Let Freedom Ring

I love America.

My trip to Honduras this week was fantastic, and I'll be sharing more of that story with you in the next couple of days, so check back - it will be worth it.

I hope the people of other countries love their homes, too.  

I was born here, and so appreciate all the great things about America, most particularly the freedoms that we have.   

Freedom, you see, isn't free.  It costs blood and treasure.  The flag pictured above is maybe my favorite picture I've ever taken.  It's from the Avenue of Flags display at the Orange Grove Memorial Cemetery in Lake Charles (on Memorial and Veteran's Days).  

One of the things I love about the picture is how the Sun shins through the flag, illuminating the color and adding vibrancy.  

It reminds me that my freedom, my real, enduring freedom, comes when the Son of God, Jesus, shines in my heart, breaking me free from every form of bondage.

That's why we are planting a church in theLC, to Let Freedom Ring here!  

I am proud to live in America, and to be an American.  Even more, I belong to Jesus!  Here is how the Apostle Paul says this in the Bible, his letter to the church in Philippi:

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.
Philippians 3:20

Let Freedom Ring!  

Happy Birthday, America

from Honduras to Suffolk Manor

This week I went to Honduras.  My friend, Norman Thomas, Pastor of New Life Church International, here in Lake Charles, invited me to join him on a trip there.

I'm so glad.

Today at our Worship Gathering I'll share what God taught me on the trip.

And I'll post a couple entries on this blog and include some videos this week.

Last night, we hosted a party for the residents at Suffolk Manor Apartments on Lake St, here in Lake Charles.  The owners of the complex welcomed us as a church getting to know the people who live there, and we are excited to do just that.

These two are connected by the reality that the Apostle Paul wrote about in his letter to the church at a city called Colossia.

"This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace." Colossians 1:6

All over the world, from the mountains of Honduras, among the Lenka people, who are less than 1% Christian (at least they were before the churches I met started a couple of years ago!) to the apartment complexes and homes right here in theLC.

from the city church in Lake Charles, Louisiana (LA) to new churches in Honduras, #theCityWillBeDifferent!

Life is Too Good to Do Alone

June 5 Update to Post: Here is Rachel at our Worship Gathering sharing about Community.  Way cool.

We were made for Community.  When the first couple was just a single (after God made Adam, but before He made Eve), God said something incredible about His creation.  "It is not good."  God had made everything up to this point, and there was no sin.  It was sweet!  Adam had a cool job, work was pleasing.  The weather was perfect.  He could hang with GOD!  Yet it was not good...

Adam felt alone.

So God intervened, and He gave Eve to Adam.  And it was good.  

There are a lot of us feeling like Adam felt before Eve was around.  Alone.  And Not Good.  We are surrounded by people, physically and electronically, yet many are so alone.  Longing for someone to know them and to know others.  

We were made for so much more.  

We were made to live in community.  

In the Bible, it gives us this life giving encouragement, "²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ²⁵ Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

That truth lights me up every time!  

Life is too good to do alone.  So Connect in Community.

What is the Church? (and great night last Sunday!)

Our info and vision night last week was great!  We met some new friends and reconnected with old ones.

The video above is from one of the friends who joined us last Sunday Night.  Watch as Mr. Roosevelt shares his experience at his first visit to a worship gathering at theCityChurch and his confidence in God's movement among us.

Tomorrow, we ask and start to answer the question, what is the Church?

My first official Bible Study happened while I was in college at McNeese, and it was in a book in the Bible called Ephesians.  A guy named Paul was an Apostle, a leader appointed by Jesus to share the Gospel among people who didn't know God.  Paul started a church in the city of Ephesus, in modern day Turkey.  He wrote a letter to the church in that city, and we call that letter Ephesians.  I read that letter many times, and the sweat from my hands expanded the pages to they stuck out a bit in my Bible.

In Chapter 4, of that letter, Paul says that God gave gifts to every person in the church, including leaders whose job is to equip the people who follow Jesus to do God's work on the earth (you can call that ministry).

Paul says that the Church is to be equipped, built up, know Jesus, the Son of God, and reach maturity in Jesus.  When we do that we won't be blown back and forth, but will support one another, connected together in Christ.

I love that description of the Church!  Let's pursue it together

www.theCityShouldBeDifferent.com  

What does is mean to plant a new church? Sunday Night, May 15th Info Meeting (No Sunday Morning Worship Gathering that day)

We're planting a new church, theCityChurch.us, because we believe that because of God's intervention in the world, in my story and in yours, that as a result of that theCityShouldBeDifferent!

On Sunday, May 15th, at 6 pm we're hosting a gathering at Stellar Beans Coffee, 319 Broad St. to share the vision of theCityChurch - a church FOR YOU and FOR THE CITY!  

Here is what we are dreaming for you and me, for our city: A church where you can... 

Come as you are.  

Encounter God, the One who has all the Hope we need.  

Connect into a community, at your own pace.  

Find purpose to live for what matters.

theCityWillBeDifferent

paul

p.s. Why plant a new church?  Two short video responses to that great question!

 

Here are a couple more videos about the May 15th Info meeting: 

Hope comes from God. Clay Pettefer's last days...then JESUS!

My daddy passed away last Friday.  The Friday before that I spent the day in his hospital room.  It was great!

I felt like sharing, so I grabbed my camera and Bible, and that few minutes is on the video above.

The Memorial Service for Clay is tomorrow night, Thursday, at 7.  Visitation is from 4-7.  All at Trinity Baptist Church, 1800 Country Club Rd.  We'd love to see you there.

We'll share a great picture video of Clay's life, hear a couple stories about Dad, and I'll share.

Hope is here because JesusIsAlive!

paul

Worst day...could be the 1 that changes everything

It's in songs, poetry, conversations, tears...and photographs.

Some days are dark.  Hard.  Sad.  Unfair.

It's Friday, the day we honor the death of Jesus, around 2,000 years ago.  And when the religious leaders of His day partnered with the government leaders to conduct a sham trial and a brutal execution...it was a dark day.

Jesus hadn't committed any crimes.  He'd never even sinned.  People spoke lies about Him as cover for the haters.  But Jesus didn't even defend Himself.  He saw the bigger picture.  He understood the timeline of God's Kingdom, and how God's incredible Love Story includes really hard days, like Crucification Friday.

When Jesus was crucified, all His friends, the ones He'd spent three years living with and training as His disciples, they all deserted Him.  He was alone, mocked, beaten, humiliated and brutalized.  But He saw a bigger picture than that moment, awful as it was.

You've probably been around people when they have had one of these terrible days.  I have too.  Maybe you are in the middle of that day now.  Often, the worst day is the one that changes everything.  When you see that destructive and selfish lifestyle has got to change.  When you see that relying on yourself for strength, pushing away from God, will not work.  When you reach the end of yourself...and turn to God.

The most unfair day in history, when God's Innocent, Holy, Perfect Son was put to death...it's not the end.  It leads to the day that changed everything.

It's Friday.  But Sunday's Coming.

Role Models

The student newspaper at McNeese, theContraband, interviewed us last week at www.HomeworkNight.com.

This is Ryan and Rachel on the cover of the paper today.  To which I say...GoJesus!

I'm going to pick up a copy today.

When we love on people and give of our lives to benefit people, it matters.  And people will notice.

The kids @ Homework Night are great, and the relationships forming as a result matter.

It's how a city gets different, because Jesus is Alive!

paul

theGospel: Hope pushing back hopelessness

I love how God made us all different, and the same.

When we get a new bookshelf at the Pettefer house, I get the hammer, drill and screwdriver, and April sits nearby with the instruction manual, and we put it together...together.

I like images and drawings.  They help me remember and remind me how to tell someone else what I learned.  So when we're building the shelf, I look at the drawings, April reads the instructions, and before long, we have a great looking piece of furniture assembled and ready to use!

I've been thinking lately about how God's Kingdom is at work right here, right now.  A friend used a 4 Circle drawing to share the big picture of God's story and I thought it was really helpful.  (I'll share it soon.)

The last part of that drawing is depicting the movement of God's kingdom that started when Jesus came out of the grave, and will be completed when He comes back.  When He does return, He will make everything right.  Until then, the earth has so much that is not right...  The evidence of the fall of man is all around: family destruction, self-destruction...and the pain of it is overwhelming.

So what is God doing now, using the people who have been made alive in Jesus?

He's about bringing Hope; bringing it to where hopelessness has set up camp and is pushing the accelerator speeding the downward spiral of death and decay.

Hope arrives in Jesus.  It enters people who turn to the Lord and see His rescue plan...and put their trust in God's grace in Jesus.  Then Hope steps out to touch people, people who without Jesus are feeling hopeless.  (Oh, I know that we put on masks and keep ourselves busy, trying to pretend it's not there.  But eventually, everybody gets to the point where we see the death sentence that comes from our rebellion from God, and the need for a rescue.)

Hope in Jesus is carried in the people who have been made alive by Him into every corner of the world, to shine His light and push back the hopelessness of a fleeting life apart from God.

I'm rejoicing that God is the One at work, using Jesus' body left on the earth, the Church, to move His kingdom forward.  Hopelessness doesn't stand a chance when  Jesus shows up.

Believing that theCityWillBeDifferent, paul

theGospel

Life, my friends, can be hard.

The weird thing is, life can be hard even when things are easy.  You don't have to be a single mom with 11 kids, or a young cancer-victim, or, for something less flashy, someone out of a job.

You can even be a guy planting a church.

When life is hard, apply theGospel.

I'm not saying this to be trite or whimsical, but to be sincere.

What I'm seeing more clearly about myself is how quickly the sense of energy which lies beneath my hope can evaporate.  I can go from lots of confidence to a feeling of, let's call is slow-drag, in a short amount of time.

What gives me value?  Where does my hope come from?  What animates my sense of direction and passion?

I was hanging out in God's Words on Monday, and after a little while, pulled out the video camera with this response:

My value, my hope, my energy to press on, my ability to endure in hard things, my capacity to not get the big head when I do well...all come from the Good News (theGospel means "good news") that my life is no longer my own. My life was spiritually bankrupt, and what God did was provide a way for me to trade my "death" in for Jesus' life.  Jesus can do this because He never sinned, yet he went to the Cross, which He didn't deserve, to pay for my sin in my place.  When the trade happened, my death got removed, and Jesus' life got planted inside of me.  So my death got traded for Jesus' life, and I now seek to live out of this new-birth by drawing on the Jesus-life inside of me, daily.  That is the Gospel-Centered Life.

I'm learning how to see everything through the lens of the blood-stained Cross and the Empty Tomb.

More to come,
paul