Challenges of being portable

At the Evolve Conference last month, I got fired up about being portable. As I shared the next Sunday, "buildings don't reach people, people reach people." This post also fired me up about being portable.

This week has been a bit of a challenge to our portability. Last Sunday, our truck started acting up and we had to spend several hundred dollars to fix it.
And after this Sunday, we're going to have to spend more money to fix the jack on our trailer.

Since my dad was in town, I figured we'd give Brian and the trailer-pullers a break and pull the trailer for them. I originally put on the wrong hitch, the one that's too close to the ground. When I realized this, we had to start cranking the trailer back up to put on the hitch that sets higher off the ground. But, the jack handle was really stiff, needed oil and was so hard to turn, it was killing me. Just as dad said, "this thing's going to break" the handle snapped off.

Not good.

This was a scary as the Sunday the key broke off in our padlock. Thankfully, the tongue was up high enough that we jacked it up (with a car jack) just a bit more and were able to hook it onto the trailer hitch. With the help of the pipe wrench that's been in the truck since the key incident, we were able to lower it back down over the ball on the trailer hitch. But the jack was still dragging on the ground, so my dad used a brick and some baling wire (the number one tool of a farmer) and we were able to 'fix' it.

The trailer didn't get to the school until about 8:40 but we were still set up with time to spare.
Our set-up guys are incredible.

This is one more example of why I should just stick to preaching!

Trinity Family in Relevant Magazine

Don't blink because you might miss it, but Trinity Family was referenced in the latest edition of Relevant Magazine. It's an article on Harmony Dust of the Treasures ministry.
You can read the article here.

Harmony coached my wife on starting her own outreach to exotic dancers, our Love Wins ministry. So, that means that this quote from Harmony in the article is referring to us. "It's exciting to see churches reaching out in communities nationally. It's easy to go overseas to help a girl in the sex trade, but what about the girls in our own backyard? We have to create an open-door policy in our churches that embraces those in the sex industry with the love of Christ."

Folks, that line is referring to our awesome church!

We're also getting support in April from New Life here in Gardner, Christ Community (our mother church) in Olathe and Burlington First Church of the Nazarene (my home church) in Burlington, IA.

Update: I emailed Harmony about this and she responded with, "Yep! You are one of the churches I had in mind when I said that! Thanks for being a part of this and for being faithful with it!"

Our Easter Invite Card

Andy Phelps just got done designing the invite card for Easter Sunday and it looks great!
"Echoes of Easter" is the title of my Easter Sunday message and the picture tells a story we'll explain on Easter.
It's a great image! We'll be sending them to the printer today and we'll be passing them out on Sunday.
The only thing left to do is invite your friends!!!!

Pussycat Preachers

This is reprinted from the mmi blog.

When young pastor Matt Brown announced he was supporting a ministry for women in the sex industry led by an x-stripper, he was expecting applause. Instead, he got cold stares and an e-mail inbox filled with angry letters. At issue was Heather Veitch, an x-stripper turned evangelist. She looked too much like a stripper and was leading Christian women into the dark world of strip clubs for so-called “outreach.” Capturing it all, was documentary filmmaker Bill Day for his new film “The Pussycat Preacher.”
“Most Christians know that Jesus spent time with prostitutes and tax collectors because that is where the word was needed. But believing the ideal is one thing and living the reality is another,” says Day.
“If we all took a vote on being Biblical versus being respectable , we would all vote for Biblical,” says theology expert Professor Sarah Sumner PhD from Azusa Pacific University in the film. “But the reality is many churches are more concerned with respectability.”
Pastor Greg Laurie from mega-church Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside was one of pastors who didn’t believe Heather’s method of winning souls was worth the risk. He warned Brown to stay away from Veitch.
“When a Pastor you look up to tells you something like that it’s scary,” Brown confesses. “I’m a pastor and I am supposed to love people. But I didn’t love strippers. What Heather did was she birthed that in me and my congregation.”
Instead of backing away from Heather, Pastor Brown put up $50,000 of church money to support the ministry. But in no time at all, a rumor got started that the $50,000 was being used by Brown to buy lap dances for himself. Brown suddenly found himself on the verge of losing his church facility housed on the campus of Southern California Baptist University.
For her part, Heather Veitch claims she is winning souls and that is what matters. For evidence, she has the documentary which shows a number of strippers making their first venture into church. “Now comes the hard part,” Heather smiles.
Day says the film is not rated but very ‘’PG’’ It has no nudity or offensive language. It will be available on DVD, pay to download , or ‘’watch free’’ with advertising at the film website http://www.pussycatpreacher.com/ starting Feb 15.

Seems like something we might do at TFC.

40 Hours of Prayer

We're going to be praying for 40 straight hours from 4 PM on Good Friday until 8 AM Resurrection Sunday morning.
You can pick an hour time slot at the blog or by signing up at the welcome table on Sunday morning.

Here's the 40 hours of prayer blog. link

God is moving in our small groups!

Wow, God did some great stuff in our small groups on Sunday night.

Here are two emails I got from leaders:

Our group (16 people) met tonight. Again, very good discussion.
There was a universal appreciation for Dan and how he presented the material. We heard (and made) comments like: "that was an ah-ha moment ..."; "...the examples/stories were very pertinent..." and "I never thought of it (prayer) that way."
Of the seven (7) main points, the standouts mentioned by our group were: "Effective Prayer is SPECIFIC," "Effective Prayer requires PARDON/FORGIVENESS," and "Effective Prayer will produce SPIRITUAL PASSION."

and

I just wanted to take a minute to summarize our group meeting tonight. We started with a recap and discussion about the sermon. I was really hoping that by the end of the evening we would be able to make some sort of commitment to each other as prayer partners. Something incredible happened after a general discussion. We all confessed that our communication with God was lacking. Then we made a plan for how we could revive our commitment to prayer and build our relationship with ourselves. We had trouble hashing out details because there wasn't much time, but eventually we decided to privately write specific requests and trade with each other (woman to woman, man to man). This was the most meaningful small group meeting so far. I ...We are excited to listen to what God has to tell us!

And David Brush posted this link

I also got this email today:
This past Sunday was probably one of the most effective services I've attended in my life.

Finally, another person emailed to say that though they've been meaning to for awhile, they were finally able to make it to their first small group meeting on Sunday night and "enjoyed myself thoroughly."

Great stuff!

Love Wins - February

Erin and Jaymie had a great night at the clubs on Friday night, good stuff happening.
Since all I saw was the front door as they went in and out, I'll let my sweet wife share her story from Friday night.

This month's trip to the clubs was the most fun yet! Each time we arrive now, people greet us with big grins. I finally remembered to ask the name of the door guy at End Zone. He smiled and replied that he can't remember any of that stuff either becuase he works so many jobs. We also got to talk to Penny and Angela for a little while. These two ladies are managers at the club. We found out that it was Angela's birthday when a guy came up and said, "See, someone else remembered." He was talking about the fact that we brought chocolate dipped strawberries. We actually didn't know it was her birthday though... When I asked Tammy how everyone was doing, she said just fine. Then she told me that she has mentioned to the girls to call us if they need to talk. She talked about the cards that we put in the bags with our information on them. That's good news!
When we got to Bonita Flats, the strawberries were a hit! As soon as we walked in the door, we offered them to the door guy. One of the girls was sitting right next to him and jumped up to talk to us. Her face was really beaming. We introduced ourselves and she told us her name and smiled and thanked us for coming and bringing gifts. She grabbed a strawberry while we were chatting. Then we walked into the club and the strawberries were a magnet. Three other girls came over to get a strawberry. We talked for about 5 minutes. One of the girls kept saying how sweet it is that we bring gifts all the time. She mentioned the jars with cookie mix and how she and her daughter baked them together. Another girl kept going on and on about the strawberries and how she LOVED them. We offered to set the tray up on the bar, but they said they would take them to the back so that they could eat them all!
Thanks to Sarah and Aaron Holmes and Elizabeth Diddle for their gift of these fabulous strawberries!

Our church rocks!

It's a common characteristic of church planters that they're cocky about their church, but I'm cocky about my church and I want to brag.

• I like the fact that we can change things up on a Sunday morning. We didn't have any music today. Instead of singing, we spent the response time in prayer. I asked someone who is new to TFC what they thought about the change. She told me, "it was good, but don't do it often, I love your music."
• I'm proud of the fact that rather than just talking about prayer, we actually prayed! Everyone talks about prayer, we took time this morning to pray. And we're going to be doing it more next Sunday, you don't want to miss it. Dan was telling me about what we'll be doing and he said, "sometimes God just does awesome things when we become more intentional about prayer."
• Nate told me after church, "we didn't screw up the music today." I added, "and we had good preaching." We had no music and a guest preacher.
• It's an awesome privilege to have my former pastor preach at my church. As I said when I introduced Pastor Dan; his example was a HUGE reason I developed a passion for unchurched people. The only person more influential in my calling into pastoral ministry, with a passion for reaching the lost, is my dad.
  
• Here's where I really want to brag about TFC. Since we didn't have any music to set up or practice this morning, Zach, Chris, David and Nate all went to observe the set-up procedures of another church that meets in a school to see what they could learn. This is a great church. We're very similar to them in style and ministry approach, we're just on a smaller scale than them. Their church was launched several years ago with a couple hundred people, several hundred thousand dollars (!!!) and two full-time staff. So, yes, we're a bit smaller operation than them.
  And yet, every one of the four guys who went came back saying, "we're more efficient than them, I wouldn't trade anything we do for what they do." The only exception is their lighting system. They have a $5,000 (!!!!) lighting system that blows our can lights away, but our sound and media is just as 'powerful' and even more efficient. Turns out that Chris was giving pointers to their full-time music guy.
  I say this not to put down that church, they're an awesome church, but to brag on TFC!
  The talent we have in our church is amazing! And I know of church plants that have paid twice what we paid for our sound/media systems and literally have half the quality.
• And what else is cool is that while four of our media/sound guys were observing another church, we had 5 guys still at our school, setting up the sound and media that we needed for the day. So our talent pool is several people deep. Holding down the homefront were Josh, Scott, Philip, Caleb and Justin.
• He's been gone for awhile, but today's trip to that church made me want to give a shout-out to my good friend Emanuel Reinbold. God has since moved him onto pastoral ministry in Nebraska (where they really need Jesus - right, Joe) but his hard work in our early days is still paying dividends for our set-up process and sound system.

Yeah, our church rocks!!!