Here is a quote from the book, Stimulated!

“When we are most in touch with our creative swing is when we feel that wonderful euphoric sensation associated with being stimulated. These are times when we feel most alive and excited because we are acting and responding in ways that are authentically aligned with our creative selves — our creative genius.” (pg 182, Stimulated, Andrew Pek and Jeannine McGlade)

Tags: Stimulated!, book, Andrew Pek, Jeannie Mcglade

This past weekend’s Faith Apostolic recap is for the AM service only, as my family and I were in Ottawa at Calvary Church for the evening.  Kofi Kobia was down in Cornwall for the evening service.

My message was pretty simple. I asked the question after reading the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is our neighbor?

The world has converged together.  The world is flat as Thomas Freidman has stated in his book.  What does this mean?

Simply, our neighbor doesn’t just mean the person living directly beside us on our local street.  So when we hear about social injustices, what is our response going to be?

Miss it?
Ignore it?
Recognize it, but still inaction?
Or act on it?
Do something, anything about it?

Do we really want to see people’s lives transformed?  Do we want to see the kingdom of God make a difference in the world?

If we do, what are we going to do about it?

Maybe we have to do things a bit differently in a flat world.

Tags: FaithApostolic, Thomas Freidman, flat world, Kingdom of God, Ottawa, Calvary Church, Kofi Kobia, Cornwall

Here is the recap from this past weekend.  The kids went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for the weekend.  This was the first time my wife and I had spent the weekend away from the kids since B4 came into the family. 

We spent the weekend over in Massena, NY. 

On Sunday, I continued the series on Baggage.  I spoke on the topic of Emotional Baggage.  Many times we are told things throughout our lives that cause us to carry emotional baggage around, such as “your not good enough,” “your useless,” etc.  As a result we can try to impress people and be a performer.  We have to remember it is not about who we are, but who’s we are.  It is about who we know, Jesus Christ.  We need to lay down our emotional baggage, we can do that because who’s we are.  It is not by our power that we need to try and perform, it is all about Christ Spirit working in and through us.

In the second service I was going to speak this message again so that everyone could get to hear all the messages of the series, but I just felt the Spirit nudge me to go into a different direction.  There is some recent changes about to take place at FA, and I felt the Spirit tell me to preach a message that is true to myself.  So, I prayed about it, and I preached the message I have taught in a couple of instances before.  It was about getting into the community and reaching those that are not Christ followers.  About being missional. Being local missionaries. This might cause us to do church differently. To obey the verb, “go.”

Some changes that are coming to FA is that there will be a vote for a new pastor, April 29th, 7:00pm. Someone has put their name forward to the District Board and the local membership of FA will be voting soon if they accept this person as the new pastor. 

It is not me.

Tags: FaithApostolic, Cornwall, Baggage, Emotional Baggage, Massena, NY, missional, missionaries

This past weekend was the first time I have preached an Easter message. It was also the first time I had to prepare to serve communion as well.

The message I preached could be summed up in a few points

• What if the stone hadn’t rolled away on the third day, what would that mean?
• The stone did roll away on the third day and here is proof.

The stone was rolled away on the third day and Jesus Christ rose again, conquering death, not just so Jesus could exit, also, so that we could enter. Death is no longer a pit, but an entrance into everlasting life.

We had the opportunity to go to lunch with a new family that has been attending FA.  We were able to learn about their story….incredible history.  I also got to learn about architecture, pretty interesting stuff.

In the evening, I was surprised to have our Bishop in attendance.  I have a meeting this week with my Pastor…was to be on Tuesday, but got postponed to Thursday

This past Tuesday night 040709, I took my three oldest kids to the Newsboys concert in Gatineau, QC. Here is my review of the show.

Originally I was not going to purchase tickets to the show, because I wasn’t sure I was going to like the new sound of the band without frontman Peter Furler.

The Newsboys in the near past had Bass player Phil Joel leave the band. This had the band minus two members I felt made the sound of the Newsboys in the past, primarily because of the vocals.

So I wasn’t sure if I wanted to plop down the $ for four tickets. My three kids really wanted to go to the concert, so Monday I purchased the tickets.

The were three other bands, Bread of Stone, VOTA, and Decemberadio. I was only familar with Decemberadio.

Bread of Stone opened the show, they had a pretty good sound, and I will problably check out their music in the future. I think they only played four or five songs, just to get you in the live show mode.

VOTA, they were very good. I have already downloaded their album and have been listening to it the past couple of days. The kids really liked this band, and want it on their MP3 players. The band gave everyone at the show a free digital album to download, that was a great marketing move to get more exposure.

Decemberadio was good, but I was a little disappointed that they had what seemed to be a short set. With two full albums I was left feeling they needed to play some more. My favorite song by the band also was not played, The Least of These. Their sound was great with what they did play, Southern Rock. The kids also got a a poster autographed by the whole band.

Newsboys was a great show. With new frontman Michael Tait, formally of DC Talk and the band Tait, they rocked. Tait was able to rock the Newsboys catalog, the highlight being Breakfast, such an awesome crowd song.

I also liked the B stage setup. It was neat how they mixed short versions of the songs and got more intimate with the crowd.

They also performed some old DC Talk songs, and that made the show for me. The encore was Jesus Freak, and that was amazing live, absolutely love that song.

Overall an amazing show, and to top it off the kids had a blast.

I typed this on my Blackberry, so links and spelling are secondary.

This past Sunday at Faith Apostolic we continued the series called “Baggage.”

This week I decided to change it up a little at Faith Apostolic and take somewhat of a risk.  The risk was that those that are regular attendees of Faith Apostolic would miss the point of what I was doing. I decided that for both the AM and PM service I was going to speak the same message.

For those that are reading this and are not aware why that would be a risk, I’ll explain.  There are churches that have multiple services on Sunday and the same message is spoken in each service, but the reason they have multiple services is to handle the amount of people attending their church. However, at Faith Apostolic and other churches two services are held AM and PM and traditionally these services have different messages preached, taught etc.

I wanted to make a point that we need to break free some from traditions.  That traditions should not define what we do.  We need to make sure that we are not just doing “church” but being the “church.”

I felt I needed to make the slight change this week.  Felt it was the right thing to do.  So I did it. Honestly, I felt the second service was one of the best we have had since we have been going down to Cornwall.

The message this week fit with this change as well. I spoke on “Religious Baggage.”

There were two types of baggage I spoke on:

1. Pharisee Style Baggage - man made rules that go too far, where they become unreasonable and distracting.
2. Religious Baggage from other religions - when we come to Christ we can carry some baggage with us from previous religious teaching, that can hinder us experiencing everything Christ wants us to. 

To put this baggage down we need to return to two things…

1. Love for Christ
2. Love for Other People

Traditions or man made rules cannot replace those two things.  Sometimes we can have #1 but lose #2 or vice versa or both.

Tags: ReligiousBaggage, Pharisee, Baggage, Faith Apostolic

This past Sunday we started a new series - “Baggage”. This is a series other churches have done, so it was not a unique series to Faith Apostolic.  However, as usual the series is localized to fit the local church.

I had the platform covered in different types and sizes of bags.  It looked pretty cool.  I forgot to get a picture, but will this coming weekend.

AM Service

• The message was called, “Baggage – Check It”
• Everyone has baggage, and the key is to figure out what your baggage is and acknowledge it.
• We carry our baggage around
• Three prayers to deal with baggage

• Jesus help me renew my mind with your truth
• Jesus help restore what is lost.
• Jesus help me to release my offender (forgive)

PM Service

• The message was called, “Baggage – The Past”
• Talked about Moses, went through everything that Moses had been through before the burning bush.
• Moses tried to get out of it.
• Moses had some baggage when God told him he was going back to be the leader of the people out of bondage in Egypt.
• When we carry the baggage of the past, we are the same. It is difficult because we hold and carry the past around with us.
• There is some baggage that Faith Apostolic is carrying around from the recent past, that needs to be put down to move forward.
• We need to do some things

• we need to know the truth, we do that by listening to Jesus. Stop listening to the wrong people.
• Learn the lesson. Ask who am I listening to? Did I listen to Jesus? What choices did I have? Did I have the correct attitude?
• Look to the future, look to what lies ahead.