I’ve heard pastors cynically decry the public interest of people in church around holidays. They say stuff like, “sure, they’ll come now but won’t be back next week.” Ok, maybe that’s true. But last time I checked we were meant to cast the net not to ensure which fish remain in the boat. As far as I am concerned any ramped up receptivity to hearing the gospel is a great thing, and an opportunity that we will be held accountable for having been given.

I wanted to let you know about what we are doing to reach out online to those who can’t get to church or for those who are unwilling to come into one:

Christmas Eve
We have two HD webcasts on Christmas Eve, one at 2pm and another at 6pm. (Mountain Time) This will be the grand finale of our Majesty series.
The online experience will stream to iPhones, computers and iPads at freshlifechurch.com. If you have sketchy internet you can listen to an audio only feed at freshliferadio.com
We have built a page where you can tweet, facebook or email a friend about it. Click here to check it out.

Christmas Day
I am super stoked about what we are doing on Christmas and want to invite you to be a part of it. We have put together a Christmas worship experience to-go. It includes some beautiful Christmas carols performed exclusively for this purpose, a message that I filmed on the east coast and an optional interactive question guide for families to discuss what Christmas is all about with their kids. The vision behind it is for everyone to take some time to honor Christ as Lord, though in different places, before opening presents. Plus this way you get to go to church in your pj’s!

We are giving out DVD’s with the content on Christmas Eve, and QR codes that point to the content for those traveling, but I will also post it here for those of you on the blog who would like to join in. Look for it here anytime after midnight on Christmas day.

I have previewed it all and trust me when I say that it is really special and it would be a huge joy to know you were joining my family in this special way.

“The modern Christian has lost a sense of worship along with the concept of majesty and reverence…We must see again how awful [awe-full] God is, how beautiful and how perfect. And we must begin to preach it, sing it, write about it, promote it, talk it, tell it and pray it until we have recaptured the concept of majesty…” -A.W. Tozer

Words are a powerful thing. They can build up and tear down. They can unlock potential and they can crush spirits. Indeed, death and life are bound up in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).

Your allotment of words today could be used to encourage someone who is depressed, inspire someone to do something beautiful, or give hope to someone who is lonely. Each word becoming a brick to restore broken things around you. On the flip side you could use your thousands of words as an arsenal of bullets as you go on a verbal shooting spree, cutting into those around you with sarcasm, cynicism and pride.

I’ve reached the end of days where I’ve gone both ways. And I want to tell you how much better it feels to speak words of life. Not just for those who are on the receiving end either. It feels better to use your tongue for good and not for evil. For loving and not for lashing. That’s no coincidence. When your words are like medicine they bless you as they pass through you. And if your mouth is like a Komodo dragon, teeming with bacteria, it won’t just be those you bite that are infected–you poison yourself in the process.

Make the decision with me to speak words of life today. Build up. Choose to inspire, to beautify with your mouth. Be an encourager. Since out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, hide God’s Word into your heart and regulate what else you let in there. Garbage in, Garbage out. And in case of emergency, if you sense you are slipping and your tongue is about to talk some trash…Bite it!

Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.

It is finally here. We are taking Skull Church on the road for the first time. There will be performances by Family Force 5, Blindside, the Skull Church band and explicit gospel messages. We are praying for God to move powerfully in Zoo town!

Take a moment and visit our promo page (link) where you can invite people to attend, send pre-loaded tweets, and download wallpapers for your screen. Both nights of this outreach will be webcast live so you can even invite people who don’t live anywhere near Montana to join in on the fun. And please pray for God to move in power!

It’s not everyday that you get to shake hands with someone who shook hands with Adolf Hitler. Last night at the Harvest Crusade I had the opportunity to do just that when I met Louie Zamperini. He was interviewed by Greg Laurie in front of the capacity+ crowd that had gathered at Angel’s stadium and I had the chance to speak to him backstage.

Shaking the hand of Hitler is not the only unusual item on his resume either. Not by a long shot. He also competed in the Olympics, was a fighter pilot in WWII, crashed a plane called the Green Hornet into the ocean, spent 47 days floating at sea in a raft where he punched a great white shark in the nose, survived imprisonment and torture as a POW, and then was saved at a Billy Graham crusade.

If you are thinking that this guys life needs to be a movie, that is exactly what is going to happen. His life story was documented in the book “Unbroken” by the author who wrote the book “Seabiscuit” and is going to be made into a movie. It was a huge honor to meet this eloquent and funny man who has lived enough for four lifetimes but isn’t done yet, he continues to share his story. And God is using him in major ways, including the more than 40,000 people who were blessed by him last night!

Joshua 24:15 Choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.

Additionally, we saw many respond to the gospel this weekend in response to the teaching from John 11. This powerful text contains the statement, “I am the resurrection and the life” that Jesus made standing near the grave of Lazarus. Now I’ll grant you, saying something like that is easy, but in the following moments Jesus told Lazarus to get up…and He did. I think that should earn Him our undivided attention!

One detail I love in the story is that Jesus raised the dead, but He had the people roll away the stone. He could have done it Himself–without even trying! But He chose to involve others. The picture that emerges is that while salvation is a work that only God can do, He longs for us to participate, “rolling away the stones” so to speak, as we intentionally bring dead people before the Word of Christ. If we as a church truly embrace that, this wednesday night, at the Skull Church event for April, there is no telling what God might do!

Also, this week I had the opportunity and the pleasure to travel to Chicago to attend an event put on by my good friend Pastor James MacDonald. It was called The Elephant Room, and it was fantastic. You can read a blog he wrote describing what went down, HERE and he will be posting the whole 7 hour event in increments on his site in the weeks to come so look for it. Let me say having been there, it was seriously rad. The only way I can really describe it is that it was like you were getting to hear the sort of conversations that go on backstage at a conference, off the microphone. Only these raw, un-groomed conversations were the conference.

The trip was also refreshing personally. It is always a great blessing to spend time with men of God. James MacDonald, Greg Laurie and Mark Driscoll are guys that I look up to and have learned much from. Greg is a father in the faith, and James and Mark have both spoken into my life and taught me much. It was also a blast hanging out with Jonathan Laurie and Landon MacDonald–PK’s that love Jesus and rock hard. Another one of the highlights of the trip for me was meeting Pastor Steven Furtick for the first time. He is someone whose ministry, passion and vision I appreciate very much and it was great to get to tell him how God has used him in my life.

with Landon and Jonathan (from left)

The message will be the second to last installment of the Rise & Rise Again series (the series finale will be on Easter Sunday) and we will see the death of Christ on the cross was such a powerful event that it triggered the rising of several people from the dead on the spot. You can tune in at 91.3FM in the Flathead Valley, or catch it streaming at freshliferadio.com everywhere else. If you have an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad you can stream the station through the safari app; it will even run in the background like Pandora–only fresher.