Harvest is THE Church of the Week!    We will be featured on the new program “Church of the Week” airing on local Christian TV Station, WHBR.    Air dates are this week… Tuesday at 7pm and Saturday at 7:30pm.

WHBR TV can be viewed in our area on Comcast Cable (ch. 7), Mediacom in Mobile (ch. 13), Mediacom in Baldwin County (ch. 7), on DISH (ch. 33) and “over the air” on ch. 34.

Invite your family and friends to tune in. This is a great opportunity for our church to receive good positive promotion throughout the Gulf Coast and pray the interview, worship and teaching I did will bear “much fruit”.

Thanks for watching!

pkc

Where ARE the workers God needs… that we (as leaders) need?  Where do we go to find workers?  Bible colleges & seminaries?  Harvard School do Business?  Churches? Prophetic meetings?  No, none of these.  Where then?  On our knees before the throne of God!  (ALL we need is IN His presence.)  Prayer is never the least we can do it is always the most we can do.    Zech 10:1

So, pray!  Pray for someone specifically… Call their name out to God this week, & ask Him to make YOU a laborer!

*”The only barrier we face to a greater harvest is a lack of compassion that motivates prayer, which releases workers, which yields the harvest!” – Neil Cole

Welcome to the Post-Modern world where missionaries aren’t just for Africa & India anymore.  God is calling us, His Body in the earth, to be evangelists & missional to the world around us.  Acts 1:8
Nowhere in the Scripture does Jesus ask us to worship Him, but He does ask us to become like Him – worship Him by obeying Him.  (This is discipleship.)  Matt. 28

I believe God is taking us from institution to revolution!
Our problem is we have God all figured out – His ways are NOT our ways! There is still a mystery!  It takes more faith to NOT have ALL the answers sometimes…

But here’s what I do know:  Jesus said, “I will build MY church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”   Gates are defensive things.  So the church Jesus is building is the one that is plunging head-long into darkness & danger to get it’s hands dirty & rescue people from hell!

The Holy Spirit is calling His Bride to Action:  “Who will go?”  (Isaiah 6)

pkc

The church always expresses itself in different ways depending upon the culture that it’s in.  It’s very fluid so it can “reform” itself all the time depending upon the culture or environment that it’s in.  The purpose for this of course is so it can be a relevant witness in that particular culture.  The problem is, we are in a “post-modern” or “post-Christian” generation.  In other words, people in the Western World ARE searching for God but just not in the church anymore.  So what can we do to increase our influence in this culture?
(NOTE: by “the church” I mean Christ-followers. Not any particular denomination.)
We only legitimize ourselves are Christians by going back to Jesus.  Are we reflecting Jesus? If we are not then we are ultimately “unChristian-Christians.”  I know this is an oxy-moron. The greatest insult you can hurl at a Christian is “you don’t look like Jesus.”  Ghandi said, (paraphrase) “I’d be a Christian if I hadn’t met so many of them.”  What an indictment that still holds true in many instances today.  Does it in your? In mine?

We are not to reflect the culture we are in but yet relate to it so we can express this other-worldly culture of the Kingdom that we are from.  The standard has always been, is and always will be – JESUS.  To be “culturally relevant” we have to accurately express JESUS to our neighbors, co-workers, friends, etc.

WE ARE MISSIONARIES!

Acts 1:8  The power of the Holy Spirit’s baptism will enable us to be a a meaningful witness.

pkc

God is calling us to transition from a church-based Christianity to a culture-based Christianity: God wants to use us to influence art, business, government, family, education, media, & technology!  This is having a meaningful witness. (One folks will listen to)

Not relying on our old methodology is a fantastic opportunity but it’s also a bit frightening, but the early church thrived in risk & danger!  The Bible term for this is “faith…”  and “apostolic!”     This is what we all keep claiming we want: to be like the first century church.  And I believe the human experience craves adventure, challenge, & danger!  We need something to overcome – Jesus made us overcomers after all

Our concept of the church & the role it inherited has to adjust again in the Western World to become a MISSIONS church again like we were in the 1st century.  Why? Because people in the Western World are looking for God but for the 1st time NOT in the church.  We must be a people of the Gospel AND engage culture.

God has called us to be a missionary church & a missionary people.  We have to stop the old way of think that the missionaries are those beleivers over in Africa and embrace the New Wine-Skin mentality:  WE ARE THE MISSIONARIES!

more soon…

pkc

Harvest 10.2  New Wine Skins

Luke 5:36-38 (New Living Translation)
36 Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment.
37 “And no one puts new wine into old wine-skins. For the new wine would burst the wine-skins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. 38 New wine must be stored in new wine-skins. 39 But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”
Remember: Jesus is TIMELESS!  But the Pharisees were stuck in their old system. He spoke of LOVE,  they spoke of the he Law.  Jesus spoke of Grace they only know Performance.  He spoke of His Kingdom & they of their tired system of works.  He told stories – they had their lists…*God sent Jesus to upgrade the system!  To fashion the “new wineskin.”  That new wine-skin is His Church.

Three Principles of Wine-skins:
1. Wine is TIMELESS… Transcendent.  In other words, people are always going to drink wine.  People are ALWAYS going to need Jesus! Only HE can satisfy their spiritual thirst.
2. Wine-skins don’t last forever.  The culture around us changes so our methods much also change.
3. New wine requires new skins.  If we are going to be a relevant witness to this generation then we will have to understand the culture & reflect Jesus to it.

This is part of the ongoing process of God’s Spirit is consistently drawing us out of our comfort zones to live a life of faith & total dependence on HIM.

We have to put the venture back into the adventure of the church.  We must stop being so risk-adverse.  Do we love God & people enough to let go of the way we’ve always done things & trust Him to lead us into His ways?

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That’s right.  Search the New Testament:  Jesus never asked us or commanded us to worship Him – He only asked us to be LIKE HIM.

It seems to me that doing this is the KEY to accurately being the Body of Christ in our culture with effectiveness & power.

pkc

I’m performing a wedding today at 4 pm for a friend.  Those are always fun. Marriage is so important in our lives & culture.  It was God’s idea you know.

My wife comes home today from taking our vivacious boys to Jackson, MS to frolic in the snow.  They had a blast!  My tasks today are washing dishes, cleaning up from my pizza party, folding laundry.  Yes, (happy) marriage is WORK but it is of course worth it.

Well, I’m REALLY genuinely excited about the gathering at Harvest tomorrow!  After a 9 month break I’m leading worship tomorrow, bringing a brief word, and then Hollywood Master’s Commission will be performing several dramas.

It’s gonna be a fun day.

Enjoy your Saturday!

pkc

Luke 5:36

*The systems in our church train people to act & behave the way they do.  In the OLD system, members expected you to babysit their kids whenever we had an event.  Now we have people volunteering to MINISTER to our kids!  (In fact, at a recent special service we had to “turn volunteers away”! GREAT problem to have.)    In the OLD system we did church for church folk; now we are creating an atmosphere where both Christians & pre-christians can engage God. The old system was “what can I get” now it’s “what can I bring?”  The old system was having church instead of being the church.

Our church has a few critical systems: (Here’s some of them)

1. How we communicate Truth: We handle TIMELESS truth with a system that is perpetually changing so that we can more effectively connect with the culture.

2. How we integrate leaders:  Church Community Builder (CCB.)  Meetings are not the only or best way to pull leaders into our church.  We do have hands on training for new volunteers.  But also, CCB is like a modern day church directory we use to help leaders & members connect to one anther & to the church.  It’s kind of like “Facebook” & our congregation is really starting to buy-in to it.  Today’s culture is just tech-savy.  i.e.: My son made an “F” on a paper because my wife didn’t’ check her email.  It’s just part of our school’s system.  Now we check our emails from the school daily.
3.  System that CONNECTS people:  Our GROUPS are a vital part of who we are and what we do!  In the past year we have transitioned from a church with small groups to a church OF small groups.
4. System that MOBILIZE our church: Old system says, “Your primary responsibility as a christian is “come to church” vs “understanding what it means to BE the church.”  A major focus of ours this year is OUTREACH.  Not always “planned events” on the church calendar but through our groups “organically.”

5. System that Partners with families: JumpKids is really being “upgraded” right now thru parent involvement, parenting seminars coming soon, JKNewsletter, Twitters & blog with parenting tips.  We are beginning to allocate a % of our time to think how we can strategically better partner with our families.

pk