• The last 6 weeks have been AMAZING!!! River City Church hasn’t grown this much (spiritually speaking) since we launched.
• God has been using worship, prayer, preaching, and LifeGroups to bring about this change. I really feel that we’re on the right track.
• God has been changing lives like we’ve never seen before. Individuals, relationships, and marriages restored.
• I am going to miss the Fallen sermon series. The Book of Galatians has been life changing. Did I already mention that?
• I preached for over an hour last night on sowing grace into our relationships. The bottom line is that the way we sow grace into others is through forgiveness.
• The best way to work through forgiveness is first to take the plank out of our own eye so that we can see clearly.
• Then and only then can we humbly approach others regarding forgiveness.
• Too much to explain here. You better just have a listen below:

• Great service last night. Seems like attendance was up, but I’m not sure we actually counted.
• Someone made the comment last week that RCC has hit its stride since we’ve moved to the new building and time. I think he’s right.
• I really enjoy the response time at the end. We’re doing 2 songs now during this time to extend it a little bit. Doesn’t feel as rushed.
• We continued the Wild Goose Chase series with “Chasing the Wild Goose”.
• How do we pursue the Holy Spirit? I unpacked 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22. In order not to quench the Spirit in our lives, we need to:
  • Live a Life of Worship
  • Live a Life of Prayer
  • Live a Life in the Word
  • Live Free from Sin
• That is how we pursue, and catch the Wild Goose!

• Great service last night! We had a lot of new people even though it was snowing out.
• It was Sam and Emily’s last night leading worship for a while. They’ve been so faithful and such a blessing to RCC. Be praying that they would clearly hear God’s voice regarding this next season for them.
• Looks like Eric and Jamie are going to step up and start leading again. Looking forward to a new season of worship!
• God was in the house last night! I sensed the presence of God in a way that I haven’t since we moved into the new building.
• I feel like there’s an expectation in the people, and that we’re on the verge of a move of God. Not even sure what that means, but I’m excited!
• Kicked off our new series, “Wild Goose Chase”. The Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit, “An geadh glas”, meaning the Wild Goose. They believed that living a Spirit-filled life was akin to chasing a wild goose. Wild geese are unpredictable, untameable. They can’t be caged.
• We started last night by tacking the most basic, but important questions: “Who is the Holy Spirit? And, what is His primary purpose.
• The Holy Spirit is not a force, energy, or power. He is a person. The 3rd person of the trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-eternal, co-existant, and co-equal.
• I likened the roles of the 3 to a building project. The Father is the executive. He is the funder and calls the shots. The Son is the architect. He has the master plan. The Holy Spirit is the contractor. He gets the job done.
• The primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is this: To point us to Jesus and the cross; to bring glory to Jesus Christ.
• One of my longest sermons in a while, but worth a listen!

• We kicked off Love Missoula month by talking about being missionaries to our city.
• All of us are missionaries.
• I believe that in Acts 1:8 Jesus called us to go and be witnesses to our city first, our region next, and then the ends of the earth.
• If we are making an impact in the cities God has placed us in, we have no business going anywhere else.
• The primary way we will take our cities for the Kingdom of God is through prayer.
• Anybody can serve, but only God’s people can serve through the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be filled up each and every day.
• Jesus’ disciples were very ordinary people until the day the Holy Spirit came down upon them. They were never the same again.
• From that day on they were filled with dunamis power that resulted in the lame walking, the blind seeing, the dead living, and THOUSANDS of people coming to place their faith in Jesus Christ.
• If we want to see revival in Missoula, we have to pray it in.
• We also talked about the need for the church to be the most generous people on this planet. I doubt we’d be accused of that right now. We have some work to do.
• Generosity opens doors to hearts and cities. We need to be the most generous people our city has ever seen, both with our time and finances.
• When the church of Missoula comes together in prayer and generosity, we’ll see this city turned upside down for Jesus.
• Now that’s what I’m talking about!

• The River City Boy Band rocked it today! Seriously though, I love their hearts and passion for worshiping God. Stephen and the team modeled passionate worship today for us.
• I’ve really appreciated the Lewiston crew coming over once a month and showing us what passionate worship looks like. I think we’re growing in this area.
• Hugh Layborn from Lewiston brought a great message on the importance of prayer. We then had a panel discussion where Andrea, Jamie, Mike, and myself were asked several questions about prayer. What a unique way to teach!
• We ended the service by breaking up into small groups to pray for one another. Probably a bit uncomfortable for some, but hey, Jesus never promised comfort!
• In fact, it was a powerful time of praying for one another. We should do that more often.
• Met with a bunch of people down at Taco Del Mar after the service. It seems like a bunch of us always eat together after the service anyway, so we’re going to start announcing where we’re going each Sunday. Great way to get to know each other.
• Next week is our monthly Communion Meal so we won’t be going out. You won’t want to miss it!

This isn’t going to be my thesis on the subject, but rather a forum for all to discuss this issue. I believe the Bible teaches us that it is not God’s will for us to live in sickness and poverty. However, many of us still suffer from these and other issues in our lives. What gives? Click on “comments” down below, log in, and sound off!

• Great day at RCC today!
• Started off a little rough at worship practice for me. I had the wrong chords to the 1st song and it took me a while to figure out why I sounded so bad.
• Overall worship was great though, no thanks to me. Loved doing Salvation Is Here, particularly since it went perfectly with the sermon!
• Spoke on Part 2 of the Born Identity series. Last week was about understanding our identity in Christ. So crucial to get this one. This week was our Explanation of Benefits.
• The benefits of being in Christ are so numerous, I could preach on it for weeks. Jesus said in Luke 19:10 that he came to “Seek and save that which was lost.” That which was lost was perfect fellowship with God, heaven on earth if you will.
• Jesus came to restore that, and he even directed his disciples in Matthew 6 to pray that the Father’s will would be done on earth just as it is in heaven.
• There is no sickness, sin, death, poverty, fear, or bondage in heaven. The new covenant gives us a promise of restoration to the way God originally intended it to be.
• The new covenant also gives us authority to possess our full inheritance. Jesus said he was given “all authority” by his Father in heaven. He passed this very authority on to us, his followers.
• We have authority to stand against darkness and evil, and to speak life into situations.
• Couple of faux pas today: the sermon went 40 minutes. Haven’t done that in a while. And I spontaneously tried to quote Psalm 91 and got hung up in the 1st sentence. So much for spontaneity!
• We ended with some ministry time. Got to pray with and for several people. Lives were changed today! That’s the business of the God we serve!
• Next week we’ll be discussing the great responsibility that comes when we are given the great blessing and authority that God has given us.
• You can listen to the sermon below:

Just wanted to encourage you all to keep praying for the people on your Invite Initiative cards. We played a short video last week on the power of an invitation. You can click here to view it. It’s powerful stuff. Don’t underestimate the power of prayer. God will provide opportunities to share your faith and invite your friends to church if you are diligent in praying. Even if you don’t really know how to pray, just turn your Invite Initiative card over and pray the prayer on the back.

Here are a few ideas on inviting your friends and family to RCC:

1. Pray!
2. Personally invite them to join you on a Sunday. Tell them you’ll pick them up and even take them out to lunch afterwards.
3. Give them an invite card. It is good for a free latte or mocha (we’ll be handing these out this Sunday)
4. Personally invite them to come to our Birthday Bash on Sep 13th. We’ll have bouncy houses and fun activities for the kids, and we’ll be talking about all that God has done and what the future holds for RCC. We’ll finish with a BBQ afterwards. This will be a fun Sunday.
5. Send them an evite from the RCC Homepage. This is a very simple way to invite someone. Don’t rely only on this method though. It is too impersonal. Use this tool as a way to remind someone whom you’ve already invited. Or use it to prime someone before you personally invite them.
6. Personally invite them again.
7. Personally invite them again (this is not a typo).
8. Give them another invite card.
9. Repeat steps 1-8.

The bottom line is that you can’t invite someone too many times. It often takes a few times before someone comes, not because they don’t want to, but just because their lives may not be scheduled around coming to church on Sunday mornings.
Again, watch this video to see how important the invite is. You may be thinking “I don’t want to bug anyone”. But this could be the most important decision they ever make. God wants us to be a part of that. Never be ashamed of bugging someone into the Kingdom of God.

As we approach the month of August, we realize that the upcoming fall season tends to get people back into their “normal” routine. Kids are back in school, vacations become fewer, and people are thinking about coming back to church on Sundays. In fact, the fall is a time of natural growth for churches. We want to take advantage of the natural growth cycle that is coming to help grow River City Church. We want to ride the natural momentum of this wave. However, this time around we aren’t going to do a 40,000 piece mailer to all of the households in Missoula. No radio ads. Nope. This time, we’re relying on you, RCC members, to get the word out. Fan-based marketing. Word-of-mouth marketing.

There are a lot of advantages to using word-of-mouth marketing over mass marketing strategies. Perhaps the most important is that it gives each one of us personal ownership in helping out with the Great Commission, which is to make disciples of all the nations. Furthermore, an invite to church from a friend or family member tends to be much more effective than receiving a piece of mail from a church you’ve never heard of. If someone comes to church with a friend or family member, they are much more likely to stay and get plugged in, because they have relationship.

Here’s how it’s going to work: I want each person to come up with 2-4 people who don’t currently attend a church, or who at least aren’t actively involved in a local church. Then, I want you to commit to praying for each of those people for the next month. In fact, we’re going to pray for them as a congregation each Sunday through the month of August. We are going to pray specifically that God would stir their hearts to want to grow spiritually and start attending a church. We’re also going to pray that God would provide a perfect opportunity for us to invite them to River City Church.

Prayer is going to be key to the INVITE Initiative. I’m not asking you to commit to inviting them to church. I’m not asking you to commit to proselytizing them. Right now, all I’m asking from each of you is that you commit to pray for 2-4 people every day. That’s it.  What’s going to happen as we pray for these people, is God is going create opportunities for you to share your faith with them, and for you to invite them to a Sunday service or other RCC event. These opportunities will not feel forced, but rather will come very naturally. People will start asking you questions about your faith and your church out of the blue. We are going to be amazed at how God works through us.

For the next few Sundays, we are going to be handing out wallet-sized cards that we can write people’s names on as a reminder to pray for them. Ask God to give you the names of 2-4 people for this Sunday. Bring them with you. And remember last week’s sermon on stepping out in faith to overcome obstacles. I realize this is going to be a stretch for some of us. That’s okay. What’s not okay is allowing fear to rule us. Let’s step out in faith together and believe that God is going to use each of us in a great way to see His Kingdom grow through River City Church.

Fasting sucks. It’s totally inconvenient. It hurts. It completely robs me of my physical strength. But it is an extremely powerful spiritual tool. As powerful as prayer itself. Maybe more powerful.

Jesus said in Matthew 6 “When you fast…”. Not if you fast, but when you fast. Jesus expected that his followers would fast. He understood the importance of the fast. He fasted for 40 days in the wilderness. That is some serious fasting.

Why fast?:

1. Breakthrough
2. Guidance
3. Hearing from God
4. Strength
5. Fruitfulness in our life/ministry

I supposed there are other reasons, but Isaiah 58:10-11  says that when we fast that

“…your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

How does it work? Fasting works to deny our flesh. When we deny our flesh we are more in tune to our spirit. Because God is spirit, he speaks to us through our spirit. When we are more in tune with our spirit, we are more in tune with God. We hear his voice more clearly. God is always talking, but we’re rarely listening. Fasting causes us to listen.

There is also a supernatural power in fasting. It is like prayer. We don’t know exactly how prayer works, but we know that it works and that it is powerful. Fasting is the same way. We often use the terms “prayer” and “fasting” in the same sentence, but there is power just in the fast itself. When we need breakthrough in our lives, fasting may be the answer. When Jesus’ disciples couldn’t cast out a demon, Jesus told them it was because they hadn’t fasted.

Again, I don’t know exactly how fasting works, but I do know it works. About 7 years ago I was working as a wildlife biologist for a timber company in Idaho. I had started thinking about going back to school to get my PhD. However, this was a very major life decision and one I didn’t take lightly. I had this desire to go back to school, but I couldn’t see how it would work, or how it fit into my goal of ultimately planting a church some day. So, I decided that I would fast for 3 days. I expected to hear from God sometime through that fast. James 1:5 says that if anyone lacks wisdom that we should ask God, and expect to hear from him without doubting. That is what I did. The first 2 days were without incident. I fasted and prayed, but didn’t get anything specifically. On the 3rd day I was at work and it just so happened to be my annual review that day. So I was meeting with my supervisor and all was going well. At the end of the meeting, he asked my without any prompting at all, “Have you ever thought about going back to school and getting your PhD? I’m sure the company would support you and even pay for it.”

God spoke. I heard him. I went back to school. It was amazing.

What is it that you need in your life right now? More power to overcome? A breakthrough in your finances? To draw closer to God? To hear his voice? Fasting holds the key to all of these things.

Start with a 1 day fast, then work your way up to a 3 day fast. Anyone can do these fasts. Drink lots of water to stay hydrated. It’s amazing how much hydration food actually provides. Work your way up to longer fasts if God leads you that way.

There is actually a fast called a Daniel fast. Daniel ate only vegetables and drank only water. You can read this in the Book of Daniel. This is also a good way to work up to a total fast.

We all have a bunch of very good reasons why we can’t fast. I’ve actually heard every one of them. Most of those excuses came out of my own mouth. But actually, we are all capable of fasting, we usually just aren’t willing.

Give it a try. See if God won’t honor your fast and speak to you. See if he won’t bring breakthrough in your life. I think you’ll be surprised.