Monday, July 28, 2008

Week of Prayer

One of my favorite things to do is gather together with the church for prayer. Praying on your own is great, but there is a special dynamic when "two or three" gather. And it has an exponential effect as it grows to 20, 40, 75, 100....and up and up. I found John Lanferman's analogy last Sunday very helpful. He likened corporate (the whole church) prayer gatherings like lumping coals together. One coal will spark and flicker, but will eventually burn out. However, if you lump coals together, a fire breaks out.

I would encourage you to download it that message if you missed it.

Here's this week's prayer schedule:

Monday Night
Who: Wentzville Location
Where: Rick and Gayle Hein's House
When: 7 PM

Tuesday Night
Who: Leaders
Where: Kingshighway building
When: 5:30 PM
Childcare Provided

Wednesday Night
Who: City Location, Last Name A-L
Where: Kingshighway building
When: 7 PM
Childcare Provided

Thursday Night
Who: City Location, Last Name M-Z
Where: Kingshighway building
When: 7 PM
Childcare Provided

Friday Night
Who: EVERYONE!!!
Where: Kingshighway building
When: 7 PM
Childcare Provided


Finally, I wanted to pass along this thought from one of our members, Jamee Palmer. One of the things I really appreciate about what she says is that it's God's will not ours. Thanks Jamee for being a "living stone" and spurring us on in prayer!

In light of this upcoming week of prayer at Jubilee, I thought I'd share something I read in 1 Samuel a couple months ago that impacted me.

Here is the story: There was a man named Elkanah, and he had 2 wives: Hannah and Peninnah. Hannah was barren because "the Lord had closed her womb"--this indicates that it was not by chance or for punishment, but was under the Lord's sovereign control (1:5). Elkanah regularly sacrificed a double portion to the Lord on her behalf, but it wasn't until Hannah herself went to the temple and wept and poured out her heart to God that the big stuff happened (1:20). Eli the priest observed her praying silently and perceived that Hannah was drunk. When he rebuked her, (1:14) she explained that she was speaking out of vexation and great anxiety, not from drunkenness. Eli then said "the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to Him" (1:17). Hannah went away and ate (after having fasted for a long time because of her sorrow), and her face was no longer sad.

Hannah's reaction after her experience praying in the temple shows that she had confidence and great faith that her prayer would be answered. She went away acting as if she had already received an answer from God, because she was so certain that He heard her.

God did hear, and He did answer. Hannah bore Samuel, and when she went back to the temple after he was weaned she was able to tell Eli, "I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to Him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord" (1:26-28).

Result: God is glorified.

There are several things we can take away from this story, but I want to point out one thing: When we pray, we are not only praying for our needs or desires to be met (as Hannah prayed for a child), but we are expecting God to answer according to His will, and ready to tell others about it when He does. Having our prayers answered is not an end in itself: it is also a means to glorify God. I am going to try to have this mindset when praying, and hopefully it will help my focus to be on the One who moves and answers, not just the answer itself.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Reports from Oneblaze Week

Things are going very well so far during the Oneblaze week. Our youth are making a big impact on the community. I'll pass along more details later.

But for now, I wanted to let you know what is happening spiritually with our youth. Here are some reports I received from Matt Sweetman, a church planting intern at Jubilee and the Oneblaze Youth Leader. He did a great job at collecting some great interviews with the kids.

In our second evening meeting we received a word of knowledge about someone with a problem in their elbow and suffering from headaches.

Wes from Arizona responded to the word. He hurt his elbow playing tennis and after an MRI scan the doctors told him that they couldn't do anything for it. He was stuck with the problem. So, we prayed in the name of Jesus and his elbow was completely healed and he's been free from his headaches so far. Watch the video below for more ...

In our second evening meeting Sam, a catholic girl from the North East, realized that she was not a Christian and decided to follow Jesus. The girls had a party in the dorms that night to celebrate!!! See the brief interview with her ...

Rhianna from Atlanta has had Scoliosis (curvature of the spine) for about a year. One of her shoulder blades sticks out because of this and she has constant pain -- day and night. She was prayed for in one of our meetings and Jesus completely healed her. It's been a couple of days and her spine is still straight and she has no pain.

Rhianna was scheduled for an operation which would require 3 months out of school. Praise God she no longer requires this! See my short video interview with her ...


Thursday, July 24, 2008

Oneblaze Update/Family Fun Day


Well it's been a great week so far. We have 175 Oneblazers (youth) booked in, worshiping God, making friends and serving the St. Louis community. One of the ways we are serving our community is through offering a free kids camp. We have 85 kids from the neighborhood participating in our camp and having a great time. I can not thank enough, or speak highly enough of the numerous volunteers who have put this week together and those who have faithfully served to make this event possible.

I would highly, highly encourage you all to join Jubilee and the Oneblazers this Saturday at the Kingshighway building from 11-4 pm for our second annual Family Fun Day. It will be a time of food, music, lots of kid toys and more. It will be a good opportunity to have fun together and meet new friends from our community after a great week of serving St. Louis. Invite a friend! For more info, click here.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Mark Driscoll on Newfrontiers and Prophecy

If you are a blogging junkie in the Christian world (especially if you are in Newfrontiers or a reformed-charismatic), you have probably of heard of Adrian Warnock. His blog gets about 30,000 hits a day in the US alone. Adrian is not a pastor, but is a part of a Newfrontiers church in London named Jubilee Church (great name). I like tunning into his blog because he gets good interviews with some great people including our own John Lanferman.

Recently, he interviewed Mark Driscoll to get his thoughts on Newfrontiers and Prophesy. I thought I would pass that along. To view this interview, click here.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Interview with Jeremy Simpkins


Hello Jubilee! This is my final day in Brighton, UK. I finally got around to eating fish 'n chips. And I have to say, it was quite good. If I could sneak them through customs, I would bring some back. I have really enjoyed being in Brighton and attending the conference, but I'm really excited to go home. I miss my Rachel, Ella and Simon.

My final interview was with Jeremy Simpkins from another Jubilee Church in Teesside, UK. Jeremy, his wife Anne, and Julian Adams will be with us in September for our Acts 13 meetings on September 13 and 14. I want to highly encourage you all to make yourself available to be with us on those days. I will be speaking more on this in the future.

Here's the interview with Jeremy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WxcBeK9N0Y

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Interview with Mbonisi Malaba

One of the real privileges of being apart of the Newfrontiers family of church is the relationships you develop all over the world. Mbonisi Malaba and his wife Tash a dear friends of mine who lead a church in Bulaway, Zimbabwe. I had the privilege of having dinner with him on Wednesday night and I asked him to send you all a message about how we can continue to pray for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5j9Ls3xnCQ

What Outsiders Think of Newfrontiers


The main speaker at this year's Brighton conference is non other than Mark Driscoll. Driscoll leads on the fastest growing churches in the USA gathering about 8,000 on a Sunday. He also leads a network of churches that planted more than 100 churches. He's a author and perhaps the most influential pastor under 40 years old.

His time with us has been very beneficial. I think he is serving us very well. I thought you might want to read what he has to say about us. I cut and pasted this off his blog. If you want to read the whole thing, click here.

A healthy mix of Word and Spirit The Newfrontiers folks are a very healthy mix of Word and Spirit. They love the Bible and the leading of God the Holy Spirit. Sometimes in the States those who are charismatic are negatively influenced by health and wealth teachers who say that, in essence, if you have enough faith you do not need to be like Jesus and endure pain or poverty. In contrast, somehow the folks I am meeting from around the world who are connected to Newfrontiers have a healthy biblical reformed theology complemented with an active and biblical view of the person and work of the Holy Spirit and exercise of all spiritual gifts. I have always believed in the perpetuity of all the spiritual gifts (including such things as tongues and prophecy) but have not had much experience in seeing them exercised biblically, so being in circles like this is very insightful and instructive. Yesterday, for example, a pastor from Africa (PJ Smyth) shared a prophetic word about the Father’s love for Jesus his Son and it was incredibly biblically rooted and emotionally moving.

Lastly, the people have been fantastic. My new African friend Pastor Tope who leads a growing church in London has been our host and rarely have I met a man whom I enjoy more than him so hanging with him has been a delight. I am eager to preach to his people on Sunday and honor their pastor who has been so gracious to me. We have been loved, served, and encouraged well. I’ve also been using the Mac to iChat with my family, which is great. Although I am gone, seeing the five smiling, laughing, funny-face-making kids of mine is a boost of joy. And nothing beats seeing your wife’s smile as often as possible, especially when on the road.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Interview with Sam Poe

Today I interview Sam Poe, who most of you would know. But if you don't know Sam, he is a up in Tacoma, WA helping to lead that church plant. He also a part of the Newfrontiers-usa leadership team and helps Newfrontiers to plant churches internationally. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY30i84Kvjo

Monday, July 7, 2008

Who I'm Hanging With

I put together the first of several videos I plan to post this week to introduce you to a few of the guys I'm hanging out with this week. Click here to view.

God's Forgiveness

I was given a handout by my Discipleship Community leader, Karl Scott, on the Lord's Prayer as "homework" last Tuesday because we ran out of time to complete it during our time together as a group. This particular lesson was on "...as we have forgiven others..."

It was a great reminder of two things: 1) the wonder of God's mercy and depth to which he forgives us and 2) the freedom we can experience when we forgive others. Scripture communicates to us that we will be forgiven AS we forgive others. In other words, if we want the floodgates of heaven to pour out mercy and forgiveness upon us, than we should do like wise to the world around us. It is a very similar concept to the Great Commandment: "To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself." God is saying that to love Me is to love people. To be forgiven is to forgive.

Listen to the grace and mercy that we find in Psalm 103:8-14.

8 The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14 For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.

Let us continue in our receiving of God's grace and forgiveness and let us continue in extending grace and forgiveness of others.

If you haven't taken the time to go through this past lesson in our Discipleship Communities, it would do you well to do so. If you don't have a copy, request one for your DC leader or email Samantha at grouplife@jubileestl.org and request one.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

My Time at CCK in Brighton



Tonight I went to CCK with a bunch of guys from Christ's Church in Joplin. I was pleased to have reunited with some friends from our churches across the USA, the world and even ran into some Jubileeites (Ginger Price and Jen Russo). Terry Virgo, who was just with us in March says hello and passes on his love (please listen to the message he preached at Jubilee if you missed it - just do a filtered search under archives).

It was great being there tonight. PJ Smyth preached an outstanding message. You can listen to it by clicking here. I would encourage you to do so. If you do, just substitute St. Louis when he talks about Brighton and Johannesburg.

Amazing Story

Read an amazing story about a child rescued out of a 60 ft ravine told by Terry Virgo on his blog, dated July 3 and titled God-Glorifying Rescue.

Getting Acclimated

I landed yesterday morning in London at 7:30 am (1:30 am St. Louis time). It was a decent flight, but bad food and little sleep. I took a bus from London to Brighton, which was both interesting and long. The good news about that is it allowed me to sleep. After another brief nap in our rented apartment, I grabbed an early dinner with some friends from Joplin, MO who I'm sharing the apt. with. We all woke up late this morning and are messing around on our computers because it's cold, windy and rainy. That's suppose to be the forecast the rest of the week so I might be blogging a lot.

Tonight I will be attending CCK, the church that Terry Virgo founded and continues to serve as an elder. PJ Smyth is the guest speaker and worship will be led by Stuart Townend, who wrote the hymn "In Christ Alone". I am really looking forward to being there tonight as well as the conference that begins on Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

National Night Out

National Night Out is a great opportunity to get to know your neighbors and building into your community. I want to highly encourage you all to make plans to get involved in your community or work together with another Jubileeite in their neighbor. Here's how to get involved:

Check with your block captain if anything has been organized. You can do this by contacting your block captain. T0 verifying which neighborhood you are in, log onto http://stlouis.missouri.org/neighborhoods/. Then search on your neighborhood page for your captains email address or phone number. If you have a NNO already planned then join it. If not then register on the web site and host it: http://www.nationalnightout.org/nno/. It is a perfect opportunity to network within your community. Let me know how it goes!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Brighton

This Sunday I'll be in Brighton, England for the 2008 Newfrontiers Leadership Conference (July 8-11). I am looking forward to hearing what God might say.

Curt McCutcheon will continue our series on Acts.