I think in my last post I said I would catch you up on my latest two Wednesday night sermons, and then I forgot to mention the second one.    So, here is my brief breakdown of what I talked about in week three of the “Sticky Thoughts” series.     The “sticky thought” last Wednesday was:  “Good is the enemy of great.”  

As some of you will recognize immediately, this is the very first sentence in Jim Collin’s classic business book, “Good to Great”.

I used Malachi 1 as my main text for the evening, and here are a couple of the thoughts I shared during that message:

“Although most of us would like to think that ‘bad’ is the enemy of great, it’s not.  Good is.”

“This attitude of ‘getting by’ was prevalent in the prophet Malachi’s day, and God revealed to Malachi that He wasn’t happy about it.” 

“Do you think God wants our best, or is good enough good enough?” 

“Not only does God want our best, but He deserves our best!”   

“Since excellence matters to God, we have to learn to hate the mindset of mediocrity.”

“’Hate’ is not an often used word in my vocabulary, but I ‘hate’ mediocrity.  Average is not a word I want to be associated with in any way whatsoever.” 

“I’m not the only one who hates mediocrity.  God hates it too.  In Revelation 3, God says, ‘I would rather you follow me with everything within you or not even follow me at all.  I don’t like wishy-washy Christians!  I hate mediocrity!”

“One of the worst things I think anyone could have ever say about me is that I was average.” 

“We need to get over ‘getting by’, and start giving our best to God, our families, and this church.”

With my recent trip out of town, and the recent renovations in our offices, I’ve not been posting with any regularity. I’m sorry. I’ll try and do better.    Today, I figured I would catch you up on the latest two sermons from my “Sticky Thoughts” series.     

My “sticky thought” during week two of the series was this:  “The local church is the hope of the world”  

About seven or eight years ago, I first heard this thought from Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and I’ve never been able to forget it!   

Anyway, here are a couple of the thoughts I shared during that message on that thought:

“God can do anything He wants to bring about change in people’s lives, but I think we can all agree, that throughout history, God has used and continues to use the local church to change people’s lives.”

“It’s not wrong to say that Jesus is the hope of the world or the Gospel is the hope of the world, but the reality is that the church is the institution that God planned from the beginning of time to be the vehicle through which Jesus would be known, through which the Gospel would be spread.” 

“I love the word devoted.  We don’t use that word very much anymore.  And yet, that is what the early church was.  They didn’t play church.  They weren’t hot and cold with their Christianity.  They were ‘devoted’!” 

“How strong would this church be if we were more attentive to the teaching of God’s word, if we were more devoted to community, if we more serious when we took of the Lord’s Supper, and we were more constant in our prayers to the Father?” 

“These early Christians did life together.  They didn’t just see each other every weekend.  They did more than shake hands and sing a fellowship chorus every week together.  They made commitments to each other.  They opened up their homes to each other.  They shared meals together.  They cared deeply for one another.  They even made sacrifices for each other.”  

“For almost 2,000 years now, Jesus has been building his church.”  “Jesus said, ‘I will build my church’.  He didn’t say he would build your church.  It’s His church, not yours.  Southside isn’t your church.  It’s not my church.  It’s His church.” 

Things are going to be slow on the blog these next couple of days.  We’re moving all of our offices around and as a result, we have stuff everywhere. 

In the meantime, if you have any topics you’d love for us to blog about, we welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Don’t go away…we’ll be back soon!

We finished week 3 of Daniel.  It was week 2 of Mark & Amber leading worship.  Here are a few things I saw / heard this morning…

• Pastor said, “do you make God famous in your life” - Good stuff.
• Once again, saw some amazing moments in peoples faces leaving the service…Holy Spirit was working big!
• It was sinfully hot.
• Went by Discovery Zone (4-5 year olds)…those kids were having a blast!  It’s fun to see kids enjoying church.
• Saw one of my neighbors in the second service…Yea God!
• Music was awesome…its strange to think that Mark isn’t a “seasoned vet” in leading worship.  Looks like it to me.
• I helped with our Awali Land team this morning…lots and lots and lots and lots of kids - great job guys.
• I saw an older adult ministering to a young single mom in the hall for about 30  minutes…lots of pray and many tears.  Love to see senior adults pour their lives & wisdom into younger people.  Trust me, if there is one thing my generation needs is wisdom.
• Did I mention that it was hot this morning?

Once again, great job to all our volunteer teams this morning.

As Matt has stated before, we both read alot of blogs.  When reading one this morning (www.leadingsmart.com/ ), I came across something very interesting.  It was thought provoking, intentional and really struck me in a challenging way.  The motive behind this list comes out of “Christians” who really don’t get what church is all about.  There is a time and place to leave a church (doctrine issues, moral failures, location, etc…) but lets be honest that is usually 10% of the cases.  Most people leave churches for preference reasons…and miss the point of church.  Read these bullet points and see if they hit you like I know they hit me.  Would love a comment or two about them.

Weekend Update:

• Our worship was amazing.  It was a new experience for us with no “official” music pastor and let me just say that we have a great worship team.  It was a Home Run.
• We began a new check-in process for our preschool / children ministry….went smooth.  Our team did a great job - Going high tech!
• Pastor completed week 2 of his Daniel series.  During the invitation I saw so many broken people come forward…what a great moment.
• We had 40 people come to Class 101.  37 of them were not members, I think most, if not all, joined and I know 2 gave their life to Christ.
• Our parking lot was 71% full (I’m a stat freak) which is great considering it was the first Sunday in June.
• Saturday night’s family movie night was a huge hit.  Our Family ministry team did another outstanding job.  As much as I wanted a count for that night, kids dont sit still and it gets dark really quick…therefore I’m saying we had thousands.

Let’s keep Loving God, People and the World on the Journey to Life Change.