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As I ponder what’s next with the call God put in my heart to share the love & grace of the gospel of Christ, I am reminded of the powerful and thought-provoking words of the song God of This City by Chris Tomlin and how I was moved to tears when I first heard this song. The chorus tells us:

Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here

Won’t you take a moment to watch the video and let this song speak to you today?

You’re the God of this City
You’re the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation
You are

You’re the Light in this darkness
You’re the Hope to the hopeless
You’re the Peace to the restless
You are

There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater thing have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City

There is no one like our God
There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here

There is no one like our god
There is no one like our God

[Chorus]
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done here

As I’ve been thinking more and more about leading a missional community through Revolution Church Sacramento next year, I’ve also had thoughts about video preaching as part of what we do. Coinciding with these thoughts was a blog post by Perry Noble that reinforced his position that video teaching honors God and connects with people.

When we did our first month of preview services to share our vision with the members of our mother church, it was video preaching for 3 weeks, with me preaching 1 week. We participated in the One Prayer with LifeChurch.tv which many of you know about already. I was so totally blown away by the quality of the preaching from Perry Noble and Steven Furtick that I was hooked. I mean, I think I can be a pretty funny guy, but usually I evoke a laugh or two during a message while Noble just raised the roof and kept it up the whole 30 minutes. The guy seems like he isn’t even trying, yet he causes us to fire on several emotions in just one message. All this and he wasn’t even in the building! How can a guy in South Carolina talking about eating big, buttery biscuits and people believing or not believing in the power of Christ connect so well with us here in California? I don’t know how or why, but I just know what I saw and how people responded and it was amazing and incredible. Pastor Furtick is another one of those guys that doesn’t seem like he is trying, yet he can convey passion about watching an ice cube in such a way that you never thought possible all through the power of Christ in his life and his love for seeing people hear the gospel and come to know the saving grace of Christ. I was teary-eyed during the last half of his message and again, he wasn’t even in the building!

Can a guy like Noble or Furtick cause things to be stirred up here in Sacramento through video preaching? I think they could. As Revolution Church Sacramento takes shape and launches next year, we are looking to connect with a younger generation for Saturday and/or Sunday evening service. Mostly singles and young couples. However, could we partner with a great visionary preacher like a Pastor Noble or Pastor Furtick (or a Craig Groeschel or Ed Young, Jr. or…) and provide a gathering for families on Sunday mornings and see the kingdom grow even more? Could being missional and putting our faith into practice and sharing the love of Christ with the world be the glue that binds us together, even though we have two different worship styles, with two different meeting times, and two different demographics? I’m beginning to think we could. I’m feeling like the work that needs to be done here in Sacramento is far greater than what I could do even on my best days, and that partnering with another ministry with someone that can lead the way through their preaching and teaching while we work to connect people into service could honor God hugely. Who says that multiple services on a weekend must be the same exact message with the same exact preacher every time?

Maybe this is just another one of those dreams too big for the moment or my abilities. Could be that my mind is wandering and this isn’t what my thoughts should be on these days. However, I just can’t help but feel like this is worth some prayer and discussion and seeing what God would have me do here. My preaching doesn’t really translate well to video, but I’ve seen others with the gift for it and know that it’s being used to make a big impact on people in awesome ways. Just consider me more than a little intrigued at this point.

I invite your prayers and thoughts on this.

Over on Tony Morgan’s blog he posted some “Perryisms” today. These are probably my favorite posts from Tony as I get such a kick out of the language that Perry Noble can pull off in his sermons. He’s simply awesome!

I’ve been posting lately about being missional and how we as Christians can engage and connect with the culture around us without compromising our faith. Here are a couple of Perryisms from Tony’s post that I thought were great:

• “If a Christian can only listen to Christian music, I wouldn’t listen to music because most of it is bad.”
• “For far too long, the Church has gotten mad at non-Christians for being non-Christians. I don’t get mad at a duck for quacking. It’s a duck. It quacks.”
• “We have to be willing to go to places that make us uncomfortable in order to reach people that no one else is reaching.”
• “We need to accept people where they are. Meet them where they are. And take them to a place where they can meet Jesus.”

Somedays I feel like I should pack up and move the family to Anderson, NC and just sit and learn all I can from Pastor Noble at NewSpring Church. However, I believe God is preparing our city here in Sacramento to go to some uncomfortable places and engage our culture and share the love & grace of Jesus bringing light into some dark places.

I feel as if God spoke to me through a blog today. Sounds crazy, right? However, think about this. If God created everything and gave us the ability to utilize tremendous resources in the 21st century, why wouldn’t God use the internet to communicate to his people?

I follow several blogs that help challenge and stretch me as a leader. Today it was a post in Dave Ferguson’s blog that helped me regain a little more focus. Dave’s post was titled, “5 Leadership Lessons it Took A Long Time to Learn.” What do I want to take away from a blog post like that? Simple! I want to learn from Dave today before we even have our official launch service for Revolution Church Sacramento rather than learn way down the road after making unnecessary mistakes.

While sorting through some things in prayer last week, one of the things that weighed heavy on my mind was the issue of finances and how we are behind schedule in raising financial support for our church plant. I was trying to determine what negative impact this would have on our start. However, Dave clarified this for me in lesson #2 from his blog post, which is “Money Always Follows Vision.” As I feel pretty confident that God wants to do a new thing here in Sacramento that gets Christians (and non-Christians) into the community to display Christ’s love for those that need it I believe that God will make a way to fund this vision and I should just be faithful to the vision and not put my faith in money.

As a leader I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert. As much experience as I have in secular, corporate leadership I cannot claim leading a church of thousands on my resume as Pastor Dave Ferguson has done with Community Christian Church. Therefore, I choose to humble myself when possible to learn from experienced lead pastors like Dave Ferguson and seek God to find out how and when those lessons and principles can be applied into the ministry here in Sacramento. So, a big thanks to God for giving us the internet and thanks to Dave Ferguson and other pastors like him that take the time to share their valuable insight on their blogs in the hopes that it helps others like me avoid some of their mistakes

 

The rumors have been swirling around for weeks ever since Starbucks announced that it was closing stores due to the slow economy. It’s been really funny how many pastors actually post about this in their blogs Like the only way I even knew the list of closures was out was by reading about it on Scott Hodge’s blog.

Well Sacramento, we are only losing 3 locations. I was surprised by how low that number was considering how many Starbucks we have here, but I guess that means we’re all caffeine junkies that willingly pay too much to get our energy boost or chocolate drink fix on. The 3 locations are: 1) Promenade @ Truxel; 2) Stockton @ Mack; 3) Auburn & Madison.

So lovers of the rich and flavorful goodness from Seattle rejoice! Looks like you’ll still be able to find a Starbucks every 5 minutes as you drive around the city!

PS. If you’re not in Sacramento and are interested in the list of Starbucks location that are scheduled to close, you can download it here.