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Church-related posts, ministry ideas and influences, etc.

spiritual development plan

By Church
I've been working with my coach on creating a "spiritual development plan" for the people who come to LifePoint. In other words, how do we intend to help them mature and become better equipped Christ-followers? To this point, we have focused primarily on how to bring people in -- something a new church has to do. We're now entering a stage where we need to begin thinking and acting more strategically and structurally.So, I spent most of yesterday brainstorming ideas, looking up relevant Bible verses, and trying to get a feel for the "flow" of things. Tonya chipped in with a name I liked and we're hoping to put it in place before the end of the year.It will include ...Pizza with the Pastor. This is our way of introducing recent attenders to myself and LifePoint.Starting Point. This will be our basic introduction to Christianity and the LifePoint, story, vision,…
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an old observation

By Church
Due to my refusal to pump an endless stream of quarters into La Mesa parking meters, I typically park several blocks away from Cosmos and convince myself it's for my health. As I walk up Palm Avenue, I pass a United Methodist Church that has one of those message boards where they post upcoming sermon titles. I had to chuckle a few weeks ago when I saw this one:"Simplify, Simplify, Simplify."My first thought was ... wouldn't it have been simpler to just put "Simplify"?
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a few more reflections on yesterday

By Church
As I reflect on yesterday's worship gathering, two particular things stand out:The creativity of the people God brings to LifePoint. We are blessed to have an increasing number of talented people willing to use their gifts to serve God. Many of our regular attenders brought a friend! That's a vote of confidence when a person invites another person to church. In order to encourage our folks to brings friends, we have always tried to provide a guest-friendly worship experience.LifePoint is truly a team effort. Not everyone can write a script or play guitar – but everyone can share in the mission of building God’s church. When each of us works together, something special happens.
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the reviews are in

By Church
The early reviews are in ... and by most accounts, The Not Really All That Early Early Show was a tremendous success. We redesigned our stage as the set of our late-night talk show and ran the entire worship experience like it was a talk show. Our creative team, especially Eric Piepenbrink ("Christian Mann"), did a fantastic job from start to finish.If you missed the live production, look for the video to be released in the next few weeks. I'm going to try to get a compressed version uploaded to youtube ... a LifePoint first! We'll probably stream parts of it from our website as well.
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a gathering of pastors

By Church
Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a gathering of pastors at Hope International University. For the past several years, pastors from the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ have met for a day of networking. I was asked to lead a roundtable discussion on how LifePoint is using techology to build our church. It was fun sharing all the different things we've tried ... what has worked and what hasn't.The featured speaker was Leroy Lawson, a pastor and former President of Hope. I first Leroy back in January of 2005 when he and Russ Blowers were guests at the church planting boot camp Tonya and I attended in Northern California. It was a great opportunity to be around two men whom God has used in tremendous ways.Leroy spoke yesterday about the need to fight discouragement by eliminating a pastor's tendency to be competitive -- competitive in the sense…
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