Tag Archive - Coconut Creek

What’s your Story?

November 12, 2009 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

I am supper excited about this weekend.  I cannot wait to see how God continues to reveal His plan for peoples personal lives in our church.  We are in a series called Discovering God’s Will and it is incredible. I am pumped to see people discover the purpose and plans that God has for their lives and have those AH HA moments where the light goes on and they see how God is talking to them today.  God is in the middle of their story in life, no matter where they find themselves in it.  He wants to do something so amazing and so different that they cannot even imagine it right now in their present circumstance.  I love what John Ortberg says…

“We live in the pain between the way things are now and the way they are supposed to be. Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, ‘God get us out of this story. This is a bad story. Take us out of here.’  He taught us to pray, ‘Let Thy Kingdom come!  On earth as it is in Heaven. In my body. In my family. In our church. In every dark place on the planet.’”

Check out this video on the Lord’s Prayer, it is very moving

The Divine Commodity

November 12, 2009 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

I have the best group of people on the planet to work with at Coastal Community Church.  They are an amazing, eclectic mix of individuals who bring differing voices and thoughts to the table.  I love serving together with them as we make Jesus famous in Ft. Lauderdale.

As a staff we are reading a book by Skye Jethani called The Divine Commodity.  The book is about discovering our faith beyond being consumer Christians.  We are just in chapter one but there are some great and thought provoking quotes that I thought I would share.

“Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them.” Albert Einstein

“Questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined.  The imagination must come before implementation.  Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and imagine almost nothing.”

“The fertile land of imagination is a terrain we pass through, not a field we cultivate.”

“Jesus’ adult followers suffered from a chronic lack of imagination.  Their minds were shackled by conventionality.”

“Art should do more than present reality; it should represent reality by uncovering the truth that is not apparent to the naked eye.”  Vincent Van Gogh

“He didn’t merely present the world as it is; he represented it as one full of God’s presence and love.  But to see this world a person needs more than eyes.  He or she needs a ray from on high, an imagination awakened and illuminated by God.”

“If your imagination of God is starved then when you come up against difficulties, you have not power, you can only endure darkness.”  Oswald Chambers

and the most convicting statement

“The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.”

THIS WEEKEND!!!

September 25, 2009 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

I am so excited for this weekends message.  I think that it will probably be one of the best messages I have ever shared.  The reason I think it will be so powerful is the fact that so many people deal with the subject we are going to be talking about on Sunday.  You do not want to miss church this weekend at Coastal Community Church.

I truly believe that God is up to something BIG in Ft. Lauderdale.  I know that He definitely has GREATER THINGS in store for his church than what we can dream or imagine.  I can’t wait to see how lives are transformed by the power of his Holy Spirit.  When we open ourselves up to what He wants to do instead of what we want to do, God has the opportunity to do a new thing in our life.  I truly believe that this weekend will be an opportunity for God to do something completely new and different in peoples lives and bring FREEDOM to our lives.

Can’t wait to see you all this weekend!!!

Coastal Community Church is off and running!!!

September 22, 2009 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

It has been a couple of weeks since my last blog post and I apologize.  The last two weeks have been a dream come true for me.  On September 13, 2009 we had the very first service of Coastal Community Church.  It was probably the 3rd greatest moment of my life besides accepting Christ and marrying my wife.  We had 357 people show up for that first service. The room was filled with anticipation, people gave their all in worship and the word of God was preached.  At the end of the day I was exhausted but at the same time I was invigorated.  It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.  I am not an emotional guy but when the commitment song, Came to my Rescue, was being sung and I looked out and saw hundreds of people worshipping God I just broke down.  There is nothing greater than seeing the Spirit of God move in peoples live to draw them into His presence.

I am so thankful to all of you who have been praying for Shayla, myself and our team.  You have no idea what is about to take place in Ft. Lauderdale because of your faithfulness.  To all those who have contributed financially to the vision before it was a reality, thank you so much for your belief and faith in us to do a Greater Thing down here.  Finally, to those who sacrificed by moving your families and giving up jobs, family and friends, you are my heroes.  We could not have planted this church without you and you have been such a huge encouragement and source of inspiration to us.

It’s about the DETAILS!!!

September 3, 2009 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

Over the past 3 months I have learned a principle that has changed my life.  I am one of those people who is all about the big picture.  The thing about being a big picture person is that you are not necessarily a detail person.  I like talking about what it will look like when and dreaming about the future.  I am not real big on getting all the minor details in place.  The thing that I have learned is that life is culmination of all the details adding up to the big picture.  The details are what sets a good thing apart from the great thing, it’s what changes something from ordinary to extraordinary, and it is the difference in a good idea and a God idea.

I have come to find in planting Coastal Community Church that God is about detail.  He doesn’t just want us to have a good church service every weekend but a great one.  That means we have to plan for more than just some people greeting at the door, good music and relevant teaching.  It means we have to think about every sign that directs people, every word that goes on the screen during worship, our follow up on people who come to church, the curriculum we use to teach our children, the way we communicate to our community through our advertising, to the words we speak when we are in front of people.  It is all about the details.

This isn’t a new concept either, if you were to read Exodus in the Bible you would see how detailed God was about His first portable church that was planted in the desert.  They had to make the temple exact and precise.  It was all about detail.  I believe that God is looking for people who are about His details.  They are looking at what most would think of as meaningless but to God is extremely important.  I believe that the details take us from being visionaries to revolutionaries.  God is looking for a people who are all about the details, who can take a vision from concept to a reality and be the catalyst for a generation.

  • What details are you forgetting about right now in your life?
  • Where have you been slacking in life that you know you should be doing but you have just been lazy in?

Lets decide to be a people that are about the details of life!

Don’t forget this detail: SEPTEMBER 13, 2009 Monarch High School 10am COASTAL COMMUNITY CHURCH IS LAUNCHING!

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