Northwest News!

The Lord really blessed us with a productive week.  Many of the folks in the church really worked extra hard to invite people to church this week.  We took leaflets around to 583 doors.  Several times people came and wanted to just go out by themselves which was great because I was tied down several days with other work and could not get out myself. 

This afternoon, we had a great time at our Usher/Greeter Training.  We had three men who help us with ushering come.  We only were able to cover the training for the Ushers, so we will be scheduling a day especially for Greeter Training on Saturday, 19 April, from 1-3 PM. 

We need people to help as greeters in the following areas: 1) Assistance Greeters who assist people from the car park to the building, 2) Welcome Greeters who welcome people as they enter the building and direct them to their appropriate location, and 3) Host Greeters who host new people through giving them a tour of the building, introducing them to the staff and teachers, as well as taking care of them.  We need ladies and men who will volunteer to help with the greeting.

I was reading Proverbs 18:24 today that says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

As we prepare for Celebration Sunday, I want to encourage all of use to be friendly.  Here are some things to keep in mind about friendliness:

• We have to initiation friendliness. We cannot expect people to come up and be friendly to us, we must go to them.
• We must be sincere.  We should really care about the person we are meeting and greeting.  To often we see people as numbers and not as real people with real problems, concerns, and feelings.
• We should be careful to not be overly friendly.  Sometimes we can be too pushy, ask too many questions, and take away any anonymity that people might want to have.  We should greet people, try to get their name and remember their name, make sure they know where the bathrooms, creche (if they have children), and meeting room are, let them know our name, tell them we are glad they are there, and then let the conversation develope naturally.  If we can tell they don’t want to talk any more, then we should give them space to just sit back and watch.  I am sure that many will come just to “see what is going on” and we need to give them the opportunity to do so in a safe environment.
• We should try to remember their names and pray for them during the service and after they leave.
• We should also encourage them to fill out their welcome card.  Nothing works better to get people to fill out their welcome card than a personal reminder to do so.  This really helps us to follow up with them and know how we can better serve the visitors that come through our doors.

Thank you for how friendly you all have been in the past.  I just want to encourage you to continue on and to step things up this Sunday!  Thank you for all your help.  You are a wonderful group of people, and I praise God for what He is doing already in our midst.

Here is a great article on being friendly to visitors that I thought was important for us to think about.

Just a few years ago, in the church, church leaders, were terrible about “singling out” lost people or visitors in a church service.  There were lots of abuses,: from a “unique” visitor’s name tag that visitors had to put on; ushers (who couldn’t “ush”) would ask: “Is this your first time?” There were “visitor’s parking spaces; and visitors were sometimes even asked to stand or stay seated while everyone else stood to be greeted as an “outsider.” Well, all of this is stupid…
        However, I really believe that many churches have thrown out the baby with the bathwater (ask someone if you don’t know what that means) when it comes to giving people “space” in our churches to remain “anonymous” when they visit our churches and check out Jesus from a distance. I believe it’s literally sin on our part as churches to allow them to remain anonymous! Follow my logic: Here’s the deal: Isn’t it also our tendency to want to go home in the afternoon, roll up, then down our garage door, and never speak to our neighbors, because we’re busy and exhausted? But does that make it right? Does that mean we don’t NEED a neighbor? Does that mean that we don’t need to be loved? Does that mean we don’t  need someone TO love? Does that mean we don’t need community?
        See, I don;t think people even know what they want or need. The Bible says are heart will deceive us. People think they need a church service. What they need is God. People think they need a sermon. What they need is people who live out the sermon to love them. What they think they need is anonymity in the church. What they need is to be known. What they think they need is privacy. What they need is transparency, confession, and grace. What people think they need is religion, What they need is relationships. I want our church to extend the latter.
    At Mountain Lake, EVERYONE in our church wears a name tag (yes, everyone!). Every name tag is the same (no golden ones). IN fact our name tags are mailing labels handwritten by each of us when we walk in the doors.  Mountain Lake is a place “where everybody knows your name.” If you DON;T wear a name tag in our services, you stick out. yes, we still have “greeting times” in our worship services:: Not every week, but consistently. We have a cafe in our lobby, not to feed people or wake them up with coffee, but to help people connect with each other. over a cup of  joe.  We have small groups not primarily to study the Bible (even though we do), but to cultivate community among our church attenders. Our groups are designed with that goal in mind. 
        At MLC, we had rather run people off for being  “too friendly” than “unloving and only interested in our money.” Jesus wasn’t for anonymity.  Jesus was for relationships. Jesus was for love. That’s what I want to be for. And I want strangers to know it!

Below is an article by CHUCK NORRIS that should be a great challenge and encouragement to you men and especially the fathers.

Taken from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56220

I was genuinely flattered to hear of the worldwide enjoyment of my parody and hyperbolic WND article this last week, “If I am elected president.”  It is often said that the most powerful position in the world is the U.S. presidency. But I believe it hits much closer to home than the White House and is a role, quite frankly, that I’m much more eager to fulfill.  Before I reveal that commanding position, I’d like to discuss the power utilized in it.

The purpose of power

Calvin Coolidge, America’s 30th president, once confessed, “I suppose I am the most powerful man in the world, but great power doesn’t mean much except great limitations.” Similarly, Thomas Jefferson once pleaded, “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” Their point is that power wasn’t granted by God to be wielded like a sword but to be used to empower and better others through wise decisions and actions.We equate power with dominance, rule and self-glorification ñ that is unfortunate. I believe when God created us in his image, he gave us the authority and autonomy to rule the earth, not one another. Power was given to serve, not enslave. As I’ve taught a myriad of martial arts students, the greatest form of power is still restraint and harnessing that potential to help others. Great leaders have always understood this power principle, including Jesus, who demonstrated the original intent for our autonomy. He said, “Whoever wants to be first must be your servant ñ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And so should we do the same.

The perversion of power

When we don’t properly recognize and utilize the power God has granted us, we naturally abuse it. An example of this can be found in my now deceased, but once alcoholic, father.Dad was generally a good man when he was sober, but sobriety was not his area of expertise, or even practice. When he was drunk, the littlest things sent him into a rage. Even if he heard water running while suffering from a hangover, he would explode in an abusive tirade, roaring threats and expletives against everyone in the house. The devil might be in the details, but he’s also in the bottle ñ I’ve seen his spirit at work.Growing up, my most difficult and confusing relationship was with my father. My father abandoned his role as a servant-leader, model and mentor, dodging his duties and authority by drinking himself into a constant stooper. As a result, he failed to reflect a shadow of the Almighty’s image to his children, something I believe is the highest calling of every father.He failed to see that what gives fathers a unique power is that they bear the same title and reflection of our Heavenly Father. We were designed to show our children what God is like. In that sense, fathers are children’s first Sunday school. That is likely why George Herbert said, “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”

A power under attack

With this honorable type of power in our original design, it is no wonder that there is today a war on fatherhood and masculinity. A year ago in the Whistleblower, WND’s Managing Editor David Kupelian wrote a great article about this cultural assault and has since been featured on a national radio broadcast of the American Family Association, in which he also explains why:

• Television today portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs.
• America’s judicial system is wildly biased in favor of the mother in child custody disputes.
• In public school classrooms nationwide, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind.
• Between six and nine million American children, mostly males, are taking Ritalin, the most popular treatment for “attention-deficit” and “overactivity” problems at school.

With masculinity on the cultural butchering block, it is high time that men arise to not only protect our national borders but the boundaries of godly fatherhood!

The power of presence and soap-on-a-rope

The true measure of a father is what happens after Father’s Day ñ after he has been honored by his children or whether or not he has at all. For it is the duty and honor of a father to value his children even more than he expects to be valued by them.While I was overjoyed to be the recipient of my seven children’s love on Father’s Day, I seriously don’t believe their affection can hold a match to my adoration for them ñ and I’m determined to find multiple ways in this life to demonstrate that to them. I’m so proud of you, Mike, Dina, Eric, Kelley, Tim, Dakota and Danilee! And I know God has great plans for each of your lives.I really believe it doesn’t take as much as we think to be good fathers. As Tim Russert noted in his excellent book, “Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons,” much of the adoration echoed from children for their fathers originates from simply taking time to be with them and making a big deal out of the simplest things. As Bill Cosby once said, “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”

A power you can take pride in

Gentlemen, it’s time to move beyond the guilt and mistakes of the past and press on to being the fathers God has created us to be. Though I’ve been far from a perfect father too, I refuse to allow my mistakes to hinder me from being a better one in the future, and I encourage you to do the same. It’s time for us to re-enlist rather than retire from fatherhood.We all need the passion of Douglas MacArthur, who declared, “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder ñ infinitely prouder ñ to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’”By the way, if you somehow failed to read between the lines, I will always believe the most powerful position on earth is being a father.

2 Peter 2:3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

Peter warned the early believers to watch out for false teachers who were known for their own self-motivated interests. They would pervert the truth and because of their covetousness, they try to make merchandise of the sheep. To make merchandise of someone is very belittling. To use people for your own personal gain is wicked, and that is what so many false religions and false teachers do. They use God’s people in His church to finance and support their “ministries” by deceiving them and beguiling them with their new doctrines. I recently saw a flier in the mail that is advertising a prophecy conference. When I went to their website, I couldn’t find what they believed. I did some investigation and found out that the people who were involved believed in baptismal regeneration, Saturday Sabbath, and denied the eternality of hell. How did I hear about it? One of our church members alerted me and asked me to check it out.

Now, I have said all of that to apply it a little closer to home. What if you’re in a church where the leadership preaches the gospel, but they’re making merchandise of you? They use you as a means to build their agenda. It’s difficult to impossible to impugn the motives of another Christian, so let’s not try doing that. However, don’t be naive enough to think that it’s spiritual to take abuse. You may be being used and abused without really knowing it. I want to point out several characteristics of an abusive ministry:

1. Control and motivation by use of fear

The “cult” mentality that traps people in a church is the manipulation of fear. Fear of rejection by the leadership, fear of being labled or dis-fellowshipped. Fear of some judgment that God will exercise on you should you not comply with the church’s or the leaders wishes. If you are not inclined to go along with their program fully and willingly, then the use of fear may motivate you to do what they expect you to do. This motivation by fear is a control tactic.

2. Control and motivation by use of guilt

If fear dosn’t work on someone, there is always one vulnerable emotion that will: guilt. Because we are naturally at odds against God and His word, it is easy to manipulate someone’s will by making them to feel a sense of guilt if they are led to believe that by not following the leaders wishes, that the follower is somehow in transgression against God’s will. The best way to keep someone under their control in this manner is to keep them ignorant of Biblical truth. It is so easy to whip someone with scripture, when that poor, ignorant sheep doesn’t know scripture well enough to arm himself with truth and refute the leader’s abuse of the Bible. For example, one can use Acts 20:20 as a weapon against someone who has not been involved in the door to door soul winning program. The abusive leader can turn this DESCRIPTION into a PRESCRIPTION and the ignorant sheep has no knowledge to know the difference, and so under guilt he feels no choice but to either humbly submit, or rebel.

(”And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house,”)

3. Measuring worth by performance

The value that someone has to God or to the church is measured by how they perform: How many do they bring on a bus, how many hours they are out soul winning, how long they’ve been a teacher, etc. This is ungodly and worldly. Does not the world measure the value of people in their orginizations this same way? God has made it clear that we are going to bear fruit some 10-fold, some 30-fold, some 100-fold, but it’s God who brings the increase not, the fruit bearer! Because this worldly mentality is pervasive, then the next problem arises:

4. Clicks are formed

A spirit of elitism can be easily formed in a church when there is a “top performers club” formed. Of course, there won’t be an actual club, but in all practicality, that is what happens. The leaders who set a very high level of performance bestow their blessing on those who are able to meet the standard. They get invited over to eat, they get privileged status with the leaders; and all though it’s unspoken, it’s very obvious to those trying to attain that status, but just don’t quite cut it.

5. Absolute Loyalty to it’s Leader

I guess this one should have been first, because it seems to be the most obvious, but I put it last because all the other manipulations point in this direction. Jesus is not glorified, a man is glorified. I’m not saying that no one SAYS “glory to God” but the reality of it is that the leader or even his mentor is idolized and cannot be questioned. If the leader is questioned about something he has said, or how he has interpreted scripture, or an action he has taken; then any questioning of him is considered to be rebellion as if someone would question the very word of God! The leader is untouchable, and even if he is involved in something where anyone else would be looked upon as very shady, he gets a pass because of his “Man of God” status that he has built for himself among his followers.

We as pastors and church leaders must handle the sheep with care and make sure that their loyalty is first to God and His Word long before it’s ever to us. Let us lead by love and good example rather than manipulation and fear. This is how Jesus led, let us do the same.