One Prayer – Fasting & Night of Worship
By Guest Blogger, Jenny Huang
As part of the One Prayer series, we will be fasting and hosting a Night of Worship on Wednesday July 1st at 7 pm at our Midtown Campus and 6:30 pm at our Orange Park campus. This will be a powerful night as we come together and pray for the impact being made through Celebration Church – locally and globally.
Join us as we pray for our local outreaches, missions teams, and church campuses as well as future church plants including Costa Rica, Johannesburg, Argentina and Greece. We will also be praying for the IMAGINE campaign as our future building at Baymeadows/9A is the hub that will support all local, national, and international ministries at Celebration. You’ll get to hear stories of impact from several 2009 mission trips and have the opportunity to pray for teams yet to be sent this year. You don’t want to miss it!
Jenny Huang
Another cool link to checkout
By Linda Riddle, Awakening Coordinator
Hi everyone! Here’s another cool link I thought I’d share.
Pastor Stovall was recently asked by Catalyst to write an article in which he shared some insights into leadership. The article featured some of what he has shared in his recent blog series “Top 10 Leadership Mistakes I’ve Made”. Click here to read the entire article.
One Prayer Interview with Pastor Stovall
By Linda Riddle, Awakening Coordinator
Hey everyone! Wanted to share this great link for you to check out.
As part of One Prayer this year, Pastor Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv interviewed several Pastors whose churches are participating in One Prayer. Today, you can read Pastor Stovall’s responses to that interview on swerve.lifechurch.tv. Here’s some of what he had to say:
What is God showing you, personally?
“That I need to keep my relationship with Jesus simple and fresh…..I need to seek God in my seeking God…..if I start to feel as if it’s more of a discipline than a “want to” than something needs to change.”
Click Here to read the entire interview.
Waiting…
By David Branker
How often do we hear someone say “I love to wait”? Not very often. Most of us think of waiting in a negative connotation. We try to find the shortest checkout line at the grocery store, so we don’t have to wait long. We can’t wait until the weekend and even thinking about going to the DMV puts us in a bad mood. We want to wait as little as possible and when we do have to wait, it’s usually not with a good attitude.
Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.” (AMP)
This verse puts a different spin on waiting. When we wait on God we should expect that He is doing something in our lives, in our hearts. We are looking for God in our situation and know that He “causes everything to works together to the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28). During our waiting periods, God is renewing us. He is building up His strength in us.
When you feel like you are waiting for something to happen in your life, know that God hasn’t forgotten about you or your situation. God is using that time to prepare you for what He has in store for you. He is with you the entire time and He will lift you up and give you the strength to persevere. So wait upon Him.
What Is Love?
By Linda Riddle, Awakening Coordinator
Mistake #10: Allowing myself to become too discouraged
By Stovall Weems
Some of you might be a little surprised by this one, but it’s true: If I am not careful, I can get discouraged really easily. In fact, I used to get depressed almost every Sunday night. I would joke with some of my staff and pastor friends and we would call this the “Sunday night abyss”. Because no matter how great services were, or how many people got saved, I would always be discouraged by something that didn’t go right or some part of my message that I felt didn’t connect with the audience. I’d go through seasons of feeling like I was not making the most of my potential and just felt generally frustrated. I’d start feeling like we were failing and not doing enough to reach people. I would get down on myself really bad, which is exactly what the enemy wants. Honestly speaking, there were a few times I felt like giving up, but God has taught me over the years to go to Him when I am feeling down and focus on His love for me.
It is ok to have feelings of discouragement when things aren’t moving forward at the speed you would like them to or when an area of ministry does not reflect the excellence you think it can reflect, but you have to balance that with contentment and thankfulness. Leaders are always going to focus on the few things that need improvement and can easily overlook all the improvement that has been made! God wants us to be thankful and rejoicing at all the great things He has done and will continue to do. If a few setbacks send us into a tailspin we will not be able to lead from a position of strength. Here is my rule-be thankful and grateful for all God is doing, and if you do get upset, just don’t ever let that carry over to the next day. Each day has enough challenges of it’s own and God is good!
I hope that by sharing these top 10 leadership mistakes I made in the first 10 years of our church, you have been strengthened and encouraged. I believe that it is important to share failures and mistakes so that we can all learn and grow from them. I want to let you know that if you are reading this I am praying for you and believe in you as a leader. Thanks so much for allowing me to speak into your life.
Stovall
Television Broadcast Schedule
By Linda Riddle, Awakening Coordinator
Hey there! Just wanted to update everyone on the latest broadcast schedule for StovallWeems.tv. You can now watch the broadcast on the following networks, (with a new airtime starting July 7th on Daystar):
National and International Broadcast Schedule:
Daystar
Tuesday – 11pm EST (Starting July 7th)
The Church Channel
Sunday - 12pmEST
Monday – 1am EST | 11pm EST
Tuesday – 5:30am EST
Wednesday – 1:30pm EST
Australian Church Channel
Monday – 10pm NSW time
Tuesday 4:30am NSW Time
Europe – UCB TV
Tuesday – 11pmG MT
Wednesday – 12:30pm GMT
Saturday – 10pm GMT
Mistake #9: Not Resting
By Stovall Weems
This mistake can be an easy one to commit. Working in the ministry, (while it has it’s challenges and difficulties), is very satisfying. It’s exciting to see people’s lives transformed and help meet people’s needs through the love of Christ. There’s passion and purpose in knowing that what we do has eternal impact connected to it. So it’s no wonder that we can easily start “burning the candle at both ends” and put off taking time to rest, as there’s always so much to do. However, not taking time to rest is basically a violation of the principle of the Sabbath, and God’s principles cannot be violated without consequence. If we ignore this, and don’t take time to rest and get refreshed, this can lead to burnout very fast and it will be extremely difficult on us individually, as well as our families.
The bottom line is this- we can never finish all our “ministry work”. People have needs 24/7. Hell does not take a day off and there is always so much to be done for God. But we have to keep looking at the big picture and think long-term. We will be much more effective for Jesus in the long run if we take our proper rest.
Personally, I have found that this is something I have to be intentional about and work hard at protecting, but it always pays off.
Stovall
Updates from Celebration Church
By Linda Riddle, Awakening Coordinator
Africa
Pastor Stovall and our team are back from Africa and what an incredible trip! The team had an awesome time and it was very exciting to see everything God is doing through Celebration Zimbabwe. What an incredible impact and difference we’re making there for the kingdom of God. We look forward to sharing some of the highlights and video footage from that trip this weekend. Thank you all for your prayers for their safe journey and continually for our extended church family in Zimbabwe.
Summer Groups
Just as a reminder, our Summer groups and Financial Peace University groups start this week. The Summer is an awesome time to get connected with others while growing spiritually. If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late. Visit our website or get more details at the info center this weekend at your campus.
Book Project
We also wanted to share a quick project update. As many of you know, Pastor Stovall’s been working on his first book. It’s a big project and one that we are all very excited about. There are so many different ways of reaching people for the kingdom and we’re really hoping this is another vehicle God will use to be a help and encouragement to people. If we stay on schedule with the timeline that’s been established, the book will be released in late fall 2010, which is very exciting. Please pray with us for God’s continued blessing over it. We will keep you updated and will be sharing more details over the next few months.
Have an incredible day and we’ll see you this weekend!
Linda
Mistake #8: Not leading at the right level
By Stovall Weems
Very simply put, this mistake had to do with me spending time and energy on decisions and details that I just quite frankly didn’t need to be spending time and energy on. I would allow myself to become focused on problems or challenges that our leadership team was very capable of handling, and I would give unnecessary time and energy to fixing or tweaking something that others could easily do. I would spend time on planning details and calendar meetings that I honestly didn’t even need to be involved in.
When I spend time with our staff, what they need from me is vision, encouragement, inspiration and creativity. Not my preferences on where to do the next water baptism service, what to put in video announcements, or how to make our connection card easier to read. We have incredibly creative, pro-active people on our team that carry the vision and the heart of our church very well. They are capable of doing all these things better than I can. By getting involved in these types of things, I would begin to lead at a lower level and become a bottle neck to things moving forward. Unintentionally, I was conditioning the team to rely on my input before they could move forward with something instead of empowering them to think through it and do it themselves.
When leaders step up and lead at the right level it causes everyone else to step up as well. Jesus modeled this very well. But we must also recognize that giving people authority and responsibility also carries with it accountability. This was also modeled by Jesus. (Matthew 25: 14-30)
Leaders love solving problems- just make sure you are solving problems at the right level.
Stovall
