Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to our Northern friends… we have two Canadians on our leadership team so we got a jump on some good eats tonight!
I love the Team that God has brought together here at Renovation. I know this month is Pastor Appreciation month and I know that my role is the out front guy and I get a lot of “ada boys” from a lot of people but i also know that without the Team both paid and volunteer we would not be where we are 10 months into a new church plant. Each team member brings great value and a ton of capacity with an authentic heart for God and for people!
We had another great day yesterday… week three of our Leaving Lust Vegas series.
Porn Again…. of course the topic of our attention was pornography. It is the number one issue that is infecting, destroying the Church in America. Unfortunately it’s probably the last thing that most pastor’s want to talk about… because there are a lot pastor’s who are struggling with the very issue in their own personal lives…. because it’s really uncomfortable… because well intentioned Christians will get mad, offended if they do…
Porn is not prejudice… it will level anybody and everybody it can!
We discovered yesterday that the avg age of introduction to porn is 11 yrs of age!
Porn is effecting 47% of all Christian families.
We watched a video that XXXChurch.com (scroll down to bottom of page… click on Porn Sunday and then hit preview when the next page opens up) produced for churches to use all over the country. It is an incredible powerful presentation that I would encourage everybody to watch if you didn’t get to hang out with us at Renovation. We watched the video and we interspersed strategic songs throughout the video. Each song was chosen to show the backside of the addiction that porn takes us into.
Here is the songs we used in the order we sang them…
Addicted by Josh Hoge…talks specifically about the addiction of pornography…
Private Dancer by Tina Turner… gives the perspective of woman that is being used in the porn world… that the women involved in porn is a mom, a daughter, a sister, a niece…
Hurt by Johnny Cash… gives the perspective of what it feels to be addicted to anything… drugs, alcohol, porn…
Broken but I’m Healed by Byron Cage speaks the hope that we all have based on the great Physician!
Of course we aren’t saying these songs are what we should be about… but we are using them to examine what our culture is saying to us… when we drag that which is in the dark into the light of the Gospel things happen, people change, chains are broken…. the power of lust is lessened.
Several people came to Christ yesterday…how cool is that?!
I am not sure how many raised their hands, finger, elbow, pinky… when I gave people an opportunity to first confess to God because I also closed my eyes but I pray there were many.
I have been praying for the conversations that hopefully began yesterday… husbands with wives, boys with dads or moms, daughters with dads or moms… remember what we heard… confess it to God, confess it to someone else, clean it up
Here are some helpful tools to do just that…
What would happen if the Church of America stopped consuming porn, stopped committing sexual sins, stopped living together, committing adultery… what would happen?
Renovation what would happen in our community if we would surrender our lives to walking in purity? How would our families… friends… co-workers be impacted for the Kingdom… what could be and should be would actually begin to happen… that is what God wants for us!
