the    sides

Had this conversation this week with our staff and team. It’s something God is really taking me to the wood-shed about. And let me start by saying that we are not sure exactly WHAT we are in the middle of. We’ve had 16 professions of faith this year – that we know of. We baptized [...]

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This post is the start of a writing safari, an experiment. I want to explore the idea of what people-development looks like in the local church. Why is it important? What will it do? What does it mean? Please be warned, I have little to no idea what I’m doing, your mileage may vary. Anyone [...]

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Last month we looked at Mark 10. This month, Mark 11:1-26. These were some of the thoughts shared this morning… The same people that sang praises and Hosannas would sing Crucify in 6 days. Easy to blame fickleness on culture but these people weren’t just ‘culture.’ They were ‘believers’ of a sort, believers that Messiah [...]

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I gotta be honest…Kurt Warner’s retirement bums me out a bit. He has played outstanding football the last two years, resurrected his career again in Arizona, and once again took a laughable franchise and made them formidable. You know the numbers right? 1 Ring, 3 Super Bowls, 2 MVPs, top three passing yards games in [...]

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I think it’s awesome that God sometimes ‘themes’ our weeks. Like this week – I’ve had 4 different encounters with other leaders and as Divine Coincidence would have it, all of them centered around the same topic – discipleship, spiritual formation. How does your church do this? How do you define it? How do you [...]

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The journey of the Harvest thus far: The Past 30, The Next 30 A Little Sacrifice Now… Why The Debt And Why Now Exodus 36:5 A Gentle Rebuke So what happened Sunday? We had over 17k dollars come in towards the debt…which means there is 19k left…which means in the span of 9 months we’ve [...]

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I was at Oasis today in Emporia. Oasis is a one-day refreshment for area youth pastors and Danny Payne has hosted it the last two years. He asked me to come lead a round table discussion. Instead of having an outline of points to make, I had questions. Here was the list I brought… Who [...]

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A new read of mine is Perry Noble’s blog. He’s the lead pastor at a church called New Life in Carolina. HUGE mega church but he’s always an entertaining read. This morning he was a slap upside the head – doh! kinda read. Here’s the line from his morning post that banged me up pretty [...]

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…will lead to a big payoff later. I know this principle applies in multiple areas – sports, education, leadership – but for us we’re applying to the Harvest and the reduction of debt at Western Hill. We’ve called for the church to spend the month of September in prayer – to seek God’s wisdom as [...]

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30 days is a deceiving amount of time. Not enough or too long? The Past 30 We celebrated 6 new believers. Had 4 new families join. Went Down Under with VBS. We revamped our student ministry. We invaded McCarter Elementary with over 1,000 school supplies. We made close to 100 nap mats for McCarter Kindergarten. [...]

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