Mark’s Heart

 I love listening to my husband, Mark, talk right before we go to bed.  He is relaxed and tends to reflect on the people in his life that he appreciates.  He tells a funny story from the day about the kids or laughs at the latest crazy adventure that we are on.  Lately he has been consumed with the thoughts of how to reach as many people with the love of Christ that he can.  It is with that heart that we wrote this week’s email for our church email group (you can sign up to receive our emails at www.coffeechurch.com).  I included it below for those of you who might not get our regular emails:

 

September brings fond memories of two years ago when we were preparing for the launch of the first service for North Creek Church.  Thirty-nine people (including kids) had worked and prayed for months just for September 24 to come.  And when it arrived, I couldn’t sleep, eat, or think about anything else…except people.  How many would come?  What did they look like?  What was their story?  How would Jesus impact their futures and how would North Creek play a part in that?

 

I can remember watching out the windows of Salmon Creek Elementary just praying that somebody would show up that first morning.  And when they did I was both amazed and thankful to God for entrusting our church with their lives.  Some of the faces that I saw that day became some of the closest friends I have now.  And the stories that have been told from those lives still keep me up at night.  I am humbled by the impact that we’ve been given by God.  And that is why I am more convinced of the direction that God has put on my heart for the fall.

 

My commitment is to do whatever it takes to keep us from being comfortable in the blessings that God has given us.  We have amazing people, we are able to pay the bills, our systems and strategies seem to be working…and it’s not enough.  Today my heart beats refreshed in the purpose that started this church in the beginning…people.

 

We are committed to the mission of God!  With all of our heart and soul!  And I look forward to stretching North Creek Church again to the edges of faith in order to reach more with the love of Jesus.  I can’t wait to share with you about what is on my heart.

Jonah and The Whine

Have you read the story of Jonah lately?  Mark preached on Jonah yesterday, so I was reading a little bit about him again to refresh my memory.  The story of Jonah is way too familiar, but most people don’t read the whole story.  The end is the most interesting part…

Long story short, God tells Jonah to preach to people he doesn’t like, Jonah says no, runs, ends up inside a fish, gets puked up, go to the people he doesn’t like, end of story…or not.  Here is what Jonah has to say after God used him to impact a HUGE city:

Jonah 4

Jonah’s Anger at the Lord ’s Compassion

 1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

 4 But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”

 5 Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
      ”I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”

 10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

AND THAT’S THE END OF THE BOOK!

After all of the complaining, God helping him to understand the importance of obedience, seeing God change thousands of lives…he’s still complaining!  He closes his chapter in history with a pity party! 

I am ashamed to say that I have seen that all too often among Christians in the last 20 years.  We’ll find the one thing about a church that we don’t like and point that out.  We’ll analyze a sermon and pick it apart as if we could do better.  We’ll take the time to tell people what is wrong with the system rather than what is right.

Jonah is a challenge to me.  If my chapter closed today, what would I be saying?  Would I be working toward bettering the system or would I be pointing out everything wrong with it?  I have a very critical eye for excellence, but Jonah really challenges me to keep my hands working and my mouth shut!

Outrageous Stages

Here’s some funny memories from Kris that will make you laugh today:

 

North Creek is a church of purpose.  Everything we do is for a particular and well thought out reason.  Even our stage decorations have a purpose.  In fact, the win for the Stage Creativity Ministry is to create an auditorium environment that people will tell others about when they leave.  Have you heard about coffeechurch’s crazy stage decorations yet?  If you live anywhere near Vancouver, Washington you just might!  Until then, here’s a list of some of the odd things we’ve heard said in the midst of North Creek’s preparations for our stage decorations:

 

1.     Joe, could you go rub Kylie’s back, I need to make 43 more cups of mashed potatoes.

2.     Doctor, can you get tetanus from chicken wire.

3.     How much paint do you need to cover six eight foot men?

4.     Where can I get 1,000 pounds of flour?

5.     Do they carry that at Target?

6.     Can you push that while you breastfeed?

7.     Mom, you drivin’ me crazy…you walking me too long!

8.     We’ll only have to have a fridge on the stage for one week.

9.     We’d only have to unplug one cable….

10.   Is somebody writing this down?

11.   I can’t take the baby chicks home, I have cats.

12.   Exactly how many rolls of sod does it take to cover the stage?

13.  If you think Mary will let you have open flame in the lobby, you’re crazy.

 

A Word From Kris

 Just to throw in a little variety, here are some thoughts from one of our other pastors, Kris Gray…

 

As part of the teaching team at North Creek Church, I had the privilege of speaking about Dreaming Big last Sunday and I am overwhelmed by the responses of our people!  I have been flooded with calls, emails, and texts of people who went home and made incredible goals for themselves and their family and I am very excited for what these small and big changes might mean for our church, our community, and our world!  

 

 

I used the illustration of the scene in the original Indiana Jones where Indy is faced with fighting a man who seems very proficient in whip wielding and is displaying his incredible skills to Indy, which the audience seems to find very intimidating.  But not Indy.  He just quietly and subtly pulls out his gun and shoots the guy.  It’s an awesome moment in the movie and it’s an incredible analogy of not getting caught up in being superspiritual, but instead taking action on who you want to be and who God says you are.  To me, it’s what’s so great about North Creek Church, changing lives in a practical way.   

 

By the way, if you want to know the odd story behind that scene in Indiana Jones, shoot me an email and I’ll fill you in! (kris@coffeechurch.com)  And if you want to check out the entire sermon, visit www.coffeechurch.com and click on the media library link.   

 

Until then, dream big!  Dream with expectancy!  Believe what God says about you!  I do…

 

 

“Someday” is Going to Be Great

Pastor Kris preached at church this morning on dreaming big.  It’ll be online to listen to at www.coffeechurch.com in a couple of days.  Listen to it!  It’s a pretty amazing reminder of confidence in our God.

Kris’ request is for people to get a dream and live it out.  In her sermon she said, “Someday” is going to be great, but we’re not supposed to live for someday.  I think we are all guilty of believing in “someday” much more than we are at believing in today. 

Although I have personal goals, I often find that most of my goals revolve around our church.  My life and ministry are very tightly wound together!  So, I have lots of goals about what North Creek is going to become in the future and it’s easy to settle into the fact that we’ll just grow into it…someday. 

But what if it didn’t have to be that way?  What if we could wake up tomorrow and become a force to be reckoned with?  People clammering to hear about Jesus and get involved in ministry?  What if everyone in Vancouver knew the name of coffeechurch.com and associated it as a church that cares about the community?  What do we have to do to make that happen…now? 

Through a series of events that have occured throughout the last few weeks, I think God is stirring within me to go after my goals with a new vengence…both those ministry goals and my personal list.  I hope that you have goals stirring within you as well.  I’d love for you to comment on what some of your goals are.  There is power in writing them down!  Here’s three of mine:

*Have a church of at least 10,000 people

*Be on Deal or No Deal

*Go to Israel to see where Jesus was!

*Have Andy Stanley comment on my blog

I’ve got lots more, but those seem pretty significant, so I’ll leave it at that for now! Go ahead and leave a comment with a few of your dreams!

The Way I See It

As a staff we sit down and think through the year and what we feel our people would most learn from.  Right now we are in the middle of a really great series called The Way I See It.  It’s about some of the things in the Bible that the world doesn’t understand, such as “Jesus is the Only Way”, baptism, and the Holy Spirit. 

It’s seems that there is a trend in the culture of Christianity to pick and choose what we believe, most of the time based on our experiences rather than the Bible.  Partnered with that picking and choosing is a lack of Bible reading, which is a combination that can literally spin off into an entirely different religion. 

My prayer for the church is that as we read the Bible we would accept it all – the parts that are easy and the parts that are downright uncomfortable.   The hardest parts of the Bible to comprehend are what make God, well, God.  If we could wrap our brains around a concept such as the Holy Spirit, then we would be equal to God, not His students.

And yet, rather than embracing the vastness of the Bible, we chop it into “understandable” parts in order to find some measure of comfort in our belief system.  But faith is a key component of our belief system and comfort never comes with faith.

I’m impressed by the openness of the people at North Creek to learn.  They are humble and moldable, which are characteristics that God honors greatly.  I know that as we as a congregation dive into the text of the Bible, God is going to pour out wisdom and understanding that we have never had before.  And with wisdom, comes great things!