Love

I was skimming through some blogs and saw Anthony Coppedge had a new one. For those that don’t recognize his name, he is an extremely knowledgable church media consultant. So I’m reading his blog and it really stood out. I’m not usually one to repost other’s work, but in this case, there is nothing I would add or remove. He really hit the nail on the head with this post.

 

During the times of my life when I’ve been really stretched and I learned to grow, God has often shown me an old thing a new way. For me, this has sometimes been through a different translation of the Bible (I usually read the NIV and NJKV). Last night that happened yet again when, on a whim, I used BibleGateway.com to read 1 Corinthians 13 from The Message.

I have a love/hate thing going on with this chapter, as it continually encourages me and then kicks my butt. So when I read it last night, it really popped off the page with a new twist. Here’s how verse 7 read:

1 Corinthians 13:7

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Sure, it’s the same, but the new twist of reading it differently made it come alive in a new way…a way that causes me to rethink where I’m right (dogmatically). As a husband, I can look at Ephesians 5 and think I’ve got a handle on things. But then when I re-read this, with a new twist, I realized that being “right” has less significance than showing love.

I’m a work in progress. I’m learning. But I am getting it…slowly.

Here’s your assignment:

• Man or woman, married or not, are you loving this way?
• When you think you’ve won a disagreement hands-down, does it matter if you’re not loving this way?
• Who you are going to show this kind of love to today?

J

In Search of Sound

The band at Four Points Church is coming together. When we had our first meeting at Brent’s house in September of 07′ we had a guitar and some voices.  A couple of months later as we made the move into our first venue at Mt. Paran we picked up a keyboard player, and another voice. Now, as we are preparing to move into our new venue in Acworth in preparation for our September launch, the band has evolved yet again. This week we picked up our new bass player Jason Gabriel. Prior to that, we were able to attain a solid drummer and friend with Jon Williams (aka Dr. Thumper). As our band continues to grow along with our church we are finding ourselves in a search of sound and rhythm.

On any given Sunday, if you were to walk into a given church in our country you would be somewhat familiar with the music. I believe there are to reasons for this. First, a majority of the music that is being played in most churches is simply over killed songs from decades past. Everyone knows the songs because they have been played and sung over and over again through out their life. Secondly, their are only a handful of places from which music that is replayed in churches seems to originate from. Every worship leader flocks to their resources for their innovation. Examples of these churches would be North Point, Fellowship Church, Gateway Church, Mars Hill, Hillsong. The sad thing is, only about .05% of these types of growing innovative churches exist. That means that the other 99.95% of churches have generally found themselves running in the rut of someone else’s creativity, and never really bothering to step out and explore their own voice and sound.

At Four Points the worship is all about Jesus. The worship is directed to Jesus. The music is played and sung for Jesus. And for that reason, we try to give the music and song our absolute best (scripturally, lyrically, musically) because it is what we are giving to Jesus. Right now we are finding ourselves in a unique place with the band. For starters we are still growing as a group. It is for that matter we are covering other churches songs, simply to learn each others ways. Secondly, we are currently working on some original songs. This is where we are really struggling to find our own God-given tone. We as individuals, as a church strive to be what Christ Jesus has called us to be for our city at this time. As much as we admire many churches presently, as well as many churches and church leaders of the past, we do not want to be carbon copies of them. We will take what we can learn from them and move forward the best we can. 

We are currently in the process of spending bits and pieces of time in the studio working with different sounds and songs. We hope to have some things for you to listen to on itunes in the next couple of weeks.

“If our life is just a breath, gone in just a sec. We’ll breathe in deep, and give it in song to You.”

Dan

Is it Friday already?

Seriously!

It feels like Sunday was just yesterday. 

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this week has flown by for me.

I digress; tomorrow is UFC 84: ill will. Anyone interested in watching it with the 4pc crew is welcome to join us at Buffalo Wild Wings in Marietta on Barrett Parkway. Show starts at 10:00 pm; we usually get there around 9:00 or 9:30.

Sunday morning, Brent will be sharing part two of Vintage Jesus: Who Is Jesus?

Also, the band will be debuting a new song.

Here’s a hint: Cream.

See ya there,

J

The Gasoline/Sin Analogy

I recently paid $3.69 a gallon for gas and it was about freaking ridiculous…I then went to Cleveland and paid $3.42/gallon and got ticked off about paying so much for gas in Atlanta.  Well, I started doing the math and it ended up I would save around four dollars…I was like, well that’s not that big of a deal…Four Dollars.
Okay, so my train of thought was this…Sin is like stinking gasoline!!  It gets worse and worse in your life and you keep on telling yourself and other people that, “Man, we really have to do something about all of this crap”, or, “I am about sick and tired of this stuff and somebody has to do something about this and it might as well be me!”  And then…..life settles back in and we start getting excited about American Idol, or Lost, or the season finale of The Office (all admitted vices of mine) and we forget to do anything about it…We continually get desensitized to the world of sin around us…When I was a little boy, I would have never thought that I would have had to endure Girls Gone Wild videos at night without so much as three seconds of warning to turn the channel…and you only have the strength to do that when you are fasting and prayed up!  It is a difficult world for a single man to have cable in…I will tell you that much.   The crazy thing is that this all got this way out of nowhere…We have been gradually desensitized over vast amounts of time and when it finally gets out of hand it is going to be too late…We are stuck with what we have been used to and it spirals out of hand…
Does this make sense to anyone else??  Holler back if it does
Joshua

Busy weekend……

It’s a busy weekend at Four Points Church. Last night the ladies had Chic Night. I don’t know how that went, and I’m not sure if I really want to know. Only joking; I’m sure they had fun.

Tomorrow morning the men have their Dude’s Breakfast at Chick-fil-a on Cobb Parkway in Acworth. We’ll be discussing Deadly Viper Character Assassins. 

Tomorrow night I along with the worship team have setup and rehearsal. If you haven’t read my first blog, take a peek at it and you’ll get an idea of what practice is like. 

And finally, we have Sunday! We’re having a Schools Out Picnic, but of course, before that, we have our service at 10:00 am. The band’s set list is I Am Free, All Because of Jesus, God of This City, There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood. Also, Brent will begin a new sermon series. If you haven’t read Dan’s blog, here’s another hint as to the subject matter:

See you Sunday,

J

Jesus

Jesus. Everything we do springs from the man who carried this name, lived, died and rose again over 2,000 years ago.

The mere mention of the name of Jesus conjures up so many varied images, emotions and thoughts. Some hear the name of Jesus and immediately correlate Him to right wing republicans, while others equate Him to a hippyish Gandolf smoking a pipe spouting off fortune cookie wisdom like Confucius. Jesus is very evident in our twenty first century pop-culture. Numerous celebrities have been seen sporting “Jesus is my homeboy” T-shirts. The famed sitcom cartoons series The Simpson’s and SouthPark have included Jesus in their cartoon cast alongside of Bart and Timmy. And in the movie Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby prays to an “8-pound, 6 ounce, newborn infant Jesus” in “golden fleece diapers.”

What is amazing is that even two thousand years after Jesus came to earth, his fame continues to grow. To this day Jesus still has the largest following of any other religion or group on earth. 

At Four Points, we are seemingly always approached after a service regarding how often we preach and mention the name of Jesus. The reasoning is very simple. Jesus is the focus. The focus is not placed on the individual leaders or ministry teams within the church. The Focus is Jesus. The focus is not placed on our preferences and styles. The focus is Jesus. The focus is not placed in good deeds (though they exist). The focus at four points centers around a homeless peasant from a small country town named Jesus. This Jesus we want to share. We invite you to learn about  Jesus with us over the next several weeks as we begin a new sermon series entitled “Vintage Jesus”. Please feel free to tune in to our Podcast on our webpage (www.fourpointchurch.tv) to learn more about Jesus. 

Dan

It’s almost Sunday……

It’s 7:00 PM on Friday night. That means 39 hours until another service at Four Points Church. 23 hours we’ll begin setup. An hour after that is practice. The band has two hours to learn, rehearse and perfect four songs. I have two hours to EQ and mix a band that has a very diverse sound (an average service consists of a Beatles song, a couple worship songs and a hymn). On top of that, we’re changing up our order of service; we’re going to open service with U2’s Beautiful Day, then Brent is going to speak on worship, and then the worship set at the end. 

This all looks simple in theory.

It isn’t.

But I can’t complain.

I live for this.

To know that I’m part of a church that is engaging culture instead of hiding from it and loving people instead of shunning them, all while being unashamedly grounded under the authority of scripture is an awesome feeling.

Or maybe it’s the adrenaline rush that comes each Sunday, knowing that it’s only by God’s help that we do this.

See you Sunday.

J