It's Story Time

Now that Nicholas is 2 ½ years old I find myself saying “no, you can’t do that,” or just simply “stop”  a lot more.

“No, you can’t jump head first off the couch.”

“Stop climbing the refrigerator. “

“Stop sticking your finger there.”

Sure my son is obviously a boy and boys do things that sometimes defy logic and really make you laugh.  But, he also lives uninhibited.  He is on GO mode.

What is it like to live unstoppable, to live in a way where “no” is something you just don’t hear.  Where the idea of stopping is not an option.  When I look at the modern church I think to myself, what would our world look like if we were unstoppable.  If there was no stopping the impact we as Christians could make on the world.

Too many times as Christians we say NO far to often.  Sure, you might be thinking to yourself “I never say NO to the church or to God.”  Your might not utter the words, but we say it far to often with our lives.  The way we live, the way we conduct ourselves as followers of Christ in the workplace etc etc..  We live as if we can’t do anything for the Kingdom of God.  We live lives that are led out of fear instead of faith.  Fear of what others will think, fear of what we will have to give up, fear of letting go of control.  So what do we do, we STOP.  We stop short of that point of full surrender, full obedience.

God wants us to be unstoppable and to have a life that is worthy of the grace and mercy we have been shown. The way I look at it is that we as Christ followers should respond in faithfulness based on what God has done for us, not based on what God can do for us.  It’s simple.  Through Christ we have new life.  We have hope.  We have forgiveness, restoration, the old is gone, and the new is here.  So it is heartbreaking to see Christians respond in a way that is so stoppable.

For the past few weeks we have been talking about what it would look like if we lived as if there was no stopping us.  If we lived in a way that let those around us who see us everyday know that no matter what the cost there would be no stopping us.  Imagine how things could be different.

When we live as if we are unstoppable:

We will see things we never thought we would see.

We will say thing we never thought we would say.

We will do things we never thought we would do.

We will experience things we never thought we would experience.

God is in the business of taking things that are broken and restoring them. Pieces of our lives that others have left in shambles. Past experiences that brought us shame and guilt. We often define ourselves by what we have done. The beauty of God is that we are defined by Christ. His love. His sacrifice. More people need to hear of these types of transformations. More people need to know that there is hope in Christ. Please feel free to share your story here. Share how Christ has transformed your life.

Most times in our world today we see people who are will to sacrifice, willing to love, willing to go the extra mile when it is convenient. We measure in our minds, and ask ourselves how much is this action going to cost me. Time, money, energy. What if we acted without regard to the cost? What if we loved and sacrificed because we were overflowing with a love inside us? A love that is shown to us by God and as a result the people around us are showered with love, with compassion. What would that look like? Who would love?

This is the beginning of our story when it comes to ministry in the East Valley. We officially started this last weekend. It was a long weekend, but it was well worth the hard work. On Saturday morning we showed up bright and early at 7:00 am and our trailer was delivered to us. This was our Church on Wheels package that was going to include everything we would need for the church. Even though it was raining and cold, you could not help but see the excitement on the faces of all the volunteers that showed up that morning. By the time most of them had shown up they could hardly believe that everything inside this multi-purpose room at Sundance Elementary belonged to us and it was what God had provided for us to reach out to the community around us. We spent most of the morning doing inventory and learning what items went in which carts. The morning really got interesting when the directions were given to begin to set up our church. Boxes were flying everywhere. Wrapping and packing materials were thrown all over the school. Outside every room was a pile of trash. At first it was hard to see what was coming together. There was so much commotion and so many bodies running around that the chaos seemed to be too much. Then as time went by our church was sifted to the surface and then someone said it, “ oh my goodness, it looks like a real church.” One of the ladies who was helping in the children areas made her way back into the multi-purpose room and said with so much passion and excitement what everyone was hoping to be true. That at the end of this set up time was it even going to look like a church. She runs out and gathers all the helpers from all the different areas and ushers them back into the main meeting area and the whole group just smiled. I hopped up on stage and shouted, “well, we did it, we just set up our church for the first time.” People cheered and as I looked around the room I could see that people were starting to understand, they were starting to get it. This image had been in my mind for months and now everyone had the same picture. SUNRISE EAST VALLEY was here and ready to do ministry, ready to let God use us to further His Kingdom. It was a divine moment.
The rest of the day was filled with excitement and wonder. People wondering who would come, wondering which people they had invited would show up. We wondered and we worked. We tore things down and set them up one more time. Each time we set it up people got more excited. Ideas started flowing and people were ready to see everything in action.
Sunday morning came early as well we were anticipating a strong turnout, but we thought they would be mostly from the Rialto campus of Sunrise Church. We met early and set things up and saw what things would feel like on a Sunday morning. The morning was cold, but you couldn’t tell by the faces of all the volunteers. On this day they were driven, they were ready to do this for real. They had been talking about having a church service in the East Valley for the better part of five months. This was the day, the day we had all been preparing for and waiting for. This is the day that the LORD had made. God really had orchestrated a lot of things in order to make this campus happen. We can’t help but look and see His hand in so many details and events leading up to this day. As the morning went on all the areas were set up and we were ready to pray for our day. We met at 9:30 am and came together as leaders and came before God and thanked Him for all He had done and asked Him to use us to do mighty things in order to further His Kingdom. After prayer we all got into our spots. Greeters were set, ushers were ready, coffee and donuts were brewed and sliced. We were anticipating this to be our soft launch and were not really thinking people outside of the Sunrise sphere of influence would show up. Boy, were we wrong. As 10:30 am approached we kept seeing new faces again and again. Apparently one of the mailers had gone out early and people were showing up. Everyone was so excited and was so friendly ready to say “hello” and to welcome new faces to our first church service and new face and new face kept coming in. By the end of the service we had just under 120 people show up. We were so excited to see that God had brought so many people into our lives and that we had an opportunity to welcome them into our community. Josh Martinez did and excellent job in leading us in worship through music and Doug Story brought us a message from the Old Testament. The message focused on challenging believers to be obedient and accomplish great things for God. All in all it was a great day. We hope that all who read this post can join us from time to time and that you would even take the initiative in inviting someone to join you at Sundance Elementary on Sunday morning. Please continue to pray for Sunrise Church and that we would continue to be faithful to the task God has laid before us. This was just the first weekend in what we hope to be a long journey of great memories and stories of transformed lives; Lives in which God has left His imprint on. Lets enjoy the journey together.

To start things off I would like to say that you are reading this story with out starting at the beginning. Have you ever done that before? Just jumped right to the good stuff. There are plenty of great and marvelous things that have happened in the last 27 chapters of my life. Rest assured I didn’t jut show up here as a 28 year old man. I’m gonna try to recap that early years and spend some significant time writing the rest of my story. But, for these purposes , for these events we are going to start at Chapter 28.

So as of right now (age 28, hence the start in chapter 28) I am a husband, a father, and a pastor. I love God and I love people. Currently I have been given the task of starting a new church campus in the East Valley of Southern California. The church I work for is Sunrise Church www.sunrisechurch.org Right now they have 3 campuses (Rialto,* Wrightwood, and Ontario)(* Lots of chapters to come about Rialto, that is where I grew up). We are going to be the 4th campus and I thought it would be a good idea to record the stories of how this whole thing got started. I hope to be able to look back over the years and see how God is doing mighty things in me and through me.

This is my story.  This is our story.  This is HIS story.