Greg Pittman

Well, I’m in downtown Cincinnati this week at the North American Christian Convention. We just completed the first full day of the conference at it has been great. The theme is “Living Dangerously” - it’s a call for Christians to lead couragously no matter the consequences.

In this morning’s main session, Jon Weece, preacher at Southland Christian Church, Lexington, KY, spoke about having a dangerous faith. It was an awesome challenge! Tonight, Ajai Lall, with Central India Christian Mission, spoke about the dangerous call. Dr. Lall shared several real-life stories about Christians around the world who are being persecuted because of their faith in Jesus. How God is using their testimonies to bring people into the kingdom is incredible. Hope I can share some of those stories soon with our Cedar Ridge family.

Hey, if you’ve never been to the NACC, you need to check it out some time. It will give you a bigger sense of God’s church and what He is doing around the world. Next year is in Louisville. Maybe you can come…

I’m about a week and half into my sabbatical. The first few days were mostly just catching up and getting ready for our trip to North Africa. Well we’re there… I’ve had a hard time getting access to internet since we’ve been here and have not been able to update you. Andrea and I (along with good friends Larry and Robin) left Saturday afternoon on our scheduled trip. After about 30 hours of traveling time, across several time zones, we finally arrived at our destination around 2:00 am local time.

During our short time here we’ve had a great time catching up with and encouraging our friends, talking “shop,” and today…visiting the old part of town. We start our trek back in a couple of days. I’ll post some additional updates when I can. Continue to keep us in your prayers.

This past weekend our family attended a purity retreat put on by our church’s Student Ministry. We had about 80 young people participate, including my two teenagers, Kyler and Kimber. Paul Abner, from Worth the Wait, did the speaking. Some of the parents I talked with loved how they were included as a part of the programming and looked forward to using the weekend as a springboard to talk to their student about sexual issues. During the final session, students made a committment to sexual purity. Many were given rings by their parents as a symbol of that commitment. It was a powerful weekend. And one I hope we can do again in a couple of years. Parents, let’s keep praying for our kids to remain pure.

Okay, I’ve had enough spring weather makers this year. And tornadoes have been the least of our worries. Early last week, it was large hail. Strong winds and widespread flooding (Grand Lake was about 8 feet above normal) finished out the week. This week was an mid-April freeze warning followed by a several-county fire alert. Enough!

I’m still surveying the damage around our place from last week’s hail storm. I don’t think i’ve ever heard hail coming down that hard. I wasn’t sure if I had any roof damage…that is until I came home Thursday afternoon from work to find a front yard full of shingles. Evidently my house doesn’t respond well to hail storms followed by strong wind gusts. I still don’t know if I have damage or not. I called my insurance company. They’re sending out an adjustor on Thursday to remind me how high my deductible is. I’ll keep you posted.

We had our first Celebrate Recovery Celebration Service tonight. We had been praying and planning for this for over a year. And I have to say - it was a great service. I don’t know if it was because it was communicated, “this is a safe environment” or if it was because the worship band was cranked up or if it was the anticipation of something new. No, on second thought, it was just the unashamed celebration and victory of true life change. That’s what I really love about Celebrate Recovery - life transformation happens! And it happens through the powerful name of Jesus Christ.

I have to tell you, I loved the worship. I loved the testimonies, but I think most of all I loved the “chip ceremony.” I don’t know if that’s what you call it, but toward the end of the service, chips were presented to those who had reach some milestone in their recovery. As people come forward, the audience applauded favorably. The blue chip was given to those who wanted to newly surrender an area of their life or had experienced a relapse and wanted to re-surrender. Tonight there was an amazing response of those desiring the blue chip. It was moving. I thought, “this is the church at it’s finest; believers trusting God to work miraculously in their lives, all with the support of other believers encouraging them on.” It doesn’t get any better than that.

It has been fun to watch out church move in this direction. It has been a joy to see our church leadership embrace Celebrate Recovery (and they were noticably present and involved tonight). It’s been exciting to see our Celebrate Recovery leadership team put it all together. Thanks guys! You did a great job.

I was proud of our church tonight; proud of our admission that even believers have hurts, habits and hangups; proud that we chose to be inclusive and to reach out to those who don’t “have their act all together”; and proud that we took another step toward fulfilling our vision of creating safe environments where anyone can come to Christ, everyone can experience community, and you can make a difference.

Some have asked about my upcoming Sabbatical. In preparation for what I see as a busy season of ministry ahead of us and to “catch my breath” after 20 years of ministry, I will be taking a time of sabbath rest this summer. The term sabbath means “to cease” or “to rest.” God the Creator modeled it for us in Genesis 2 when He rested. You could say it is a discipline of abstinence from the routine activities for the express purpose of becoming more sufficient on God. I’m still working out some of the details for my sabbatical, but here’s what I do know:

I will be away from the church office and ministerial responsibilities from May 20th through September 2nd. I don’t anticipate any interruptions in the work and ministry at Cedar Ridge. Our staff and elders are a terrific team and things will continue, not missing a beat, with the same pursuit of our mission and vision.

The preaching schedule, for the Sundays I’ll be out, has already been filled. It will include a mix of current staff members preaching a summer-long series on relationships based on the Fruit of the Spirit. Matt Proctor, President of Ozark Christian College, and Doug Priest, 2008 National Missionary Convention President, will be filling in selected dates as well.

What will I be doing while away? Well, I have a mission trip to Africa in the works. I plan to visit some designated churches in our region and talk with their senior leaders. I will attend the North American Christian Convention in Cincinatti. I will take some time for study and prayer. Of course, I also have a list of projects around the house I hope to tackle.

I’ll keep you posted on my latest plans. You can also keep up with me during my sabbatical right here. I’ll be writing regularly.

Several weeks ago I preached about how we are just managers of God’s stuff. To illustrate that point, I gave away money in the service and asked random people to “invest” it in the kingdom. I included several of the reports on how that money was used in a previous article.

I received another email just a couple of weeks ago:

I got one of the envelopes at church with money in it…it was really hard for me to decide what to do with it. It would have been easier if it were my money to give away. I stressed about it and prayed about it. I finally decided to give it to one of my students. She is a single mom of 2 and works really hard to provide for them and go to school full time too. S.H.

Following services on Easter I received this update on the previous email:

I just wanted to let you know that the student that I gave the money to came to church on Sunday…she had never been to a service…It was a blessing to have been give this opportunity. S.H.

That’s cool!

I’ve served the last couple of years on U.S. Congressman John Sullivan’s Values Action Team. This group meets a couple of times a year to discuss issues and legislation facing our state and nation, especially those affecting moral issues. It’s reassuring to know that there are elected officials at a federal level who still care about what God says on the issues. It was a privilege for me to pray over our Congressman today at the conclusion of our meeting. I’ve told him several times that I may not contribute much to the discussion, but I can pray hard. Keep Congressman Sullivan, his family, and his leadership duties in your prayers.

Well our Multi-site Steering Committee met last night. Some exciting developments are taking place in our preparation to go mult-site. For those of you new to that discussion - Cedar Ridge, in partnership with the NOEA (Northeastern Oklahoma Evangelizing Association), is planning to start a new church work that would function as a satellite location of our current church family. It would be Cedar Ridge, just an additional location. The beauty if that is you have the excitement of something new but still one church, one leadership, and one budget.

Here’s the update…
Our Location Committee meets this Thursday night to start narrowing down the site possibilities. Right now we’re exploring the North Bixby area along Memorial, between 121st & 151st. The other area is the highway 51 corridor between the Creek Turnpike interchange and the new Walmart. If you know of a potential building or property in either of those areas, let me know. Please pray for this team as they work through this process.

Our Campus Minister Search Committee meets next Thursday. We’ve already received serveral resumes for this position. In a nutshell this person will have the primary responsibility for the preparation and presentation of the new location. Pray for this team as they search for a candidate to fulfill this role and partner with our current staff.

This idea of one church with multiple locations is still new for many folks. But it carries with it tremendous potential to touch people we might never reach. If you want to read more about it, go to newthing.org or read Dave Ferguson’s blog, minister at Community Christian Church which is a multi-site independent Christian church.

Well, my two younger kids, Kyler and Kimber, got home from Mexico over the weekend. They had been in Juarez, Mexico along with 60 other young people and sponsors from Cedar Ridge participating in a short-term mission trip. Their agenda was to build two homes for two different families in partnership with Amor Ministries.

The trip was successful. The homes were finished. Students returned safely. Experiences were shared. But my prayer is that seeds were planted. Maybe future missionaries in our group of high schoolers…maybe future church leaders growing up inside a newly provided home…Maybe future kingdom citizens from the neighborhood children that were watching and wondered why…?

I’m glad my kids are home. Andrea and I missed them (although we did enjoy a quiet house for the week). We hugged them a long time. We got their clothes cleaned, sort of. We listened to their stories. We’re glad they’re back. But I hope there’s a part of them that stayed in that distance place. I hope no matter what they do in life that they’ll always have a heart for people who are far from God, and often far from home.