How I Got Out of the Performance Game
Since I preached on God’s grace in the last 2 messages of the 6 Hot Weekends series, I have had a few questions from people about how I got out of a performance-based cycle in my personal relationship with God. So, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about that.
What actually happened was that I realized that I had become more focused on how well I “performed” spiritually and less focused on Jesus.
When performance is your focus the only way for you to move forward spiritually — or at least to feel like you are — is to keep setting the bar higher. I had made so many rules (more prayer, more Bible-reading, more fasting) that when I couldn’t fulfill my self-imposed requirements, I couldn’t enjoy my relationship with God. I had very little joy, and I knew that wasn’t the way that I could really be effective in serving God and reaching people.
When I took my focus off of myself and my performance and put it on Jesus, and HIS GOODNESS I realized how off track I had been. The joy of God was immediately more evident in my life, and my relationship with God became a “want to” instead of a “have to.”
I became more effective at every level.
Now actually, my prayer, Bible-reading and other Christian disciplines are more consistent in my life.
And that’s how I got out of the performance game.
Get Ready for College Life!
Don’t forget about the launch of College Life on Wednesday, September 5th. The keyword here is free. Free food, free gas cards, and no telling what else we have up our sleeves.
Here’s some more info from our Student Ministries Pastor Corey Naquin.
We are very excited to announce that starting on Wednesday, September 5th Celebration Church will be launching a brand new college ministry at our Midtown location. After a great deal of prayer and an honest evaluation of our ability to continue to reach more college students in the Jacksonville area, we have determined that a ministry that will focus exclusively on college-aged students (18-25) would prove to be most effective.
So, what will the college ministry look like? Great question! What we know for sure is that there will be a worship element, a more in-depth Bible teaching, and a small group/discussion portion to really drive the point of the message for that particular night.
In typical Celebration style there will always be plenty of surprises and lots of fun each week. Let’s not forget what college student students like most..food. There will always be plenty of food. We also want to ensure that more intentional small groups will formulate through this new ministry.
Along with all of this we are making a renewed commitment to reaching out on college campuses around our area.
CNN Article on Ron Luce
CNN did a great article on Ron Luce. Ron is a friend of mine who founded and oversees a great ministry called Teen Mania. He does a great job ministering to kids and brings so many to Christ every year.
Group Leader Training
This weekend at church was a blast. Worship was really strong across the church at every location, and I am really loving this Transformers series so far. I haven’t blogged in awhile with the start up of school and Stovie’s football (he loves it!), so I gotta step it up!
I am also excited about the upcoming groups launch. The groups for married couples are promising to be a real success. We are seeing so many strong leaders come through the leadership training process.
I love that we are investing so much time in developing the group leaders, so that they in turn can invest in the people of Celebration Church. I love seeing people empowered to minister, and I know there’s a lot of leadership capacity in Celebration Church.
The course our group leaders go through is a 16 hour course over 8 weeks. I know that might sound like a lot, but I also know that leaders leave the group fully equipped to really lead people, not just go through a curriculum. Many of the leaders have told me how they looked forward to group leader training because they didn’t want to miss even one session!
Our next group leader training begins on Wednesday, August 29th at 7:00pm.
If you are interested in becoming a group leader you can contact Jenny Huang to find out the first steps.
Discipline
If a leader lacks discipline in one area of his or her life, it probably means that they lack discipline in other areas of their life. When it comes to self control and discipline, there is no substitute for the core principle of intimacy with Jesus.
Spontaneity
Jesus was full of life, spontaneous and unpredictable. Are we leading like Jesus?
MarriedLife–Sold Out
Tonight’s MarriedLife event is gonna be a blast. And as we expected, it is sold out. We have unfortunately had to turn a lot of couples away. If you were not able to get in this time around, remember to register early for the next one; and I think at the next one we will do 2 nights in a row to be able to accommodate more people. From what I understand we are also getting some calls from people concerned about can they still get in a MarriedLife small group this semester even though they are not at the event tonight. They answer is yes — absolutely. Tonight we are only previewing some aspects of the group life and people can sign up for a group tonight, but you can sign up for a group all the way through the month of September. In fact, the groups don’t even start until the week after Labor Day so no worries.
C3 at Celebration
We are excited to announce that Celebration Church will be hosting the C3 Creative Church Conference led by Pastor Ed Young from Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas, on Monday, October 1. I encourage all of you church leaders in the North Florida area to make every effort to attend this conference where you will hear Pastor Young share the life-lessons and leadership principles needed to tackle the real issues facing leaders today. It is a one day, crash course in leadership that is packed with more than just theory and philosophy. It provides the practical tools you need to take your leadership to the next level. More details to come soon.
Is It Really Time for School?
I can’t believe that my kids go back to school next week. This summer just flew by. My son Stovie is also playing football this year. He is only 7 years old so I am going to let him test the waters and hopefully he will like it. I love football – I loved it when I played and now I love watching it and studying the game. It would be great if Stovie enjoyed playing but I am not gonna put any pressure on him. I am so thankful for my wife and kids.
Don’t Forget to FLEX
Hey everyone—Just wanted to remind all you guys out there that our 2nd annual FLEX conference will be held the last weekend in January 2008 and you are not going to want to miss this one. Jentzen Franklin and John Bevere will be joining us as guest speakers and there are a few more surprises I’ll save for later. So keep your eyes and ears open and be sure to sign up early. It’s going to be an unbelievable event.