Time to freshen up the blog, as we bring our busy fall ministry launch season to a close. Here are just a few touch points, to connect my heart with yours and get current . . .
• HARVEST TRAINING CENTER FOR CHURCH PLANTING
Love, love, love the men who have come with their families for several months of training, before they launch out to plant the churches that will take this wonderful missions effort beyond the 150-churches mark, worldwide. These guys are so hungry, and I had maybe the best time ever up at Camp Harvest with them and our pastors a few weeks ago, concentrating our preaching training into a two-day period.
• HARVEST UNIVERSITY
Very excited about the upcoming Harvest University starting Sunday night, and the first-ever Harvest U outside Chicago, on October 25-28, near Toronto with our Canadian Harvest Bible Fellowship partners. The purpose of this event is to connect our wider church family around the world with the principles of Vertical Church. We offer impactful worship/preaching sessions, as well as very practical ministry training workshops.
• VERTICAL CHURCH MEDIA
“The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” is our church’s soon to be released feature-length film. It was recently screened in L.A. by the film’s producers and received great reviews. This motion picture, set to release nationwide in 2016, will be exclusively previewed each night of Harvest University. It is not the typical Christian film, as it’s targeted to impact Christians and non-Christians alike. The movie’s premise is a child star turned bad boy in adulthood, who is forced to do community service in a church to avoid jail time. His introduction to the subculture of evangelicalism is awkward, hilarious and, ultimately, life changing. Please pray with us about this exciting outreach.
• PROPHECY PREACHING
I interrupted the fall preaching schedule with a two-part series called Signs of the Times in the New York Times. I had been so burdened by the encroaching darkness of our current moral climate that I wanted to bring some understanding to our people about how such decline is predicted in Scripture. We studied, in Mark 13, the ten things Jesus said would precede His return with the goal of raising our sense of personal urgency in the Lord’s work. (Watch “Signs of the Times in the New York Times, Part 2”.) I know that abuse of prophecy passages has made it popular to to shy away from such teaching, but I think it really helped our people process some of the massive cultural shifts we all have been seeing.
• A SHOT IN THE ARM!
I recently came across this spoken word piece in my wife’s Facebook feed and was so proud of our Tara Stutes, who committed it to memory and shared on one of our campuses with great impact.
• BASICS ARE BEAUTIFUL
I have cut back on my travel by more than 90% and can honestly say I only wish I had done it sooner. I have been consciously saying “no” to things I know will drain me and de-prioritize our own church family—and frequently saying a glad “yes” to stuff that had gotten crowded out. I have loved preaching on Wednesday nights at our Rolling Meadows Campus, then remaining in the area with Kathy so I can lead a Thursday morning small group for about 20 young leaders on the same campus. Soon, I will have done this for 10 straight weeks (unthinkable by my 2012 travel standards), and I am so grateful. This discipline of personal discipleship has been so integral in my own growth as a believer, I can’t believe I ever let the demands of ministry draw me away from this personal priority.
– Photo cred to Pastor Dave Learned, who co-leads the group
Let’s be “unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Your brother in Jesus,
James
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