Posts Tagged: steven furtick

revolution church sacramento / sunday night reflections — No Comments
21
Jun 09

Sunday Night Reflections: June 21, 2009

Tonight was the night that I had been warned about. When the start time for our gathering tonight came & went without anyone there to worship with us, I was a little worried about how the team would want to proceed. I felt we should move forward with the service as it is never about us, but it should always be about our worship and service whether anyone is there to see it or not. Just before I was about to ask them to stand with me and move forward with the service, cars came into the parking lot. We started late, but it was okay. Today was a memorable day and here are the reasons why:

  • We were able to go through with our worship set even though it was our smallest gathering to date. This honored God and I know he was pleased! Not many people get a chance to face this situation. It was a blessing in disguise for our team.
  • I had a chance to hear Annette throw down some rhymes today. I like the way she raps, “yo, yo, yo!” We need more Asian hip-hop artists in Sacramento! :)
  • Being smaller today allowed us to be more-relaxed. It was fun time and we engaged in some good fellowship. I don’t want Revolution Church to be stodgy & traditional. Talking about running 10k’s, and about our studies, and joking around together…what a great way to prepare ourselves to worship our God together! I may put up some clips on our vimeo site :)
  • As always, Steven Furtick brought it all today! I’m wondering if there is ever going to be a time when I watch Pastor Furtick preach a message and I don’t get emotional and get teary. I just get so jacked up hearing this man speak! His enthusiasm for the local church and his love of God is incomparable. God wrecks me every time. Steven Furtick and I may never meet in-person and he may not know me by name, but I guarantee you that people in Sacramento are going to know the saving grace of Christ Jesus because of how Pastor Furtick has influenced me and my ministry. I will never be the same!
  • I’m so indebted to the kingdom-minded team of Craig Groeschel and staff at LifeChurch.tv. One Prayer this year has been crazy good and has been a great way for us to introduce Revolution Church to Sacramento during our public preview services this month. Much love always to Pastor Craig and the amazing team at LifeChurch.tv…we will be forever thankful that we could grow in our faith and grow closer together through your making resources such as One Prayer available to small churches such as us. For those of you that have my blog for any length of time know how grateful I am for Craig Groeschel’s kingdom heart and for all that he has spoken into my life and ministry. Someday I hope we as Revolution Church Sacramento have a chance to give to others as LifeChurch.tv has freely given to us.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We have an unbelievably gifted and big-hearted worship team for our public preview services and I am awed in their presence. I’ve been to several churches as part of my seminary studies and through my travels. I know some churches with thousands of people in attendance on a Sunday that don’t have the cohesiveness and spirit of worship that our team has. God so answered our prayers for this aspect of our ministry and I am completely humbled that of all the ministries in all the world that he would put together this outstanding team for our preview services. As Pastor Furtick shared tonight, God is GREAT!
  • We finally got all of our sound system issues resolved today! It sounded really nice and we are ready for our guest worship team from Xaris Church next Sunday. Wow, how we got some low budget, used equipment from ebay to perform like this could only be the result of a GREAT God! Wow!
  • As it was Father’s Day, I had to get together with my daughters after service so I missed hanging out with our church for dinner. It really felt strange to me. Seriously, I am wondering how I am going to respond when we stop meeting Sunday nights after next week and go to gathering for small group gatherings in homes for two months. I can honestly say that I am going to miss our church after our preview services. It’s making me feel a little sad at the moment.
  • As we conclude week three with just one more week to go for One Prayer, I know that we could not have realized this time without the strong prayers of some great people that have partnered with us throughout the world in prayer. Combining the prayers of our partners along with those from over 1,800 churches participating in One Prayer makes for some abundant favor upon God’s house and his people. Prayer is being lifted up and God is responding in awesome ways. When we can recognize his hand in the little things we can come to expect his hand in the bigger things.
  • Hearing Steven Furtick’s testimony again about how Elevation Church got its start always gets me excited. When people see him speak and learn that he is a senior pastor the first thing people comment about is how young he is. So beautiful to see God work in all sorts of people that will pursue him in faith. Young or old, loud or quiet, tall or short…God will use the least of his people at times to speak power into people’s lives. Praying that God will continually do that as he grows our ministry here in Sacramento. Can’t wait to see how things come together for us!
  • The text I studied and prayed over last week in Philippians really spoke to me tonight. On the surface it may have seemed like tonight was kind of uneventful, but I feel that we had much to rejoice about and many to be thankful for. Tonight we stood in unity and it wasn’t about theology or mission or worship style--we were truly brothers and sisters i Christ and it was a wonderful time to be together.
  • After having the video messages from some gifted preachers being received so well this month, I’m going to have to step-it-up for next Sunday. Hoping I don’t disappoint anyone…please pray for me.
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Bible / God — 1 Comment
15
Jan 09

How do you trust in God?

I am always so amazed at the way Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church thinks. I believe him to be a genius, yet it has nothing to do with his intelligence (I am sure he has a brilliant mind). It has everything to do with his heart, passion and creativity.

I just read his blog post for today. It’s about trusting God as referenced in Proverbs 3:5-6 which reads: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

How does Steven Furtick represent his trust in God?

Our church is not going to do a capital campaign, we’re just trusting God to bring the resources if He wants us to have them.

Can you really grasp the reality of that? There are several books written on how churches are to do capital campaigns properly. Pastors get attention for when they start a multi-million capital campaign and hit their targets.

We in the ministry trust in God that if we have a need to raise money and announce it to the church and our community, that God will come through and put it into the hearts of the people to give and have the need met. However, how much faith does that show compared to a church that won’t make a push for raising funds? Pastor Furtick says just trust in God without the big announcement. If God wants it done, he’ll find a way that points directly to his awesome power and to the fact that he is alive and with us today. That’s just over-the-top powerful, trusting genius kinda talk!

I put my trust in God every day, yet I feel like I still do too much. I’m still learning the art of patience and waiting on God in some areas of my life and ministry. After reading Steven Furtick’s blog today, I find myself challenged to really do what is necessary to make it all about God with nothing left that points to me when it comes to trusting him. As I embark on a time of having to cast vision and see how my community responds to both the gospel and a call to help support our upcoming church plant this year, I need to spend more time trusting God and not getting discouraged or over-zealous in my attempts at raising financial support. God will show me the way to get things started with the church plant and I must just be committed to put my best foot forward and prepare myself using the action steps in Ephesians 6.

Father God, today is the day that I ask you to show me how to give everything I have to you. May I trust your faithfulness and the vision you have shared with me in bold, yet simple, faithful ways such as Pastor Furtick is doing. Thank you for allowing me to receive your wisdom, strength, power, love and hope from Pastor Furtick’s blog. Keep my eyes open, my ears listening and my heart steadfast to hear your voice as you call upon me to trust in you. I am always so humbled by the examples of boldness in your people and may you always reward their trust in you by delivering upon your promises. Thank you that you are my God and allowing me to get to a place where others may see you through your actions in me so that they may declare you to be their God as well. I am in your humble service and excited to see where you lead me as I trust in you more and more. In the name of Christ, amen.

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church / church planting / church relevance / Dave (personal) / leadership / ministry / missional / preaching / Sacramento / technology — 3 Comments
22
Oct 08

Video killed the radio star, but what about the preacher?

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.

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church / church relevance / Dave (personal) / leadership / people / vision — No Comments
15
Aug 08

It’s all about me!

Craig Groeschel has been blogging this week about how to be original and not try to emulate other pastors. He posted a list of pastors with a notable trait and professed that he would never be like them in those areas (click here to see the list). I found it incredibly interesting as I would have commented on the exact same things. Two that stood out in particular were:

I’ll never be as funny as Perry Noble

I’ll never be as passionate as Steven Furtick

I’ve got to say that after following these two pastors and speaking to my church during the One Prayer series, I was feeling less-than-capable and a little dejected. I’m a passionate guy! I like to think I’m funny too. Somehow it just never translates into my preaching persona. Through prayer I’ve come to accept the gifts God has blessed me with to connect with the people he puts in my path. It’s all about me, because God created me to be the best me I can be. Not the best Craig Groeschel or Perry Noble or Steven Furtick, just the best at being all the Dave Ingland that God calls me to be.

In Craig’s post he ends with a question: What are the top three gifts/talents/abilities God has given you? My response would be:

  1. Relevant- As an atheist for the first 37 years of my life, I can relate to anything someone would say about why they believe God does not exist or how Christians are hypocrites or the Bible is just some book no different than a fairy tale read in elementary school. I’ve all of it at some point and now know why I don’t think those things any more. Having been in their shoes, God uses me to be relevant so that they can see the transforming power of the salvation of God within me.
  2. Conversational- I am not a bold and loud speaker when I deliver messages. I also don’t come across as being out of reach. God has given me the ability to break out of my shyness and to just talk to people where they are at and to engage them in thought and conversation. I don’t really feel like I am preaching on Sundays, but it is more like being in my living room and I am leading a discussion on a topic and asking for feedback. I definitely doubt I’ll ever be invited by Brian Houston to preach at Hillsong Australia like Perry Noble.
  3. Visionary- I never want to settle for less than my best for God and I always want to be moving forward--this is something I am passionate about. Anyone can do something halfway, but if it only requires half of my ability, then anyone could do it. Anyone can do what is assigned to them today, but it takes vision to do something today in a way that it will affect tomorrow. I believe that God has placed me in a journey that causes me to help people realize their dreams through embracing hard work and seeing the bigger picture. Living the Christian life isn’t easy, but it causes us to fulfill that which God created us for--loving God, and loving others above ourselves. Even though we are not to emulate others, this is an area where I would say that I will never be as bold of a visionary as Craig Groeschel. Craig is amazing and when he finds what works he opens up his experiences so that others (like me) can learn through the LifeChuch.tv online resources, his blog, or through writing books.

What are the top three gifts/talents/abilities God has given you?

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