Here’s some questions I got from my coach this week concerning preaching. Figured I’d pass it to the Kingdom. 1) Did I grow in my own walk with God through my preaching and preparation? Was I personally impacted by what I preached? Am I therefore a more godly man entering 2009 than 2008 because of the texts I exposited? In what specific ways? If I have not grown: what sins have hindered my progress and require confession? 2) Did I provide my congregation with a balanced diet and at least some measure of ‘the whole counsel of God?’ Did I cover something from both Testaments? Were believers comforted and unbelievers challenged? Were the weak and strong, the immature and mature, given their share of milk and solid food? Was justification taught and sanctification? 3) Did I take the glory or give God the glory? Did I seek the limelight in any way this year? If so, in what specific ways did a desire to glorify ‘Self’ rear its ugly head during this year’s sermons? How can I best repent of this? 4) Did I preach the text, only the text, and nothing but the text? How often did I preach in general Scriptural terms yet not in terms of the specific Scripture I was expositing? Even if I preached numerous topical sermons, were these exposing the meanings of particular texts. Did I impose my agenda, rather than expose the meaning of God’s Word? 5) Did I constantly preach Christ and him crucified? Did I persistently preach the gospel, or lapse into talking in terms of religous self-effort and moralism? No matter what my passage, did I highlight its redemptive components? Even if the passage was wholly negative, did I trace the redemption of its sin and the bearing of its judgement to the Redeemer and Propitiator, Jesus Christ? 6) Humanly speaking, what one aspect of my sermons in general was the weakest component? Are my introductions invariably weak, my applications typically fuzzy or my conclusions often an anticlimax? How will I work on improving this area in 2009 for the glory of God and the good of His people? 7) Did I pray enough and depend on God for the results? Looking forward to 2009… Will I grow in my own walk with God through my preaching? Will I provide my congregation with a balanced diet?’ Will I take the glory or give God the glory? Will I preach the text, only the text, and nothing but the text? Will I constantly preach Christ and him crucified? Will I prayerfully depend on God during every stage of my preaching?

Right now, Harmony Church is predominately Caucasian. I say “predominately” to mean everyone but Pablo, our worship leader. Here’s some quick stats I came across today, via PeopleGroups.info: As of 2000, there are: 2820 people from Mexico in our area. 220 people from India in our area. 191 people from China in our area. 102 people from Vietnam in our area. That’s households, by the way. And it also doesn’t include the diversity of the university. Bottom line: there are well over 3,000 people that may not be being reached by churches in our area. So what can you do to cross cultural boundaries, and extend a hand to those people who aren’t like you?

So stoked that we’re giving our people this Sunday a break from the pressure of having “to go to church”. Family time is much more important than an hour meeting. We had a great Echo Group this past Sunday night. We talked about Gospel-centered marriages…one of my passions. Ephesians 5 is the text for this. Can’t wait to preach on it in February. I’ve got the first three sermons of 2009 completely outlined. It feels weird to be ahead. Praying through how we can partner with Sovereign King Church in Garner. Gordon and I were talking online the other day, and would love for both churches to get together somehow. Any ideas? We’ve dropped off three families’ worth of gifts and groceries. It’s awesome that even though we are a young church, it is built into our culture that we don’t exist for ourselves. It would be so easy to say “We need the money, we can’t afford to give it away”, but we don’t. We have been blessed to be a blessing. Sherry, I promise the Gospel-Centered Legacy post is coming. Sometime this coming week. Miranda and I are enjoying our break. Can’t wait to give her her Christmas present. Hope she’ll like it. I’m hoping that my co-workers will finally be joining me in January. I think they’re excited to hear me preach. Hopefully they’ll be even more excited to meet Jesus. Keep praying for the 170,000, Harmony. We’ve got work to do…starting in a week.

Between Clay, Aaron, Dan, Brad, and myself…we could take it. Or we could just give it to Jo-Jo and Isaac. If I Die A Bacon-Related Death, I’d Like It To Be Because Of This | www.holytaco.com

Yesterday, I unveiled the vision that Harmony Church is going to accomplish. In short, the vision is to be reaching 170,000 people with the Gospel by 2020. That’s the number of “unclaimed” people there will be in the year 2020, according to current rates, as surveyed by the Association of Religion Data Archives. Our immediate goal is to be reaching “300 in 3″: to fill Unk’s to fire occupancy (295) within 3 years. A smaller goal within that is to have more people in Sunday am services than they have at a Friday night concert. Here’s the thing: we measure how we’re doing in part by numbers, but numbers is not the end goal! More people worshiping Jesus is the end goal. Here’s some notes and a review of yesterday [we didn’t get a recording ]. I will, however, be recording a special message to our podcast listeners as well, to be rolled out sometime this week. The Need in Greenville You can find the ARDA’s profile of our county here: Pitt County Membership Report I think it’s important to remember that in all actuality, there are probably more than 117,000 currently that do not worship Christ according to Scripture. This would be the number of unclaimed in 2007 (roughly 117,000) plus the number of ’survey-takers’ who are nominal Christians. I think it’s also interesting to notice the decline and rise of certain denominational groups in our area; it’s a monitor of the religious climate (the rise of Unitarian-Universalists and Latter-Day Saints are of utmost importance concerning the Gospel). Our city is growing at a rate of over 5,000 people a year. In order to keep up with current growth rates, we need to be planting 4 gospel-centered churches a year. The Vision of Harmony Church By 2020, we will be reaching the 170,000 through multiple services across multiple campuses throughout the city of Greenville, contextualized to the 4 distinct cultures in our area: urban core, suburban families, progressive rural, and traditional rural. We will be leading people to become a Gospel-centered community who loves God and people, lives out the Gospel intentionally in the Kingdom, and echoes the Way to others. We will be serving our city in social justice contexts (ie. homelessness, poverty), serving households in familial-need contexts (ie. building marriages, raising children), and serving individuals in immediate-need contexts (ie. addictions, career options). The Method of Harmony Church We will reach the 170,000 by reverse-engineering the big picture to small, quantifiable goals achievable by everyone living and working towards the same end. The current timeline, in terms of attendance only, looks somewhat like the following: We will be engaging our city in three different, but overlapping, environments: the square, the home, and the well. The Square is the metaphor that we will be using for all of the primarily eternal aspects of building God’s church in this city. Within the Square, we will blanket with the Gospel,address idolatry, confront worldview issues, and call people to Jesus in a large group setting. The Square stands for the public square, and our current efforts that speak to this environment would be, most importantly, our Sunday morning services. Our upcoming conversations with the campus Secular Humanist group would also be “square” engagements with our city. The spiritual warfare metaphor for this aspect of our engagement is the air war analogy. The Home is the metaphor that we will be using for all of the primarily internal aspects of building God’s church in this city. This will include our efforts to create Gospel-centered marriages and families, as well as to create a Gospel-centered community within Harmony Church. Our current efforts that are addressing the Home environment are, most importantly, Echo Groups. Trailer Park and upcoming opportunities for couples and family discipleship will be “Home” efforts as well. The spiritual warfare metaphor for this aspect of our engagement is the triage; a hospital for the soul. The Well is the metaphor that we will be using for all of the primarily external aspects of building God’s church in this city. This will include our efforts to create relationships with not-yet-Christians in the city, as well as to address social-justice issues in our community at-large. Our current efforts that are addressing the Well environment are, most importantly, our community partnerships such as those we have with Uptown Greenville and the Third Street School. Other efforts in the Well include God and Guinness, and the tweetups started by Mr. Proctor (GreenvilleTweets.Com). The spiritual warfare metaphor for this aspect of our engagement is the infantry: the ground war that is painstakingly laborious and slow…but necessary. I am fully convinced that as we labor to love, live, and echo in all three environments: the Square, the Home, and the Well, we will begin to see a community that loves Jesus, clings to the Cross, and calls other people to worship Him.

Yeah, you might want to be at Unk’s on Sunday if you’re even remotely connected to Harmony Church. If you’ve been once. I’ll be preaching like a man on fire. Jesus has been speaking to me lately like no other time in my life. I’m freaking stoked.

We’ve recently updated the website (again!). It’s now a bit Christmas-y. Check it out: http://www.harmonygreenville.com

Pablo asked Jessica over the Turkey break to marry him. She said “yes”. Looking forward to their future…here in Greenville! Jessica is an awesome woman who has served overseas in Ireland (woot for Guinness), and is now serving in her hometown of Gastonia at her home church. Pablo, as you know, is the “Harmony Hombre”. He does an incredible job leading us in worship and in spiritual disciplines (the man prays like no one’s business). Pray that they both find jobs here in the Emerald City, so that they can remain on mission with us here in Greenville.