Revival

Transition – Discovering God’s Call for Your Church

Many of you know that my calling is to a very specific field of ministry in the church. I am a transitional pastor. I help congregations discover God’s call for their collective of Christ followers. I met Bruce Cormier and his wife Lesia at my last transition. Together we, the collective of Christ followers called Cornerstone Christian Fellowship – Mimico and myself, set out on what ended up being an 18 month journey to understand what God was saying about the future of our church. We had a building. We had a small in-person congregation of about 30 and a similar sized online group who, in their younger years had attended in person. It took me 18 months to get to this point and Bruce managed to say it in just over 1500 words!

This little church has close to doubled in size and continues to grow under their new permanent pastor. The biggest question we needed to answer was about the building the church owned. As you read this, maybe your church needs to ask itself the same question they were asking:

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The New NoStick

I don’t usually do reviews on my blog. I love to cook and have used a variety of pots and pans. I am a big fan of cast iron and stainless steel because they can be used at high temperatures and don’t scratch easily. That being said, simple meals on no-stick pans makes sense. Me writing about no-stick doesn’t but me writing about NoStick does if you give me a chance and read on.

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It’s Like Putting Lipstick on a Pig

I know the phrase. I’ve used the phrase. One thing I haven’t done is tried putting lipstick on a pig. The logistics alone make this quite the monumental feat. As I said, I’ve never tried but if you use your imagination, you can hear the squeals, picture the battle of wills and even smell the… those with a less vibrant imagination are thankful they don’t see, hear, feel and smell the way those of us who can get lost in our own thoughts do. Putting that aside, putting lipstick on a pig is not only tough, it’s not worth the effort.

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Bad Theology Leads to Good Living

I have made the decision to live out bad theology in an attempt to please God. This sentence in itself might be considered bad theology. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6) and yet I appear to be substituting a way of living for faith. This is only the beginning of me messing with theology. Worse still, I hope I can convince you to live out the same bad theology, to please God by substituting my thesis way of living.

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He Loves Me Just The Way I Am

I don’t know about you, but I find this comforting. In my life I have sinned too much to ask God to love me based on who I am or what I have done. To be loved just as I am, is a miracle in itself. While I believe I love others with some of the same unconditional love, I must admit I often fail. I want to be like Jesus. I want to offer truly unconditional love. I want to love like Jesus. I guess I just have to stop expecting others to do what is right, to change, to seek to be more like they were created to be, lowering my expectations so I can simply love. To be like Jesus is to love with no standard, no expectations; to live and let live, isn’t it?

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Poking Holes in Our Holiness

Do I need to aspire to be more holy? Isn’t what Jesus did enough? Am I not saved by grace instead of my works? Can’t I just embrace Jesus and His teachings; isn’t that enough? Isn’t my Holiness assigned to me because Jesus paid the price I could never pay? I’m not perfect, I am not expected to be perfect, do I need to strive to be perfect if perfection is not attainable or required? Do I really need to struggle with my sinful nature if Jesus already paid for my sins?

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