The mission of Grace Community Church is short.

GCC exists to encourage growing followers of Jesus Christ.

We believe it’s easy to understand, but it’s obviously somewhat subjective. Our staff has been working over the last few months to add some clarity to what we mean by “growing followers of Jesus Christ”. In an all day staff retreat recently, we decided on ten attributes of a growing follower of Jesus.

We call them our core values and we will be sharing them with our church in the coming weeks. These will become principles to guide how we encourage discipleship at every level of ministry.

Our core values:

A growing follower of Jesus values…

GATHERING: consistently gathering with the Church to celebrate Jesus and encounter Biblical teaching. (Acts 2:42, Hebrews 10:25)

COMMUNITY: building authentic relationships of encouragement and accountability with other followers of Jesus. (Acts 2:44, 1 Corinthians 12:12)

SERVING: developing a servant’s heart that looks to always meet the needs of others. (Matthew 20:28, 1 Peter 4:10)

PRAYER: maintaining a continuous conversation with God. (1 Thessalonians 5:17, James 5:16)

GOD’S WORD: spending consistent time reading the Bible and applying its Truth. (Acts 2:42, 2 Timothy 3:16)

SHARING THEIR STORY: creating conversations about what God has done and is doing in his/her life. (Acts 1:8, 1 Peter 3:15)

WISDOM: seeking God’s will in all decisions. (Proverbs 8:11, James 1:5)

GENEROSITY: developing a growing generosity with resources and finances. (Proverbs 3:9, 2 Corinthians 9:7)

INTEGRITY: striving to develop a reputation that honors God. (Matthew 5:16, Ephesians 4:1-3)

INFLUENCE: maximizing influence to point others to Jesus. (Deuteronomy 4:9, 1 Peter 3:16)

Does your church have something such as this to help shape programs, ministry and teaching?

Today was a special day of remembrance. You may want to read THIS POST and watch the 5 minute video associated with before viewing this message.

We are in a series called FREE. It’s about living the freedom Christ intends for us to have, in spite of the death, pain, failure, loss and disappointments that come our way…mostly beyond our control. How as a believer are we to grieve? If you’re struggling with a significant loss, I hope this message gives you comfort:

Breaking free from the pain of death or loss from Gcomchurch Sermons on Vimeo.

If you choose to listen to this message, you may do so HERE:

Most of my readers know by now that I live in a military town. Our church is full of modern-day heros who have sacrificed to keep us free as a nation. I’ve written 10 Reasons I Love Our Military Families previously. Today is a day to remember all that took place, honor the fallen. Hundreds of fire, police and medical personnel, along with hundreds from our nation and others died on 9/11. I heard today that 90 countries were represented in the deaths on 9/11.

In a military community, the remembrance takes on a deeper meaning, because that day changed how many in our community have lived these last 10 years. In our church alone, we have several widows, several parents who have lost children, and hundreds of families who have spent more time separated more than together, because of the events of 9/11. There have been 603 lives lost this far into the war on terror from our community.

This week, as we remembered the events of 911, three of our brave soldiers were interviewed. Here’s is the short interview we shared today.

Please pray for our military and families and for our nation! Please continue to remember those who serve, our military, as well as our police, fire and emergency personnel. Thanks for all you do!

I am honored to live in a military town. All my life I have known soldiers. Some of my best friends and family have been military-related. Our church has a large military population. I have heard people talk about the burden of military families on a church, because every three years they have to be replaced. The family in this picture was in our community group, but left our church for a reassignment. Cheryl and I could not love a family anymore than we love them and we’ve loved staying in touch with them.

I have always felt our church was stronger because of our military families, for as long as they might stay.  Therefore, as we celebrate military families, here are 10 Reasons why I love the military families in our church:

• They are some of the most dedicated people I know
• They bring experiences with them from around the world
• They have great work ethics
• They are expectant of great things from God
• They are appreciative of any ministry
• They make wonderful volunteers
• They build friendships for life
• They are sacrificial givers
• They raise awesome families
• They are brave soldiers, protecting my right to do what I do

God bless our military and God bless America!

(I previously posted this over 2 years ago, but thought it appropriate to re-post, slightly edited, in honor of this weekend.)

We have an all day or couple day staff retreat a few times each year at Grace Community Church. These retreats always focus on the future…where we are going. We have made huge changes in our church as a result of these times.

In our last all-day retreat, our main purpose was to write some guiding principles of what it means to accomplish our vision, which is “Grace Community Church exists to lead people to become growing followers of Jesus.” We did a few things before we got to that part, but they were all forward-thinking discussions.

These are the notes from that day. They may appear random to you, but my hope is they will help you see how we use these all-day staff retreats.

Collaborating with Volunteers

• Organize a team of volunteers (Collaboration teams/Dream Teams) in your ministry to learn from them.
• They need to feel a part & have a voice at the table on decisions in your ministry. You have to genuinely listen to them and validate their feedback. It will allow you to get early buy in from them.
• High power/high interest volunteers need to be part of that team
• Doesn’t have to be the same team every time
• If people understand the “why”, they will always be willing to do the “what”
• We have to move more in that direction the bigger we get.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• We have to make our strengths and weaknesses work together as a team
• Our weaknesses do show up on the team
• Use others on the team to help with the areas that we have weaknesses

Passion for Ministry

• You minister differently to someone who is a new believer vs. one who has been a believer for 50 yrs
• We each tend to have a passion for a specific segment of people in that spectrum.
• We have to push ourselves to minister to those that we aren’t naturally drawn to.

VISION DISCUSSION

Grace Community Church exists to lead people to become growing followers of Jesus.

• We exist to LEAD PEOPLE to be growing followers of Jesus
• But they don’t know what that means
• They can do everything in our strategy of Gather, Commit and Serve and still not be growing
• We need Guiding principles for what it means to be growing followers of Jesus

We spent the rest of the day in teams, and then as a group, writing our guiding principles. We are word-smithing these principles. I’ll share them in a future post.

How often does your staff do an all-day retreat, and what do those days look like? 

Today Grace Community Church released our new website. It’s streamlined, cleans up some areas, and offers and easier navigation for visitors. Most of our web traffic comes from people checking out churches, so we needed to simplify some things…plus…it was time for a change.

Check it out HERE and let us know what you think!

By the way, this will be our third major website overhaul in less than 6 years. What do you need to upgrade in your church? (I wrote about that subject HERE.)

For whatever reason, apparently some of my readers like to listen to my Sunday messages. My hope is that listening online to anyone’s message is not an excuse for failing to connect with a local church. I believe that’s where the best discipleship occurs. If you are having trouble connecting somewhere, read THIS POST. If you want to supplement your church experience, you have to miss for other reasons, or you just want to hear my teaching, welcome!

We have a teaching team, so I don’t preach every week, but share the messages here when I do. Currently our podcast host is experiencing some problems with the embed feature, but if you are interested, we are walking through the book of Mark this summer. Here are a couple messages I’ve not yet posted. I’ll post the messages as a video here when that feature is repaired.

Week 1 - Mark 8:1-13

To hear this message, click HERE. To view this message click HERE.

Here are the questions for reflection on this message:

• Do you believe God is able to do whatever you need Him to do?
• Do you believe God will do what you need Him to do?
• Do you have people in your life who you rust more now than you did when you first met them?
• Do you have people you trust less now that you know them?
• How do you think you could develop more trust in God?

Week 2 - Mark 10:17-31

A key to developing a sincere, growing faith in Jesus is to discover what holds our heart more than Christ. Join Ron Edmondson as he looks at a familiar passage illustrating that point.

To hear this message, click HERE. To view this message click HERE.

Here are the questions for reflection on this message:

• Did you grow up in church?
• Would you consider yourself a good person?
• Do you think you are better than average?
• What would be the hardest thing for you to give up if God asked you to?
• Do you sometimes think you have already given so much…and wonder when you’ll get your reward?
• Does the concept of grace, God’s forgiveness and mercy, freely given, ever blow your mind if you think about it, especially considering how well you know yourself?

I love hearing from you if you are listening to these messages.

I have had a distant love and attraction to the city of New Orleans since hurricane Katrina and the aftermath devastated that city in 2005. Before Grace Community Church officially launched, we wrote our first check to relief efforts in that city. I was in New Orleans for the first time earlier this week. I spent a couple days visiting our student ministry team who were there on a mission trip. It was a very quick trip, but in addition to seeing the great work our team was doing, I was able to visit with a few great pastors doing good work in the city.

I had been to Louisiana a couple times, but had never made it into the city of New Orleans. It was hot and humid, but I left with some good memories and was glad to see some ways God is impacting that city.

On a short bus ride from the car rental hub to the airport terminal, the bus driver asked what I liked most about the city. It was an easy answer:

Food – Sorry to put that first, but it was that memorable. I never had a bad meal. I asked at the hotel where I should eat and, while she did give me a recommendation, she also said, “You won’t find a bad meal around here.” She was right by my experience.

People – Everywhere I went, regardless of the class of people I met or the side of town I was on, they were friendly and helpful. I’m sure there are a few scrooges in New Orleans, but those may be the tourists and I didn’t encounter them. From the police to the restaurant workers to the clerks in a store, the locals seemed exceptionally nice.

Resolve – New Orleans is coming back after Katrina. That period remains very much on the minds of the people. It was obviously a defining moment in their history. Progress appears slower than some want it to be and there are still frustrations with the government, but from an outside perspective I saw a people determined to love their city back to health.

Yes, there are still problems. I wish those who choose to litter wouldn’t. There are some places good Christians shouldn’t go. The roads could use some attention. They could lower the humidity a bit for my comfort. I suspect they could find some of those issues in my city as well. Overall, I was impressed with the city of New Orleans.

Have you been to New Orleans either before or after Katrina? What were your impressions?

We’ve got some excellent interns around Grace this summer. Interns help us do something new. We treat them as staff members, so this gives us additional summer staff to accomplish projects we couldn’t do otherwise. This year there are some special projects we are working on, as we prepare for fall. Additionally, allow us to invest in some young leaders, hoping to learn from us this summer. We usually end up learning just as much from them.

Let me introduce you to our interns, appearing from left to right in the picture:

Lauren Grizzard – Lauren is working with our children’s ministry this summer. She has been with us since the beginning at Grace Community Church. Her parents were part of our core team and her mother was one of our first staff hires. Lauren helped launch our first youth group, and is now midway through college. God has His hand on Lauren and she has a future in ministry. We’re sure of it.

Van Riggins - Van is also working with our children’s ministry this summer. Van is a college freshman and connected with Grace while he was in high school. Van is tremendously talented with drama and story-telling. Van’s energy is contagious.

Grant Caldwell - Grant recently finished his freshman year of college and is working with our student ministry this summer. Grant is in familiar territory, because he was a star in our youth program throughout high school. Grant is a great young man exploring ministry options and sensing a call to serve Christ vocationally.

Dan Dominguez – Dan should be voted “most likely to be messed up after this summer”, because he is interning with me. Dan will be finishing his last year in pastoral ministry education at Moody Bible Institute this next year and needed an internship with a senior pastor. Dan is a friend of my son Nate who also attends Moody. He’s a sharp young man and will do well in ministry. He wants to be a pastor. (I’ll do my best to talk him out of that this summer.) If he survives he will have been tested for the pastorate.

Gita Fromertaite – Gita is the director of children’s ministry from our sister church in Lithuania. I have preached in Gita’s church and her pastor is a good friend of mine. Gita is with us this summer learning children’s ministry ideas to take back to the developing Christian world of Lithuania. I love the International investment our church is making by partnering with City Church and having Gita with us. Our staff will be learning from the sincerity of Gita’s heart and the culture of church planting from which she comes.

Also with us this summer, but not pictured, is Caitlin Little. Caitlin has been out of high school for several years and is working with our student ministry. She’s finishing up college but feels a call to vocational ministry. She has a great personality and loves investing in students. As inside information, my son Nate is convinced Caitlin will one day serve on his team once he is a pastor. Knowing my perfectionist son, that’s a huge compliment.

When I was in college I interned in Washington, D.C. with a congressman. It made a huge impression on me that summer. I believe in this intentional investment in young leaders. It’s a benefit to the intern and the organization.

Do me a favor, follow the ones on Twitter who have Twitter names linked to their name. You’ll be glad you found some sharp young leaders to follow.

Does your church use interns?

Did you ever serve as an intern? Tell me about your experience.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus’ miracles is the calming of the storm found in Mark 4. This Summer we are walking through the book of Mark with Grace Community Church in a series called Defiance.

Recently I was able to preach on this familiar and powerful passage. Do you need some encouragement in your faith these days? I hope this helps.

What is your favorite miracle story of Jesus?