River City Sunday on the Lochsa was a huge success! In case you didn’t know, we canceled church as usual and instead we went up camping on the Lochsa River in Idaho.
We had 61 people either camp with us or come up for the service. That’s more people than we had each of the last several weeks!
Maybe we need to think about how we do church for the rest of this summer. Rumor has it we may be doing church outside at least once a month! Rumor also has it that we might be resurrecting communion meals on those days as well!
We had a great time camping with everyone even though it rained every night. At least Sat and Sun were nice.
We pulled off the 1st pig roast in the new smoker trailer. It turned out perfect! Couldn’t have asked for a better maiden voyage. Can’t wait to fire it up for 4th of July and tailgates this fall.
We did the service in an amphitheater at the campground. Couldn’t have been a better place to worship our Creator.
We did an acoustic worship set with guitars and drums.
Kevin Beeson came up from RCC Lewiston and brought a great message on the balance between sitting and waiting, and getting up and going.
We’ve got to know when to sit and wait on the Lord, and we’ve got to know when it’s time to get ‘er done!
The analogy he used was that the 2 greatest commandments are to love God (sitting and waiting on God), and to love your neighbor (getting up and going to serve people).
We actually had some visitors at the service and also camping with us. We even had 2 strangers show up for the service! Good stuff!
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!
The first service in our new building was great! I had a lot of people tell me that it felt like home.
The new building has a lot more usable space, and has a much warmer feel than our old space.
AND, it costs less!
I love the vision for Convergence Ministries, the group who owns the building. They want to share resources with churches to reach Missoula for the Kingdom of God.
We’re the fourth church to use the building. What a great way to partner with other local churches to reach Missoula!
We started the night with an open house with hors d’oeuvres and refreshments.
Worship went great, especially considering the sound system was all new to us. The presence of God was definitely felt last night.
I sort of forgot that it was night time rather than morning. Once inside the building, it all felt the same.
We kicked off a new Kidway curriculum and the kids loved it. We’ve got lots of classroom space!
We started a new sermon series called RCC Challenge 2010. I’m going to challenge RCC in the area of finances, relationship with God, and community over the next few weeks.
We talked about finances last night. I challenged our people to do the following: 1) Decide to follow the Word of God when it comes to finances, 2) Decide to be in unity with our spouses concerning finances, 3) Work hard and smart, 4) Get out of debt, and 5) Save.
Come see our new digs this Sunday before the service! We’ll be serving refreshments at 5:30pm so that you can look around before the service at 6pm. If you’re a regular member please bring a snack to share. If you’re a guest, just bring yourself and your family. Hope to see you on Sunday!
Merry Christmas! It was so fun doing a Christmas service today.
Worship was great. I say that because as I looked out I noticed more people passionately worshiping today than I have ever seen.
We’ve been praying as a worship team for breakthrough in this area. It is so cool to see it come to pass.
The kids recited a story today. It was so cute! I’m going to podcast it later. Stay tuned.
I absolutely loved the message today. I can say that because I didn’t speak much. I started with a video, ended with a video, and told a couple of stories in between.
Emmanuel, God is with us. That simple truth will change your life if you can comprehend it.
Even without the video, the message below is a powerful reminder of the significance of Jesus’ birth.
Oh yeah, and I made a big announcement at the end just in case you’re interested.
Numbers were back up to normal today! I just love the dynamics of a full room.
Emily led worship for her first time today. She did an awesome job! We had a full band and a new vocalist. Way to go Arran!
We started One Prayer today! I think the video message went great.
Craig Groeschel pretty much knocked it out of the park today with, “God is…Love”
Very powerful message. I’m already looking forward to next week’s message!
We had our communion meal and a church business meeting after the service today. As usual the food was great.
Had to talk about finances today at the business meeting. I don’t like to have to talk about them, but we were short last month and we haven’t paid rent yet. Things need to change for us to make it through the summer months.
So get this: I FORGOT TO TAKE AN OFFERING TODAY! What?!?!?!?!
Seriously folks, of all the times to forget, this was a very inconvenient time.
However, I told the church where we were at and people stepped up. Thanks to all of you who gave for the first time, gave beyond your normal giving, and those who gave sacrificially. I knew you’d do it! You rock!
Bottom line: this isn’t my church. This is God’s church, and his people (RCC people) care enough to keep it going. That totally fires me up!
Remember to pray about giving to the One Prayer church planting initiative. We’ll be taking up an offering on June 28th, exactly 1 yr from the date of our very first church service in Missoula!
Whether you’re a business leader, civic leader, or church leader, this book is for you. This has got to be one of the best books that has come out in some time. If you’re a leader of any type, you need to download this book. It’s free.
What someone has done is taken the best blogs of 2008, from some of the best church leaders in North America, and compiled them into a book format, arranged by author.
You can read one entry a day and it will last you the entire year. Or you can do as I do, and just keep reading until your eyes turn bloodshot because the entries are all so good!
The other day while I was thinking about our upcoming Easter egg helicopter drop, I knew there would be naysayers who would question why we would spend the time, energy, and money on getting people to a pagan event. It’s a good question really. So as I was praying for the event the phrase “Access Points” came to me. For a long time in our culture, if you built a church building an hung an “open” sign on it, people would come. It was just part of the culture. One of the results of that was that the church didn’t go to the culture. The church began to expect people to come to them. The church was never meant to wait for people to come, the church was to go to the people. Just look at Jesus’ life: he hung out at weddings, ate and drank with drunkards and tax collectors. He didn’t sit at the synagogue on Saturdays and hope these people would show up. No, Jesus created Access Points into the Kingdom of God. He created opportunities for people to experience the Kingdom of God by going to them.
There are so many ways that we can create Access Points. I was just down at Zootown Brew in downtown Missoula. This guy felt God tell him to start a coffee shop downtown so that he could create an Access Point for people down there. We’re doing the egg drop so that we might create an Access Point for people who otherwise would never think about coming to River City Church. You can create an Access Point by going out with your friends to the bar tomorrow night instead of staying home and playing nerdy.
An Access Point is access to the Kingdom of God through our lives. This is how people experience the Kingdom of God, through other people. We need to get out of our pews, get out of our churches, and start taking the Kingdom of God to people rather than waiting for them to come to it. Get creative about it. The Bible says we are to take every thought captive so that it is obedient to Christ. Let’s take our creative, outside the box, revolutionary thoughts captive and use them to create Access Points for those outside the Kingdom of God.
