The greatest story . . .

I am amazed at how we overshadow the birth of Jesus Christ with the commercialization of Christmas. Artificial snow is sometimes more important than loving our neighbors.

Yet, it is during the holidays that we do take time to encourage each other. We do take time to love each other. Wouldn't it be nice if the entire month of December could be a long celebration of God and His love to all men, women, and children?

The Angels celebrated the birth of Jesus in just such a grand manner. They told the shepherds that were taking care of their sheep about the birth of Jesus. They told how this would bring peace and goodwill to men (women and children).

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The story behind the holidays is awsome. I am reading it again and I cannot believe how incredible it was (and still is).

I have read so many great stories over the years, but the story behind Christmas has become better each year. And to think that I could have missed this story and never known what was happening behind the scene as Mary and Joseph had little Jesus.

Over the next week and a half, I will be blogging more about my impressions as I Christmas shop, visit family, re-read the Christmas story, and share the story with others.

God bless you and merry Christmas!

The cry of my heart . . .

There is this song that goes: "You said, "ask and I'll give the nations to you."oh Lord, that's the cry of my heart."

The words echo the cry of my heart.

If the words echo the cry of your heart, then I would guess that you are in tune with God and the desire He has to save His people.

Isn't He an awesome God? In the midst of all that is wrong in this world. In the midst of the death in this world. In the midst of bad intelligence in this world, God still has a desire to bring His people from the nations. He still desires to bring everyone home, to His home - Heaven.

The Father's Will

For Jesus the Father's will was to not loose any that God should give Him (John 7: 38 - 40).

I believe that as a leader in His Kingdom, I should strive to not loose any that He has given me to lead into eternity.

God's leading . . .

Our Mission: As brothers and sisters in Christ, it is our mission to go and make disciples.

Our Vision: God will make disciples here in the metroplex through us. We will start a new multi-site location every 18 months. God will lead us to help plant at least one church a year the first two years, two churches a year for the next two years. Then we will enter into our next stage: we will start a church planting center and plant at least ten churches a year the rest of our existence.

We will do this from a multisite church.

Why a multisite church? Because of two reasons: new churches are the best method of reaching the lost; and multisite churches adapt better than the traditional model of church. Multisite churches can close or relocate sites to keep the site new and focused upon reaching the lost. We can do this WITHOUT the associated risk, overhead, and collapse that often destroys older congregations.