Daily Herald

Here is an article that was in the Daily Herald:

Winthrop Harbor’s North Point Christian Church is ready to officially bring its ministry to the Gurnee area.

North Point’s new home will be at Warren Township High School’s Almond Road upperclassmen campus, between Washington Street and Gages Lake Road just outside Gurnee. Adult worship will be in the Black Box Theater.

Church leaders said the grand opening service at what’s called the Warren campus will be 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 9. Campus Pastor Mike Foster said North Point seeks to attract visitors who aren’t affiliated with a church or have “no connection to Jesus.”

Foster said about 75 of North Point’s 500 or so members come from the Gurnee-Grayslake area. He said North Point is energized in its effort to become more of a regional nondenominational church at Warren’s Almond Road building.

“It’s been very exciting,” Foster said Monday, “especially for those who are part of the (Warren) launch group, the core group for the new campus.”

Sunday’s adult worship service in the Black Box Theater will feature a praise band with guitars, drums and keyboards. Some preaching will come over a video screen.

In addition, there will be a full children’s ministry program, divided into three age groups at the Almond Road high school.

North Point already has started a network of small groups for Bible study and to discuss general concerns in homes in the Gurnee-Grayslake area. Church officials said North Point is known for community service in Zion and Benton townships in northern Lake County, and plans to do the same from its Warren campus.

Multiplying

This coming weekend, Sunday Nov. 9^th to be exact, we have our official launch for our new campus. This is a very exciting time in the life of our little church. I pray that everything that is done will be done as a true glorification of God and that His Kingdom will grow exponentially.

As much as I love the fact that the church is multiplying…I just wish I could multiply myself as well. I have the great privilege of preaching at the Harbor Campus this weekend and will not be able to attend the launch of the Warren Campus…I must say, I completely trust the people working at the Warren Campus and know they will represent Christ well. I guess I am just a bit jealous as I would love to be part of the front lines with them this weekend.

PS…Maybe we can come up with a creative way to multiplying myself………

Soft Launch Away

I know, I know, Iknow…I know what you are going to say before you say it…so let me put it to rest before I begin…I KNOW THAT IT MIGHT GET REALLY REALLY OLD AND REALLY REALLY MUNDANE AS THE TIME WEARS ON(particularly on those cold days in February). But man, after meeting together for our soft launch (or pre-view service or pre-launch service or practice service…however you want to say it) I am ready to sell our building and property and go to a portable church every week. It was awesome…whatta HOOT! It was great working with all the Warren Campus Core Team people who had the same focus, the same mindset, the same purpose in mind. We didn’t know exactly what we were doing but within an hour and half we had transformed a school building into a place to worship God through song, communion, giving, and teaching.

Dale Taylor had his sound equipment ready to go(what a blessing for him to let us use his sound and light equipment), Ramona and her K-town workers (Kids department) were ready to rock and roll, the worship team had a bit of a last minute major change (the lead singer, Ben Baumann called in and could not make it due to illness in the family…hope all is doing well dude!) and James Bruebach and Rod Taylor stepped up and did a great acoustic set, the whole Core Team was excited, Tim Adornetto did a great communion and offering meditation, Jeni and Phil Jones were “on it” with the video set up (thanks also to all the efforts of Jeff Volz did on the preparing the video and all the video equipment), Scott Lindemann with his trailor full of equipment, and Mike Foster was coordinating it all. There were so many people who help out and I was just absolutely jazzed to see all these people dedicating themselves to this effort.

And here is the coolest thing of all…without this even being advertised that we were starting Sunday, we had nine new people come and check us out.

God is working in the lives of people in the Warren Township area…I pray that we will endeavor to hear and heed His calling in the life of NPC…for people to come to an understanding of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord of thier lives.

Here We Go!!!!

And here we go. Last night was the last core meeting before we have our soft launch this coming Sunday. It was a good meeting to just check out the different areas of ministry to make sure we had our “ducks in a row”.

We have a great bunch of people who are willing to be used by God in this effort and are spending a great deal of time and resources to accomplish this task…and I praise God for all these people.

Yet, there are still those out there that can’t quite get why we are undertaking this new venture of multi-site. They give various reasoning and logic as to why we should not be doing this. I was reading in a book earlier this year, “the multi-site church revolution”, about comments people were making about their mutli-site move. Here were some of the comments…”why do we want to replicate ministries that we do poorly at the original campus? We don’t have enough leaders, volunteers, and musicians for the services we are already doing, how can we do more? Budgets are stretched tight, how can we spend money on additional campuses?” I had to laugh when I read these, for these are some of the same questions and comments that have been made at NPC. The serious side of the coin though is that they are right…we are stretched very tight in all areas of our resources.

But here is the deal, I have seen in my life (time and time again), in the life of others, and clear through the scriptures…that God works in ways and in people’s lives that sometimes just don’t make sense to us. God uses people that we may not even consider qualified or even useful, God uses situations that to us seem impossible, God uses life situations that we just as soon not deal with for His good…WHY? Because there is no greater way to show God’s power, might, love, foreknowledge, supremacy and ultimately His glory than to use the unusable…to make possible the impossible…utilize the unlikely. It is in these cases where God does His work…to make the blind to see, the lame to walk, those with leprosy to be cured, the deaf to hear, the dead to rise…God reaches to poor to show His Greatness.

The same is true with this effort of the new Warren Campus that begins this week. No matter what will take place…what we perceive to be wins or failures…our job is to surrender to God’s will and let Him be glorified through it all.

Time with a couple…God and Mindy

Last week Mindy and I were able to; I believe for the first time, take a week long Sabbath rest. This was an absolute fantastic time to spend with both God and my wife. We spend the week at Cerdarly in Delafield WI, about an hour drive north from where we live. It was much like a bed and breakfast only it is designated for pastors and ministers from all denominations. The interesting thing was that we spent the week with 5 other couples and never really discussed what “denomination” or “non-denomination” each was from.

Again this was a time of refreshment and listening to God. It was a great reminder that God can speak to us in so many fantastic ways if we will only slow down to take the time to listen. The first day there the Cedarly host asked everyone two questions; “why Cedarly” and “why now”? The first was easy to answer the second not so much. The first answer was simply we had heard a lot about Cedarly and decided to go on the week of Mindy’s birthday. The second was a bit tougher to answer but I gave it shot and said, “Right now makes absolutely no sense. We are within two weks of launching a new campus, there has been transitions of staff recently, and there is a tremendous amount of things that need to get done between now and then…so right now makes now sense at all…..paused for effect….yet I know that God has other plans for this week and I can’t wait to see what they are.”

This was very true, God spoke in a tremendous way that cut me to the quick. I can’t share it all right now as some things are still being revealed. But what I can share is this…there was a renewed feeling of excitement and anticipation for the things that are taking place in my life, in the life of my family and in the life of the church. God has set a vision for us that I am sure will glorify Him and His Kingdom if we will just get out of the way and let Him do His thing through us.

We are on the countdown week to our soft launch and there is much to do…let me put it another way…I am not sure how we are going to get everything don that needs to be done in the next six days. But this I know…this I am confident of God is directing this thing…we need to do our part and be diligent to this effort…but God is in control…so tie a knot in the end of the rope and hang on…we’re going for a ride!

Day 1

Here is a run down of some of our adventure on our Mission’s Trip to Mexico. 11 of us packed up and headed out on Thursday, July 17^th to go work with Rio Bravo Christian Ministries in San Carlos Mexico. Right out of the box we almost hit out first snag of the trip. We were heading out on the tri-state highway through Chicago on our way to O’Hare Airport when we hit the morning rush. I had planned on hitting some traffic but this was terrible…I thought we were going to be so late. Luckily, when we got to airport I had been through this scene before and was able to quickly get all of us checked in and through security in a relatively short amount of time (thank God for group check in).

This was a fun time for me as I was able to be with my son Kurt for his first plane ride. He loved it…despite the fact that earlier that week he had a terrible ear infection (a whole story in and of itself…including a very painful penicillin shot).

We flew from O’Hare to San Antonio Texas. When we landed Todd Tate (RBCM) picked us up and drove us 3 hours to Del Rio Texas. At Del Rio, we went to Wal-Mart to get our supplies for the week. All I can say is that at the Wal-Mart in Del Rio Texas…don’t be in a hurry…cause they sure aren’t. Anyway we purchased all our food and stuff and made a run for the border. We crossed into Mexico and drove to San Carlos and arrived at the camp around 9:30 PM.

We took some time to unpack and set up camp and then settle in for our nightly team meeting. Donna Taylor, who is doing an internship with us at the church led our nightly meetings and did a great job. Her lesson the first night was on a prayer wrapped around five fingers. Each figure represented a letter B.L.E.S.S.

B= Body, pray for our physical health and nutrition

L= Labor, pray for our work at the camp

E= Emotions, pray for emotional health and well being of the missionaries and the children we serve

S= Social, pray for our families and the Mexican children’s families

S= Spiritual, pray for the hearts of the nationals

This was a good first day…time for rest in our “open air” dorms…what did you say…Black Widow…who is she (I will explain later).

Quick Thought

I just spent a week in Mexico working with a camp for kids…what a great time. While we were there, 70 people shared 2 bathrooms…now that I am home, 2 bathrooms are not big enough for a family of 5.

Back From Mexico

Just got back from a great (8 day) trip to Mexico working with Rio Bravo Ministy.  I will be posting more this week about the trip.  Today, I will spent…very much needed…time with my family.

Roots

Having grown up with a father that is a traveling salesman and the fact that I had been a salesman for nearly 3 years myself, the idea that we must talk with people face to face has been drilled into my head. The job my dad has, pays him a salary to go out and make calls on his customers face to face…because people want that interaction…it may sound like we are a culture moving at the speed of light towards a phone, email, or even website driven society but the fact remains that to see a results the best possible interaction is face to face. And as I have found out so many times…it is much harder for someone to say “No” when you are standing there talking to them.

You see, we (Mike, Dennis and I) have made several attempts to converse with people about a venue for the new Warren Campus. We tried to set up appointments either over the phone or via email and not really having much success, soooooo I went back to my roots. Not that I am have a shred of intelligence at all…I really am just an idiot trying to make my way with the help of God. But I went back to my roots…things that I had been taught…things that I remember from working not only in the sheriff’s dept or as a salesman or even as a pastor. And here is the genius of what we did…now hold on this is incredible insight…and we just went…we went…we went and just showed up and talked face to face. We talked with a secretary at one place and a manager at another and even stopped by to talk with a new friend (Susanne Simpson the Warren Township Supervisor) and what a good day that turned out to be as were even able to make an appointment with the University Center of Lake County.

So here’s to going back to the roots of personal contact…if you are a fan of “The Office”…then I guess Michael was right…personal contact still means something.

Continue to pray as we move forward.

Blast Zones

Blast Zones are here and going full force.  A few years ago NPC decided to go a bit of a different direction with VBS. In doing so we investigated all kinds of ideas from sports camps to teaming up with the local recreation departments to do some type of big community kids week long kids activity. When it was all said an done the decision was made to do something that was actually retro back to years past…let’s do VBS in the backyards of our community. NPC is a church that I believe is doing its absolute best to be an iatrical part of the community…by going out into the community and getting involved with our neighbors the best we can.

There is a Blast Zone (or backyard VBS) happening almost every week this summer in backyards across the NPC area. Here is a crazy statistic….70% of the kids coming to the Blast Zones are not from NPC. NPC kids are coming but they are bringing their friend and neighbors and the outreach with the gospel of Jesus Christ is spreading like a wildfire.

Praise God for this so many people willing to give up a week and their yard to host the Blast Zones…I pray God will continue to bless these efforts all summer long.