one-third of the people who identified themselves as religious were only minimally connected to traditional worship. "

Let me get this straight...70 percent attend church at maybe Easter, Christmas, or not at all. Let me catch my breath.

Here are some questions for you to ponder.  Do I invite my friends to church? Do I feel my church offers something for my unchurched friends that would be worth their time?  Do I consider regular church attendance (2-4 times per month) a vital part of my spiritual journey? If I knew that NO ONE would ever ask or care if I went to church, would I keep going? What keeps me from going to church every week? 

I would love to hear your comments. As a church leader, if I am creating a worship experience that is not engaging, not relevant to unchurched people, not encouraging you in your spiritual journey, and frankly just a waste of your time, please tell me.  I would really like to know.

Sunday Recap

Todd (my hubby) and I have finished the first five (of many more, I'm sure) weeks of planning services together.  I am happy to report we are still married and we still like each other :) Honestly, it has gone very well making this move to live teaching...better than I thought.  Todd and Pastor Jeff work on their messages together and then share the same outline. The service planning has been fun for me to see this side of my husband and the inner "creative" coming out of him.  Emily, our Worship Arts Intern, has done at great job of choosing worship songs for our services and creatively contributing to the team with other elements. She is taking the reins on her own for a couple of Sundays coming up here soon. We had a new bass player, Sam, start with us this week (he is also our viola player) Not bad for a kid! (he's in high school) His good friend, Rob, is our cellist, so I just told them to work out the rotation (cello one week--bass guitar one week) and let me know. I think they liked that :) It was cool to see Rob sitting in the congregation this week just worshiping and cheering on Sam. I am so blown away at the community that we have on our team with each other. Bryan, one of our audio guys, made a GREAT call in between the services on a stage volume issue we were having.  Man, it made a huge difference!  I love the ownership that our team takes with executing services. I love it that they want it to be THE BEST it can be for God. I feel really blessed to be where I am. Here was our setlist:

"Trading My Sorrows"
"All Because of Jesus" - Fee
Welcome/Announcements
Desert Song - Hillsongs
Message
"Still" - Hillsongs
"Your Name" - Baloche

Our Time of Response was really worshipful...people REALLY sang out on "Your Name." It has kind of become the culture here that people just stand or sit on their own during the response time to sing.  As a worship leader, it is SO meaningful to just lead people and not tell them that they should stand now, sit now, do this, do that. Our people have really learned to respond during that time as they feel led. The whole room doesn't stand every week... it's a personal response and I love that and will always encourage that.  BTW, I took my ears out to listen to them sing...yeah, I just about lost it. It was such a great day.

Go to Fred's for more great setlists!

Look for some upcoming posts about what I think are THE MOST Important tools you need as a Worship Arts Leader in church planting.

More Fasting and Praying

 I was so struck today by Acts 13. Hear are verses 1-3. "Among the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch of Syria were Barnabas, Simeon (called “the black man”"Go to" Lucius (from Cyrene), Manaen (the childhood companion of King Herod Antipas^[b]), and Saul. ² One day as these men were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Dedicate Barnabas and Saul for the special work to which I have called them.” ³ So after more fasting and prayer, the men laid their hands on them and sent them on their way."

They were already fasting and praying. You can read on and see that they were going to a TOUGH place to minister. This required MORE fasting and praying. Are we doing that in the face of churches declining at an alarming rate? Are we doing MORE fasting and praying or are we coming up with a "new strategy" in our staff meetings? I am all for "If you are riding a dead horse, dismount." However, the Holy Spirit told them to fast and pray more for the challenge ahead. This hit me square between the eyes. This is what I need to be doing for the challenges ahead...more fasting and praying...and less planning.

What do you think?
 

Sunday Recap

It was one of those weeks...I chose a new song ("All Praise to God") and I loved it all week. It went ok in rehearsal. It just didn't cut it on Sunday. I love the song and I will definitely do it on my own on acoustic, but it just didn't work... the band agreed. We added "The Doxology" to the end and it was cool - I definitely recommend doing that if you do this song. Don't get me wrong - this is a GREAT SONG! It just didn't work for us. I changed the order after the 1st service - didn't like the way the songs were working with the other elements. It went SO much better in the 2nd service. We opened with "We Stand" by Lee McDerment. It rocked! This is GREAT opener and the people loved it! My 9-volt in my acoustic died during the 2nd service, so I had to switch over to keys for "All Praise to God" (which I had never played on keys before!) but we pulled it off. Just a weird day...Here was our service flow (from the 2nd service).

"We Stand" - Lee McDerment
"Sing to the King"  - Foote
Welcome/Announcements
"Let Me Sing" - Fields
Psalm 96 Reading
"All Praise to God" - Foote- w/ "The Doxology"
Message
Time of Response
"Lord of All" - Stanfill

Meet me at Fred's!

A proud Blog Mama

We all have blog mamas and papas....Randy Elrod is my Blog Papa. He got me into this in February 2006. Actually, it was a year before that, but I was a slow starter.  This has moved from being something that I did (one-way) to a true community of people in conversation (two-way). I am very passionate about people sharing ideas, sharing their journey, and being in authentic community...that is why I love blogging. The online community has been amazing, but the face-to-face conversation that has been generated by my blog has been unbelieveable.   I've spent most of this week developing a campus blog for our core campus and tweaking our own campus blog. It has been a privilege to come alongside our Lead Pastor, Jeff, and help him start his blog this year (which, by the way, he was BORN to do this!) Our entire Hilton Head Island Staff are bloggers (ok, there are only 3 of us, but it is 100 percent participation!) I am also working with other staff on the Bluffton Campus over the next few months to help them become a part of this community.  Clay has ben a huge help as a fellow blogger since he knows A LOT more about CSS than I do and has a great eye for design.  I've had a blast this week!  Check these out...Todd Cullen
Jeff Cranston     Barb Weatherwax     LowCountry Community Church - Hilton Head Island Campus Blog
LowCountry Community Church - Bluffton Campus Blog

At the plate

It's Sunday morning...very early.  I got a call late last night that our main worship leader on the other campus, Clay, is sick, which means Rob has to lead worship out there.  Normally, no big deal except today, Rob was scheduled to lead worship on my campus.  You've heard of musical chairs...how about musical worship leaders? So, I'm thinking through the worship set this morning, changing all the keys, maybe changing a song or 2. Our lead pastor, Jeff, has been on a 3-month sabbatical and just returned last week. He's doing a 3-week Message series entitled "PAUSE" starting today on our campus. He's putting our current Message series on hold while he addresses the worry, fear, and frustration that we are feeling as Americans with our current economic crisis. I'm really looking forward to this series. I've chosen "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman as a song of reflection today - I'm pumped about that. So, if you read this before 10:30 AM  E.S.T, pray a little prayer for me.  I'm feeling ill prepared (the perfectionist in me!) But, that is usually when God does His greatest work in me...when I'm up at the plate and needing Him desperately to help me swing.

At Bat by Les Tait