As we started 2012 our church began a series that strikes a serious chord with me….”Becoming a Courageous Family.” I believe the family and the church are at a serious crossroads. For years the church has focused on building “specialized ministries.” How do you build these specialized ministries? Well, you need a “specialized minister.” So churches would a “specialized minister” in an attempt to build a better student ministry, or build a better children’s ministry, only to find that in many churches they only built expensive ministry silos.

Parents often looked at these ministries and their leaders as their saviors. If they could just get their kids involved with the “youth group” then they would stay out of trouble. Here is a question I always had in the back of my mind, “Does this approach really build disciples? Does this approach even keep kids out of trouble?” My experience would say, “not necessarily.” Here is why I think this philosophy is problematic. It never addresses the need to partner with God’s original plan for training the next generation……working with parents in the context of family. God’s design has always been one man for one woman for a lifetime, training up their children in “the nurture and admonition of the LORD.” That plan hasn’t changed. Does that mean that if this occurs in a family that we are guaranteed that our kids will grow up to pursue God? No. But it does give them a much better chance in following God.

I have thought for years that their needed to be a more holistic approach. Now that I am a pastor and looking back on those youth and children’s ministry days I have a different view of what is needed. Families and churches should look at developing a PARTNERSHIP. We truly are in partnership together! How can our church build faith into the parents, and teach them to live it out before their kids? That is the question I wrestle with. We have been blessed to learn from the reThink group, and specifically the Orange strategy. It is everything I always thought ministry should be….Family Ministry is a much more holistic approach to building disciples.

This is one of the reasons we have invested as a church to bring on a full time Family Pastor, Jared Hill. His ministry will be all about integrating the church and family in an effort to build gospel centered, disciple making homes. So he will primarily be working with families who have preschool, elementary, students in middle, high school and college.

It is time to focus more on building the kingdom of God….one family at a time! For more information on Orange go to www.whatisorange.org.

As I write this post I find myself in a season of “growth.”  Do you remember those days of “growing pains” when you were younger?  Your knees would hurt, thighs would ache, and your mom or dad would say, “It’s just growing pains!”  They may have been correct in their assessment, but it didn’t help matters!  Our oldest daughter is experiencing “growing pains” even as I type.  She has grown over ten inches in 2 1/2 years!  Growth is such an encouraging aspect of our lives.  I’m sure you can remember going to the door frame and putting your back up against the frame.  Your mom or dad took a pencil and marked off your height.  You eagerly turned around to see how much distance was between the new mark and the old mark.  It was a time of celebration if you had grown significantly!

I believe God gives us opportunities to look back at the “old marks” and look at the “new marks” of growth in our lives.  I know this year for me has been a season of growth.  I’ve grown in my awareness as to what God is desiring to accomplish in my life.  I’ve learned that even if I’m found in the Cherith Ravine, a place of brokeness and being cut down, it’s because He’s working on me.  So often God has to work more in me, because He has so much more to do through me!  This past year I’ve had to learn to wait more on the LORD.  I don’t like waiting.  So often I try to lay out my agenda in life and then see if I can get God to sign off on it!  Maybe I’m the only person that struggles with this, but I think not.

Our church has grown in so many ways.  We are growing numerically.  We are growing in the depth of our love for Him.  We are pursuing opportunities to love people like Jesus loves them.  There are so many positive things going on!  Yet in the midst of growth their is pain.  You see one of the things God is teaching me is in order to experience growth in our lives we must experience pain too!  When I go to the gym or work out at home my goal is to get stronger!  The way I get stronger is to literally rip those muscles apart and then let them heal.  When they heal they typically grow back stronger and bigger!

So as we look at the growth in our lives, church, organization may we always remember that serious growth only comes after some pain along the way!  He is working in you, because He has so much more to do through you!

Well, it’s good to get back to the blogosphere!  I hope this post can help someone as they deal with their “growth spurts.”

As I sit here on the last day of 2010 my mind is reflecting about this past year. We hear a lot about leaving a legacy behind. We think of Michael Jordan being the greatest basketball player that’s ever laced up the sneakers. We think of Elvis Presley being the King of Rock-N-Roll. We think of Billy Graham being the greatest evangelist that’s ever lived. We think of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, being the greatest example of humility ever!

When I think about leaving a legacy at the end of my life it’s somewhat overwhelming to think about. I just turned 40 years old this year. I have so many things I still want to accomplish with my life [i.e. plant more churches, see our kids grow up to be champions for Christ, write a book, be a better husband, etc.] You see it’s overwhelming isn’t it? Especially, when you are still trying to figure out how to balance the normal demands of life.

I think the reason “Leaving a Legacy” can be so overwhelming is it’s too big! What if we took each year and looked at it as a chapter in a book. So 2010 was chapter forty of my book! So what was the legacy of chapter 40 for me? If we break it into “bite sized pieces” it’s a little easier to absorb.

So what was your legacy in this year’s chapter? What will be your legacy in 2011?

Tonight my wife and I swung by Starbucks after eating dinner. She had to get her Friday night fix (ok…I’m exaggerating a bit)!

The one thing you have to admit is Starbucks does one thing and one thing well….they serve up a mean cup of Java. It’s actually the Starbuck’s experience! They have excelled by having laser focus….doing coffee and doing well!

The church of Jesus Christ could learn from the laser focus of Starbucks. Instead of serving up a buffet of ministry specials what if we had a couple ministry specials, and do them well.

For more great reading on this topic read Simple Church and Church Unique.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

A few months ago the leadership at Crosslink went through a visionary process to find our uniqueness as a church. In that process we discovered or uncovered our values.

G – Generous Living
R – Reproducing Leaders
A – Authentic Relationships
C – Community Transformation
E – Everyone Cares

We want this to be part of our culture at Crosslink! We’ve been talking about the Great Commission Resurgence focus of the Southern Baptist Convention. This week’s component to address is making our values transparent. This GCR Task Force spent an entire year working on this. Here are the values they have uncovered:
Christ-Likeness
Truth
Unity
Relationships
Trust
Future
Local Church
Kingdom

Now more than ever as a convention we must define who we are and where we are heading. I believe the GCR Task Force has clearly articulated a set of values that we should all be able to agree upon. Looking at these reminds me of our own core values [see above], and how there is great alignment. It is our job to come together as the body of Christ, and make disciples of Jesus Christ.

To take a deeper look at the GCR Core Values go to www.PRAY4GCR.com.

There comes a point in time where every organization must evaluate it’s mission. In the realm of Kingdom work it’s even more important that our mission is aligning others to fulfill His mission for us. The first component of the Great Commission Resurgence is “Getting The Mission Right.”

“As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all nations.”

You may think that’s a rather daunting mission. However, can we even think of settling for anything less than a God sized vision? It is the belief of the convention, and your pastor, that this mission must drive everything we do as Southern Baptists. It should reset every priority of the local church and the denomination.

Our mission at Crosslink is “We link people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” It is our desire to see people’s lives changed by the life changing message of Jesus Christ. We want to see disciples made here in North Carolina, and around the world.

It is our prayer that God would use Crosslink to help carry out the mission of presenting the Gospel to every person in the world and to make disciples of all nations. The next post will look at Component Two: Making our Values Transparent.

It’s hard to imagine that there are almost 7 billion human inhabitants on the face of planet earth. Generous estimates are around 1 billion of those people are believing Christians. That means there are over 6 billion people who are lost without Jesus. Of these 6 billion people, over 3.5 billion have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ! You heard me say this past weekend that there are over 6,000 people groups without a Christian witness [actually 6426 to be exact].

There is no way that we can make a real impact toward reaching these unreached people groups unless we experience a genuine Great Commission Resurgence. We must see a tidal wave of evangelistic and missionary passion, or the numbers of unreached people groups will only continue to expand, and the lostness will grow. We must penetrate the lostness.

We must acknowledge the centrality of the gospel message to everything we do and everything we are. This is the heart beat of the passing of the Great Commission Resurgence last week on the convention floor. In the next post I will begin to unpack the seven components of the Great Commission Resurgence.

It is my prayer that these components will stir our heart strings to reach our “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Well tomorrow is officially Father’s Day. I will have to admit I really love Father’s Day. Our girls love Father’s Day too! There’s nothing quite like receiving hand made cards and the “spa treatment” from them. I am such a blessed man to have three wonderful girls who I am so very proud of. I feel that everyday is a Father’s Day! So I send out this post to wish all of our fathers a very happy Father’s Day. May God give you a wonderful day as you worship with your family on this special day!

Have you ever thought about the “Red-letters” in the Gospels? They are important aren’t they? They mean something don’t they? Why? Because Jesus the Son of God spoke those words! So I want us to glean from what Jesus said about being a disciple. Let me review….

When we last met I drew a “stick man” [not a very good one] and we used the different body parts to help us think about “what a disciple looks like.” We talked about Measures or Missional Life Marks being the “bulls-eye of where we are all aiming!” We want a target a goal, and this helps us to answer “When are we successful?”

It’s very important to know that this side of the frame [Marks or Measures] is very different than the strategy side. The strategy tells us How we are accomplishing the vision. The measures are a set of attributes in an individual’s life that define or reflect the accomplishment of the church’s mission.

If you remember reading in Church Unique about Joe Grow [the fictitious character] the Map or strategy tells “Joe Grow where to go.”  The Marks or Measures tell us “what Joe is becoming.” The goal is a disciple of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus spoke everyone listened. So for all of our leaders here is your homework assignment between now and Tuesday morning…..I want you to scan the red-letters of Jesus in the Gospels. I want you to look for attributes that Jesus used to describe what a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ looked like. Why is this important? Because God’s Word doesn’t change. If He described it in that first century it still applies today. Feel free to post your comments or bring them with you to Tuesday’s leadership meeting.

I was reflecting back over our marriage retreat weekend and thought I would share some thoughts.  I think there were three things that jumped out to me:

1)  We need to celebrate the differences – While modern culture constantly wants to point to the sameness of the sexes, God encourages us to celebrate the differences.  He has uniquely created all of us.  I believe we acknowledged the differences and celebrated them this weekend.

2)  There is always room for improvement - I don’t care who you are or how long you’ve been married there’s room for improvement.  We had couples there who had been married 8 months to 45 years!   It seemed that every couple talked about the need to work on their marriage and make it better.  It was clear no one thought they had arrived!

3)  When Christ is the Centerpiece of the Marriage all things are possible – When we are woven together by His Word and His Spirit all the demons of hell can’t tear it apart.  So we have to walk in His Spirit together!  This must be a daily occurence in our lives.  When it is a daily occurence we can overcome any storm in our lives.

Thanks for a great weekend!  May God bless each and every one of you!

Pastor Ken