Greg Pittman

I’m sitting at the airport on my way back to Tulsa after a fantastic convention. Come to think of it, I’ve never been disappointed by a North American Christian Convention. This week was no exception.

Max Lucado spoke at the last main session this morning. It was a simple but powerful message from John 3:16. My favorite line was shared while Lucado was talking about the phrase “shall not perish.” He said, “Hell is not a place for those who seek God and struggle, but for those who dismiss God and succeed.”

Looking forward to being home and seeing my family.

Today started with a very practical message by Rick Stedman. Rick is the Pastor at Adventure Christian Church in Roseville, CA. Rick encouraged listeners from 1 Corinthians 13 to share faith, hope and love. Favorite quote: “Too many Christians are hope-suckers.”

Dave Bycroft from Tyro Christian Church in Tyro, KS and Dudley Rutherford from Shepherd of the Hills in Porter Ranch, CA did a great job tag-teaming a dialogue sermon. We were instructed to share grace with everyone, everywhere and in every way. Ask Debbie Holmes about the video they showed. I’ve never seen her laugh so hard.

Matt Proctor, President at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, MO hit an absolute home run tonight at the main session. My favorite message so far. Matt preached from 2 Timothy 2 instructing us on how to endure through the struggles of the Christian life.
1. We need the pictures of endurance: a soldier, a farmer, an athlete (2 Timothy 2:3-6).
2. We need the purposes of endurance.
We become like Jesus (2 Timothy 2:8).
We bring others to Jesus (2 Timothy 2:10).
We save our place in heaven (2 Timothy 2:12a).
3. Most of all, we need the power of endurance.
We can’t do it by ourselves. We’re strong only through the grace of Jesus (2 Timothy 2:1).

The day ended with Casting Crowns in concert. They performed the favorites: Does Anybody Hear Her; Praise You in the Storm; Voice of Truth; Who Am I; All Because of Jesus. It was a great end to a great day!

“Grace That Heals” was the theme of Wednesday night’s main session. Dr. David Clark, Lead Pastor at Central Christian Church in Beloit, WI, preached from Luke 5. He compared Peter’s failed fishing trip with our own feelings of “not being good enough.” What allowed Peter to become a powerful servant of God? The key is in Luke 5:5. First of all, Peter was real about “his mess.” He had tried everything he knew and admitted that to Jesus. Secondly, he told Jesus, “because you say so, I will…”

The service ended with a time for hurting people to come forward and receive prayer. Lots of responses.

I stopped by the Ozark Christian College reception after the main session. Got a chance to catch up with lots of people there.

The main session speakers at the NACC were great this morning!

Rick Rusaw, Senior Minister at LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, CO spoke on the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. His question approaching the text was, “what makes a good neighbor?” His observations:
1. He saw the man in need.
2. He got his hands dirty.
3. He was inconvenienced.
4. He befriended the person.
5. He gave his money.
Rick encouraged churches to engage and serve the community in which they are in and only then will they get an opportunity to influence people.

Chuck Booher is Senior Minister at Crossroads Christian Church in Corono, CA. He reminded us that if we’re people of grace…
1. We have to cross racial barriers.
2. We have to cross international borders.
3. We have to cross generational boundaries.

I saw some people from Cedar Ridge today. Randy and Linda Beeson at the main session this morning. Kevin Shahan just stopped by my room. I heard Tony and Debbie Holmes are here, but haven’t seen them yet. I’m enjoying spending some time with my dad.

This week I’m in downtown Louisville, KY at the North American Christian Convention. This is a gathering of believers and church leaders (mostly from independent Christian Churches) for the purpose of worshipping and fellowshipping together.

Last night, Jeff Stone, the President of the 2009 NACC and Senior Minister at Discover Christian Church in Dublin, OH. Jeff kicked off the convention’s theme, Still Amazed (we’re talking about grace), reminding us that…
Grace must be discovered.
Grace must be displayed.
Grace must be dispensed.

Great sermon! I’m looking forward to being refreshed and encouraged this week. I’m also looking forward to catching up with some old friends, maybe even some family.

As a part of our on-going staff development, we’re usually reading a current title and discussing at our Monday morning staff meeting. We just finished reading the book, Deliberate Simplicity by Dave Browning. Browning is the founding pastor of the non-denominational, multi-site Christ the King Community Church.

Two thoughts our staff agreed were particularly applicable for Cedar Ridge:
1. We need to be more missional - that is intentional about outreach. Browning talks about an “arrows out” church. He asks the question, “is church a place you go to, or is church a place you go from?”

2. We also need to be cautious about creating so much programming that we unconsciously complicate discipleship. The sub-title of Browning’s book is How the Church Does More by Doing Less. He encourages churches to “uplug the extraneous” and become more intentional.

A couple of other thoughts I found interesting:
“The gap holding back most believers is not the gap between what they know and what they don’t know. It’s the gap between what they know and what they’re living…They are educated beyond their obedience.” Isn’t that the truth? Churches can be guility of operating with the idea that if we just impart more Bible knowledge, then we’ll have more mature Christ-followers. I wish it were that easy.

Browning also cites a survey taken in San Francisco that asked the question, “What do Christians do?” They received two primary answers: “They go to a lot of meetings” and “They are against things.” Ouch! If that’s the message the culture around us is hearing from us, we’re doing something wrong.

We’re three weeks into this thought-provoking series where the idea is that we can become victims of spiritual myths that get passed around as fact. They can be dangerous to our walk with God by causing us to become disappointed, disillusioned, even destroy our faith. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 says, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

This last week, we busted the myth that “Faith Can Fix Everything.” I appreciate Dr. Dale Doty with Christian Family Institute, participating in some dialogue with me on this subject. If you weren’t here Sunday, you can listen to the message at our cedarridgecc.com site.

That’s the name of our latest series. Sunday, I began by asking the question, “If you only had one month to live, would you do anything differently?” I introduced the series with six things you need to know, to live a no regrets life. If you’re interested in going a little deeper, read the book by Chris and Kerry Shook.

I had an interesting day today. I had a meeting at the Eddie Warrior Correction Center in Taft, OK, with Warden, the Chaplain, and the Department of Corrections Chaplain Coordinator regarding the need for a chapel on the prison grounds. Eddie Warrior is a minimum security prison for 750 plus women offenders. Eddie Warrior has a great faith-based program with women on the waiting list to participate. Their big need is for dedicated facilities. The Chaplain, Kathryn McCollum, has done a great job of initiating programs and rallying volunteers, but today pleaded with us to help build facilities. Hopefully the churches of Oklahoma and World Mission Builders can partner together to find a solution to the only thing holding back some women offenders from experiencing the transforming power of the gospel. I’ll keep you posted with the progress on this.

We had a great Easter at Cedar Ridge. Over 1300 in attendance between our two services. Our Creative and Worship Teams did a great job of putting the service together for us.

Here’s a video very similar to what we did in our services after my message on Losing Religion - Experiencing Life. It’s the song, Bring Me to Life, by Evanescence, and it was powerful message in and of itself. Our artists did a great job of pulling this off at two campuses.