My friend, Travis Reed, and the peeps at The Work of the People are offering a new FREE Christmas video. I figured: Who doesn’t want to know about a free Christmas media resource? So I’m letting you, my friends, know. To get the video seen below, go HERE and use the promo code: freetwotpchristmas
EVERYTHING you need – Christmas carol sheet music, keyboard underscores, chord charts, PowerPoint and narrations – all for your Christmas Eve Service.
*** 70 pages of sheet music, charts and narrations, 22 MP3s ***
My good friend and HymnCharts.com arranger Don Chapman has composed beautiful “movie score” type keyboard underscores for Scripture narrations that weave together his unique HymnCharts Christmas carols to create a worshipful Christmas Eve service unlike your congregation has ever experienced.
All you need is a capable pianist and a sermon from your pastor, and you’re ready for a musical highlight of your church’s Christmas season.
Download More Details About the Service Guide:
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Click to download a PDF with more detailed instructions about the Christmas Eve Service Guide |
My son, Tommy (age 7) is having surgery today to get his tonsils taken out. This is our first child to have surgery so pray for mom and dad, too. Pray that Tommy isn’t in too much discomfort and heals quickly.
While you’re at it, pray for my wife – she’s having issues with her kidneys and may need surgery soon, too. Thanks!
Tomorrow I leave for San Diego. I’ll be speaking for the first time at the National Outreach Convention. I’m really looking forward to it as I’ll be able to see many great friends, leaders I respect and hopefully meet some people for the first time. I’ll be speaking four times. Here’s where you can catch me if you’re attending:
USA 60sec add from Hillsong United on Vimeo.
4 years in the making // over 3 years of filming // over 2000 individual tapes // over 150,000 minutes of footage // over 25,600 gigabytes of memory space // edited over 550days //
NOW here we are, ONLY LESS THAN ONE WEEK OUT from THE PREMIERE of ‘The I-HEART Revolution’ Film Documentary: ‘WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER’!!
The date is set // The invitations are sent // The theatres are filling fast (don’t miss out, get your tickets here… [USA Tickets] [CANADA Tickets])
Never before seen or heard //
Hillsong United are streaming new songs of worship LIVE from Sydney, Australia, and directly to your theatre //
What has been a huge journey already, is only really beginning – because now, it’s up to US – & we’re all in this together!
The possibilities are endless.
[USA Tickets] [CANADA Tickets]
Church Planters Roundtables or (CPRs) rock. I’ve been to a live one and I watch another one nightly as I work with a video editor on the upcoming CPR Online project that ARC will unveil in the new year. For now, you can still catch a CPR on the west and east coasts. Here’s what’s coming up through the end of the year with ARC:
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YouVersion Live gives you a way to interact with church services and other live events using your mobile device. You can follow along with message outlines and take notes, read related Bible verses and click through to the expanded passage, vote on a poll and see the results live, ask questions anonymously, give, request prayer, and take it all home with you on your phone. It works with any web-enabled phone, as well as any computer with an internet connection.
Introducing YouVersion Live from YouVersion on Vimeo.
Check out this blog post from Terry Storch HERE.
*** PERSONAL:
Tonight I’m taking my wife on a date to the U2 concert at Cowboy’s Stadium. Can’t wait!
The other day I wrote about what magazines I had read lately. I mentioned that I wanted to come back and talk about Outreach Magazine. This issue was their 100 Largest and Fastest-Growing Churches in America edition.
There is a great interview in the magazine with pastors Rick Bezet and Chris Hodges – pastors of the fastest growing church in America (’09 & ’08). It’s a great interview and knowing how humble and sincere both pastors are, I thought it gave glory where glory is due – to God.
An interesting thing though that many may not realize is that not only are Rick and Chris (and their churches) ARC churches, they both serve on the board of ARC (Association of Related Churches). Not only that, Rick and Chris’ churches were the first 2 churches that ARC planted 8 years ago when ARC was birthed.
So ARC launched 8 years ago with Church of the Highlands (Chris Hodges) and New Life Church (Rick Bezet) and then fast-forward: Church of the Highlands is the fastest growing church in the US in 2008 and New Life Church is the fastest growing church in 2009.
I point this out because I believe in ARC and think they do a good job planting churches. It’s worth noting that this year’s and last year’s fastest growing churches are both ARC churches. I wrote THIS blog post a while back and mentioned all the great churches that you may not realize are ARC churches. If you didn’t read it, it’s worth checking out. You’d be amazed at how many great churches and pastors you’ve heard of are ARC churches.
Why do I do a blog post on “ARC and Church Growth”? Because as an ARC coach of church planters, I can personally tell you how much I talk about the importance of prayer in leading and growing/strengthening your church. I’ve met with church planters and pastors and begged them to make prayer a priority. I’ve begged them to gather on Saturday to pray for Sunday (like Chris Hodges has always done). I’ve begged pastors to begin an intercessory prayer ministry that prays throughout their morning worship services.
Fortunately, I’ve had the privilege of hearing both Rick and Chris teach on the importance and power of prayer. The very first thing ARC teaches at their CPR’s (Church Planters Roundtable) is that you must “win the war in the spiritual”. As Billy Hornsby says, “Prayer is a non-negotiable”. I heard Chris Hodges once say, “You can’t delegate prayer.”
I write this blog post because every “fastest-growing” list that comes out has a story behind the names on the list. There are some amazing churches listed on this year’s list. I know most of the churches. My word to you is that knowing these leaders, I know they wouldn’t point to a cool technology or church growth fad, but to the power and presence of our Almighty God.
God is using ARC in a mighty way and I’m thrilled to be a small part of it and not only contribute and consult, but I grow and learn all the time by hanging out and talking with the ARC team. Billy Hornsby is a new mentor in my life and I appreciate the investment he’s making in my life.
My encouragement to you is for YOU to get to know the ARC as well. If you’re a future church planter, look into planting through ARC. Contact me and I’ll get you started down the path. If you’re an already existing church, you can join ARC (like Craig Groeschel and LifeChurch.tv and Mark Batterson and National Community Church) and begin to see your missions budget go straight to planting churches here in the United States. I’d be glad to talk with you about how your church can join the ARC and begin actively supporting church planting.
All Glory to God!
As you know, I spend a lot of time coaching church planters. Some launched earlier this year, some are launching this Fall and some will launch in 2010.
One thing I love telling my church planters about is Casey Graham and the services of The Change Group. Now whether you’re a brand new church or an established, older church, Casey’s team can be a huge blessing to you. As he always says, “What you stay awake worrying about, we wake up thinking about!”
Casey and his team can do: quarterly CFO consulting, build monthly financial dashboards, and provide weekly bookkeeping for less than it cost to hire a part time staff member! I’d encourage you to get to know them. I’ve invited Casey to do a guest post on here.
Guest Post by Casey Graham:
Life Giving Finances
My name is Casey Graham and I am one of the Co-Founders of The Change Group. Over the past year we have worked with so many churches to help them increase their operational revenue and manage their finances. I believe everything we do should be LIFE GIVING (John 10:10) and that goes with our finances as well. I just wanted to take a minute and talk about three things every church can do today that will make a big difference tomorrow.
1. Personal Generosity
Nothing will increase your passion for helping people find life through generosity more than you modeling it. Developing a culture is not rocket science! Who you are is who your people will become.
2. Life Giving Offerings
When you stand up to talk about the offering, don’t “beg” for dollars. Help people understand that every dollar they give goes to change lives! Help people connect their money to the different ministries. People will want to give to that.
3. Appreciate People
One of the most life giving things you can do financially is say thank you. When it comes to the area of money in church we can’t show favoritism but we can appreciate what people do. Have dinner night at your home and invite your top twenty donors to your home. Give to them, cook for them, love on them and really believe in them. Also, you can thank you first time givers with a hand written thank you card. Appreciate anything and everything that people give! You can’t do what you do without them!
*** Be sure to check out their free offer: http://thechangegroup.tv/freeoffer.html
