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A team from our church is heading to Denver the weekend after Thanksgiving to donate their time and labor to packing boxes for Operation Christmas Child! There are two different fundraisers to help them on their way this weekend…
How did a small, church plant in Oklahoma go national in the past ten years? Such is the story of Life Church, now known as LifeChurch.tv. From its beginnings in Edmond, Oklahoma, Life Church now has twelve different campuses across the nation (including Arizona, Texas, Tennesse, Florida and New York.
Admittedly, not all of these campuses are new church starts. Several of them involve existing churches coming into the LifeChurch.tv network.
However, this year Lifechurch.tv launched what it calls “Second Life,” which is a fully interactive, online church. Yep. You can do church online… Hooboy.
According to their website, “Currently LifeChurch.tv is hosting nearly 20,000 people every weekend across all its campuses during 47 worship experiences.”
Life Church is a part of the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination, and it has a well-expressed, though abbreviated, set of core beliefs:
I’ll admit… there’s enough there to intrigue me and want to know more about Life Church. Do you realize that there’s not an Evangelical Covenant Church in Arkansas? Neither is there a Life Church here… yet.
It’s fast becoming one of the most popular productivity-enhancement websites out there. After reading this article at Engadget, I thought I’d open up an account and give it a try… I’ll let you know in a few weeks what I think…
by Arthur T. Pierson
For such a short little book, I was struck by Pierson’s writing eloquence and ability to say in such a brief span volumes more than many contemporary authors do in longer books.
A.T. Pierson was a Presbyterian minister who lived from 19371837-1911. He edited The Missionary Review of the World for many years and apparently was a prolific writer. I most assuredly will be reading more by Pierson because of this book.
There may not be a more contentious subject in the contemporary American church today than the role of the Holy Spirit. Entire denominations have been created due to the negligence or over-emphasis on Him.
Pierson takes the book of Acts, and in short, succinct chapters, describes the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit for the corporate church and individual believers in Jesus Christ. He does so in a way that is enlightening and challenging.
As a pedigreed Southern Baptist, I have to admit that for years, my tribe has simply tried to work around the Spirit. Most Baptist preachers, teachers, evangelists and professors that I’ve known are big on the Father and Son but a little intimidated by the Spirit.
In fact, in my own life, it’s rather disconcerting to realize that I have not taught and equipped those under my care to recognize and know how to “walk in the Spirit.” It will be a renewed commitment, I can assure you.
Pierson states at one point, “Satan’s activity is always increased when disciples bestir themselves anew.” I can heartily agree to the accuracy of that statement after some personal experiences of the last few months. It crystallized in my mind, once again, the unseen reality of spiritual warfare.
No one attribute is more needful today for Christ’s witnesses than Holy Spirit boldness due to Holy Spirit fullness.
Pierson shares at length about the dangers of a church or Christian organization being led and guided by logic, by secular principles or organizational procedures without first being led by the Holy Spirit.
All in all, it’s a fantastic little book that would be a great foundation to start learning more about the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians.
I get asked frequently how I incorporate calendars and event lists into some of the websites that I design. It’s really pretty simple after you’ve worked through the process once. I use CalendarHub for event lists (it’s free!), I was using Trumba for MonticelloLive’s community calendar (a paid service, but full of features). Recently, I’ve been using Airset for several projects, especially for coordinating a calendar with lots of folks. It works great for church use, but its learning curve for the casual user is steep. It’s not very intuitive (aka, very un-Maclike).
Here’s an excellent article on dozens of other online calendar options out there.
Here’s an article related to this that I wrote a while back.
Incoming links... add yours by linking!
