Change

Change is inevitable just like death and taxes. Change comes with life. You may not want it and you may not like it but it comes. Sometimes change is hard like when your family moves to a new city and as a child you have to change schools. Sometimes you must change your ways if you want to save your marriage or if you want to make better grades in school. It can be hard but necessary. Change can be good as well. It can make you a better person! It can make you more appreciative of who you are as a person and where you've come from and what you have! I recently made a change! I decided to leave the church I started from scratch with my wife and about twenty people over five years ago! It wasn't an easy decision but one I knew was the right thing to do and the right time for me and my family and hopefully for Crosspoint! Change is not always easy but when you make a change knowing that it's the right thing to do, life takes on such more meaning! You come to realize what's really important in life like family and health and you value those you love more. Change brings questions. Some have wondered that it must be a waste that Crosspoint is no longer a church, since it went through a struggle following my departure and eventually merged with and became Next Level Church? My answer to that is an emphatic NO! What Christ did through Crosspoint will live on forever! Just ask Carol Cavanaugh, and Jeff Johnson and Ken Horgan and Sherry Hundley and Janet Poole and many, many others who came to know Christ at Crosspoint, or who found acceptance in our fellowship or who came to know real community through the friendships of others or who were blessed by the weekly teaching and worship! Ask the kids who received weekly hugs and love from the faithful volunteers or the many tireless servants who served together setting up week after week for the new folks who found a home at Crosspoint? They would say it was not a waste! If only one had come to know Christ during the four and half years it existed, it would have been worth it all! A waste? Not for a second! God will have the final say about Crosspoint and I'm confident that He will say his name was glorified and that his will was done! And the good news is that the ministry still continues there! It just doesn't say Crosspoint out on the front sign! It says Next Level and indications are that things are alive and well there! So, change happens! It may not always be what we imagined but it comes! The question is how will you respond to it when it does?

Leadership

I have had the good fortune to be able to lead several ministries over the past thirty years! First as a middle school teacher and coach, then as a middle school pastor, high school pastor, family and men's pastor and finally as a Lead Pastor. These positions included leading numbers of adult volunteers, thousands of students, and several staff members as well as hundreds of congregants. The past few months I have reflected on what it means to be a leader, whether it's the leader of a church as I was, the leader of a family, the leader of a committee or the leader of an athletic team or any other group or organization! We see and hear much today about leaders and leadership. Tim Tebow, the quarterback of the Denver Broncos has been described as a leader. Much has been made of his prayer pose on the field but he tries to let his abilities speak for themselves on the field with his team. Certain politicians in the GOP Presidential race have been trying to stand out as the right leader for their party. CEO's of major corporations have been branded as poor leaders of failed institutions. We could go on! As I have reflected on what it takes to be a leader today in any setting, I have noticed certain qualities that arise from those who have set the standard of leadership. Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa and Truett Cathy are just a few great leaders who come to mind for me. I'll let you read up on their own personal qualities if you don't know their stories. I'll post a couple of these qualities here today for your consideration and a few more in later posts. To be a leader requires first and foremost humility! It's not about having a great vision or being relational or having a dynamic personality. Those things are fine but they are not the most important essential. It has to start with humility. I think humility is missing in many who call themselves leaders today! Jesus said that he who would be great must be the least of all. In other words, if you want to be a great leader, you must first learn what it means to be humble. Jesus said of Moses that he was the most humble person who ever lived. He was referring to Moses leadership. He was strong but tender. He knew that great leadership was about knowing from where one came and the great responsibility that comes with the job. Humility has been described by some as power under control. It's likened to a wild horse that's been broken and tamed. There can be no room for arrogance or ego or feeling as if you're above everyone else! To go up one must first go down. It was the epitome of how Jesus lived his life! If you think you're a leader or if you want to lead others, take on the attitude of humility. Humility enables one to see that leadership is hard and tenuous and requires an understanding heart for others who lead! Humility doesn't take pot shots at other leaders. Humility enables one to come alongside of other leaders to help and encourage and not tear down, because they sense and understand the difficulty of leading. Humility is never mentioned in most leadership books. It's usually about being strong and tenacious and driven and having a plan. But plans and goals mean nothing if you're not humble. Don't say you're a leader if you're not willing to humble yourself! A second quality of leadership that I believe is essential and the last we'll touch on here in today's blog is submission. Leaders aren't born and they don't assume leadership just because they may want to lead. There must be a willingness to submit to someone, to some group or to a process that channels people into leadership. They show by example that one can lead by the things they do (attitude-humility) and (action-submission) and prove that they're worthy of a leadership position. The best leaders at home are the ones who serve the rest without complaint. Jesus said he came to serve and not be served. Remarkable if you think about it. I mean, after all, he was the Son of God. He could have chosen to set up his throne and government right in the heart of Jerusalem. Yet he chose to lead in an upside down way that is contrary to what we usually think of leadership. In other words, he wasn't here to lord over others by strong arming and controlling. Leadership is born out of service to others and the willingness to do any and every task that may seem a long way from being the top dog, but it's the only way to leadership. Some of the greatest CEO's and president's of great companies started in the mail room or as a clerk or swept floors before they were ever appointed to the top. But they were willing to submit to a process that can take time and patience but in the end lead to places of leadership that was never imaginable. Many today have plans, ideas and visions that sound great. They're good people with great ambition. But they often try to assume leadership and leapfrog over the hard work of submission that's required to learn to lead. When Moses was young, you may remember he saw how his adopted nation of Egypt was mistreating his own people of Israel and he thought he could take matters into his own hands and kill an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite slave. He ran over and killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. He began looking for more of these opportunities to end the oppression of his people. He was looking to be a self-promoted leader. But it wasn't the right way or the right time. God wasn't ready for him to lead yet. Moses needed to learn humility and submission. Guess what happened to him. He spent the next 40 years on the back side of the desert herding sheep. Then after years of silence and solitude and hanging out with sheep, God was ready to let him lead. He learned the two greatest essentials of leadership. For all who yearn to lead, who may even have the biblical gift of leadership, check everything else at the door and let God work these two essentials deep into your character and life. Then and only then will you be ready to lead!

Friends!

I love good friends! You know the kind I'm talking about? They are unpretentious around you and they love you for you! You can be yourself around your friends and there's no need to impress. You don't have to! And good friends have your back. They know you so they can vouch for you and will take a bullet for you because they love you! Tonight, we were out with good friends. They know who they are. There was good conversation and laughter, funny moments and serious, thoughtful moments and the time to just be yourself. These friends are safe because everything we say stays there. There's no need to worry that something you said will be shared because friends don't share. And you're known and accepted for who you are and all that goes with that instead of known for what you do! When I'm in a conversation with someone I've just met, I try not to ask what they do until I've gotten to know them. And then, as the conversation dies down, I may ask what they do for a living just to keep the conversation going and to get to know them better! Sometimes I don't ask at all because I don't wont that to make me size them up financially or socially. You see, we are all more than the title we wear, whether it be pastor or manager or vice president of marketing or administrative assistant! The job is not who I am but something I do! With good friends, it doesn't matter what you do! You're accepted and loved for who you are, warts and all! May we all learn to accept each other and the friends and neighbors we love just for who they are, not for what they do or for what they can give! Jesus said to "love your neighbor as you love yourself!" That means fully, without reservation, through and through! It's at the heart of what it means to be Christian!

Volunteerism

Today I was a volunteer at the Morrison YMCA Triatholon event that ran in South Charlotte around the Y and surrounding community! There were several hundred participants and a host of volunteers to help run things. I don't write this to toot my own horn so that you'll look at me! But I do write this to encourage those who follow Christ to get out in the community and serve! It was a pleasure to serve today and to help point runners in the right direction and then to help take down and clean up! There's something about rubbing shoulders with total strangers and working together on a unified event that stirs you to care for others and to make things better. Now this was just a race event but being able to encourage runners and support the Y was very rewarding and hopefully inspiring to others! It reminds you why we live in this community and why we should serve others. I did it because I love Christ and love others and so I feel compelled to volunteer! I think it's what Christ would do if he were here! It also reminds me that there's more to life than just hanging out with the same folks that I'm most comfortable with! That's easy to do and it's what I'm most likely to do! But I'm so glad I spent my Saturday morning doing whatever was needed to make a great event happen for the community! For those of us who love Christ, let's look for opportunities to get out of our comfort zones and serve our community and serve others! Let's do what Christ would do! Let's put our faith to work!

The Highs and Lows of Ministry

This past week, I rode a roller coaster of emotions as I was involved in several personal encounters with very good friends that typifies the highs and lows of ministry! On one hand, I visited a former student of my youth ministry days who is battling a brain tumor now for almost four years. His wife and parents moved him here to their home so that he could finish out his days among family and friends. I was able to spend two great hours with them and recall fond memories of youth ministry days! My heart aches for them as they walk this path. You aren't supposed to outlive your students! But it was so refreshing to see their spirit and courage of faith and hope in the midst of suffering!
The day before this visit, another former student who attends our church gave birth to her second child! There's always such great joy at the birth of a baby! It's fun to watch former students experience life in this way!
Then, finally, on Saturday of this week, I was invited to baptize an entire family of very good friends in the backyard pool of their parents. There were some twenty plus family members and friends there to witness the baptism and testimony of this family! They wanted everyone to know of their faith in Christ and their desire to live for Him! What a thrill to be able to participate with them in this blessed day!
As I reflected on this past week and the highs and lows of the events I was fortunate enough to share in, I thought of how life is surely a journey of trust and faith in the midst of joy and pain! But through it all, the same God is present in every situation with each person, no matter where the journey leads them. I'm grateful to be a pastor and to be able to share in these moments with friends, as hard as they may be sometimes. Thankfully, He is there every step of the way!

NT Wrigth's Repsonse to Hawking on Heaven

Stephen Hawking, the great physicist of England, says that "Heaven is a fairy story". And NT Wright, the renown Theologian, also of England, responds to Hawking's view. I have his response here!

What Stephen Hawking doesn’t understand about heaven

It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of ‘heaven’ as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race. But in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death -- first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection -- he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it -- most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.

As for the creation being self-caused: I wonder if he realises that he is simply repeating a version of ancient Epicureanism? i.e. the gods are out of the picture, a long way away, so the world/human life/etc has to get on under its own steam. This is hardly a ‘conclusion’ from his study of the evidence; it’s simply a well known worldview shared by most post-Enlightenment westerners. It is the worldview which enables secular democracy to consider itself an absolute, despite its numerous and rather obvious failings right now. The depressing thing is that Hawking doesn’t seem to realize this and so hasn’t even stopped to think that there might be quite sophisticated critiques of Epicureanism, ancient and modern, which he should work through. Not least the Christian one, which again focusses on Jesus.

Of course, the old set-up of the ‘science and religion’ debate was itself deeply influenced by this same worldview, and needs realigning. In fact, the ancient Christians would have been shocked to see their worldview labelled as a ‘religion.’ It was a philosophy, a politics, a culture, a vocation... the category of ‘religion’ is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

N.T. Wright | May 16, 2011 4:15 PM

Thoughts on Pursuing God!

How much do I want the Spirit of God to work in my life? Well, to answer that question I must compare that thought to other things I want. There are many things that I want and usually if I want them, I will go to great lengths to get them. It's the way I am, probably the way most people are. Depending on our motivation and the desire that fuels it, and maybe because of need if I want to really rationalize it, I will go to absurd lengths to get whatever it is I'm after. It could be clothes, a gadget, a car, food, just about anything. Recently I helped find my son a car. His car was totaled in a wreck by someone who ran into him, so he needed a car. We needed him to have a car. So, out of necessity I drove all over Charlotte and surrounding towns in an effort to find the right car that was safe, reliable and affordable. I'm talking about hours spent on the internet, driving, and sitting in garages having cars checked out! Now, I do believe it was out of due diligence that I did those things. But I wondered after that experience if I really pursue God with that same all out abandon, where nothing is going to stop me from getting what I want! Sadly, I don't think I do very often, at least not enough! Yes, we need cars and other things we rely on to get us through the daily grind of life. And there's nothing wrong with taking time and effort for things that are a necessity. But it really made me think about how easily I can go after things I want, and yet, the one thing or Person I need more than anything else, I sometimes hardly pursue. Don't I need God more? Doesn't He deserve my all out pursuit of Him more than the things of life I pursue? Part of following after Christ is learning what's important. This day and the days that follow, I commit to not only desiring more of God, but also of pursuing God more than the things of this life! May we all do the same! www.crosspoint521.org