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.

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.

Prayer Time

8:05 every morning my cell phone alarm goes off reminding me to send up a prayer. We (the NPC leadership team) have tried to unite the church in a time of prayer where everyone can be involved, whether at home or in the office or driving down the road…wherever they may be. This can be just a simple prayer about the calling of Christ Church in which we are involved with. This is a prayer that is for the Kingdom of God to grow and be magnified. We simply ask people to set their cell phone alarms to go off at 8:05 am and we all pray together wherever we at.

We chose 8:05 based on the scripture found in II Corinthians 8:5, “And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will.” As we give ourselves over to Christ the following, natural progression, should be to give ourselves to the ministry of Christ. So as we venture into the new Warren Campus please pray with us:

• Pray that God will continue to direct and guide our new Campus in Warren Township.
• Pray about where the Warren Campus will be meeting.
• Pray about the launch date of the Warren Campus.
• Pray for Mike Foster and his family as the lead the Warren Campus.
• Pray for the entire North Point Church staff.
• Pray for our Leadership Team.
• Pray for your personal commitments to work and give to help us reach others for Christ.

More Questions

As we venture forward with the new Warren Campus we have people asking us questions that we would like to answer. One question that has come up periodically, during this movement to multi-site church, is, “Who or How will the preaching take place at the Warren Campus?” Well the answer to that question is this…Dennis and I will be taking care of the bulk of the teaching at both the Harbor Campus and the Warren Campus. Again, we will still be ONE church just meeting in MULTIPLE locations and the teaching segments will be the same at each location.

We have 2 options before us.

Option 1: One way that it could work would be that on any given Sunday Dennis will be at one site and I at the other. We would switch off every week with the site we are preaching at. Dennis would preach “sermon A” at the Warren Campus and I would preach “sermon B” at the Harbor Campus. The following week Dennis would preach “sermon A” at the Harbor Campus and I would preach “sermon B” at the Warren campus.

The only times this will not work is on special holidays such as Easter and Christmas…try as we might we cannot postpone a major holiday one week for a particular campus. This is where Mike will most likely come in and preach on those days or at least Dennis and I would preach the same sermon at both locations.

Option #2: The second option, which is the most popular in multi-site campuses (and the more expensive option), is to video tape the sermon here at the Harbor one week and show it at the Warren Campus the following week. Dennis and I would still rotate through every other week with the preaching, but the live preaching would be at the Harbor Campus (and videoed there) and the video feed would take place at the Warren Campus. Here is why video becomes an option. When you go to 3 or more campuses the need for video becomes far more effective. It allows the campus pastor to spend more time working with the church and community by not spending 15-20 hours a week on sermon preparation.

(I stole this part from Mike Foster)…What about it being on video? Won’t it feel like we are just watching a TV preacher? Having been to a church that has a video campus, it is only momentarily odd, and the second week we went back didn’t seem too strange at all. We are a visual culture. It has been shown that churches retain people 60% from live preaching and 58% from video, virtually no difference.

For those who may be hesitant about having a video venue, here is a question for you to consider. Have you ever been to a venue where you could watch the person live or on a video screen? Which one do you watch? Dennis said that he was very skeptical of video venue until he had the opportunity to be part of one. Afterwards, He commented about how interactive it really was. When the speaker told a joke they all laughed. Why? Because the person is easier to see on the screen. The speaker becomes larger than life. I know that this may be a bit odd for those of us who have been raised in the church where we know and have a personal relationship with the preacher. But this is where the campus pastor comes in and plays a major role. The campus pastor, Mike, is the pastor on site and the people at that campus will form relationships with the campus pastor and the other leaders there.

Again, we are not sure at this point if we will do on-site or video based preaching, but video is something that we are strongly considering since we are looking to have more campuses in the near future.

If you have any questions please ask…if you are asking them others may be wondering the same thing.