Afterword to message for April 19-enjoy!

There was a few things connected with this sermon that I didn’t say on Sunday. So through the magic of technology I get to add an Afterword to this sermon. Be sure to listen to the whole sermon via podcast on either iTunes, by searching for EphesusChurch.tv, or at the media page of our website,ephesuschurch.tv.

Some more on water baptism

This past Sunday at Ephesus we looked at Matthew 3 and Jesus’ baptism by John. As usual, there was a lot to cover! Below are some additional points on baptism that I wanted to get out there for everyone interested in more on water baptism. Also, we’re going to have a water baptism at Ephesus on February 22nd for anyone who has a relationship with Jesus and has not yet been baptized. If you go to the Ephesus web site you can get registered for baptism. Hope this gives you some more insight into water baptism as we see it at Ephesus Church.

First and foremost, Jesus modeled full immersion baptism by John the Baptist in Matthew 3. Jesus directs us in Matthew 28.19-20 to baptize and we then see it carried out throughout the book of Acts as the early church was getting it’s start. Therefore, because it was exemplified in Jesus, declared by Jesus, and lived out in the life of the early church, we continue to practice it today. At Ephesus, we conduct baptism through the full immersion in water of the individual. This is due to the examples we see in the bible and the original Greek word from which baptism is derived being defined as placing someone fully in water. It’s that simple. Baptism takes on several forms of symbolism as does the Lord’s Supper. I’ll examine a few.

1. Forgiveness of sins-water is naturally seen as a cleansing agent, we bathe in it, wash dishes in, clean off dead bugs from our windshield with it. So as we are outwardly expressing our cleansing of sin through Jesus, it makes sense that water would physically symbolize a spiritual house-cleaning
2. Regeneration-Water brings life and baptism again symbolizes this. Jesus told Nicodemus one must be “born of water and spirit” in John 3.
3. Resurrection-Traditionally, when baptized one goes down into the water (careful to hold the nose for obvious reasons!) and comes up again. This symbolizes our connection with the resurrection of Jesus and is spoken of by Paul in Romans 6 and Colossians 2.
4. Unity of the church-Baptism is (at least it should be) a common experience for Christians, a sort-of “rite of passage” that is a jointly shared experience in several ways. First, we all, as followers of Jesus, have most likely been baptized at some point and see it as a shared milestone in our growth. Secondly, baptism is designed to be a public event where a shared joy and excitement occurs between friends and family. In these things we are further unified as the body of Christ.
5. Commitment to God-Baptism on a certain level also holds a degree of accountability. You have publicly declared your acceptance of Jesus’ death on the cross and folks around you now have no doubt about where you stand. You now have no excuse when you flip someone off in traffic for cutting you off and then being right next to you at the next light anyway…not that I’m bitter.

Water baptism is a powerful, personal experience as you seal in your own life what God is doing in you. It’s also a powerful public experience that allows Christians to celebrate with you  and others around you to get a glimpse of what is happening in your life.

What is “Missional” really?

I’ve been prepping for a strategic/creative planning meeting with some folks on my team and re-engaging the issue of being missional in books and articles. Came across this post from Scott Thomas at Acts 29 from last week. He nails it. Good read.

Promoting our new church

This past Sunday we had our Christmas service. We’re a church plant that rents our facility on Sundays. With that we decided to do a special evening Christmas service in addition to our morning service and in lieu of a Christmas Eve service. I created a Facebook ad to promote the event. Over the course of 2 weeks we had nearly 85,000 “views” as recorded by Facebook. I limited it to only being seen locally (Charlotte, NC). Of that we had 27 clicks of the ad. From that, I did not meet anyone Sunday night who came because of the ad. We did have new folks at the service but all that I met had been invited by either someone in the church, family or others who know our church. So I’m not sure of the success of the ad. The positive in that is that we only pay per click so the total cost to us was less than $10. We’ve intentionally decided to be very low-key and grassroots with promoting and advertising our new church. Our 2 key methods of attracting new folks have been personal invitations from attenders and very basic 18″x24″ corrugated yard signs. It’s very low cost, and also very important, sustainable. We’re not relying on big events with high production value that we can’t maintain week after week. We do what we do with an eye to excellence and high value placed on quality content in music and preaching. That has been attractive in retaining most of our first time visitors. All that to say, it may be a while before we try Facebook ads again.

Christmas @ Ephesus

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to invite you to our first Christmas @ Ephesus service! Below you’ll find the details and attached is an e-vite you can send on to friends, family and coworkers. I hope you’ll join us in Uptown Charlotte for Christmas @ Ephesus!

Join us for our first Christmas service at Ephesus! We will gather the evening of December 21st at Grace Event Center at 6pm to celebrate Christmas together. Christmas is a time to gather with family and friends and remember the gift of Jesus to us. We will celebrate with music and a candlelight service. Our evening Christmas service will be in addition to our regular Sunday morning service and will be in lieu of a Christmas Eve service. We hope you will invite friends and family to celebrate with us. Visit www.ephesuschurch.tv for more info.

The low’s and highs

Church planting is exciting, scary, fun, challenging, encouraging and difficult all at the same time. You try hard not get so caught on the crest that you crash or so stuck in the trough you’re pummeled by the next wave instead of paddling in and catching it (you like the surfing reference there?!). This past week was all of the above. I had to walk through some very difficult challenges and have some very hard conversations. Afterward, when I thought I should have felt relieved, I instead felt burdened. People were involved, not just me. I suppose the pastor’s heart gets involved in the messy stuff whether we like it or not. So I was challenged, burdened and  having very difficult conversations and feeling myself slipping into the trough/impact zone. Then I got a message about how Ephesus had impacted someone in a way they hadn’t experienced in many years. WHOOSH heading back into the wave and riding the line again! God is good. He is doing amazing things at Ephesus. Not in your face, laserlight show kinds of things. But the work that Eugene Peterson paraphrases in the Message in Ephesians 3.20. “His Spirit moving deeply and gently within us.” He is moving deeply within Ephesus Church, building solid roots for what He wants to accomplish. Riding the wave is a rush!

Ephesus location update

Just a little while a go I found out the Brevard Street building passed final inspection. The only piece left is the video system which will be installed on Monday. With the last minute notice and the hold-up with the video system we are going to wait one more week to move back to the Grace Event Center on Brevard. This Sunday we will have our last service at AREA 15 and make the move to Brevard Street next Sunday (10/26/08). We are waiting one more week, but this time we know it is definitely ready for us to move back into! What a journey! Thank you for your patience throughout this process and your continued support of Ephesus. I look forward to seeing many of you this Sunday morning at 10:30am at AREA 15 and NEXT Sunday morning at 219 S. Brevard Street in Uptown Charlotte!

Here’s a pic of the almost completed Brevard Street venue…

Parenting…a follow-up to Ephesians 6:4

This past Sunday at Ephesus we hit Ephesians 6:1-4. This passage includes children obeying your parents (as opposed to wives voluntarily submitting in Ephesians 5; it’s a different relationship) and parents bringing up children in the training and admonition of the Lord. I didn’t have time to make it into a workshop on parenting, so I only laid out 4 foundational principles that I believe are a key place to begin:

1. Have a growing relationship with Jesus

2. Consistent discipline

3. Man as the head of the house

4. Love

You can get the podcast to hear more on those. I recommended a great book, Revolutionary Parenting, by George Barna. His approach is methodical and scriptural. He examines families with children who have grown up to “spiritual champions” and discerns what the families did to raise these children. Instead of a  formulaic approach to parenting, what was discovered is that the parents focused first on living out and growing in their relationship with Jesus which then naturally flowed to their children. Also, parents were intentional in instilling biblical values (not just biblical stories) in their children so it inculcated their character. This is challenging as there isn’t a step by step process to raising children, it flows out of a personal, dynamic relationship with Jesus. What a concept! So again, I highly recommend this book.

What I didn’t address on Sunday, that I wanted to hit on, were some of the negatives that we can fall into in parenting. The things that help lead “your children to wrath” as Paul states it in Eph. 6:4. John MacArthur helped me compile this list (am I allowed to reference John Macarthur at a Foursquare church??).

1. Overprotection- in some ways, the current state of our society has helped promulgate this tendency to overprotect our children. Things I did (and my mom let me do) as child I would never even consider for my own kids. We roamed the town where I grew up on our bikes all summer long, I couldn’t imagine my children doing the same thing today. Now, while that’s wisdom on my part, too often we can take this protectionism too far. We end up smothering our children so that they never learn, or live in fear, or don’t understand the values learned in making mistakes. A few years ago, I helped a friend coach his son’s 4 year old soccer team. At the first game, I learned they didn’t keep score! Didn’t want anyone to have hurt feelings because they lost??!! What happens to that boy in 20 years when he gets fired from his first job? Or doesn’t quite come through on the big project at work? Or a dating relationship doesn’t work out? A few weeks ago, we took our boys to a local park to play in the large water sprinklers they had set up for kids. Little kids were running everywhere! Laughing, splashing, having fun, probably 100 children running around. Well, as we watched from the sidelines my son and another boy knocked noggins while both were running and not looking. It was nobody’s fault. I saw the whole thing. My son got up rubbed his head, kind of looked at the other boy and walked over to us. “I hit my head” he said. “Are you alright?” I asked (I knew he was, they hadn’t hit that hard). “Yeah, I’m okay.” And back out to play he went. Over his shoulder I watched this other boy’s mom come swooping in from the sidelines, scoop him up and begin looking to see where the other boy who had done this to her son had gone (back to playing!)! She carried him to a chair where he sat and sniffled and was coddled for a little while. And I thought, “there’s a boy who’s going to have a hard time being a man, when he needs to be and is going to be either bitter at mom, or dysfunctionally attached.” That’s where overprotection breaks down the family

 

2. Favoritism-We see in the bible the result of this, Esau and Jacob. The fathers’ of 2 peoples that continue to war today (The Jews and Palestinians). Our children will always be different. My 2 boys are completely separate people. I’m sure as my daughter grows up her uniqueness will be readily apparent. My older son is very lively and animated while my younger son is a little more thoughtful. Sometimes when the older one is bouncing around I catch myself thinking, “Why can’t he be calmer sometimes like his brother?” And very quickly I have to stop myself. He does not need to be like his brother! He is who God made him to be. We can’t compare our children to their siblings, they’ll become bitter and angry and have their spirit destroyed.

 

3. Pushing achievement-The dads duking it out on the Little League field exemplify this negative parenting trait. Dads so often want their sons to accomplish what they never did and moms want to be able to brag on their child as being the best at something. What this leads to is resentment on the part of the child and a feeling of never measuring up. Allow your children to find their groove, push enough to build character and a strong work ethic, but be wary of pushing them to the breaking point.

 

 4  Discouragement-It’s easy to always focus on the negative. Think about your view of yourself for a moment…did something negative pop up? Be wary you don’t transfer that to your children. Our children put so much of who they are on how we treat them. If all we do is point out the negative and never the positive, we’re buildng children of wrath 

 

5.  Failure to make sacrifices-Our culture today values the individual and the individual’s needs. That leads to selfishness and defiance against sacrifice. Children know this and see this if you treat them as though they are in the way or a nuisance, or holding you back from your selfish desires. The other night I was watching “Cinderella Man” with Russell Crowe. As the family struggled through the Great Depression, they were low on food. His daughter innocently complained of being hungry. Russell Crowe’s character gave his one piece of bologna to his daughter and went off to work with no food in his stomach. What did that say to his children! They’ll certainly be far from wrath

 

6. Failure to allow childishness-they’re children! They’re going to act like children! Let them goof around and play and be silly (try being silly with them, it’s a blast!). Don’t expect perfection or maturity if they’re children. Let them express ideas that may be silly, even though they don’t intend them to be and don’t laugh at their silly ideas if you know it will hurt them. They’ll grow out of it (unless they’re like me) and love you and remember a fun childhood.

 

7. Neglect-our society today is one that is busy and we can pack our schedule out with all of the “good” things we need to be doing. As a pastor, I have to constantly examine my time management (with Casey’s help!) and not let the “important” things of ministry lead to my neglecting our 3 children. David, a man “after God’s own heart” allowed himself to neglect his son Absalom which led to his entire family’s ruin. They know when they’re second-tier in your schedule and eventually wrath will begin to build

 

8. Withdrawing love-this should never be a form of punishment or a threat. “I won’t like you if you do that…” Quickly they will become insecure. Praise God, he never stops loving us! We should never stop loving our children.

 

9. Bitter words and cruel physical punishment- (I’ll let John MacArthur handle this one, I’ve got no patience for verbal and physical abuse) Never take your anger out on your children. I don’t know what causes anyone to batter children, but we all need to be careful; children are fragile. Fathers, don’t shove your weight around and use your superior strength. That will provoke your children to wrath. Not only can children be battered physically, but they can also be devastated verbally. Parents are more erudite and sarcastic than children, and they can destroy and discourage a child through their verbal barrage. I’m always amazed to hear the things we say to our children that we would never say to an adult for fear of our reputation.

 

These are great reminders of what to avoid as we seek to live lives of example and love for our children. Good stuff!

Here she is!

DSC02876

Originally uploaded by g8rben

Welcome to the world Reese!

The Ephesus Office begins to take shape

The Ephesus Office begins to take shape

Originally uploaded by g8rben

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