"Get off our rumps"

"Thank you for coming, we needed to hear this tonight... we need to get off our rumps around here."

That was a quote from (who I found out later was) the "Chairman of the Deacon Board" at this church I spoke with last night.

A 91 year old lady came up to me and said "Son, you shook up a lot of people in this room. Thank You. We needed it."

Last night I spoke at the "1st Annual Eastern Shore Bible Conference" for our state denom convention. I had a great time. It is a traditional church with traditional views of the world... I loved the opportunity to share with them. I talked to them about having a Big-Screen HDTV vision of the world. For far too long most of us live our Christian lives with a 9 inch black and white TV vision of Chrisitanity. We need to see all that God was doing in the world.

I moved on to talk about apples. Throughout the crowd I had ushers hand out apples so that when I made this point I asked them to hold them up. I said "Starvation can be ended if we'd just use an apple. But for the apples to be planted and cultivated... this origional apple has to "die to self"."

Most of the rest of the night I talked about what that means. To die to self. When we accepted Christ as Savior we had no problem acknowledging the need to die to self but somewhere along the way with board meetings and color-carpet choices and deacon fights we started to think that church was about 'me'. So now we dont' have a church of people who have died to self and are ready to reach the world... we have a church full of selfish people claiming the name of Christ.

I moved from there into 'living for significances vs. living for success'. I told them that I don't know if I'll live another day. They don't either. How will we spend our days?

Because it was still so fresh on my mind and because I was in a traditional environment, I took a minute to speak on the idea of "deep" which I wrote about yesterday.

I then spoke about how the church is a VERB, not a noun. I asked them to quit referring to Christ's church as a noun. I went on to talk about the verbs in Matthew 28: 16-20. Then we moved toward discussing what it means to take captive EVERY thought to the cross of Christ. Good thoughts, nice thoughts, even important thoughts... if they aren't captive first to the cross of Christ they are hallow thoughts and not worthy of our time. Thoughts and argument are only given worth when they are under the Cross of Christ.

In closing I challenged this meeting to consider their churches. Each of the churches represented had an opportunity... continue the way they are "like that apple" or die to self for the sake of the gospel. Die to self to plant churches. Die to self to reach their community.

The Pastors on the Eastern Shore have great hearts. They're struggling with the American Church mindset among their congregations. Because I was the first speaker (they continue tonight and tomorrow), I pray that they use this as a catalyst to make the necessary changes in their congregations... if the Chairman of the Deacon moves... I think we may see some changed hearts on the shore. God rocks!