Invest & Invite

I’ve taught often, and encouraged repeatedly, that each person in our body has the role of investing in the lives of people who don’t know Christ, and inviting them to come hear about Him.

I love to hear stories of how that’s happening. Over the past few weeks, I’ve met a ton of people at Palm Valley who were invited by friends to come, and now have invited Christ into their life. Even heard of a waitress at a restaurant who received an invite card with her tip (a good tip), and now she and her husband are attending Palm Valley regularly.

I have been convicted in a huge way of a few beliefs recently (not new, just affirmed in my life experience)….

1) The vast majority of people in our community don’t know Jesus through a personal relationship.

2) The vast majority of people in our community are open to Christ, but turned off by religion and their experience with church.

3) The vast majority of our community will give Palm Valley Church a try if they are personally invited by a trusted friend who invests in a relationship with them!

So let’s get busy investing and inviting!

West Coast Style

Sure Gary and his crew have mad rap skills, but as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the west coast isn’t giving it up to the east coast. So Michael Gray, our Communications Pastor, gave me this link to show everyone the mad dance skills I possess. Enjoy…

Greg, the dancing elf here…

Don’t be jealous that you don’t have these kinds of moves, I’m sure you’ve been blessed in other areas!

Last Weekend

It’s taken me a few days to collect my thoughts from last weekend, so here they are…

1) Our Creative Team is really gaining momentum, and it shows. The Christmas Blues series has been a blast. From creating our own game shows, to the video elements, the new worship leadership with Derrick, to the topics we’ve addressed; I’ve just felt that we’re really hitting a groove creatively. This will show big time at our Christmas services next week!

2) This message hit. I talked about guilt, and the difference between guilt vs. conviction. I could really sense as I was teaching that God was using the message, but it was confirmed in a huge way after the services. I don’t know that I’ve ever had so many people tell me very specific ways the message hit them. It wasn’t just “great message preacher” stuff. It was real, heart-felt, specific issues that people dealt with during the messgae. That’s the power of God’s Word at work!

3) I love our children’s ministry teams. I walked through our kids areas and saw how much love, care, creativity, and passion are being invested into the young people of Palm Valley Church. As a parent of 4 young ones, I’m thankful they’re growing up in such an awesome church!

4) A lot of people are cool with the fact that I got to drive a Mercedes last week I got a lot of emails from people who said they would have been judgmental if they HAD seen me, and my story helped them to realize they don’t know (nor need to know) everything about other’s lives. I think it was healing for some to let go of judgment and guilt, and move into grace!

5) Ryan has become an incredible teacher. Received a ton of comments from people who got a lot from his mesage last week, and they look forward to him teaching again. Ryan’s going to be teaching much more this next year, and the people of PVC will be the beneficiaries.

Those are my weekend thoughts, and I’m looking forward to another great one this week!

Guilt or Conviction?

I’m excited about this week’s message. After not really teaching for the last two weeks, I’ve got a lot on my heart I can’t wait to share. As we continue the “Beating the Christmas Blues” series this week, we’re looking at “Feeling Guilty”.

I think guilt is one of those emotions that 100% of us deal with. Part of the reason is that we’re all guilty (brilliant, isn’t it?). We’ve all blown it, and we know it. However, guilt is not an emotion God wants us to live with, it’s unhealthy.

We’re going to take a look at the life of David this week; the good, bad, and ugly. We’ll look at how God used guilt in David’s life, and kept using David even through his problems. I believe God wants to do the same in our lives today.

So, we’ll be talking about how to avoid guilt through living by conviction. You’ll want to make sure you get there early, and are ready to dump the guilt!

Living It Out!

Saturday night Lori and I went to the Christmas tree lighting at Verrado. It was cool to see how many Palm Valley’ers were involved, reminds me what an impact we’re having in the community.

The coolest part of the night for me though, was when Jonathan Turner, took the stage. Jonathan plays in our youth praise band, and had been selected to perform some Christmas music for the crowd of about 1,500. Jonathan’s 14, and it was great to see him perform with poise and confidence.

The most awesome part was when he broke out with a version of Amazing Grace he rewrote, while playing on his electric guitar.When he finished the crowd gave him the largest ovation of the night. It blew my mind!

Here was a young man openly sharing his love for Christ, and showing no shame! God gave him a stage and crowd, and Jonathan responded by giving glory back to Him. You think God might give this young man a greater stage in the future?

Anyways, thanks Jonathan for making my night, and reminding me why I love being around young people who are reckless in their faith! I think I saw a future worship leader tonight.

Weekend Off

Man, did I need this weekend off. I had taught every weekend since mid-July, and that’s just too much. I didn’t realize how tired I was. I decided to take Gary’s lead, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn’t go to any church this weekend. It was a surreal weekend, knowing that I was just hanging out while PVC was still going, but here’s some observations I had…

1) My family loved it. It blew my kids away that we weren’t going to church, they didn’t quite understand. Saturday we woke up and went to breakfast with Santa at Verrado. We ate, took pic’s, had a snow ball fight, and hung out with friends. Then we lounged around much of the day, until it was back to Verrado for the Christmas tree lighting. Again, hung out with friends and just had a blast.

Sunday, we slept in. Met our new neighbors (more on that later), and went to Chevy’s for brunch. Hung out at the mall for a while (it was packed, why aren’t these people in church?), and then went home and decorated for Christmas.

Topped the day off by going to Lifetime Fitness and working out with Lori. I love working out with her, it’s the best date ever. Man, the stairmaster kicked my rear! All in all, my family loved just having dad around all weekend, it was a fun experience. They put up with a lot because of my job, it’s important to me that they always feel honored.

2) There’s a lot of people who don’t go to church every Sunday. It’s crazy that most churches worry about keeping Christians happy, and what Christians are going to which church in the community. The vast majority of our community doesn’t know Christ, they’re who we should be worrieid about.

I’m thankful that Palm Valley Church always keeps its eye on the ball. We’ll never be about keeping Christians happy. We’ll never worry about what Christians don’t go to our church. I know this makes Christians angry at me. We will always be consumed with the mission Jesus gave us, and that’s to introduce people to Him!

3) The mall was packed. People are very into Christmas, they just don’t know it’s all about Christ. Someone should tell them!

4) We’re having an impact in this community. Everywhere I went this weekend I saw people who attend Palm Valley. I heard cool stories of how people’s lives are being changed. I love being a part of what God is doing! Special thanks to the person who bought our lunch at Macayo’s. That was great!

5) Being a pastor is often detrimental to my own personal outreach. Lori and I went over and met our new neighbors, who moved in this week. Great couple, as nice as could be. It was interesting though, that he had already heard I was a pastor. It’s funny how word spreads ahead of you. I’m guessing he had been warned Meeting my neighbor felt good. It was an act of worship for me. I was simply reaching out to people new to our community, and I’m asking God to use that in some way in their lives!

6) We have a great staff team at Palm Valley. They didn’t miss a beat without me, and they had a great weekend. It’s great for me to know that I’m not really needed (should I be worried?). I heard about some decisions the team had to make w/o me, and I know they handled them well!

All in all it was a great weekend, and I plan to do it more. I look forward to being back next week to teach on Guilt.

Beating The Christmas Blues

We’re starting a new series this week, titled “Beating The Christmas Blues”. We’ll be tackling some of the toughest emotions people deal with during the holidays; loneliness, guilt, and stress. In addition to the teaching we’ll be having a blast each week pulling people from the audience to play our own game show.

You can view the video trailer and learn more about this series here…

You can send an e-invitation from here…

I encourage you to invite people who don’t know Christ to come with you, they’ll be glad you did!

West Coast vs. East Coast?

Checking out the blogosphere for pastors, I see a heavy slant towards the east coast. Some of my favorites are Gary Lamb, Perry Noble, Tony Morgan, and Mark Batterson. As I follow people’s links to bloggers they read, I see that there’s a HEAVY bias towards east coast bloggers.

In the words of Snoop Dogg, “the east coast ain’t got no love for the west coast?”. I don’t mean to start a blog war, but where are all the west coast bloggers? I know Mark Driscoll, he’s the real deal, but nobody else.

Is the Holy Spirit only inspiring bloggers east of the Mississippi? Is it because we have Rick Warren and his funny hawaiian shirts, while you have the super smooth Andy Stanley? If that’s the case, we claim Ed Young on our side! To be fair, you do have Jerry Falwell.

To drive home my point, while Gary & Perry are figuring out whose team is better amongst a bunch of crummy teams, the USC Trojans will spank Notre Dame. While Mark’s in a pit with a lion on a snowy day, I’ll be golfing in 85 degree weather, on Thanksgiving! And while Tony’s simply stragetically dreaming, I’ll be laying pool side watching the palm trees grow, on Christmas!

My early new year’s resolution is to blog more regularly, more fervently, with more passion, to bring the love back to the west coast where it belongs. After all, with apologies to Gary and Perry, this is where the NCAA champs have come from for the past 3 years, and the Trojans will be back at it again this January in where … Glendale, AZ baby. Home of the National Championship game, and Palm Valley Church. Now I’m feeling the love

Some tongue in cheek Thanksgiving humor, have a great one!

Big News

Darius and Nicole Sanders are two of my favorite people on the planet. Darius was in a small group I led when he was in Junior High and I was a volunteer at a church. 15 years later he’s on our staff as Junior High Pastor. Darius is passionate about loving the Lord, and lives out what he believes. He’s the real deal.

The best thing about Darius though, is his wife. Darius married Nicole, who is like a daughter to Lori and I. She came to Christ in our youth ministry, and has been walking with the Lord every day since. She’s incredible, and Darius is lucky to have her (he’ll tell you so himself).

Anyways, Darius and Nicole announced this week that they’re expecting a baby. It’s been hard for me to sit on this info, so I got permission from them to break the news in the blogosphere. It’s so fun to watch people grow through the seasons of life, I’m one proud pastor when it comes to these two.

Congratulations Darius and Nicole!

Seize The Moment

Met with some leaders in our church tonight and introduced our “Seize The Moment” campaign to build our campus. We’ll officially kick it off early 2007, but I wanted to give this group a peek at the site plans, building renderings, and latest developments. It was fun to see their excitement at the next steps for Palm Valley Church!

It’s hard to believe that after 6 years of being portable, we’re actually getting ready to build a campus. As one friend told me tonight, “it’s going to be a wild ride”. I think my favorite part of the whole campus is the kids fountain. I can’t wait to see our children having a blast on their own church campus!

For the record, I cried during the presentation. I told myself not to. Lori told me not to. I just couldn’t help it. When I see the hand prints of God all over something, it brings me to tears. Tonight I was reminded that His fingerprints are all over my life, and all over the people of PVC.