Vision Video for Church Planting in Atlanta
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CHURCH PLANTING IN ATLANTA
If you have not yet heard, we are moving to Atlanta to plant a church. The long and short of it is, I have been wrestling through a call to preach and plant for the last year and we are responding to that call from God to plant a church.
We will be linking arms with Pastor Alex Early and Four Corners Church in Newnan, Georgia to do a one year church planting apprenticeship, which will end in us being sent out by FCC to plant somewhere in the South/West Atlanta Metro in September 2013.
If you are interested in knowing more or how you can sow into our ministry and support us just email Josiah at Josiah@fourcornersnewnan.org or click here: https://fourcorners.onthecity.org/give/login
There is no story behind the story on this one. We love CrossPointe and will miss them dearly. We are simply being led by the Holy Spirit to continue proclaiming the Gospel for Jesus, so that people might come to know and love Him, be brought from death to life and then proclaim the Gospel to others! We are thankful for Pastor Jared sending us out this past Sunday and are looking forward to hearing of the Gospel fruit that will be harvested at CrossPointe in the years to come for the glory of God.
Stay tuned as we are working on a vision video that will provide more info!
-The Potters
Photo by: Matt Gruber
WORSHIP PROBLEM
“Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it.” Isaiah 44:15
Our view of idolatry has been skewed in the Western world because when we think of idols, we think of wooden totem poles or shrines of gold and rock that can only be found on tours in Eastern countries, when in reality they not only exist in our culture and world, but they exist in our every day lives because we have made them from our hearts.
Edward T. Welch, in his book Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave, says, “Furthermore, the problem is not outside of us, located in a liquor store or on the Internet; the problem is within us. Alcohol and drugs are essentially satisfiers of deeper idols. The problem is not the idolatrous substance; it is the false worship of the heart.“
Most of us, if not all of us, immediately point to external manifestations of our idols, rather than to the source of it; our hearts. We desperately want to believe that we are good and things outside of us are what corrupts us, when in reality it is the opposite.
Jesus said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23
Your idolatry doesn’t come from porn.
Your idolatry doesn’t come from alchohol.
Your idolatry doesn’t come from Facebook or Twitter or television or anything else.
Your idolatry comes from your heart.
That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news.
Jesus died to give you a new heart through His atoning work on the cross and resurrection!
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
Jesus gave His life so that we might be able to have new hearts that correctly worship and enjoy Him forever.
Repent of your idolatry. Turn to Jesus. Worship Him with your new heart.
worship PASTOR
One of the things I have learned this year from our meetings at The Worship Cohort is that there are a lot of worship LEADERS but not a lot of worship PASTORS. This is troubling because it seems to be a growing trend that we put young, inexperienced men in Pastoral roles that carry Pastoral responsibilities, but then hand them a job description that reads like an open mic audition form for a band, and then chastise them for not being Pastoral in their ministry.
There are three things that need to happen to begin to shape much of worship ministry today in our churches. The first two are for lead pastors and the last one is for worship leaders/pastors.
1. Training & Equipping
Stop putting the first guy who can strum a G chord on stage and calling him a worship leader. We must train and equip worship leaders/pastors in the same way we would train and equip lead pastors. There must be an understanding that your (lead pastor) worship leader shares the stage you preach from %50 of the time. The two of you are the most recognizable people to the congregation and that carries weight and responsibility.
Meet with your worship leader/pastor. Every week. If you don’t have time, make time. It’s unbelievable that some pastors do not get time with the other dude that is on stage for 30/60 minutes of the service. While I recognize there are different models out there (like ours) who have multiple worship leaders/bands; usually there is someone on staff designated as “Worship Pastor.” You (lead pastor) need to get time with him and grow your relationship. Look at all the thriving churches who have healthy lead pastor/worship pastor relationships.
Newspring, Mars Hill, The Village, Elevation, Living Stones etc.
Identify worship leaders in your church. Train and equip them. THEN put them on stage. The stage is a strange place and spotlights do strange things to people. Make sure your worship leader has been assessed and equipped before allowing them to experience that sort of thing.
Also, stop sending them to giant conferences where they’re enamored with stuff that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars that your church cannot afford. If you send them anywhere, send them to a conference that at least has breakout groups and sessions that are designated for specific church sizes. There are a lot out there, you just have to search for them. This will be helpful because it will give your worship leader training they need without the glitz and unreachable flash they would normally see at huge conferences. If you only send your worship leader to huge conferences, they will come back frustrated because when they get home, they won’t be able to pull off what the guys at the conference pulled off.
2. Be their Pastor AND their Boss
Too many lead pastors function as poor bosses who simply manage a team of people who need to get tasks done. You must realize that even though your worship leader may be a grown man with a family and a ministry; he still needs a pastor. Make sure you are carving out time and creating a culture of confession and repentance and leading him well so he can be spiritually healthy. It can be weighty to have to pastor your staff, but that’s what you signed up for when you planted.
Another good way to function in this way is to differentiate WHEN you’re being pastor and boss. By creating a time for your worship leader/pastor to open up with what’s going on in their life, you will also be eliminating frustration in meetings. If all you do is meet and talk about tasks, then your worship leader will scramble to find a good moment in those meetings to bring up the things that are pressing on them in their life. Usually this will come at the end of a meeting when you need to be somewhere else. Instead of fueling this type of miscommunication and frustration; set aside the first 15 minutes of your meeting for your worship leader to open up about what is going on in their life.
(For those of you with female worship leaders; let a godly woman in your church meet with and discuss her deeper problems and struggles. Be above reproach.)
3. Worship leader/pastor, you have a responsibility
Stop fondling your guitar and spending hours looking at gear and trying to get the perfect tone. No one remembers what your rig sounded like last week, let alone (probably) every song you played. Your gear cannot be what drives you. Your arrangements cannot be what drives you. Your team cannot be what drives you. Jesus must be what drives you.
Take time to actually Pastor the people in your ministry. Spend time not just with your teams or bands, but with the actual people you are leading in worship every week.
Your job is to point people to Jesus every week. They come in. You point them to Jesus. They leave. Do you know what happens when they leave? Or at least what is suppose to happen? THEY WORSHIP JESUS. They go home and worship Jesus. They go to work and worship Jesus. They go to school and worship Jesus. And then at the end of a week full of worship, they gather with the other members of the body of Christ and worship Jesus, TOGETHER.
If you are truly their worship PASTOR, then pastor them. Lead them in worship on wednesday over coffee. Lead them in worship on Thursday at your house when your families get together. Lead them in worship on a double date with you and your spouse.
Worship PASTOR, you are called to serve the church, not surf the web looking for gear all day and browsing Facebook to see if people are liking your quotes you ripped from some conference you attended last week. Get out of your office, get out of your practice space, get out from behind your computer and go Pastor people.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There is certainly a place for gear, tone, and time on the computer. (Except for Facebook creeping. Just delete your account. The thing is worthless and a time suck.)
However, the reason I am being overbearing on my points is because I have seen this type of leadership taking shape in the church and it is scary.
Identify gifted worship leaders. Train and equip them for the work of the ministry. Pastor them. Hold them accountable and love them. Put them on stage to lead the people they are Pastoring, in worship through song and praise.
Unshackled: Galatians 3:15-25
This past Sunday I had the opportunity to preach the Gospel at Crosspointe Church Waterford Lakes where I am the Worship Pastor. Our Lead Pastor, Jared was out of town on vacation, so I was honored to be able to occupy his pulpit for the weekend and walk through Galatians 3:15-25 with our church.
Here is the link to hear the podcast: http://www.crosspointechurchwaterfordlakes.com/sermons/sermon/redeemed:-week-7:-unshackled
Hope you can take a listen and wrestle through the truths of the Gospel as we did this past Sunday.
-Josiah
5 Questions to ask when considering a BF/GF
As I preached, worked, and fellowshipped with everyone at the FCA mission two weeks ago, I began to look back on my high school experience. As I sifted through the years I began noticing a trend in my relational life. I really didn’t have a gauge to measure relationships with. Now, I’m sure my dad, David, Tommy, or Bob preached on how to gauge my relationships at one point, but I didn’t use anything when it came to dating. My only gauge was 1. Does she go to church? 2. Is she pretty? I didn’t care to even ask if she loved Jesus or what her heart looked like.
As I got older, I developed a gauge and the Lord has blessed me with a beautiful wife who met and continually meets these requirements. I wrote this up in my journal for my daughter Mercy. I know she’s only ten months old, but I figure it’ll give me time to shape and mold this list. (And possibly grow it!)
This is a framework for what a person should be exhibiting and permeating before you decide to give your heart to them in a relationship. I feel that if the youth of our culture today could begin using this measure the potential of a bf/gf then it might plant seeds to lead to healthy marriages because they won’t be selling themselves short for prom, which may grow into not selling themselves short for marriage.
I hope this helps, and if you have any suggestions please send them my way!
FCA Missions 2011-Mexico
Upon leaving Mexico this year I thought about all the Holy Spirit had taught us throughout the week. There have been so many mission trips that I have been impacted by the Holy Spirit, God’s Word, and Jesus through what I experienced each week, but went back home, backslid into old habits. I now see that it’s because I wasn’t resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I was still trying to earn my salvation by impressing God with how ‘good’ I was. The truth is that God sees Jesus when He looks at us. That’s why the scriptures say that we are “…the righteousness of God.” To help address the issues that get at my heart and cause me to forget the gospel of Jesus Christ and what He has done for me, I made this up to look at everyday. It’s a collaboration of ideas, questions, and sermons I’ve heard from Tullian, Davis, Driscoll, and generally what the Holy Spirit has been teaching me this year. Hope this will help you orient your hearts to Christ, rest in Him, and then do good works already prepared in Him for God’s glory and your good.
Move to the YMCA
Here are some photos from our first Sunday in our new YMCA facility!!!!
Continue to pray for us and CrossPointe Waterford Lakes.
Salvation and Missing Flights
Traveling with a baby is different than traveling alone. Some of you just nodded your head in agreement, and some of you (most likely single people who are disillusioned because of American television) thought, ‘no it’s not,’ just wait, you’ll see.
When traveling with an infant, you basically have to tack on 15 minutes to everything you plan to do. It’s a pretty good estimate for getting to places on time, and it definitely got us to the airport on time.
Jordan, Mercy and I, after checking our bags and making it through security finally make it to our gate. Whenever I get to my gate early, I like to people watch, and what better airport to people watch than Atlanta. Especially in terminal A where Delta and Chick Fil A are.
As I sat there watching people, I saw lots of folks running. apparently there was canceled flight after canceled flight and people were trying to make it to the next gate to get on standby. Eventually as time went on our gate became the next gate at which people were scrambling to get on stand by.
It was intense.
The line was fifty deep. People were cutting in line, interrupting one another, and being rude to whoever was in their way.
I began to become anxious, wondering if my seat would be given away, or maybe some big wig with flyer miles would snatch up my spot and leave me in Atlanta for the night.
But, then I looked down at my ticket.
I had a ticket.
I had the very thing I needed to get me and my family home.
I think the realization I had at gate A16 last night is similar to the realization I have when I begin trying to earn my salvation.
I look around in life and see people scrambling to find their way ‘home.’ They run to different gates seeing if that’s how they can obtain peace, joy, fullness. But, every time they get up close, they realize that gate, whether it be relationships, money or whatever it is they’re seeking, is not going to take them home.
Then I look around at my gate, which I guess could be paralleled as the church, or Christianity. I see people shoving, pushing and forcing their way to the front of the line. Being rude to one another, saying things like, ‘I’ve earned this flight with my miles,’ or ‘I deserve this flight because…’ and I begin to get anxious, wondering if I need to be earning more miles to get on my flight home.
Then I see my ticket.
Salvation.
The beauty about our tickets yesterday and the ticket in my parallel is that we didn’t purchase either of them. Our tickets for Christmas were a gift from family and my salvation is a gift from Christ.
My ticket has been paid for. I didn’t have to work for it. I didn’t have to earn it. It was simply given in love.
As I settled back into my seat and waited for our zone to be called, I kissed my bride and baby, assured in my faith, and thankful for Christ did for me on the cross.
Are you trying to earn your ticket?
