I am writing this entry in bed with the laptop as Beka channel surfs at the end of a busy day.  This morning I took a road trip to Nashville with Damon, Doug, and Luke - the lead pastor, children’s pastor, and youth pastor of Hamilton Life Church, respectively. 

We went up to Nashville and took a tour of The Church At Indian Lake and ate lunch with Aaron and David, their lead pastor and youth pastor, also respectively.  The Church At Indian Lake donated several road cases to Embrace and Damon offered to help me get them back to Chattanooga and store them until we need them.  We really appreciate the free stuff and the help getting said free stuff, and I really enjoyed the entire day…it was a very fun trip.

Anyway, let me take a moment to tell the blog world about some exciting things coming up at Embrace…

May 18th - We are finishing the Engage series.  I am very excited about this because I have never done a message anywhere on what I’m talking about Sunday, but I’ve always wanted to - practical advice for studying the Bible.

May 25th - This will be the first time in the short history of Embrace that someone else will fill the “pulpit” and preach.  It’s going to be a great day. 

June 1st - We start a new series called Scars.  I really believe this is going to be the most powerful series we have done yet.  It’s about living abundant life while still being wounded.  The perfect way to start Scars is with an entire worship service focused on communion, a very special act of worship.  We spent the evening at Adam’s house.  While the ladies continued to work hard on the other two trees for the worship area, Adam and I planned out the service…with input from the ladies too of course.  It’s going to be very different from a normal Sunday.  We are going to talk about how the scars of Christ heal us.  This service is going to be an extremely meaningful worship experience from beginning to end, and you won’t want to miss it.

June 8th - Pizza and Ice Cream Party after church!!!  This won’t surprise you, but I am REALLY excited about this. 

This is a great time to be connected to Embrace Church.

And finally, my faithful readers, a few days late, here is “In Case You Missed It…”

We were blessed with a special performance of a timeless worship song Sunday morning.  If you missed it…well…you missed it.  Click here to watch part of it, but remember that it fails to capture the magic of the live performance.

 

 

I am having a very low-key day at home.  Allergies are killing me!!  Yesterday was pretty bad but then I was up from 2:00 a.m. to about 4:30 a.m. sufferring big time.  You know West Virginia primary coverage and analysis on MSNBC gets a little old after a few hours. 

So today I slept in a little to catch up on the lost sleep, and I am just going to hang out at home today, do some things on the computer, and work on my message for Sunday.  My goal is to make Mondays and Tuesdays administrative days, Wednesdays and Fridays message prep days, and Thursdays catch-up days and date days with Beka in the afternoon. 

This Sunday I am finishing the Engage series.  Whereas the past week’s message was very theological and historical, this Sunday will just be extremely practical advice for how to study and understand the Bible…how to get the most out of it.  I’m looking forward to it!

Here’s a few other random items of interest…

*Another Embrace person is blogging now!  Mary Christa (or just MC) has been with us since the very first core team meeting in May 2007 in our living room.  She is responsible for lighting at Loose Cannon, but our church hasn’t really seen her full leadership yet.  MC is our theater/production director and when that ministry really starts to come into its own, you’ll see MC on the frontlines more and more.  Anyway, she has a blog now!

*I am eating Fruity Pebbles for lunch.  But the box is almost empty. 

*I don’t want Hillary Clinton to quit.  This is an exciting, historic election and for us political nerds, it will be sad when this part of it comes to an end.  Last night Hillary’s campaign manager accussed Chris Matthews and other pundits of wanting Hillary to drop out and declaring a premature Obama victory…Chris Matthews said, “Are you kidding?  We love this!  We live for this!  We want this to go right to the convention floor for a vote!  We don’t want this excitement to end!”  My thoughts exactly. 

*I often have good-natured fun at the expense of the strange and silly things churches do.  And don’t worry, it may be Wednesday, but my weekly “In Case You Missed It…” post is coming.  But at the same time, I need to point out the incredible things that churches do to share the love of Christ.  Click here to watch a video from Mother’s Day at New Spring Church in Anderson, SC.  It is almost 9 minutes, but believe me, you’ll be glad you watched it.   

*We’ve got some really good stuff coming up at Embrace for the rest of May and June.  I’ll be sharing that in a post maybe tomorrow or later today.

*The finance team tells me that some folks have been taking advantage of our online giving which is amazing since I have never really promoted that.  Sorry.  I should be promoting that.  Hey, did you know you can give online?  Click here.

I guess that’s all for now.  Hope you are having a great day!

 

 

As you know, there is a big difference between your destination and your vehicle.  When you leave in the morning, you only have one destination - one place you have got to be at a certain time to accomplish specific things.  As for the vehicle, it really doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle you use to get there as long as it is trustworthy, reliable, and in good condition.

If I take Beka to work in the morning (like today), does it really matter if we take her grey Honda Accord or my white Honda Accord?  Nope, we’ll still get there either way. 

With that in mind, I think one reason church planting and churches like Embrace get criticized and dismissed by much of the established church world is because there are those who can’t see the difference between the destination and the vehicle. 

For example, not long ago I was talking with a guy who seemed real interested in what we are doing at Embrace (he’s a minister also), but I could tell he was really struggling with the idea of just how modern church should be. 

He said that he was “real traditional.”  So I asked him, “What do you mean by that?  Give me an example.”

His answer, “Well, I just really believe in Sunday School very strongly.”

I thought about that for a minute and then replied, admittedly trying to provoke some thought and conversation, “You don’t really believe in Sunday School.  You believe in Bible teaching and discipleship in smaller, more focused settings than a worship service.”

Sunday School is a vehicle; Bible teaching is the destination.  As we know from statistics, Sunday School is not a vehicle many churches drive effectively and efficiently anymore.  While there are churches with a booming Sunday School program, that is the exception rather than the norm.  You probably know from history that in the South during WWII in Pentecostal/Baptist/Evangelical churches, it was very common to have a lot more people in Sunday School classes than in church services.  In fact, churches used to measure themselves by Sunday School attendance and offerings!!

While Sunday School is dying out, small groups are currently the most popular and effective vehicle for connecting people to a smaller, more focused atmospheres where real Bible learning, exploration, questions, and discussions can take place.

But small groups won’t work forever.  As culture changes, as the needs of and demands on American families change, something else will have to come along that works better…and that’s fine.  But I’ll bet you when that day comes, there will be many people who claim the sky is falling because the church is abandoning the time-honored tradition of the small group!!  Once again, the small group is the vehicle that works right and Bible teaching is the destination.

I think churches would have a lot more respect for each other if we learned to walk in this balance. 

A few other examples…

*Hymns were a vehicle; intelligent, engaging worship is the destination

*Passing the plate was a vehicle; giving people a chance to invest in their church and honor God is the destination

*Choirs and praise teams were a vehicle; leading people in worship is the destination

*Hymnals were a vehicle; making it easy for people to engage in worship is the destination

*Pulpits were a vehicle; an engaging preaching ministry is the destination

*15 minutes of announcements was a vehicle; keeping people informed is the destination

*Programs 6 nights a week were a vehicle; giving people a chance to connect and enjoy friendship is the destination

There are 1,000 other examples.  But the point is perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to criticize those who do things differently if we came to a place where we could see beyond the vehicle and realize most of us are actually heading to the same place.

 

Not much to blog about today.  We have our staff meeting tonight.  Now that we have switched back to monthly meetings (we started off as monthly from May 2007 to December 2007 and then went weekly in 2008), I really look forward to these gatherings more.  Sure, I like the ideas, the planning, the discussions and all that, but I also enjoy them because we have fun.  In fact it takes a long time to get to the agenda because we eat and just talk about whatever…we don’t really get a chance to do that on Sundays because everyone comes in and gets right to work, very focused on a smooth set-up, a great worship experience, and a quick and painless tear-down, pack-up, and clean-up.  The staff meetings give us a chance to just be friends leading a church together. 

Embrace folks…we’ve got some very exciting stuff coming down the line.  Summer won’t be boring.  But don’t worry, we will never forsake one of our core values of not “over-churching” people. 

So anyway I have pretty much spent the day cleaning the house and getting things ready.  Hope you had an exciting day as well! 

Without sounding like one of those hype and pump pastors on a blog brag, today was a great day at Embrace…

*We were expecting a really small crowd because we got e-mails and text messages all week from several of our regulars saying that they would be at church today with their parents, on family vacations, or traveling to see their parents. While we did have a LOT of regulars gone today, we still ended up with a real decent crowd. It was a real pleasant surprise, and hopefully we will have EVERYBODY together next week.

*We had an amazing offering today! In fact, we are just a few hundred dollars away from taking in everything we need for May’s budget!!! I can hear somebody reading my blog and saying, “Oh you shouldn’t say that, people will stop giving this month.” Trust me, there aint nobody at Embrace who gives simply so we can meet budget. They give because they want to invest, honor God, and be blessed.

*The Engage series is going really well. I am really enjoying sharing this stuff with our people and we have heard some good feedback. Today was about “evidence for the embrace” of the Bible as the trustworthy truth of God. I talked about 5 pieces of evidence for the authenticity of the Bible. The message should be on the website soon.

*I started today’s message in a way I’ve never done before. I had Joel come up on stage and play JENGA. We gave him $1 for every block he was able to successfully move to the top of the tower…he made $14! It was really fun!

*There was a connection between JENGA and the message. You’ll just have to listen online.

*I made one of the worst, corniest jokes during the message today. Again, it will be online soon.

*No technical difficulties today, the band sounded awesome, and the worship vibe was great. Not the best we’ve ever had, but still very good.

*Great atmosphere today. It was very exciting for me to see so many people who have come to our church through different avenues talking with each other and starting to make those connections. We have always said that friendships in a new church come with time and you can’t force it or rush it, but we are seeing the beginnings of it.

*Several of our set-up and tear-down folks were gone today for family stuff and other obligations, but we still had a smooth set-up and we were out of there by 2:00 p.m. today.

*The new projectors look great, but we had to do some tinkering to get everything just right…apparently we couldn’t get the Macbook and projectors to get along with each other. (That’s my very technical explanation anyway…Adam has to make things very simple for me.)

*Mother’s Day lunch with my parents at Bonefish…amazing. Then we went and spent some time with Beka’s mom, shot across the street and saw Beka’s dad, came home, and crashed!

*We heard some great compliments today. One first-time visitor, a family friend, was blown away and just bragged about the church the entire time she was there. Someone else told me that she “appreciates my blog because I’m honest on it.” For me that is a huge compliment. And someone else told us that she was bragging to her friends about Embrace saying she had never seen a church pay so much attention to every detail, even how we set up a full childcare area every week even though most weeks we don’t even have kids because of the average age of our people. And once again, we heard more people talk about how comfortable and accepted they feel when they come to Embrace.

*Next week we finish Engage. The 4th week in May is going to be different than anything we’ve done yet. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I will tell you that I am not preaching. (I can hear the amens already)

*So as you can tell, today went very well despite missing many of our friends. Things are going really well at Embrace and I am extremely excited about our future. There are some Sundays when I come home feeling very deflated and stressed about where this is all going…today is NOT one of those days.

*For a great post about dealing with the highs and lows of church planting, read this post from Pastor Chris Elrod in Florida. Very good.

Beka is watching a TV show that featured a restaurant that serves Sloppy Joe sandwhiches…but instead of making them with beef, they use catfish.  That’s sick.

 

 

In case you didn’t know, this is a presidential election year.  Isn’t that exciting?  One very popular thing for candidates to do on the campaign trail is visit churches.  A lot of times churches are criticized for welcoming political candidates.

Well, I want to send a message to Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain, because I know you each read my blog faithfully - you are more than welcome to come and worship with us at Embrace Church any Sunday you’d like.

I do not believe in having candidates come to the pulpit because they would no doubt promote their candidacy and make it look like the church is endorsing them, which churches can not - and should not - do.

But any of you are welcome to join us for worship any Sunday your campaign trail brings you through Chattanooga.  I know you’d be blessed by the service, and our people would enjoy meeting you, asking questions, and getting to know you better beyond the rhetoric and hype.

We’d love to have you.

And yes, Ron Paul and Ralph Nader…even you. 

 

I have learned that when you enter the world of church leadership, you get flooded with invitations (no that makes it sound personal - advertisements is a better term) to attend conferences, seminars, conventions, summits, and gatherings of all kinds.  While some of them feature really interesting speakers and themes, it seems most of the host churches actually forget what it is like to be a young pastor or church planter…financially speaking that is.  $600 registration fee plus a $200-a-night hotel room, transportation, food, and conference materials?  I don’t think so.

But I am very excited that Beka and I are going to attend the Unplugged Conference, a two-day gathering from June 26th to 27th.  Here is why I am looking forward to it:

*It’s being hosted by National Community Church and Pastor Mark Batterson.  Mark’s blog is one of the 21 on my bloglines account.  I have a deep respect for NCC and Pastor Mark.  We actually just inherited one of their members who moved back to Chattanooga from D.C., and it’s obvious to see the church’s impact on her life.  NCC is a great church for Embrace to learn from not only because it grew from less than 20 people to several thousands of worshippers each weekend at 4 different locations, but also because over 70% of NCC’s membership is single people in their 20s.  Sound familiar?

*We’ll get to spend 3 days or so in one of my favorite cities, Washington D.C.

*The conference is affordable.  The registration fee for me and Beka was just under $300.  We have a very hospitable aunt and uncle who live in Fairfax, VA, and I already called them to inform them of the privilege of hosting us next month.  So there won’t be any hotel costs and they only live like 15 minutes from a Metro station. 

*We are driving, not flying.  I love roadtrips.  I hate flying.

*The concept of this conference is really cool - NCC is hosting it at the coffee shop they own on Capital Hill.  The idea is a very limited number of pastors and church planters so that the two days can be very interactive and conversational.  I LOVE that concept.

Between you and me, many churches have conferences just to make money, promote themselves, and show off their ability to drag in big names.  But this conference was obviously designed to help leaders and churches reach full potential, and that’s awesome. 

We have a lot of college students at Embrace Church.  To congratulate and honor them for making it through another semester (and a couple even graduated their programs), we gave each one of them a $10.00 gift card to Panera Bread.  A small gift from the church but hopefully it will provide some enjoyment.  The only graduate connected to our church who didn’t get a gift is Biscuit Jenkins because he doesn’t deserve a reward for knowing nothing.

It would have been nice to give each of our college students a week-long cruise or vacation to enjoy this summer, but we are an 8-week-old church started by a group of people in their 20s. 

We aren’t Signal Mountain Presbyterian… 

 

Welcome to the inaugural post of “In Case You Missed It.” You probably don’t know this, but Embrace Church has state-of-the-art television equipment that we use to record each service. So each Monday or Tuesday, I am going to come out to the blog and post a portion of what you missed if you weren’t able to make it out on Sunday.

With that in mind, here is a clip from the worship Sunday, in case you missed it…

Click here.