Baptisms and beyond…

Yesterday was a pretty phenomenal day at Ephesus Church. We had classic church plant baptisms in our backyard in an inflatable pool. I was thinking and praying about the baptisms before I headed to church yesterday evening and felt like that was a huge step for our young church just as it was a huge step for those being baptized, setting us up for the next phase. Then last night….Seth led a phenomenal worship set. The music was absolutely amazing, but it was so obviously authentic and Spirit-led. I was challenged as to how to transition from that amazing time of worship into a sermon. God spoke to me in the back of the room and I realized it all tied together. The message was from Ephesians 4.7-16 on maturity and growth. I realized it was right where God wanted us to go. Worship is amazing as we honor God with music and singing, but we can also have the tendency to want to “camp out” in worship and the euphoria it often brings. While not wrong in and of itself, it’s also not the whole package of our Christian faith. God desires for us to worship Him and He blesses us in the process, BUT he also calls us to growth and maturity, so the sermon was the right follow-up to an amazing time of worship. I had a blast with the sermon last night. I got up on a couple of soap boxes and really felt like God was directing much of my words to Ephesus last night. MUCH of what I said was not in my notes, which always seems to make it better stuff. To top it off we had our best attendance since moving to Area 15, on July 4th weekend no less! Needless to say I’m on a little bit of a high today!

Worship

Tonight at Ephesus I’m continuing the series on the church by talking about worship. What it is and why we do it at church. I originally intended to talk about worship as well as communion and preaching in one message. Boy was that poor planning. As dug in more and more I realized there’s no way I could do it! So tonight, it’s just worship. Even with spending the whole time on it tonight we’ll still only scratch the surface. I could easily do a whole series on worship and maybe someday I will. Needless to say, I wanted to direct you to 2 small books that give great insight into the entirety of worship. It is so much more than a few songs during a Sunday service and these books uncover the depth of true worship. I encourage you to pick them up and do some more reading on your own.

Inside Out Worship-compiled by Matt Redman

(you have to ignore the cheesy cover)

The Unquenchable Worshipper-written by Matt Redman

Getting the Word out and Lead Team

Just returned from two days of planning and prayer for Ephesus with most of the Lead Team. It was a real good time of hanging out and talking through everything. You could really see everyone get on the same page moving forward and see how all the different components will come together to make one church impacting Charlotte. Cool stuff

Tomorrow Adam Wilson  and the Ephesus Worship Team are leading at Grace, and I’ll be sharing our new promo video and a little about what Ephesus is about and where we can still plug people in either physically or as a resource (ie money…). If you’re around hope you can make it. Keep an eye out for the new video right here!

Preachin the Word, Preachin the Word

Well, I preached today at church in all three services. Most folks I’ve ever preached in front, about 2500 or so. Why do we have to call it “preaching?” Sounds to formal. Anyway, it went well. I had good response and I got to talk about our church plant some. Shared our vision of going into Uptown Charlotte and people really responded to that. It’s amazing how much more of a response we’ve gotten since God’s given us the vision for Uptown. It would seem nobody could get excited about one more suburban church (including us) but they’re gathering around this new vision. It’s pretty incredible seeing God move in all this. So anyway, this morning went well. I realized I’m out of practice. Preaching/teaching really is work, and I can tell I’m out of the routine, but at the same time I HAD to rely on God (go figure huh?). So good stuff. The youth worship team led this morning too. I love watching young people worship God, and besides they know how to rock. I’ve always said, if Pink Floyd ever led worship…

We got a worship leader

Last week we found out we will have a worship leader. Adam Wilson is coming out from California to work with us on this journey to start a church in the Uptown Charlotte area. I’m real excited about this, because he’s good! He certainly has a call from God to lead worship and gets our vision for this new church. We’re pumped! You can read Adam’s blog at http://aconventionalconfabulation.wordpress.com/