Good laugh!

I’m headed home to my honey in just a few minutes, but I had a good laugh this morning in the final session at the Global Advance Pastor’s Forum near Branson, MO. I was seated beside my friends, Pastors Phil & Melody Nordstrom as the distinguished professon, Dr. Roy Fish (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s school of evangelism is named after him!) was about to speak for the final time at this retreat, but his mic wasn’t on. The audio engineer had turned the volume way up trying to pick up his voice to no avail, and finally came up front and switched on the mic, which then boomed with Dr. Fish’s voice. He hesitated just a moment and then said, “It’s loud, but not so clear”.

Melody immediately quipped, “reminds me of a lot of sermons I’ve heard”!

After I finally quit laughing, I realized that a lot of us preachers are guilty as charged. I know I am. But it made me ponder: what makes a sermon only loud and not so clear?

I’ve got 2 extremely important messages coming up in the next 2 days, as I try to bring some comfort to a precious family who lost their 4-year old son in a tragic accident caused by a drunk driver, and then help launch our newest campus in South Bend, IN and one thing is for certain: I don’t want to be loud but not so clear!

I think clarity is enhanced by:

• having one point and staying on it
• using stories or illustrations that, like a window, let in light on the subject
• using Scripture accurately
• talking to people, not at or about them
• NOT going on and on

Those are just my thoughts. I’ll bet listeners have some good ideas, too. Can you help me? What suggestions do you have so I can be a clear communicator?

Good cry?

I’ve heard that expression a few times (from women), but last night I think I experienced it. The session here at the Global Advance Pastor’s Forum at Big Cedar Lodge with Dr. Roy Fish moved me like I haven’t been moved in a long time. As he finished his presentation, I just began to weep and couldn’t stop (didn’t want to!)

Why all the tears?

Because he reminded us through several simple stories of the privilege of sowing Gospel seeds into lost people, and the harvest that follows. In a nutshell, I wept with desire for God to use me to help reach people with the Gospel. That used to be a regular prayer of mine. It used to be a big focus of ministry. But sometimes in the busyness of ‘doing church’ we forget what it’s all about – the reason for capital campaigns, and children’s ministry, and a hot band, and coffee bars, and websites, and nice facilities, and sermon series, and big screen multimedia, and email blasts and TV commercials, and multi-site expansion, and ALL that we do – is simply to reach lost people who matter to God!

When was the last time you wept over that?

Do it again, Lord!

At the Global Advance Pastor’s Forum in Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, I just sat spellbound as Dr. Roy Fish shared about the “Layman’s Prayer Revival of 1858″. (I know; I know, some of you are thinking what could be more boring than a history lecture from 150 years ago! If you only knew…)

According to Dr. Fish, that era was much like our own, with materialism and moral decay threatening to destroy American society from within. But a convert of Charles Finney named Jeremiah Lamphere invited businessmen from New York City to join him for a noon prayer meeting on April 23, 1858. He actually prayed alone for the first half-hour, before 5 other businessmen trickled in to the church where he met. By the time it was over, 18 months later:

• there were 150 such prayer meetings around New York City, with 50,000 praying daily
• 25,000 businessmen were converted in NY City, and 65,000 others were saved there
• From NY City, it spread eventually throughout the USA
• In Trenton, NJ, 1700 were converted in one Methodist Church & 5,000 total in the city
• When the revival reached Kalamazoo, MI the leader of the daily prayer meeting read a prayer request that was handed in “from a praying wife, asking prayer for her unsaved husband” and immediately a man jumped to his feet with tears and said, “that’s me – my wife has been praying for me to get saved”, then another and another, until 5 men were standing, claiming to be the one….and 400 were converted in one week!
• When it reached Chicago, a young man who had just moved there wrote his mother not to worry about him, because he was attending a wonderful prayer meeting every day. Soon he asked to teach a Sunday school class at his church, only to be told that there was a waiting list of willing teachers – but that if he would bring his pupils to church, they’d let him teach. He started that next Sunday with 14 street urchins…a year later there were 600 of them…the following year is was 1,200, and thus began the public ministry of D.L. Moody!
• People from every walk of life were affected: in Philadelphia, 1500 firemen were converted (35 prayer meetings were conducted in 5 fire stations every week!); so many sailors in the US Navy got converted that 2 Christian newspapers began publishing just for sailors!
• Population of the USA at that time was 30 million people; one million of them were converted during this Layman’s revival in a year-and-a-half!

As Dr. Fish said of Jeremiah Lamphere, “somebody just has to start something!” – and I say, “Do it again, Lord!”

Nice welcome

Just got this post from our neighbors at Granger Community Church. They’ve raised the bar for creative ministry and reached thousands of people in Michiana over the last 20 years, and blessed us at CLC though various conferences and seminars. In fact, one of the things I most appreciate about Pastors Mark Beeson and Tim Stevens and their whole team is their willingness to share what they’ve learned with those of us who are still learning.

It’s definitely a little intimidating to be in the shadow of such a great ministry, but as Tim says in his post, it’s going to take a lot of different churches to reach a lot of different people, and we’re excited about the opportunity to reach some of them starting this Sunday, March 2!

CLCers, it’s not too late to join your prayers with mine for hundreds of people to respond to our invitations this Sunday.

glad I came!

All right, I’ll be honest. I don’t like traveling without my wife. I don’t like anything about it – flying or driving by myself…(especially) eating alone…just the whole thing. So I left today somewhat reluctantly, out of respect of Dr. David Shibley and his personal appeal to me to attend. Then my nonstop flight was cancelled and I had to scramble to make new connections and get here just in time for the opening session.

BUT boy, am I glad I came! Just this opening session from Dr. Shibley on “Evangelism in the Local Church” was worth the trip – and there’s 3 more sessions to go with a legendary seminar professor on this same subject of evangelism.

Just yesterday in our creative team planning meeting we laid the groundwork for a new series in April that exactly coincides with this retreat theme, and after today, I’m especially jazzed! Now I can’t wait to get home and share…

on the road again

I’m headed out this morning to the Global Advance Pastor’s Retreat in Branson, MO. This meeting has been one of the highlights for our year the past few years, as Chris & I have really enjoyed the opportunity to fellowship with some of the leading missions-minded pastors in America, and enjoy a relaxed pace in scenic Branson, too.

This time, because of our recent trip to Asia, we had decided not to attend. However, Dr. David Shibley persuaded me to come alone, mainly because of the special guest speaker who will be sharing in all our sessions. So, here I go this morning, weary in body but excited in spirit about what I’ll receive in the next 2 days.

I’ll be back on Friday to gear up for our opening weekend in South Bend – that’s what I’m most excited about!

Ariel Parker funeral

For all CLCers who are interested, the funeral for the 4-year old CLCer who was killed in last weekend’s car crash will be this Saturday at noon here at CLC. The wake will be at 11am.

Please continue to lift up Stephon & Rachel and the entire Parker family during this time of grief – and thank you for the loving support you’ve already shown!

Harvest event in Philippines

I shared a little this weekend about the Harvest event sponsored by the “Household of Faith” church in Davao City (actually, by their ‘Regeneration’ youth ministry led by Pastor Joel Montes, son of senior Pastor Herley Montes).

It was one of the most thrilling times of my life, for sure, and today I received some of the pictures from the event and I thought you’d enjoy seeing them

(The shots of individuals talking to small circles of students are part of the follow-up after the salvation prayer. They were SO organized – each cell leader immediately shared with those who had just received Christ about the ‘next steps’, in order to consolidate the harvest and insure fruit that remains!)

Like I said, it was ‘first-class’ all the way, and I hope the pictures give you a better idea of what an outstanding job they did in reaching out to their unsaved friends. May ALL of us be lights for Jesus in our dark world, too!

Weekend reflections

Here’s some random (really random) thoughts on this last Sunday afternoon of February:

• kudos to 24/7 and our Consumed Student Ministries for the great reports I’ve heard about their “Elevation” Winter Retreat this weekend. Really cool that we had student participation from all 3 campuses, too!
• sure felt good to be back in the CLC pulpit this weekend – I miss you guys when I’m away more than you miss me!
• we had a ton of new folks in Tinley Park this weekend, and even better, most of them told me it wasn’t their first time, but actually returning guests….I say ‘even better’ because all the stats indicate that each time a guest returns, the greater the chance of them remaining and getting plugged-in to a church….and I like it when God adds to our family!
• loved the unusual touch of the Spirit at all 3 services, and especially the fruit during the salvation invitation…..Saturday night we had a lady get born-again who told me she had not attended any church in more than 20 years!
• seeing the news article about the awful car wreck on Friday night that claimed the life of 4-year old Ariel Parker, youngest son of CLCers Stephon & Rachel Parker was so sobering. I had the chance to pray with Stephon in the lobby after the 9am service today, but there are really no words to comfort this kind of grief. Please do help me by lifting this precious family to the Lord all this week.
• just heard that, sure enough, there were some new families visiting our South Bend campus today because they just couldn’t wait for next week’s grand ‘re-opening’ celebration……we’re believing God for more than 300 in attendance on opening day, and I’m thankful for all the CLCers in TP who agreed to fast & pray this week for God’s blessing on next Sunday!

I’m sure there’s more, but I’m tired – not sure if it’s jetlag finally setting in, or just the normal consequence of not getting much sleep (our lost luggage was finally delivered just before 1am today) or preaching 3 times…but either way, I’m signing off by saying, I sure love CLCers!

home, sweet home

Well, it was 43 hours from our wake-up call at the hotel in Manado, Indonesia until we arrived home in Monee, after 5 flights covering well over 10,000 miles & 14 time zones – but it sure is good to be home….even if AA did manage to lose our luggage between LA and Chicago!

I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight, but not before closing our ‘Heroes’ series with a message I can’t wait to deliver!

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