Filed under: Uncategorized
I took a break from blogging this spring, rarely getting out what’s been going on here in NE Florida. One side affect from it was that I didn’t keep up with some of my friends and peers blogs as often as I’d like. With some travel time this week, I was able to catch up with several. Here are just a few of the blogs I love to read…
Friends:
Marla Saunders: CoffeeshopJournal.com I have a passion for Christ and Coffee…so Marla’s blog about unique connections, observations, and thoughts over coffee and in coffeeshops are a real hit for me. A Favorite Quote: “Life happens over coffee.”
Jacqueline Sweet: Jacque is assistant to Lisa Bevere, and has a real gift for writing as well. She is also my only friend to ever be mistaken for an X-Men Character…. Jean Grey. You go Jacque!
Becca and Josh Turner: www.rileyturner.com Riley was born about a year and a half ago with multiple medical complications. This blog really pulls at my heart everytime it’s updated…especially dealing with the ups and downs along with the Turner family.
Alex Tran: ‘Shrug’ . Alex is our Internet Campus Pastor and runs our church website…amongst 1000 other things. I love his transparency. And that he and I were both up at 12 a.m. the night Facebook gave out url’s.
Duncan McFadzean: Fourthspace. Scotlands finest…”Discussions and stories of kingdom living and missional praxis”. He especially gives great insight into conferences he’s attended…incredibly thorough, and is doing innovative kingdom work with micro financing and missional business.
Thinkers and World Shifters
These people have even more of a global stage and stretch my brain often. It’s often painful but necessary to embrace some thoughts they share.
Filed under: Uncategorized
With recent transitions, our blog was down a few days. You’ll see a noticeably different tone in the months to come…. very outreach oriented… I’ve spent the last 3 weeks getting to know my new ministry team….the 25+ people at Celebration Church who are Extension Service Hosts. Last week I had the time of my life with a bunch of them…preached down at the Homeless ministry our church does on Sunday nights near the end of Beach BLVD and A1A. It was truly amazing. I’ve got some good stuff to share in the days to come….we hit Costa Rica on Friday and it will be ON! Expect guest blogs, updates, and more.
It’s great to be back! Check our guest blog today over at our Senior Pastor Stovall Weems blog.
-John
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: jail ministry, juvenile detention center, multi-gatherings, prison
We are at a place now where doors are opening at several detention centers in the Jacksonville area to bring the Celebration services and volunteers in. I’d like to ask my subscribers to pray that we not only get in, but have a consistent lasting presence in as many of these places as possible. What has happened at the St. Johns County Jail has been exceptional….now running 4 services a week there with around 50 inmates attending…. but it took 2 years to build the relationships and earn the trust to get in there. We are currently in that ‘building trust’ stage with several facilities.
If you have relationship with a jail, rehab center, homeless shelter, etc, I’d love to hear from you. We’d also like to hear from you if you are interested in joining our team of over 50 volunteers that visits these facilities- either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. We currently have a total combined ministry to some 400 people a month in places like this throughout Jacksonville, but I feel we are just scratching the surface.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: buttercup, epic, fezzik, inigo montoya, journey, nomad, pilgrim, princess bride, the dread pirate roberts, westley
I read this quote today, “to journey and not be changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be chameleon. To journey and be transformed is to be a pilgrim.”
I can think of 4 distinct journeys in my life, and in every one, I encountered a cast of characters who all had one big thing in common…. a love for the movie, “The Princess Bride” . I always get good buzz when thinking of it. Amongst other things, it was the movie Rachel and I were watched on our second date.
So throw me your favorite quotes or/and Princess Bride Stories….I’ll begin…
“You’ve been mostly dead all day.”- Fesik
Filed under: Uncategorized
I spoke 2 weeks back to our college crew at “College Life”, wrapping up the ‘Practical Atheist’ series. As always, it was a great time, and I made some great connections afterward with several passionate students….a couple who wanted to get involved in the prison ministry, several who were interested in bringing extension services to places like FSU and Valdosta…
So check out the podcast here. And next time I invite you to College Life, give it a try!
Filed under: Uncategorized
10 months ago at the end of a 10 day fast, our lead pastor, Pastor Stovall Weems, launched an initiative known as Multi-Gatherings/ Extension Services. Today, we announced to Celebration St. Johns Campus that we have accepted his invitation to take the lead staff positions over all the Extension Services and Hosts of Celebration Church. It’s a great honor and an exciting time, as this movement promises to be an incredible venue for God to reach people in rehab centers, hospitals, military bases/vessels, jails, prisons, colleges, schools, and more.
The beginning of this season signals an end to our season as campus pastors in the St. Johns community. Rachel and I will continue to attend St. Johns Campus as our ‘home campus’, but will also be rotating to our other campuses and extensions on weekends to oversee and provide support to our extension services and hosts.
Our church is bringing new leadership to St. Johns with our great friends Pastors Dennis and Debbie Heald. Amongst other endeavors, Dennis has long played a leading role in men’s ministries at Celebration, specifically overseeing the parking/ushers/security teams at multiple campuses – all the while gathering men, discipling them, and bringing unparallelled strength to the church men’s ministry. Debbie has been on staff for over 5 years, with concentrations in women’s ministry (Shine), youth ministry, and college ministry. She’s been the fuel that kept the youth motor running at all campuses, and she’s equally excited to take on this new role. They will be great representatives of our Pastors Stovall and Kerri at the campus.
So we can’t wait to take the church to the 4 corners of creation! It’s been a strong desire in my heart that God planted in me during 1 Prayer last year that God would multiply the number of churches/plants out of the special work He is doing at Celebration. The Extension Services are a large part of that dream, as they are the first step in a community group becoming a ‘campus’. The idea of an extension service is to take the church to people rather than trying to get people to church…a ‘reverse bus ministry’ so to speak. So far, we’ve had 2 extension services morph into full fledged campuses. Here’s a description of Extension Services from www.stovallweems.com.
Filed under: Entertainment, Uncategorized | Tags: barbarian way, gladiator, guy movies, Religion
I hit the Monday wall and caved yesterday after the craziest school year I can remember. I went to Blockbuster and rented Gladiator. This one liner came back to me almost immediately…
“What we do in life echoes in eternity”-Maximus
What are some of your favorite one liners?
Filed under: Uncategorized
Yes, I said Weekness. In the busy-ness of the past week, I’ve seen God strong in several places..
( A side note- Rachel was with family for the weekend- I’ve learned that a man just can’t live off Captain Crunch even if it’s buy 1 get 1 week at Publix…)
We did a lunch for 19 of our graduating seniors- catered in Cheesecake Factory- and it was a blast. I’ll be writing blog posts about them because of what I learned at a funeral at an A.M.E. church a couple years back, “Don’t save my flowers for me for when I’m gone”
Which brings me to this…. we worked for 3 months with essentially 3 other churches to pull off an event remembering the 6 seniors who’ve passed away from the Class of 2009 at our local high school. You can find a summary of the event here. It was really humbling to have a chance to speak with the parents of these kids. I’ll be writing here soon about tips for churches/groups in responding to such crises as those we’ve experienced this year. While it was a beautiful moment in time, I’m just more resolved than ever to appreciate and encourage the living.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Graduation is about 6 weeks out. We’ve done lots of stuff in the past for our graduates….Olive Garden catered in, a special service, gifts, etc. Any special ideas for this year? Please leave comments.
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Admission: Rachel and I had a 3 day honeymoon to Orlando, took a trip to Colorado on our 1 year anniversary, and somehow didn’t take a true vacation for 4 years, until this week…
Back in Summer 08, we stumbled upon 2 bands of young men who were in the midst of their EastCoast Tour. It was great 2 day adventure (chronicled in blog form here and on CoffeeShopJournal.com ) with these total strangers that included having them stay in our house and do some crazy body surfing with Hurricane Bertha off the Florida shore (that almost killed me)….
Due to some Travelocity low-fare alerts and this being the ‘offseason’ for New England tourism, we decided to take a trip up to see the guys in concert in Connecticut on March 27 (and ride along as roadies in their van). Stay tuned to BigJohnsBlog.com for details of our trip, and we appreciate the prayers for good connections with friends old and new in the days to come.
keep the faith, and here’s to being a fan of the people in our lives.
Big John
Filed under: Popular Culture, Prison Ministry, Uncategorized | Tags: #1, critics, madea goes to jail, relevant, tyler perry
Morris O’Kelly said “The #1 movie in America, Madea Goes to Jail grossed 41 million in this its first weekend, with 1000 fewer screens than any other #1 of any week of any year.” and I couldn’t find even ONE Christian media outlet who reported or blogged on it.
Self-important movie types have rarely warmed up to Tyler Perry’s “Madea” films, and in many ways, that’s to be expected. They just don’t ‘get’ Perry’s movies….and even Perry has come to peace with that for the most part. I have been much more bothered that ‘Christian media’…aka magazines, blogs, etc… that aspire to be taken ’seriously’ chose in February to write lengthy and ‘important’ pieces on Sean Penn, Slumdog Millionaire, or the upcoming U2 album rather than even mention Tyler Perry’s Madea.
In our quest to be relevant, Christians sometimes ignore the success of those around them who’ve achieve relevance and mainstream appeal. I once heard that Relic and Relevant are on the same page in the dictionary. We have to check ourselves. In our quest to be cool, we can end up chasing the wrong influencers. This is the #1 link on my blog in 2009…so I’d like to ask you a question or 2.
1) What Christian media outlet… magazine, website, blog do you pay attention to? Why?
2) Have they taken space to report on this movie or other Tyler Perry movies? When? Where?
Filed under: Element High School Ministry, Youth Ministry | Tags: element youth st. johns
this is a letter I read to our students our last night at Element St. Johns. We felt it really fit the mood and anticipation for our futures….. It is an excerpt of a blog from our good friends Jamie and Byron from ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’.
i hope you feel less alone when you look in the mirror. i hope it reminds you of community, that you’re part of a bigger thing. i hope it sparks some conversation that brings change like a fire on the coldest night.
You’ll need more than us. You’ll need more and better. You’ll need other people. You’ll need people to help you process, people to help you let go, people to help you remember what’s true and people to help you forget what’s lies. You’ll need the stories and advice of people with gray hair or white hair or no hair at all. Don’t buy the lie that suggests they have nothing to offer or nothing to say – they were young once too. They are stories still going and they’ve seen the places you will go. They’ve been stuck at times as well, just like you and me and everyone.
You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.
We’re saying the story doesn’t end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason. Perhaps we’re all in the business of better endings, you as much as us, the business of redemption. Yours and mine and all the characters around us, and perhaps that bigger thing. i’ll steal from Bono here and tell you that i believe we’re far from alone in this, that God’s been at this for a long time, this business of buying things back, making things new. If this is starting to sound too Churchy or spiritual, i’ll simply say that i believe God…(cares)… about your life, about your story, about your pain. And if those possibilities feel too far or they just sound weird, then rest now and we’ll get back to people….
Filed under: Uncategorized
Every year, our church has a season of 21 days of prayer and fasting. This year an additional 400+ churches representing some 400,000 congregants have also signed on to join us. It’s an amazing spiritual time that also has lots of breakthroughs for us as a staff and congregation.
It’s also a time to get the body, mind, and spirit flowing in the right direction for the new year. For this kid, it’s a time to fine tune the bod and kick it into weightloss mode from the outlandish and insane holiday season.
Fasting is not about losing weight…however, it is about drawing closer to God…and my personal hope is that He makes me a better person every day.
Every Thursday during the fast and also for the next couple months after, 15 of us guys on staff here at Celebration weigh in. At the end of the 2 months, the 6 who’ve lost the most pounds in relation to their total weight get a free lunch at the expense of the other 9. The first 14 days saw me lose 16 pounds….however, the next 4 have not been so kind.
Today I twittered to my Facebook Status the need to lose 6 pounds by Thursday. I got lots of creative suggestions 
)
