We are now twelve days into this new year–how is your resolution doing? I texted ChaCha this morning and asked, “how long does the average new years resolution last?” and was told that most fizzle out before February even begins. I guess most of us aren’t resolute enough! With that in mind, this year I built a resolution for the fresh life staff and those who come to skull church where you can only make it a few months out of the year and still succeed. The goal is to read through the New Testament in ninety days.

By April 1st we will have read about Jesus’ earthly life from four different perspectives, the radical, missional, church-planting adventure contained in the book of Acts, all of Paul’s emails in addition to the other letters and of course the graphic, bloody account of the return of Jesus Christ that the New Testament closes out with. It breaks down to about 3 chapters a day, which is not really a difficult amount of material at all. I have done lots of different reading plans with varying speeds and I have really been enjoying this pace. While reading slowly enough to actually be thinking about what you are reading it still only takes about ten to fifteen minutes each day. That number is truly miniscule when you remember that the average American watches 4 hours and 49 minutes of tv a day.

It has been awesome going through it personally as well as hearing from the staff and those who have been leaving comments about their experience with the 90 day NT challenge on the skull church facebook page. I am thrilled at the thought of so many people consuming this concentrated dose of Truth. I guarantee you that God will do awesome things in people’s live’s and hearts as they consistently hide His Word in their hearts–it NEVER returns void! I also know that for those who didn’t previously spend time reading the Bible daily, they won’t be able to go back to only being spoon-fed Scripture at church. I am praying that the 90 day challenge will just whet their appetite for more.

Another refreshing thing about coming to the end of a year is the opportunity to take inventory and celebrate all that God did in the previous year before you face the blank canvas of the new one. We put together a year-end recap of some great things we saw God do in 2009, our third full year of ministry at fresh life. CLICK HERE to check it out. Looking at it, what’s really hard to believe is that it all happened in one year.

My personal resolution for this new decade is to be like Caleb from the Old Testament books of Numbers and Joshua. He was one of the spies who checked out the land of Canaan before the children of Israel entered in. Alongside Joshua, he brought back a good report and was rewarded for it by being the only one over twenty years of age that lived to enter forty years later. God said that Caleb had a “different spirit in him” and six different times it is said that he followed the Lord fully. That is my desire for this new year and decade–to follow the Lord fully. God has done tremendous things in the past but I am not content, I want to see Him do more. There are new mountains to take, new adventures to face and I intend to fully follow the Lord, to live for His glory and to use every breath I have to make Jesus famous.

One of the things that I have been most excited about recently has been the growth of our small groups at fresh life church. They are an extremely important part of a healthy church and have always been, going back all the way to the early church in the book of Acts. They are especially important when a church has multiple services/campuses to ensure people are plugged in on an intimate level and have meaningful discipleship relationships. Otherwise it is easy to anonymously exist in a congregation without experiencing the depth of spiritual fellowship that God uses to transform a person.

We had tried various solutions but up until the spring of 2009 the fact that we were struggling to get people to attend the two home groups we offered showed that we hadn’t hit our stride in this area. Our plan was for them to divide like cells when they grew and eventually we would have home groups all over the place. But It…Never…Happened. The church continued to grow, but the groups never did. Now flash forward just under a year and as we approach our second trimester of Fresh Life Groups we are adding 7 new groups to the 18 we had in the fall that this month will begin meeting in homes all over the place. What is equally awesome is that in addition to all the new people who signed up this time 72% of those who attended reenrolled in this new season.

What changed?
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I am enjoying some Christmas carols and an eggnog latte while I wrap up my message for tonights worship services at fresh life.  This morning the girls and I popped in the first disc of Jesus of Nazareth, which is a yearly tradition in my house.  (Disc two finds it’s way into the dvd player the week of Easter.) What a wonderful time of the year.  I am so thankful that God invaded our planet!  I hope that for all of us, like the Wise Men, Christmas would be marked by our desire to worship Jesus.

Matthew 2:2 “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?  For we have come to worship Him.”

To inspire your worship–here is a vid that was recorded last wednesday night at Skull Church when Kristian Stanfill and his band showed up from Atlanta to lead worship. He is one of the most passionate and high energy guys I have ever seen on stage.   He will be leading worship alongside Chris Tomlin and David Crowder at Passion 2010 this year. This is one of Kristian’s songs called Kingdom that is on his most recent album, Attention.

Merry Christmas!

Last week I wrote about fragile nature of movements, even powerful ones. Every vibrant work of God has an ever nearing expiration date, that date is the day the humans that make up the movement will expire themselves. We move closer to that “best by” date every day. That is why we must must always have the mindset of our need to pass the baton on to those who will be running when we have “spoiled.”  This mentality is a feature that can be found in some of the most prolific stories in scripture. What do Moses, Elijah, Mordechai, Naomi, Barnabas and Paul have in common? Besides a passion for the Lord they all focused time and attention on reaching and raising up young people. As a result, Joshua, Elisha, Esther, Ruth, John Mark and Timothy knew that they shouldn’t let anyone look down on their youth and so the movements continued. If we want what God has done in our lives and churches to continue we must have a similar focus.

I believe that the first step to take in effectively reaching young people (or any people) is simply having the desire to reach them. You have to have a burden from the Lord for them. It wasn’t until Paul was provoked within His spirit in Acts 17 that he went out and preached Christ in Athens. Similarly, we often read of Jesus being moved with compassion in the gospels and then speaking or ministering. If our actions flow from anywhere other than a genuine burden for lost people that comes from the Holy Spirit we will find the challenges to be too great. If on the other hand we ask the Lord to ignite a fire in our hearts and to give us His love for the lost then it won’t matter how challenging the road and how many obstacles are in our way.  If our hearts are set ablaze from on high, we will be unstoppable!

Once you have a burden for a particular group, audience or people, next you must take radical steps to target them. I am no fishermen but I know that if you have decided you want to fish for trout there are different things you will bring than if you want to fish for salmon, and that is an altogether different equipment list than will be needed if you are fishing for marlin. Companies realize this–that is why they are constantly addressing and readdressing the intangible attributes of their brands. From Cadillac to Nike to Nickelodeon–companies are never satisfied with how their brand is perceived right now, they know that in a few short years (or months) everything can change and they are constantly targeting youth.

Now in saying that, I know that many will immediately wonder, what we should be willing to change exactly? I suggest you tweak the Style not the Substance, your Methods not the Message. To use the fishing analogy–adjust the bait, chum and lures not the hook, the line or the net. We must not try so hard to be just like the world in order to reach the world and in the process give up what we had to offer to the world in the first place. The message is unchanging but the media delivery vehicles employed, graphic design, vibe, feel, sound and expression should be fluid and changing with the culture.
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I have been teaching through the life of Elijah at skull church. One of the things that really hit me hard this week was the fact that as Elijah’s chariot ride to heaven approached God had him focus on raising up his protege, Elisha. While we may not have such an impressive trip to heaven, the reality is that none of us are long for this earth. Reaching the next generation for Christ must always remain an urgent priority in the church if we are to wisely use the time that remains. If we don’t, it won’t matter how vibrant or powerful the work in our day was, because just as “there arose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph,” (Exodus 1:8) a generation will rise after us that knows not God.

We must not only reach young people, but we need to do what we can to integrate them into the church in a meaningful way. In 2003, George Barna published these troubling findings: “Many twentysomethings are reversing course after having been active church attenders during their teenage years. As teenagers, more than half attended church each week and more than 4 out of 5 (81%) had ever gone to a Christian church. That means that from high school graduation to age 25 there is a 42% drop in weekly church attendance and a 58% decline from age 18 to age 29. That represents about 8,000,000 twentysomethings alive today who were active church-goers as teenagers but who will no longer be active in a church by their 30th birthday.”

I secretly wonder how much youth groups are to blame for this trend. Not that I am opposed to youth groups (quite the opposite) but I don’t think that churches ought to think that because they have a great youth program the “church of tomorrow” is being taken care of and so they can continue to cater everything that happens in the main sanctuary to the adults. Often youth groups tend to be mini-churches within the church. A student could potentially graduate high school without ever feeling like they are woven into the fabric of the larger church body. It makes sense to me that after college they wouldn’t return to a church they were never really apart of beyond student ministry.

At fresh life we have it set up so that through their teenage years students will be connected into the larger church body as they attend and hopefully serve, both at skull church and at weekend services. The student ministries don’t compete with but rather complement what happens in the main-sanctuary. They provide specialized student teachings, small groups, accountability, events and discipleship, but are not intended to be a student’s sole church experience. (That’s why we don’t offer student programs at every weekend service or any on wednesday night.) I see myself as a youth pastor at fresh life as well and always will. (even when I get super old)

Of course for this to work, the style of the services and opportunities for students to serve have to be addressed, and with that discussion there comes the fear that those who already enjoy the way things are in the church will be upset. But that deserves it’s own blog entry. I will muse on that later this week. For now, I’ll leave you with this haunting thought–Every movement is just one generation away from becoming a monument. We must pass it on.