According to next generation thought leader Blake Mallen, “most new online technologies have one root intention: to make it simpler for people to communicate and collaborate.”  Of all the tools and websites created to connect people, Facebook seems to be the most popular starting place for many.  With more than 500 million users (that’s right – 500 MILLION AND GROWING), we all have at our fingertips the tools to find, friend, and engage with people.  Imaging how churches can use this platform to expand the Kingdom of God!

Consider this:

To reach 50 million users, it took:

1. Radio – 38 years
2. TV – 13 years
3. Internet – 4 years
4. iPod – 3 years

FACEBOOK ADDED 100 MILLION USERS IN LESS THAN 9 MONTHS

Source: United Nations Cyber School Bus Document/Mashable

Additionally, according to a Grunwald Associates National Study, “at the end of 2010 Generation Y will outnumber baby boomers…96% of them have joined a social network.”

QUESTIONS

Considering this social trend, how will the church respond and leverage social media to help expand the Kingdom of God?

How will business owners leverage social media to market their goods and services?

How are you leveraging social media?

What an incredible weekend at Mars Hill as we celebrated Mother’s Day in a very special way.  We kicked off our celebration on Friday with thousands attending our “Women’s Only” Worship Empowerment Service.   We reminded women that they are a “Fragrance of Beauty” and gave gift bags to them as they entered our worship center.

Their gift bags contained the following items:

1. A Compact mirror – to remind them they’re beautifully created in God’s Image
2. An Emory board – to remind them how God has the ability to file away the rough edges
3. A packet of Kleenex – to remind them that God can wipe away every tear

Additionally, the service included:

1. Women’s Praise Team
2. Women’s Dance Group
3. An all Women’s Band
4. A Woman Sound Engineer, & Camera/ Video Operator

In short, women were empowered to DO IT ALL & had fun doing it!

Yvette Williams gave a powerful testimony that had everyone sitting on the edge of their seats.  1st Lady Shauntai Stowers gave a riveting introduction that literally brought the ladies to their feet (maybe she should’ve gave the message).  I preached “As Is” from John 4 which told the story of The Woman at the Well.  The point of the story is how Jesus accepts our condition “as is.”  We don’t have to cover up, make excuses, or hide behind shame. It was truly an inspiring message.

The evening concluded with prizes given to the woman who had the most guests in attendance. The winner’s prize: Dinner for two with my wife & I.  Shauntai and I are looking forward to this special event.

Here are a few of the many comments I received:

“It was indeed AWESOME, the devil tried to keep me home, but I’m glad I came…”

“AWESOME indeed…had a life-transforming experience”

“Pastor thanks for delivering a message from God that encouraged and ministered to women…that we can meet God just as we are…The women in attendance needed that…”

“Pastor thank you for seeing the need & delivering a dose of medication that was so necessary! I am more empowered today than I was on yesterday.”

“I came to the service expecting & ready to receive and I got WAY MORE!”

In closing, I want to publicly thank our staff & the hundreds of volunteers who gave their time & talents!

The opening of the school year, 1905-1906, found at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, a group of students distributed in the various colleges of the University, who were desirous of maintaining more intimate contacts with one another than their classroom study permitted.  They often met in groups during the Autumn of 1905 and talked of the possibilities of closer contacts among themselves.  Different ones among them took the lead in calling these meetings, which were informal in ever detail.

After several meetings, on December 4, 1906 those in attendance decided to become a fraternity and Alpha Phi Alpha was born.  It came as an evolution through trial and struggle.  It was not spontaneous, but gradual in its growth.  Alpha Phi Alpha has not always been the great fraternity that it is today.  Its founders, however, were always great men with keen vision, undaunted courage, indomitable fortitude, and unparalleled tenacity.

There were seven men who founded Alpha Phi Alpha in 1906.  Each of these men were destined to play a highly significant role in the formative years of our great fraternity.  The members of Alpha Phi Alpha have decreed that the Founders be designated as JEWELS of the Fraternity.  The Founders (Jewels) of Alpha Phi Alpha are as follows:

Jewel Henry Arthur Callis
Jewel Charles Henry Chapman
Jewel Eugene Kinckle Jones
Jewel George Biddle Kelley
Jewel Nathaniel Allison Murray
Jewel Robert Harold Ogle
Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy

The original seven who remained steadfast to the idea of a Greek-letter Fraternity, during the months of uncertainty, did not waiver in their effforts to bring about the realization of their vision.  Therefore, I salute all the men who’ve crossed the burning sands and proudly call themselves “Alphas.”  Happy Birthday dear brothers & always remember:

Manly deeds, scholarship, & love for all mankind…

Onward & Upward – ’06

Brother Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.
Jackson State University
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Delta Phi Chapter – Spring 1987
“The Naughty 9″

Multitasking is the ability of a person to perform more than one task at the same time.  When you’re going back and forth between complicated projects, it is impossible to focus properly on each one.  “Researches call this task switching, an action, that, itself, requires time and energy.  Depending on how many tasks you’re juggling, you could be losing 20 to 40 percent of your time, because you have to reengage your focus and thoughts.” (“Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” Joshua S. Rubinstein, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City, NJ; Journal of Experimental Psychology – Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 27, No. 4).

I’ve discovered both life and ministry require a certain amount of juggling.  Few days play out in an orderly, linear sequence.  Speaking on the phone to a member, client, or colleague while you’re reading a report or typing an e-mail might not cost you that much.  But, doing so while you’re preparing a report or message might.  At the very least, it will slow you down and result in sub par work.  To increase your focus and performance when concentration is critical, cut down on multitasking.

A few suggestions:

1. Turn off your e-mail alarm (who needs to be alerted to spam or useless facebook updates).  Check it regularly when it’s convenient for you – not when it interrupts you.
2. Block out time for projects that require intense focus such as sermon preparation, budget forecasting, vision/planning, writing, drafting a presentation, or conducting analysis.
3. Forward your calls to voice mail and close your door if necessary.  Let people know that you’re working on a project.  If you don’t have a door, put up a sign.
4. When possible, schedule important phone conversations when you know you’ll have no distractions.
5. Never work on something else while you’re on the phone.  The person on the other end knows when you’re writing an email while you talk, and it’s probably irritating him or her.

Organize your work so that you can do ONE THING at a time and do it well.  The payoff will be substantial!

What if God granted you an opportunity to go back in time and speak to the wisest people who ever lived (people such as Moses, Apostle Paul, Solomon, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Fredrick Douglass)?  However, once you reached your destination, you sat at their feet and proceeded to do all the talking?  Would it be a worthwhile endeavor?  Did the aforementioned people need to know all you had to say?  Upon leaving would you wish you had talked less and listened more?  Incredibly, many people enter God’s holy presence in prayer and then do all the talking!

What God has to say to us is infinitely more important that what we have to say to Him, yet we generally monopolize the conversation. God already knows everything we plan to tell Him, yet we continue talking rather than allowing Him to tell us things we don’t know.  Why?  Our American individualist mindset tricks us to believe that we can dominate our conversation with God. Prayer is two-way communication, but it is not communication between two equal parties.

Tonight (7PM) we’ll gather @ the Mars Hill Baptist Church for our 1st Wednesday Worship.  This worship experience allows us to spend more time worshipping God and listening to the Word.  During tonight’s service, I will pose 5 Questions that will revolutionize the prayer lives of those in attendance.  The questions are as follows:

1. What is Prayer (the definition may surprise you)?
2. Why Pray (it’s not what you think)?
3. To Whom Do We Pray (is it God, Jesus, or The Holy Spirit)?
4. What Do God’s Answers Look Like (it’s more than, “God give me a sign”)?
5. What If There Is Silence?

Please come and join us!

1. During our 8AM Worship Experience, we were blessed to have a long-time friend of my father & our church preach the Word.
2. Dr. W.H. Foster, Sr., preached with passion and power as he encourage our members to continue to build on the legacy and expand for the Glory of God.  He blessed us by singing “Father, I Stretch My Hand To Thee.”  And yes, he ripped it & shouted EVERYTHING in our church.  What a mighty man of God!
3. During our 10:30AM Worship Experience, personally, I thought the music was UNBELIEVABLE!!!  WOW!
4. The Praise & Worship period blended contemporary praise peppered with traditional hymns.  From the response of the audience, I knew we were in for another awe-inspiring worship experience.
5. I sensed many in our congregation were carrying heavy burdens and needed a breakthrough.  Therefore, I preached “A Second Wind” from Isaiah 40:29-31 and saw how the words bypassed their intellect and pierced the very core of their souls!
6. To catch a Second Wind is to have increased energy or strength after feeling tired or weak.
7. A Second wind is a phenomenon in distance running, such as marathons (as well as other sports), whereby an athlete who is too out of breath and tired to continue suddenly finds the strength to press on at top performance with less exertion.  I FEEL A SHOUT COMING ON!!!
8. The phenomenon has come to be used as a metaphor for continuing on with renewed energy past the point thought to be one’s prime, whether in other sports, careers, or life in general.

A Few in Need of a Second Wind:

WIDOWS
SINGLE PARENTS
THOSE FACING HEALTH CHALLENGES
THOSE FACING LAYOFFS/DOWNSIZED
COLLEGE GRADS FACING A DIFFICULT JOB MARKET

As we wait on the Lord, we’ll find more strength (2ND WIND) to REST (while God prepares us for our next assignment), REFLECT (look around and see God’s faithfulness), and WORSHIP (to make Him the center of our affection).   Worship ended with a POWERFUL altar call for those who were ready to give up.  God interceded and gave them a “SECOND WIND” to go on!  As I prayed & laid hands, I felt the power of God breaking yokes & strongholds and people walked away with renewed strength.

Mars Hill…I love you guys…I am so blessed to be here and serving as your pastor.  I am BLOWN away by all that God is doing…and I can’t wait to see what happens next around here.  Ephesians 3:20 is becoming more and more real to all of us…we serve an amazing God!

Next week I begin a new series
“Can You See Him”

Here’s An Overview:

Daily life usually sets us on a path that’s almost robotic and we forget to see God in all things – the good, the tragic, or even the mundane.  Think of your day today.  Did you see Him in your kids’ laughter, the homeless person on the corner, or even the papers you stapled?  He was there. Join me as we discover how to see God in everything.

Read more >> Options >>

Each year we’re invited to hear “celebrity” pastors share God’s plan for the church and how we ought to adopt it and be large and successful like them.  Frankly, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a venue to really address how and why churches grow.  Many pastors & church leaders make their annual pilgrimage to Saddleback, Willowcreek, North Point, Fellowship, New Birth, Greater St. Steven FGBC, The Potter’s House, etc. and come away excited and delusional with unrealistic expectations.  Ed Stetzer of Lifeway calls it ministry pornography.  According to Ed Stetzer:

“Ministry pornography is an unrealistic expectation of an experience you’re never going to have which distracts you from the real thing.”

God used these churches and their pastors for a specific time and in a specific place.  Unfortunately, that experience is rarely duplicated.  If you were to take the aforementioned churches and transplant them in other areas, the results would be drastically different.  Can you imagine Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, or Andy Stanley leading an inner-city urban church?  Or, can you see Bishop T.D. Jakes screaming “Get Ready…Get Ready…Get, Get, Ready” at Saddleback or North Point Church?  Simply put, God rarely does the same thing twice.

May I Offer You A Few Suggestions to break your addiction to ministry porn:

1. Confess your addiction to ministry pornography & repent!
2. Do not attend any conferences for one year
3. Get alone with your Bible, pen, & paper and discover God’s purpose for the church (read Matt. 22-37-40; 28:19-20, The Book of Acts)
4. Get a demographic breakdown of your community (US Census Bureau or your local Chamber of Commerce).
5. After discovering the purpose of the church, write down how your church plans to reach that community (this is the hard part).  Make sure it’s less than a paragraph because people don’t like to read long statements.
6. Preach/teach a series on God’s vision for the church and how you plan to fulfill it.
7. Reorganize your church’s leaders, staff, volunteers, and structure (in that order)
8. Evaluate & tweak your plan/strategy

So, what’s your next step?  I’d love to hear it!

“It was the best of times, the worst of times…”

The opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, referring to the time of the French Revolution describes the economic reality of today.  The question that’s on everyone’s mind, but, seldom asked is: How are you doing?  The answer depends on your individual circumstances, of course – but also on your perspective.   The glass is either half full or half empty for many of us today.  This morning when I woke up, my first emotion was profound gratitude. Even though my financial worth had been decimated by the events of the last three months, I realized that nothing could touch the things that are most valuable to me.

I also realized that I have a choice: I can focus on what I have lost or I can focus on what I have. I started making a mental list:

1. I have my health.
2. I have a loving wife, who is also my best friend
3. I have three wonderful children.  “I am particularly fond of each of them,” as Papa says in The Shack.
4. I have several profound friendships that encourage and challenge me.
5. I have meaningful work that I would do even if I wasn’t getting paid.
6. I have incredibly competent co-workers whom I truly love and respect.
7. I have a church that grows dearer to me with each passing year.
8. I have a relationship with God that is endlessly fascinating and fulfilling.

And the list goes on. I could name a hundred more things, but you get the idea.

My guess is that the Economic Downturn is going to get worse (I pray I’m wrong) before it gets better.  You and I have very little control over what happens in the external environment.  But we do have control over what happens inside our hearts.  It all depends on our mental focus.

Question:
What do you have that the Economic Downturn can’t touch?

FYI – I want to thank my friends from Facebook for sharing their tips.  If you would like to read more, please click here.

Sunday services are over, but, my mind is STILL spinning…

1. I honestly feel that this weekends services were the most amazing services we’ve ever had since I became pastor in 1999.
2. Our total church attendance was over 2,500 for the first time in the history of our church!
3. I preached about God’s historical bailouts & (The Full Coverage Plan, The “I AM” Plan, The Provision Plan) & closed with The Greatest Bailout that ever happened – The Resurrection Plan!
4. Our NEW & IMPROVED Video Venue Service had over 220 for the first time today!  I want to thank all the ushers, greeters, deacons, ministers, and security who served in our Video Venue – YOU ARE SIMPLY THE BEST!
5. Our 100-voice choir was OFF THE CHAIN as they slammed Donald Lawrence’s “Matthew 28.”
6. Honestly, I believe Mars Hill has the best Worship & Fine Arts Ministry – PERIOD!  There are churches with larger ministries & celebrity musicians & personalities.  However, I’ll take our anointing over any celebrity!
7. Folks…what happened yesterday at our church IS NOT NORMAL…it wasn’t a “nice service”…it was a move of God!  I’ve honestly never been a part of something like what happened today…and it’s only the beginning.
8. Religion is all about what we do to get to God…Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!
9. THAT is one of the problems with church today…we’ve became “normal” when the call of Christ on our lives is to change the world-”normal” people can’t do that!
10. We will continue this series on Sunday…expecting/praying for God to do amazing things AGAIN!

AND…to My Mars Hill Family…a personal note…

Reality is this…satan got his butt kicked this weekend!  Hell is going to be less crowded!  People crossed over from death to life.  The way a community is changed is by the church preaching AND living the Gospel…and I believe we are going to continue to see Jesus do the unexplainable and undeniable…and we, His church, will continue to become unstoppable!

He’s alive-we win…now all we need to do is continually run up the score!!!

I LOVE you guys…I LOVE our church…I LOVE serving here…there is NOTHING ELSE on the planet I would rather do!  I’m bought in!!!

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Free-wheeling capitalism has always been the heart of the US Economy but the recent $700 billion bailout, a level of government intervention not seen since the Great Depression, is hardly unprecedented.  Historically, the Federal Government has not only taken stakes in banks, steel mills, and coal mines but have even seized control of everything from railways to savings and loans.  Unfortunately, when it comes to you and I, we would be hard pressed to make their list.  Consequently, If you STILL believe the government will bail you out – think again!

As Believers, we’ve already received our bailout!

So what does the bailout mean for me?  The word power occurs 57 times in the New Testament.  It is a word used to describe the most powerful bailout that ever happened, an event that separated A.D. from B.C.  That event was the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Consequently, that resurrection power is available to change your life! So, please join us this Easter at the Mars Hill Baptist Church and experience a heartfelt worship experience coupled with a timely Word from God.  Additionally, we will unveil our “new & improved” video venue which is additional worship experience using video technology to reproduce our live worship experience.

Easter Weekend Schedule

Good Friday

Friday, April 10, 2009
12 Noon & 6:30PM

Easter

Sunday, April 12, 2009
8:00 AM & 10:30 AM (Live)
8:00 AM & 10:30 AM (Video Venue)