Last night in Life Group it was great to listen and share as we began to dive into the Scriptures together. Loving like Jesus is a huge calling. Loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul and mind requires the believer to look past self and see only the Lord and our Savior Jesus. It’s saying NO to our flesh and YES to the Holy Spirit. It’s saying “not my will but thy will be done”. How successful are you with that one?
Then we shared about “loving our neighbor as ourselves”. Love is easy to talk about but it’s totally another thing to put love in action. Love IS an action word. Talk is cheap. We SAY we love people… of all classes, colors and backgrounds. We SAY we love them with the love of Jesus yet we many times are judgemental about them (hair, weight, tatoo’s, color, clothing, speach, etc.). Loving people like Jesus loves them forces us out of our own fleshly comfort zones and causes us to have to reach past the exterior of man and see the heart. We MUST love people (saved and lost). We must practice forgiveness and not judging others. The only person who has the right to judge anyone is the Lord and He loved people enough to sacrifice His only Son on the cross. What about you? Do you REALLY love people or is it all just a bunch of religious words? Do you really reach past the exterior of a person and seek to touch their heart? Are you a hypocrite – who SAYS you love people and yet practice being judgemental about them? Talk is cheap – love is an action word. Let’s LOVE people like Jesus does! Just something to think about and pray about today!! Pastor James
I’ve always pastored established congregations. I’ve never been on the “ground floor” of seeing a church come together. It’s a new mission and a new challenge but it’s also very exciting. It’s humbling to see how God is little by little fitting “puzzle pieces” together to gather the church together in His time. From people calling and asking questions to meeting new people and sharing the vision with them. From getting calls as far away as central arkansas from a couple who is praying about moving here to help us or from the people we meet at Family Dollar or Millers… God has a distinct group of people He is gathering to form this new church. Won’t you pray that God will continue to open hearts and doors? Pray as we witness and seek to win souls and teach them God’s Word.
Prayer: “God please continue to touch and burden the hearts of those people you want to become a part of this foundational core group at Life House Church. Help them to know your will and to be willing to take a step of faith and surrender to join this great work. WE want your will – not ours. Please continue to unify our hearts and knit us together as a core group. Give us your mind. One mind, one body and one ministry. Don’t let us get focused on programs or ministries that would take us away from being a ”simple church” – one that focuses on loving you, loving others and serving the world. Keep us focused. Help us not to listen to anyone who would seek to distract us with negativity or anything that is not of faith. You bless faith and with you all things are possible. Thank you Lord for what you are about to do in our lives and in our church. Thank you for providing all of our physical, financial, spiritual and emotional needs – according to your riches in glory. We praise you Jesus…in Jesus name. AMEN!”
Cindy and I will be at a church planters conference next weekend and I’ve asked Josh Ross (our oldest son) to preach for me next Sunday. Josh is praying and preparing for next Sunday’s service. Pray for him and if you can – be present to hear what God says in and through him. Cindy and I only wish we could be present to hear the message. Maybe someone will video it for us!
The Lord blessed Life House with a great time of worship today! The Lord passed by and poured out His presence on us. It was such a blessing to hear and see the church family experiencing worship together. Where the Spirit of the Lord is – there is freedom. There is freedom to worship the Lord and we should never take that for granted.
Today was our first Mother’s day as a church plant. We are thankful for our mother’s and their influence on us.
As a new church plant/mission – we are in an intentional planning and teaching/training stage of development. We have not yet begun to “go out” and seek to grow the congregation through intentional evangelism but rather we are now in the stage of gathering a core group of believers, discipling and teaching them and getting them ready to reach out and grow a church. The process of getting the building ready, training core members and doing all the leg work that is necessary can take anywhere from two months to six months or longer. I am hoping that within two months we will be ready to have public worship services but it’s important not to “hurry” the process. Pray that in the next few weeks we can accomplish the “mile markers” needed to be ready to move to the next phase of development as a church plant. We are excited that in the first two weeks of the core group meeting together we are seeing our hearts knit together. There is a real spirit of unity and purpose in this small group. God is going to use this group to reach people and grow an amazing simple church. We are using our weekly LIFE GROUP meeting as part of our discipling process. Each week we over what we’ve learned in our daily quiet times as individual believers and share what we’ve learned in the Word, what God is speaking us and how it can be used to grow a great church. If you love church growth – pray for us! It’s exciting to think outside of the traditional “BOX” and be able to learn how to “BE THE CHURCH” rather than just “DOING CHURCH”.
Also, pray for us this next weekend. Cindy and I will be going to Oklahoma to a Church Planters Training Conference sponsored by the North American Mission Board. Pray that we can be teachable and will learn the necessary tools to help make this church plant successful. We desire to do our best for the Lord and Him get glory for it all.
This is my first blog since we’ve stepped out to begin the new work called “Life House Church & Ministries” in the College Hill area. In the past three weeks we’ve seen God do some amazing things! Over and over He has given confirmation that planting a “simple church” in College Hill was His will for us. The list is long of the things we’ve seen God do but here are a few highlights in recent weeks.
God has opened the door for Life House to be sponsored by Shiloh Baptist Church (Pastor Todd Reed). Last Wednesday night, May 7th, the Shiloh Baptist Church family voted unanimously to become our “mother church/sponsor church”. They are excited about all that God is going to do in and through our new partnership. We are excited because we couldn’t have been given a better pastor and church to work with in planting this new church.
We are seeing new faces every week. People we didn’t even expect to be interested in the ministry at Life House are coming to the core group services and meetings. We are being contacted by people in the community and others who want to know more and many who are seeking a church where people of every color and station in life are welcome.
We are now partnering with the Arkansas Baptist State Convention as well as the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention to be plant this new church. They are on board and they have been so encouraging and helpful already. To answer some: YES, we are a Baptist church! We hold to the “Baptist Faith & Message 2000″ as our statement of faith.
We also are seeing God provide finacially for us as the need arises. Over and over we are seeing God bring in funds that are needed to get the building prepared and every need for the new church plant provided. It’s not our desire to have the newest or “fanciest” but we want to be a church that strives to be clean, inviting and a house of prayer and worship. God is “providing all our needs according to His riches in glory”!! God has also provided time and again from several sources for Cindy and I. Some do not understand how we could “walk away” (their words, not ours) from a great church and “nice” salary to start a church and have no salary. It’s simple: we are following God’s direction for our lives and ministry. Where God leads- He always provides. He is still God!!
All in all – it’s already been an exciting journey. God is so good! Pray for us. Pray for the people of College Hill and for lost souls. Pray that God will give me wisdom as I seek to follow His direction in planting this new church. This is “out of the box” for me. It’s out of my comfort zone. I thank God that He is giving me this chance to experience and see Him perform miracles in our lives, in the church and in our community.
I love you church - Pastor James
One last note: Pray for Faith Church as they prayerfully seek a pastor for their future. Faith is a great church with a great future. We love the members of Faith and want nothing but God’s best for them. We are not in competition with them or any church – we are co-workers together in God’s vineyard. Also, pray for Bro. David & Bro. Brian and their families as they seek to lead Faith in this interim period.