Church

Buried in a little hole in North Park is a great pizza joint. My friend, Jim, took me to Lefty's Chicago Style Pizza on 30th, just north of Upas Street. It's small and lively. Cubs souvenirs hang on the wall and the guys who run it are actually from Chicago.Here's the clincher: they have Pabst Blue Ribbon ... on tap! In fact, only two beers are on tap: PBR and Newcastle. PBR is a definitely a tip-of-the hat to their Midwestern roots.I didn't see any tax lawyers, but there was definitely an eclectic mix of people. Check it out ... and remember to get the stuffed pizza.

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,…

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"?

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.

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.