WOW – I don’t even know really where to start…

We had an amazing day at Cross Point yesterday.  Pete delivered a message that truly will impact the course of the future for Cross Point.  Several major announcements that if you missed, we’ll be sharing in Crosswire later this week.  In the meantime, you can go HERE and HERE to see what other Cross Pointers are saying about yesterday’s service.

Volunteer Appreciation was absolutely a blast!

Over 500 volunteers from both the Dickson and Nashville campuses came out and were celebrated last night at “Cross Point at the Movies”.  Radio Shack outdid himself with some great “movies” that featured Waxy One and our own Rocky, I mean ROBERTS.  (You’ll be hearing more about them soon.)

Here are a few pics from the nights (courtesy of Danny Bates):

[Oh, and in case you were wondering, dress #1 was the winner however that is dress #2 premiered by my stunning sister in the last picture!]

Crazy Love continues this week with Crazy for Community.

**My HOT husband set up the message by singing the Lenny Kravitz song “Love Revolution”.  (Just had to throw that in… I know I’m a little biased, but it’s my blog, right? )

Pete reminded us that our vision as a church can be summarized by these three statements:

• Intimacy with God
• Community with Insiders
• Influence with Outsiders

He then went on to explain how our vision or strategy is modeled after the patterns of Jesus’ life.

Luke 6:12-13

“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.  When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles.”

Luke 6:17-19

“He went down with them and stood on a level place.  A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.  Those troubled by evil spirits were cured and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.”

Matthew 22:37-39

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  ‘And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

John 13:34-35

“A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Pete challenged us today about how we as Christians are living in Community.  Are we living in love toward one another?  Are we looking at each other and calling out the best from each other? Unfortunately we as Christians have failed miserably at this.  Oftentimes we are the most judgmental and critical of others.

Pete shared three things that he believes Jesus was all about in regard to community and he challenged us as a church to get serious about living out these three things:

1. Everybody’s welcome
2. Nobody’s perfect
3. Anything’s possible

How did this message affect you today?  Which of these three things do you have the most trouble with?

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1484433]

Crazy Love kicked off at Cross Point Nashville yesterday!

I have been so excited about this series.  Over the next couple of weeks we are going to be talking about the vision of Cross Point and some exciting things that we believe God is calling us to as a church over the next year.  Clear your calendars and be here the next couple of weeks!

Today’s message was “Crazy for God!”  Here are the highlights I captured from Pete‘s message:

• Acts 2:42-47 – the scripture that Pete was reading and re-reading as God laid it on his heart to be in ministry.
• We don’t want Cross Point to just be an organization, we want it to be a revolution.
• John 13:35 – Jesus’ definition of spiritual maturity.
• Matthew 22:36-40 – Spiritual maturity is measured in the context of relationships.
• Jesus said it all comes down to LOVING God and LOVING others.
• At Cross Point we encourage each person to pursue three relationships: Intimacy with God, Community with Insiders (others in the church), and Influence with Outsiders (those who don’t yet know Christ).
• As a church, our goal is not growth, it’s health and we define health by the balance of these three relationships.
• Galatians 4:19 – Pete’s life verse/the core of his calling
• Hebrews 11:36-38 – notice that life for these believers was anything but safe and comfortable
• The opposite of Crazy Love is Civilized Love.  For most of us, our faith is very civilized or calculated.
• We have to ask ourselves some tough questions like ‘Are we really doing what God has called us to?’

Pete’s message today has both personal and church-wide application.  We’ll be sharing the church-wide application with you over the next couple of weeks, but I would like to challenge you with some questions to consider personally?

Are you playing it safe?

Do you know what God is REALLY calling you to do?

If yes, what are you waiting for?

If not, when are you going to get serious about asking him?

What do you need to do to live “Crazy for God”?

Every few weeks I head to our Cross Point Dickson campus to spend the day worshiping, and each time I visit I get so excited about what God is doing at this campus.

Here are some of the things I love about the Dickson campus:

• All the families.  Dickson is a community of young families.  I love watching all the kids come charging into the place headed to Kidz World.
• The community.  It takes me back to Cross Point Nashville’s early days in a school when there were just a couple hundred of us and we all knew one another.
• New faces checking it out for the first time… unsure of this ‘video church’ and worship band.
• Familiar faces who have been a part of Cross Point for years and believed in this campus so much that they were willing to commit IN A BIG WAY to helping make it happen!
• Our Dickson campus staff – Chad our Campus Pastor, Butch the Director of Ministries and our soon-to-be-announced Kidz World Coordinator work tirelessly to create a warm, welcoming place where people are growing in their walk with Christ.

Cross Point Dickson – you guys are awesome!

It was a really moving day at Cross Point Nashville today.  I have been looking forward to today’s messaging “Syncing Through Worship” since we started this series.

Today we did a combination of extra music, teaching all on video, and communion as part our worship experience.

Here’s what the script looked like:

Worship Songs:

“Blessed be Your Name”

“Healer”

“Awesome is Our God” (an original written by Jarrod)

Welcome by Pete

Video 1 featuring Pete talking about the discipline of worship

Worship Songs:

“From the Inside Out” (my favorite worship song!)

“Our God Reigns”

Video 2 featuring Pete – continued teaching on the worship

Communion led by Pastor Tom

Special Music “How He Loves” performed by Marcia Ramirez

Closing announcements

Here are a few things that Pete said that stuck with me:

• From John 15 “apart from me, you can do nothing”
• When we think worship, we think music/songs, but worship can be so much more than that
• You have to make a choice to build your life around this method of worship
• Worship is allowing your mind to be brought into the presence of the reality of God
• The cross is the best model of worship we have.  It’s the most incredible act of worship
• Jesus last words were a prayer of worship
• For every act of worship, there is always an act of surrender/sacrifice

What will you do to purposefully worship this week?

It’s a very full Sunday today!

We continued the Sync series talking about “Syncing through Giving”.  Pat, our Family Ministries Pastor, spoke today on this topic.

Here are some key points that he shared:

• God doesn’t want your money.  And even if he did, couldn’t he just take it?
• God wants our heart.  Notice that our hearts go where we give.
• Referencing Luke 16: 1-15, Pat challenged us with the question: “How can we take what we have and use it as a tool for the kingdom?”
• We have to leverage our stuff in the short time that we have to make an impact for the kingdom.

Two challenges Pat left us with:

1) Practice choosing contentment over consuming

2) Practice giving God your first and your best

To help make his point he used a great analogy with a cake.  He sliced the cake into five pieces, one piece to represent the mortgage, another to represent expenses for the family, another to represent the car payment, another to represent savings or investment and another to represent entertainment.  Then he shared that this is how we approach giving to God – we divide up our resources to cover all of these other things and then we are scraping the crumbs and icing to give to God – less than our first or our best.

We all walked away with one of these in hand to help us remember the point!

Another highlight of the day was connecting with Pete and the team that are on the mission trip in the Dominican Republic.  We were able to talk to them live in each of the morning services where Pete shared more about the work that these guys are doing.  In the second service we had the privilege to meet Moises, the Haitian pastor that we support in the D.R., and he shared his great appreciation and love for everyone at Cross Point and how our GIVING is impacting the ministry he is doing there.

Be sure to visit the Cross Point Missions Blog to hear more about their trip!

This afternoon I’m headed to Dickson to join Cross Point Dickson for their summer picnic.  Can’t wait to join them for their first church-wide picnic and baptism celebration!

I’m about tired of syncing!  It’s hard work!

Today Pete talked about “Syncing Through Perseverance”.

Scriptures:

James 1:2-4

Genesis 22:1-11

Isaiah 40:29-31

Psalm 147:3

Important takeaways:

• He made the important distinction between perseverance and suffering.  Suffering is what happens to you, perseverance is how you choose to respond to it.
• Suffering reminds me that I’m not in control of my life.
• You don’t have to choose suffering.  Life will arrange that for you.  You choose how you will respond to it.
• The cross reminds us that God doesn’t stand apart from our suffering.  The cross is also a reminder that God doesn’t always step in or answer our prayers the way we want them answered.  But it’s also a reminder He redeems.
• Suffering alone doesn’t create perseverance.  Suffering lived out with faith is perseverance.

We finished the service with the amazing song “Healer”, challenging us to acknowledge God as our healer – the healer of whatever we are facing in our life – the healer of our hearts, the healer of our hurts, the healer of our sickness…

Thanks Brewster for introducing this one to us!

This is the performance of the song by the original artist – powerful!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4xsWldmqAo&eurl=http://thebrewster.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/healer-part-200000000/]

We continued the Sync series today with Pastor Tom speaking on “Syncing Through Confession”.

Scripture:

• Matthew 18:15-17
• 1 John 1:8-9
• James 5:16
• Luke 15:11-24

Pastor Tom challenged us to not think:

Confession = ‘gottcha’ - people pointing figures at you calling out your mistakes

but to think:

Confession = a huddle; a group of people with whom you can be honest and accountable

Other key points:

• The purpose of confession is not exposure, it’s restoration
• Confession begins with ‘I’m sorry’
• Confession begins in safety and ends in freedom
• Realize that God is in the business of transforming lives not condemning them

So, is there anything you need to confess today?

What does this have to do with Sunday Highlights? Well, I’ll get to that in a minute…

Pete started with a question today:

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of prayer?

How would you answer that? Nervous, unsure, boring, God, church, weird…

1 Thessalonians 5:17 says “Pray without ceasing”

• How do you do this?
• Can you pray without ceasing in the real world?
• We can’t comprehend this because we’ve reduced our relationship with God to a vending machine, a transaction. We approach God when we need something and then when we get what we need we walk away. (Pete made this point while purchasing a bag of Peanut M&M’s from a vending machine displayed on stage – pretty vivid analogy!)

More key points and scriptures:

• Matthew 6:5-13
• You know how to pray, but you don’t know how to listen (OUCH!)
• Prayer is more than a transaction, it’s a mystery.
• God wants you to pray. He wants to commune with you.
• Luke 18:1-8
• We often think praying is giving God our list of things we need or want, but we have no idea what to do with God after we give him our list.
• We forget that God breathed life into us and he wants to have a relationship with us. He’ll do whatever he has to do to have a relationship with you.

If you remember nothing else today, remember this:

God created you, he breathed life into you to have a relationship with you.

What will you do to make a point to listen to God this week?

The Sync series continues this week. George Stull, our interim student pastor, spoke today at Cross Point Nashville on “Syncing Through Joy” and it was a good one.

I’m embarrassed to admit (although I’m sure it’s no big surprise to many of you that know me well) that I have trouble with choosing joy. And that was George’s point today, we have to CHOOSE joy.

I’m always amazed by how people have great joy even in difficult circumstances – the people who have just lost someone dear to them, people facing life-threatening illnesses, people who have lost a child, etc. How embarrassing it is to acknowledge that (fortunately) I don’t have any grave tragedy in my life and yet I have trouble finding joy.

I was challenged today!

Here are some key points and scriptures from George’s message today:

• John 15:9-11 Joy goes hand in hand with how we love others
• 2 Corinthians 6:4-10
• We lose joy when we covet or envy others. Are we really loving people when we’re envious of what they have?
• Joy can transcend circumstances.
• What would your life be like if you were dialed into the things that can’t be taken away?
• Joy is a posture of the heart.

How can we live in more complete joy?

1. See Joy more clearly as a choice.
2. Wear Joy no matter what – allow joy to permeate the way you see the whole world. Psalm 30:11
3. Sing for Joy because sometimes we just have to. Psalm 71:23, 100:1-5

Here’s a great quote from Henri Nouwen to leave you with:

“Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently than the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it. What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.”

I hope you’ll choose Joy this week!