Filed under: Uncategorized
I was excited to hear Donald Miller’s Prayer at the DNC this past week. It excites me that Christians are getting positions to influence all political parties in our nation. With the upcoming RNC this week, I’m trusting that someone will bring a powerful spiritual influence to that convention as well.
Prayers are going out today to the Gulf Coast, I have hundreds of friends in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Those tropics aren’t looking so good….
Filed under: Popular Culture, Religion | Tags: barack obama, charles lee, christianity, dnc prayer, donald miller, faith and politics
The following is a timely and provoking guest blog from my good friend Charles Lee, pastor of New Hope South Bay and Professor at Life Pacific University. You can read here. I first met him at the Fermi Project’s Q Conference in April 2008, and was blown away by the projects of JustOne, particularly ‘Laundry Love’ and ‘The Freeze Project’. Enjoy!his blog
Donald Miller, author of books including Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God, gave the closing prayer (benediction) tonight at the Democratic National Convention. I thought it was significant and refreshing to see Miller, as self-proclaimed follower of Christ, communicate a prayer over the United States.
As many would attest, for the past few decades, evangelical Christians have not been readily identified with the Democratic Party. Quite contrarily, for many, Christianity was and still continues to be synonymous with the Republican Party. Some in the media have unfairly portrayed Christians to be narrow-minded, bigoted, repressed in their sexuality, inconsiderate for the working class, and of course, proponents of the Republican agenda.
This is not to say that Christians ought to be Democrats. The point here is not whether Christians ought to be Republican or Democrat. (In fact, I am registered Non-Partisan.)
I think those of us who follow the teachings of Christ should recognize the imperfection of any political party. More importantly, we must acknowledge our own frailty and inadequacies. Our main focus should not be voting for the right party, politician or issue, but rather, voting our values by the way we live our lives. We can argue until we are blue in the face (no pun intended), but true change will occur once we take it upon ourselves and our faith communities to live out our values in our day to day activities.
For example, we can be passionate about legislation that assists the poor (and we should), but what good is it if we ourselves don’t holistically participate? I pray for a compassion that is not distant nor covered in our verbiage or political affiliation. I want to vote with my life before any ballot.
Please take a moment to listen and read the following prayer. It is not perfect and will push many theological envelopes, but nevertheless, I think we can learn from the heart that seeks to embrace the other.
Filed under: Celebration Church, Youth Ministry | Tags: bartram trail, cr 210, creekside, high school, julington creek, mandarin, nease, roberts road, st johns county youth ministry, st. augustine
After tropical storm fay and her whackiness, our school calendar finally began this week. i can’t express how relieved, excited, nervous, anticipaitious (is that a word?) I am.
We begin our ‘Urban Legends’ series tonight at St. Johns Element, our high school youth ministry reaching the Bartram Trail and Creekside High Schools (and a few students from Nease High and Mandarin too!). If you haven’t checked out our weekly ministry, here are a couple fast facts
-Celebration Church is 10 years old, and has a weekly attendance of 6000-7000 on average
-We have 6 youth services on Wednesday nights, scattered across Northeast Florida. There are some 450-550 students attending these services.
-The idea behind a localized ‘campus’ youth ministry like St. Johns is that our students who love God and their friends can find a local expression of the worship, messages, fellowship, fun, food, etc that is geographically easier to bring their friends to….and also helps keep students from getting ‘lost in the shuffle’.
We meet in 3 counties on Wednesday nights. Duval county- at our Midtown Campus near the town center. Clay Count- at our O.P. Campus on Kingsley, and St. Johns Campus, at Cunningham Elementary School at 7pm. You can find more information at www.element633.com.
Lookin forward to speaking tonight. Schools in for fall! (cue Alice Cooper sequel song to school’s out for summer)….
the #1 search term for bigjohnsblog is “living a simple life christian”
I had a dream last night that I had to speak a message on the spot to the senior leadership of the church I’m employed at. 7 guys in a room, and me, barefoot (that must be some deep delve into my psyche for sure…because i can’t stand people to see my feet, particularly because of a lawnmower accident I had at age 15).
Filed under: Family, Religion | Tags: man cave, palm tree preservation, tropical storm fay
rachel and i bunkered down since last night…. fay pretty much hit 35 miles south of us at flagler beach, has brought lots of rain and wind our way (not a lot compared to the 25 inches 1:15 south of us at Palm Bay.
recently, we converted our garage into a man-cave of sorts. with a couch, some lights, coffee table, candles. funny thing is, she likes it almost as much as i do. we’ve spent a couple hours out here tonight just chillin, watchin the wind bring us sheets of rain. maybe i should set up my rain collector sideways outside to get a better gauge on how much rain we’ve gotten?
tonight should be a time with a few waves here and there. the funniest moment so far for us would have to be what we saw when we came out this morning. our next door neighbor, mario, backed up his work van, extended the ladder, and effectively secured the palm tree he planted here almost 3 years ago when we moved in. with the winds coming from the north and east, he did it! i’m confident I’ll wake up friday, and the tree will be standing.
I guess i’m supposed to come up with some deep spiritual idea from this. maybe i have. some things are worth holding onto….when we know a storm is coming, it’s time to bunker down and latch onto what we dare not lose. way to go mario.
Filed under: Celebration Church, Youth Ministry | Tags: florida, tropical storm faye
Tropical Storm Fay is headed into my backyard (St. Augustine, FL) in a couple days it will sit 60 miles our coast for 12-30 hours…then come back in Thursday a.m. somewhere along our coast. it only caps off the craziest 24 days of my young life! and now they say it may be category 1. my bravado and gusto is fading….
Let’s work backwards…
Monday Aug 18- a full day at the spa, look below to see why i needed
Sunday Aug 17- First day as official campus pastors at St. Johns after 3.5 years as youth directors/associate pastors.
Aug 15-16: Flex Mens’ conference at our church…800 men, with the second day containing a 5.5 hour service project painting, mulching, and planting at Webster Elementary School in St. Augustine.
Aug 11-14: Rush Week- 4 days of events with over 450 middle, high school, and college students attending our “Guard your heart” series based on ‘Deadly Viper Character Assassins’.
Filed under: Celebration Church, Religion | Tags: blameless, flex men's conference, men's ministry, st. augustine, webster school
Our annual men’s conference, FLEX, hits Florida this weekend with monsoon force!
I’m especially excited this year as along with kickin masculine worship with some r and b flow from my guys from Blameless, we’ll have exciting speakers…..and a huge opportunity to change the community in one day on Saturday.
We’re taking over a hundred men from the conference on service outreach projects—i’ll be going to St. Augustine to the Webster Elementary School for a 2 hours blitzkrieg of brotherhood- we’re painting, pouring mulch, clearing fences, and planting potted plants in the county’s poorest neighborhood at its most desperate school. I have several buddies who’ve agreed to come on for the ride, and we expect to put some smiles on kids faces with the ‘marines’ of Celebration Church landing on the beachhead there in full force. (there’s also an outreach in Springfield near downtown Jax for the guys from the Northside at Eugene Butler Middle School!)
So let the testosterone flow, the chicken wings fly, and the enemy flee this weekend! bring on the men! You can still register at www.celebration.org.
There will be tons of food and fun, guys 11-18 come free! Those over 18, it’s $20 for a weekend of band of brother bonding! Look forward to seeing you men there!
Filed under: Celebration Church, Religion | Tags: deadly viper character assassins, mobile church, multi-site ministry, video venue
Fresh on the heels of our return from Costa Rica (Rachel’s pictured with 3 girls she played with at a playground renovation there)…..Yesterday Pastor Chris Brooks announced to our campus that Rachel and I would be the new campus pastors at St. Johns Campus of Celebration Church.
Its another step on a winding road we’ve taken in church ministry. The campus opened in March 2005, less than a year after we got married, and we began day 1 as middle school directors with 5 kids in our class. Eventually, we became high school and middle school directors at the campus, then later, youth pastors as the group grew over 100 students. Last year, ‘youth and church life pastors’ was the expanded role. What a crazy ride!
Rachel and I are excited beyond belief for this opportunity given to us by Pastor Stovall and the church leadership. We will continue to lead the youth ministry at St. Johns as we continue to expand our team of volunteers to inspire and equip students to live a God first life. CareForce Leader training will resume in September for adults who want to become group and extension gathering leaders. Many of our key mens, womens, childrens, and serving team leaders also cross train as youth workers, so we have a distinctly networked relationship with them.
The training we’ve received by Pastor Darren Sullivan and Pastor Chris Brooks has been life altering. Each brought his own leadership style/anointing and shared it with us over these past 3.5 years. I count them as trusted and true friends who have invested countless hours in me.
Now it’s time to get back to work! Rush Week for our Middle and High School Students takes off tonight, where we employ the disciplines of Deadly Viper Character Assassins to the issue of “Guarding your heart” in a weeklong event with the students. Flex, our men’s event, lands Friday, with an amazing slate for the 800-1000 men who should be in attendance.
Stoked for a huge week-and year! -big John
Filed under: Uncategorized
i’ve been off the blogging path for a few weeks…just a few here and there. tonight, hillsong london makes a stop for a worship concert at our church. should be amazing.
I’ve been off the blog radar due to a couple things…1-costa rica trip 2-myspace and facebook networking. I realized i was getting very few emails or comments on those pages….mainly because i was sending no ‘love’ to our students on theirs. so i’ve been trying to find some semblance of balance between myspace and here.
i know here we share some great ideas and inspirational stories to enhance some lives of people all over…but if I fail to fire up our people we have locally, there’s not much to share….. quite the conundrum.
so what about you? where’s the line between investing in people in your locality and investing in leaders worldwide?
Filed under: Religion, Youth Ministry | Tags: 6:8 ministries, Celebration Church, costa rica, spencer
we arrived back in FL late Thursday night, and rode a bus into the wee hours of the morning returning home. Probably got back into my bed at 3:30 a.m., then hit the jail to catch up with some of our guys there.
Over the 1 week in Costa Rica we were a part of some amazing projects. we could tell from day 1 that it would be powerful…when firstcoastnews (local abc and nbc affiliate) showed up at our church wanting to do a story on our trip….and then offered continued coverage throughout the week through reporting on our blogs over at from the field. it was just that kind of week for us. i have so much to say, and will as the days go by. i’m in florida, but i’m still in a state of mind that’s a little hard to define. i miss costa, i love st johns county, i don’t like my consumeristic life so much, and i’m pretty sure i love God more than I did a week ago. Good thing he’s not like me…His love never changes.
