Tonight Brookridge is having a concert - No Greater Love. The concert is focused on how great God's love is for us. Here is a pic of one of the songs we did. If you like what you see you can go to www.brookridge.org to get more info about the Brookridge community.

Also check us out at 10:30am on Sunday morning.

No greater love - God's love is furious for you!

BRCC is preparing for a fall mission trip to Costa Rica where we will be working alongside our missionaries there.  I believe right now we have between 14-20 people going - it's going to be exciting!

In order to raise money for the trip we are having a community-wide spaghetti dinner followed by a concert featuring our worship team.  There is a suggested donation of $5/person or $10/family.  The meal is going to be great and the music is going to inspiring.  

I'm asking all of my friends on Twitter and Facebook to help support our trip by buying tickets to the spaghetti dinner.  If you want to buy tickets, you can click     
                                                                              HERE.  

                                                                               I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Hey everyone - 

Over the past ten years we have been blessed to have a top-notch worship team.  Our team leads us to worship and prepares our hearts to allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.  They are a huge part of our Sunday celebrations.

Erin, our worship leader, just created a page on our web site that allows you to hear our music!  Click HERE to go to the page and click "launch media player."

Feel free to share this link with friends as it is a great way to share what our worship service is like on a Sunday morning.  

SHARE AWAY!!

Today our entire church fasted and prayed over their lunch hour.  It doesn't seem like a big deal (skipping one meal), but it can make a huge spiritual impact.  The point of fasting is to take the focus off your physical needs and put focus on your spiritual needs.  Prayer accompanies fasting as you pray for God to "feed" your spiritual needs.  We don't have time or space here to go into the proofs of fasting, but suffice it to say that fasting is considered a spiritual discipline by the Bible and its authors (Isaiah 58; 1 Samuel 7:6; Acts 9:9).

For my Scripture reading I read, meditated, and journaled on Luke 15,16.  I love these chapters as they contain parables that express how much God loves humanity, including myself.

After reading my prayers took the direction of thanking God for all He has done at our church.  In 11 years throughout the growth of the church He has provided buildings that could house us and give us a home.  He has blessed us with countless great memories here - Christmas and Easter celebrations, children's events, outreaches, etc. 

After being thankful my prayers moved to requests.  The constant refrain in my prayers was for God to take something small that we offer and turn it into something big for the Kingdom of God.  Oftentimes as pastor I see the negative or challenging things that we have in our community: I'm too close to the situation to see the great things that are happening.  So I prayed for God to use our small things and show me how He is working to accomplish big things.  I prayed for our Sunday worship that it would be not only pleasing to Him, but also that He could use it to break the hearts of those who were in attendance.  I prayed for the simple things to become Kingdom impacting things; nothing is too small for God.

It would be great if all BRCC would be in prayer for the little things to make a huge difference in community around us. It would be great if all BRCC had a vision for what God is doing in their life and what He could do in the future!

Sunday worship celebration is one of the most exciting times in the life of BRCC.  Every element works together to provide an environment in which the Christian can be thankful for what God has done in the previous week and anticipate in hope what God will do in the next week.

Thankfulness and anticipation are two essential parts of worship.  The first reason is that both are active.  Worship can never be passive.  Through the Holy Spirit each believer actively gives their body (including their voice) to celebrating God.  Worship was never intended to be a passive event.  When we are thankful we are actively engaging in acknowledging God's activity in our live over the past week.  So often we ignore the work of God in our lives; we don't even recognize what gifts God has given us.  This often leads to believing that God isn't in their lives or is not concerned about their life - nothing could be further from the truth.  When a Christian is thankful, worship begins to take on its correct contour and shape.  Worship grows out of thankfulness.

Secondly, worship grows out of anticipation.  Anticipation is an acknowledgement that God has done big  things in the past and that He is able and willing to do them in the future.  Anticipation is expecting God to act in our lives.  When we anticipate God working in our lives our we are naturally led to thankfulness for what God will do.  Worship fully takes on its contour and shape with the combination of thankfulness and anticipation.

This Sunday, don't come to worship EXPECTING something to be given to you.  Worship is a celebration when YOU bring something to worship.  The first place to start is being thankful for what God has done and begin to anticipate what God will do in the coming weeks!

This week starts a new discipline for me - posting my sermon slides online.  These are the sermon slides that I use on Sunday morning.  Some of them will have narratives with them, but some of them will just be the slides.  These are for people who miss worship on Sunday morning  and those who want a refresher.  

Enjoy and don't hesitate to contact me with any questions!

I've read a lot of leadership stuff over the years, both church and business leadership stuff: Harvard Business Review, John Maxwell, Rick Warren - you name it, I've read it.  The truth is that I have read so much stuff that I have forgotten more than I have remembered.  There is one thing that has stuck with me over the past 15 years of ministry - be intentional in everything that you do; what you are intentional about will happen, what you hope will happen will not.

My thoughts about the church have been revolving around this idea.  At BRCC we spend time talking about the vision of reaching and growing people and "buying into the vision of the church."  We even have the vision statement of the church right on the wall of our stairwell leading up to the sanctuary.  The vision of the church is important because it determines the direction of the church.  It eliminates thing that you shouldn't do while helping you decide what you should do.  Just because a person or organization has a vision, that doesn't mean it automatically happens; one must set GOALS that help that vision to come to fruition

The reality is that we have not done a great job at BrookRidge in the past few years at setting goals within our vision.  We have allowed our church community to  kind of waver about in our events and our decisions.  There have been a lot of great things that we have done in the past few years.  We have really focused on fellowship and building relationship in our community.  We have seen our small group ministry grow as a result of this great fellowship.  We have had some great outreach events, like our Christmas and Easter outreach.  When we made the decision to go to one service the purpose was to create more and better fellowship and build momentum for great worship each Sunday.  I think we are well on our way (in 10 months) to accomplishing this.

Here is what we are not doing well - hard core reaching out to the community in a strategic way.  I have felt that our love for those in the community and those who have yet to feel the love of Jesus waver.  I'm afraid we might have replaced our desire to reach others with our desire to build internal community; to build community is great, but it needs to be done in partnership with evangelism - sharing Jesus in our own lives and through church community events.  As pastor I want us to have a equal emphasis on evangelism as we do on building community; right now I think we are a little off.

Worship on Sunday isn't like fast food - your way right away!  

Wonder how YOU can serve YOUR CHURCH on Sunday . . . here are some ideas :)

Before the Service

• Read the passage in advance
• Pray for the gathering
• Greet newcomers (act like you are the host)
• Think strategically about who you should sit with
• Arrive Early

During the Service

• Sing with gusto (even if you can’t sing)
• Help with logistics (if there’s a problem, help fix it)
• Don’t be distracted
• Listen carefully
• Be aware of your facial expressions (you may affect others and discourage preachers)

After the Service

• Connect newcomers with others
• Get newcomers information
• Start a conversation about the sermon
• Ask someone how they became a Christian
• Stay late

Read this on Pastors.com, but can't remember the author.

The Use of Technology

Technology is absolutely a gift to ministry.  Whether it’s new HD projectors or a new LED light system, technology can be used to introduce people to Jesus Christ. I can remember the first time the little church I worked at started using an overhead projector – we felt like our little worship service was transformed!  The feeling quickly left as we realized that we needed to type up lyrics to all our songs to put on overheads; what a task that was.

Despite its availability, church communities need to be aware of how to approach the use of technology and its impact on the church.  Over years of ministry I have found three key elements of that must be kept in mind while adopting technology:

1.     Remember technology is the tool and not the content of the Sunday teaching

Projectors and sound are great, but what moves hearts is a great prophetic and Biblically based sermon.  Technology should aid the sermon, not overshadow it.

Early in my ministry I was like a slave to Powerpoint presentations.  I was more concerned about how the presentations looked than I did the content of what I was teaching.  I had to scale back the presentations and just use it for key Biblical texts or points.  This gave me the freedom to focus on the sermon rather than what was on the screen.

2.     The cost of technology isn’t a guarantee of the impact of technology

Just because you spend a lot of money doesn’t mean you’ll get big impact.  The best way to approach purchasing is to first ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the technology and then spend money appropriately. 

Our church wanted to install a new light rigging with spotlights, LEDs, and other special illumination.  We spent the money (in the thousands) to get all these lights, installed them, and began to use them.  Once we did, we realized that we hadn’t thought about the natural light coming through the windows; the natural light washed out all the new technology we bought.  We spent a lot of money, but we didn’t see the impact until we solved other, much cheaper problems.

3.     Only spend the amount that you can afford to replace

Like anything, technology breaks, wears out, or becomes outdated – or all three!  If a projector is a big part of your ministry, you’ll need to have the resources to replace it right away.  Don’t overbuy on your first piece of technology only to realize you can’t replace it later.

I bought a projector for our church with special funds that were donated to our church.  The projector was top of the line with all the bells and whistles.  Unfortunately a year later (conveniently right after the extended warranty ran out) a church member dropped the projector and broke it beyond repair.  Since it was bought with money outside the budget there was no money to replace it within the budget.  We had to scramble to replace it with a lesser product.

No leader should be scared of using technology, but they should approach its use in a smart and educated manner.