Church Planting is for Kids

"Why should I get involved with a church plant if I have children? Don’t other churches have more stuff to offer?”

Not necessarily. They may have different stuff to offer, but a young church plant has some things to offer you won’t find anywhere else. 

In fact, here are some reasons you should prefer to get your family, including your young children, involved in a young church plant like Harvest Bible Chapel Pittsburgh North:

1. They will get to see how new churches start.

I never knew how churches started before I planted a church. Guess I never really thought about it. I just assumed back in the day John Wesley and Martin Luther just moved through the area and opened franchises. (Just kidding. I knew a little more about it than that. A little.)

What an education I received planting a church, watching it all come together as God was working! And what a great opportunity for your children to learn something they may never have a chance to be a part of again.

2. They will learn that everyone is called to actively serve.

In church plant world, we use a phrase a lot: “All hands on deck!” Being young and small, we need everyone to step up and actively get on board in ministry. Everyone! That’s Biblical, by the way. I know of many passages in the Bible that call ALL believers to actively serve (Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Peter 2). I don’t know of a single passage that calls a believer to be a bystander. “My spiritual gift is bench warming.” No, it’s not.

Longer established churches are blessed to have had people step up and do and lead and disciple. So it can be easy for people to slip in and slip out without stepping up. God calls everyone to be involved, and your child will experience that especially in a church plant.

3. They will learn that church is where you look to give not expect to be given.

Similar to the previous point, your children will learn this valuable lesson about following Jesus that they will carry with them the rest of their lives, if you disciple them in this attitude.

We live in a consumer culture. We get lulled into a consumer mentality. What benefit ME best? Target or Wal*Mart? Giant Eagle or Shop and Save? Ford or Chevy? Coke or Pepsi?

Sadly we carry the consumer mentality into the church. When you walk into a church, and the first question you ask is, “How will this place benefit me?”, you have brought an unbiblical and self-centered mindset that is anything but the mind of Christ.

4. They will see God do some radical things in times of desperation.

We started this church with nothing. A zero dollar bank account. No place to meet. Few people. An empty trailer purchased, praying God would fill it with equipment.

I don’t have the space here to testify to God’s gracious provision that He made every step of the way. So many times, we had our backs against the wall, cried out to Him, and He showed up gloriously. Never late, seldom early. And He never disappointed us.

Not saying God doesn’t move mightily in big churches - sometimes it can seem less obvious to the congregation as a whole. Your child will carry with him/her the glorious lesson that God is a provider and He can always be trusted to take care of His children when they cry out to Him. They will get to not just hear it preached… but watch it happen!

5. They will see how the Holy Spirit grows the church.

What a glorious thing to behold. “But the Holy Spirit is growing big churches!“ Yes, praise God, He is! That’s how they got big. But growth can look more obvious in a church plant. Growth from 1500-1540 isn’t as obvious as growth from 25-65, right?

Jesus promised to build His church (Matthew 16:18). And from the ground up, your child will get to see Jesus fulfill His promise. New believers baptized, old believers revitalized, the Holy Spirit doing what only He can do, to the glory of God the Father.

So bring your children. Let them experience God at work in a way that will strengthen their faith for the rest of their lives!

p.s. - church planting = kids' stuff

Why does He talk like that?

(This is a revamp of a blog from when we went through Matthew 13, discussing the purpose of parables. Since we are diving into Mark 4, I thought it was a good reminder for us...)

Why does He talk like that?!

Have you ever been around someone that made you ask yourself this (hopefully in your head)? I went to high school with someone who suddenly grew a British accent when she went to work. I am sure she didn’t know she was doing it. But I was just like… why is she talking like that? When did she get so British?

So Jesus, the greatest Person to ever walk the earth, is about to reveal some deep spiritual truths about God. “Want to know about God’s kingdom? Let me tell you a story about a guy who had a bag of seeds.”

In Mark 4, Jesus teaches some parables. What is a parable? The Greek (para) means “something alongside of something else”, or a comparison. It is a hard spiritual truth alongside an easy, earthly story. Spiritual matters are very hard for fleshly humans to understand, so parables help us make sense of them.

Parables can be effective for many reasons. They put concepts in pictures, for those of us who think that way. Parables are also easy to remember and retell. They are also great attention-grabbers!

But why did Jesus talk like that? Why didn’t He just teach the facts? Why did He communicate in parables?

In Mark 4:10-13, the disciples had the same question, and Jesus explains why.

And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that "they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven." And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?

So Jesus said He speaks in parables because “they may indeed see but not perceive” and “may indeed hear but not understand”. What does that mean? Why tell a story if people aren't going to "get it"? Parables had a way of revealing truth to some people and concealing it from others… at the same time! If you want to hear God’s truth, He makes a way. But if you harden your heart, you will not be able to hear him! Receive truth, get more; reject truth, stay in darkness! Also an interesting note: Jesus didn’t explain this to the multitudes… He explained this to His disciples!

The bottom line is grace. We are accountable for how we respond to what we know. And the more someone knows… and rejects… the worse the punishment is going to be for them in hell. So God, in His grace, uses a method of clearly teaching truth in a way that can be taught by those looking for it… BUT ALSO missed by those not interested. It’s grace!

The parables have always fascinated me. How can Jesus say so much by saying so little? Join us at Harvest on Sunday as we seek to understand the profound truths taught in simple stories.

p.s. - amazed at the wisdom of Jesus..

The Only Thing I Learned in College

I paid a lot of money for college. But I think I really only learned one thing. But it is the one thing I needed to learn, and I still carry with me to this day...

My first semester of college was a lot like a 1980s movie. It was so over-the-top... the way every single thing just seemed to go wrong. You could have cued a Huey Lewis and the News soundtrack behind my daily misadventures.

It’s funny now. Was not so much then. Living in western PA my whole life, then suddenly finding myself at college in Circleville, Ohio - in a place where I knew nothing and no one!

I laugh to myself when I think back now of trying to find the bookstore. The bookstore was right in town, but I seem to remember spending hours and hours and hours driving around block after block after block trying to find the bookstore. And the town wasn’t exactly New York City. So it’s embarrassing that I got lost repeatedly (this was before everyone and their baby cousin had a GPS).

Then the car problems. I remember having so many problems with that Chevy Cavalier. Problems that I, a non-mechanic, had to figure out how to fix, because I didn't have any money. Or tools. Or clue. I remember standing out in subzero weather in the parking lot with the hood popped, trying to replace the antifreeze tank, noting the irony as my hands were freezing. And I think at the time the only tool that I had was one of those little screwdrivers you get with an eye glasses repair kit.

So I'm in the middle of a place where I don't know anyone, I don't know where I'm going, and now I think I broke my only screwdriver and I'm not sure how I'm going to repair my eyeglasses.

Then school started. I went into the cafeteria for my first lunch as a freshman. Feeling geekishly awkward and desperately wanting to fit in, I remember how delighted I was when one of the "cool kids" (he must have been wearing sunglasses) offered me a seat at his table. Finally. Things are turning around for me.  

And right when I went to sit down, another student rushed up, grabbed the seat, turned around, and looked at me with a serious scowl, saying, “There’s no room for you here.“

I stood there with my tray of terrible food and looked around the table. Everybody was just looking at me, some with a “sorry about your luck, pal” expression, others with a “seat‘s taken, Forrest Gump“ look.

I briefly contemplated either dropping my tray and running out the door all the way back to Pittsburgh, or to start flinging my mashed potatoes like a crazy monkey. But I just stood there like an idiot, paralyzed and completely clueless as to what to say or do.

That's what I heard a voice. “Young man, would you like to join us?” I turned and saw the man who was speaking. He was one of the professors, Dr David Case. And he asked me to sit down at the table with all of the other professors and have lunch.

This didn't really make me any less nervous. I was afraid that they were going to talk about a lot of Bible stuff, and at the time I was a new Christian and didn't know a lot of Bible stuff.

But they didn't talk about Bible stuff at all. They just talked about things like where are you from and what brought you here and what’s your family like and what do you hope to do when you graduate and stuff like that.

I graduated from that school almost 15 years ago now. And I'm sure that I learned some things in my time at Circleville Bible College or Ohio Christian University or whatever they call it now.

But the only lesson that really stuck with me was that lesson that I learned on the first day: Some people just need someone to reach out to them, to know they are not alone.

Dr Case showed me (by his example to me) that I should always be on the lookout for those people. Yes, it sounds crazy, but that one simple act turned a lot of things around for me that day.

And it stopped any potential disciplinary measures from the Dean of Students for any unsightly mashed potato flinging damage.

Be on the lookout for people who need a friend.

p.s. - Since college, went on to fame and fortune and got a new screwdriver.

Well, I Just Learned a New Word…

Affluenza.

Did you hear about this?

So a couple of weeks ago, a Texas teenager kills four people in a drunk driving accident. And his defense attorney lays the blame on a condition the 16 year-old has been afflicted with: Affluenza. What is that?

It is the inability to tell right from wrong because your parents make too much money.

Yes, I’m serious. See?

http://kfor.com/2013/12/16/victims-families-file-multimillion-dollar-lawsuits-against-affluenza-teen/

Has anyone else heard of this “disease”? I have to tell you, I never heard of this one. Can it be caught? Should I carry hand sanitizer with me? Is it still safe to use public restrooms? What if someone coughs on me? What if I get coughed on while inthe public restroom? Can I get vaccinated for it?

Sorry for the sarcasm. I just get worn out with people treating sin like a disease akin to the flu or diabetes. Showing my age here, but I remember when being a “spoiled brat” was a description, not an excuse. It is a disease all right - sin is a disease on your soul.

As the calendar turns to 2014, in order to avoid affluenza, greed, covetousness, envy, or any of the other afflictions that come with money this year, adopt the attitude of Agur from Proverbs 30:

Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. (v7-9)

God, don’t let me be poor - I would hate to dishonor you. But don’t let me be rich, I would hate to start to think I don’t need you.

Here’s a good plan: let’s ask God for enough. And let’s be satisfied with whatever He provides that He determined is enough.

p.s. - doing his part to stop the spread of affluenza