If LifePoint Church is where you attend I am asking you to go to Pat’s video to watch, listen and take action.
Tag Archive - ministries
Small Groups
We are a church of small groups. We have small groups that meet on Sunday morning and during the week in the homes of church members. Eddie tells me that we have around 100 adult small groups counting on campus and off campus groups.
We also have student small groups for sixth graders through college students. There are close to 100 small groups for our students. I am a proponent of small groups. My family is part of an adult small group so we have first hand knowledge of what an active small group can do for your spiritual growth.
I want to link you to a story from Chris Hollomon, our Student Pastor about a small group story that you are going to love.
Get Involved Now
The Smyrna-La Vergne Food Bank is in need of food donations. This is an agency we work closely with as a church to help with the food needs of the community. Our own Helping Hands Ministry, FBCSmyrna’s benevolence ministry, we work with outside groups like the Food Bank to minister to our community. This is a great opportunity for FBCSmyrna to bless our community in a time of need.
The Smyrna-La Vergne Food Bank saw a 30 percent increase in applications in September 2008 compared to the previous year, according to Denise Esker, director of the food bank in Smyrna. Earlier this month, 10 families applied for help for the first time in the same day. “Seventy percent of our yearly intake of food comes this time of year (because people want to give),” said Esker. (www.dnj.com)
Let’s get involved and help out.
Here are the numbers and addresses you need:
The Smyrna- La Vergne Food Bank is at 130 Richardson Road, Smyrna. The phone number is 615-355-0697.
Hours are from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.
Room at The Inn
Each November through March FBCSmyrna is involved in a ministry called Room at the Inn. This service ministry is lead by Lisa and T.J. Burke. The Burke’s initiated Room at the Inn @ FBCSmyrna over three years ago and have been leading the ministry with the help of many others. Each Friday evening FBCSmyrna host 10 (ten) men who are homeless from the Nashville area, they are fed, their clothes are washed, given haircuts if they would like one and given the opportunity to have a warm and restful sleep without the fear of any danger.
Small Groups and Sunday School classes prepare the evening meal and then spend time conversing about life, family, interest and showing the love of God to these men. If the men are in need of clothes, coats, hats or gloves they are able to look through some donated items to find the right sizes and given what they need.
The Burke’s have expressed a need for men to drive the van to pick up the guests on Friday evening and drop them off on Saturday morning. They need men to sleep over at the church. They are also in need of men’s socks, underwear, and gloves. The gloves and socks can be gently used. The underwear needs to be new. They need deodorant, shaving cream, and toothpaste.
Room at the Inn is a great service ministry and I encourage you to become a part of at FBCSmyrna. If you would like to volunteer contact Susan Garland in the Global Initiative office @ 459-3311 and she will put you in touch with Lisa and T.J..
Thank you Lisa and T.J. for your leadership and your servant heart. Your example of showing God’s love in a tangible way is making a difference.
Opposite or the Same
I got the opportunity to speak for Pat yesterday. He is gracious to let me stand in for him when he needs a break. Well, as I was “waxing eloquently” speaking on Excellence and our desire to live lives that honor the Father of Excellence I made a huge blunder. Thankfully, I had said “excellence doesn’t mean perfection”. I made the statement “sometimes I need to look at the enemies (meaning the opposites) of excellence to have a good understanding of what is meant. Some of the synonyms for excellence are apathy, laziness, and mediocrity.” It wasn’t too long after I finished the message that someone came to me and enlightened me that an antonym is the opposite of a word and synonyms can be interchanged.
It is good to be a living illustration for the people. (kind of like chicken or poultry)
Tammy Faye 1942-2007
This weekend Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker) passed away. She has battled with cancer for several years. As with her whole adult life, the battle with cancer was displayed for the world to see on television. I was shocked when I saw her on Larry King Live this past week. She had dwindled to around 60 lbs. She passed away a few days later and the reports on television, in the print media and on the Internet have been everywhere.
I am wondering this morning how does someone who was at one time hated by the mainstream media and by many in the religious media go from “mocked” to “darling” in a few short years. It was only yesterday it seems that she and her former husband were all over the television for racketeering and tax evasion. She was made fun of for her extravagant lifestyle and outrageous makeup. There were no few detractors in the media who castigated her for what some might call “manipulating” people into sending money to a ministry in hopes of material blessing and a room with a view.
Tammy Faye had a resurgence in the last several years in terms of media coverage. After her former husband went to prison, she married his friend and business partner and then watched as he went to prison for fraud. She became heavily involved in the homosexual community as an AIDS activist (her memorial service was officiated by an openly gay pastor) and seemed to somehow come out of all this on top as far as the media is concerned.
How does one go from being the “butt of the jokes” to seemingly “darling” of the media.
Death, I guess has a way of making us recall the positive qualities of an individual. For that, I am grateful.
Tammy Faye – influence in the kingdom of God (positive or negative, you decide), brought attention to the kingdom of God (positive or negative, you decide), her children are involved in ministry today, she has tried to help those less fortunate than herself, brought attention to a terrible disease and those who have the disease.
Don’t misunderstand this post, I have many questions about Tammy Faye and her lifestyle. My posting about her death and her life does not condone what she was involved in or represented. I am just wondering aloud about the apparent dichotomies of life and practice in a person.
Day of Kids
Incredible day! These are the only words that come to mind right now about yesterday. Mother’s Day is pretty special at our Church. It is mom’s day but the kids make it special. We utilize our children’s ministry to lead out in worship as a way for the mothers to see what is going on in the children’s ministry on Sunday while they (moms) are worshipping. Our children’s pastor, Allen Bishop, and the Soul Station team did an incredible job of leading us in during worship. We learned that “true heroes never give up on doing good”. Our kids were very engaged during worship and the way Allen and the team involved everyone was really special.
We also had the opportunity to dedicate nearly 50 children to the Lord. Thirty-four families committed to lead their homes in a manner that would honor God and lead their children to faith in Christ. We know the kids will eventually have to submit their lives to Christ personally, but as parents we can help set the context for them to see Christ lived out daily in our homes. It was a great day for our body to see how God is moving in our preschool and children’s ministry.
We also got to be involved in the adoption process with our pastor, Pat Hood and his family. Go to this blog (thanks Alison) and see how that happened during our services. Wow, technology is amazing.
See you this week somewhere in Smyrna.
Missions…Research…Serving
Over the last few weeks I have been doing a little research into the training we utilize as a church for team members who are leaving on mission trips. We are sending people all over the world on short term mission trips. In fact, we have a team in South Asia today and a team that has just returned from Mexico.
Some of the preliminary results of the surveys that were sent out reveal that over 65% of the people who go on a short term mission trips will go on another trip. This statistic is very interesting to me. Stats can be read in many different ways, but I think in our setting it reveals that the chances are high that if a person goes on a short term mission trip they will begin a lifetime of missions endeavors.
We also discovered that even though we offer training to our team members before they leave for the mission experience, they are returning wanting more training (over 80% desired more). Some of the areas that have been suggested are FBCSmyrna’s philosophy of missions, a biblical basis for missions, flexibility in a missions settings, more development of their personal testimony, and a few other categories.
Our team is beginning to formulate a few ideas about what we are learning. One thought we are working through is experience precedes education. If a person can experience a mission opportunity they will want to learn more about missions. We also are beginning to see people who have never been involved with serving in the church are more likely to begin serving after they return from a mission trip. These are just a couple of observations that have surfaced through the survey. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out, stay tuned for more info later.
Idol Worship
While we were in India I had the opportunity to see some very unique forms of idol worship. It is not the first time I had seen this type of display and probably will not be the last. We happened to be there during one of their biggest festivals. In the city we were working there were 300 temporary “official” worship sites erected out of bamboo and colored cloth. The temples were very elaborate and if you didn’t realize it you would think they were real. They were really a veiled attempted at a building. Inside each of these temples were around 5-6 newly made replicas of gods the Hindu people worship.
We arrived on the final night of the festival, by design. We hurriedly drove to the Ganges River to watch the people bring their idols to the river to dump. This is not a “getting rid” of the idols forever, just “baptizing” them into the holiest river in the country. All day, all night and into the next day thousands of people would gather at the Ganges to “baptize” the nearly 3000 idols into the river.
I have often thought about how the Hindus literally have figurine idols they worship and offer sacrifices to each day and in many instances by the hour. We in the USA think we are exempt from idol worship, because we may not have figurines on our mantles or shelves. I know there are some pagan religions that do have these “gods” in America, but by in large that is not the majority of us. But, we do have little “gods” all around us that vie for our attention daily. They drag us away or distract us from worshipping the one, true, living God. What are some of those potential “idols” that you see around us in the USA?
Servant Leadership
During our recent trip to S. Asia our team was teaching on Spiritual Leadership. We were teaching on the area of servant leadership and one of the leaders from our group wanted to utilize Jesus’ example of foot washing in the Scripture as a teaching illustration. I was a little skeptical and concerned about attempting to wash feet in the Indian culture. I wasn’t sure of the cultural ramifications and whether it would be offensive to the participants. We asked our host about leading the group in this illustration of scripture and he told us everything would be fine.
After one of the team members had taught on Jesus’ example we then began to wash the feet of the participants. The men we were teaching were very overwhelmed by this act. As we washed the feet of the men we prayed that God would empower them to teach and preach boldly and to serve their villages and families as Jesus would want. They began to cry and to express prayers to the Lord. When we had finished washing the feet of the men they immediately had us to sit and then clamored to wash our feet and pray for us as fellow believers.
The next day the Indian ladies involved in the women’s seminar asked to participate in the washing of feet. Their husbands had shared with them what had happened during our time of teaching and ministering and the ladies wanted to experience this also. While our ladies were demonstrating the servant aspect of foot washing the Indian ladies began to feel the weight of someone serving them. This was extraordinarily humbling for the ladies of the seminar. This is a culture where the women have no position other than what the men allow. The women of the culture in many cases are the servants to the men. So to have an American lady stoop to serve them was very overwhelming at that moment. They began to cry uncontrollably as their feet were washed individually. Some even illustrating Peter in the scripture, “you can not wash my feet.”
Finally, when all of the ladies had experienced this as individuals they rushed to wash the feet of our ladies. Each Indian lady wanted to wash the feet of our 2 American ladies. After washing their feet, many of the Indian ladies would kiss the feet of the women team members. This was a very overwhelming experience needless to say for our ladies. We talked and began to digest what had happened and realized another scripture had been illustrated. When the woman who had been forgiven much, anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment, kissed his feet and dried them with her hair.
This servant act of Jesus with His disciples was a powerful teaching moment in the day that Jesus first demonstrated it to His followers and still is today as we participated with the Indians of S. Asia. I am praying for a movement of servant leaders in S. Asia and in Smyrna, TN.
There are many more exciting and memorable moments from our trip that hopefully I will be able to post about in the coming days.
Pictures will be up in a few days on my Flikr site.
