Clif McKinley Dot Com

Ok everyone, we have been working our way through the “Experiencing God” series and yesterday was an very simple, but very important message. Yesterday we dealt with the fact that “God is ALWAYS @ work around us” and my challenge to everyone was to pray this prayer for a week and then share with us what God reveals to you and the opportunities that He gives you.

Here is the prayer:

“God you are always at work around me, give me the eyes to see it, and the wisdom to get in on it.”

I look forward to hearing your experiences!

• I got to lead worship & we sang “Majesty” shocking right.
• It was a blast, love to lead worship and miss it, but I will be doing it once a month and VERY COOL news, my wife will be leading once a month as well so you are all in for treat there.
• God is continuing to grow HIS church here in Rochester, I had some folks share some great reports with me about the things that God is doing in their lives.
• More new faces, strong attendance in the summer, and solid giving, WOW you guys are awesome and God is good!!!!!!!
• Quick update, we had another $1,000 come in toward the roofing project so just $17,400 to go, I know God can do it.
• We hit on Reality #1 today, “God is always @ work around us” and the challenge came down to this, pray this prayer everyday this week “God you are at work all around me, give me the eyes to see it, and the wisdom to get in on it.” I’ll post a blog on this Monday.
• Awesome Sunday, God is @ work in our Church, can you see it?

Ok yesterday I post the first few traits of the kind of leader that God uses taken from Glenn Wagner and Dan Southerland’s series on ReThinking Leadership, today we will list another batch:

5.  The leader God uses develops Their Skills

6.  The leader God uses Loves Others

7.  The leader God uses recognizes the Needs Of Others (Outside the church/community where they minister)

8.  The leader God uses Delegates Respsonsiblity

Reasons leaders don’t delegate:

• They have a perfered method of operating
• They need to know all the details
• “I can do it better” mentality
• They have a lack of experience in the job or in delegating
• Insecurity

Thoughts?

Sorry I am a slacker or maybe I have been busy, well whatever here we go…

Ok this past Sunday was the overview message for the remainder of the series and we hit the “7 Realities of Expeinceing God”

1.  God is always at work around us

2.  God pursues a love relationship with us that is real and personal

3.  God invites us to become involved with Him in His work

4.  God speaks to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways

5.  God’s Invitation leads to a crisis of belief that requires faith & action

6.  We must  make major adjustments in our life to join God in what He is doing

7.  We come to know God by experience as we obey Him and He accomplishes His work in us and through us

So these are the 7 Realities and this week we will be dealing in depth with #1 God is always @ work around us, so here are the questions:

“What is God doing right now in our community?”

“How do you see Him at work?”

In our Elder’s Meeting each month we try to spend sometime working on Leadership Development.  For the past couple of meetings we have been listen to some material by Glenn Wagner and Dan Southerland on “ReThinking Leadership.”  Last night the material was on the kind of leader that God uses.  I wanted to hit some of those points and see what kind of discussion is born out of it, they had 11 points we will hit a few today and some more later.  The following is taken directly form their material:

1.  The leader that God uses is open to CHANGE

Indicators change is needed:

• lack of growth
• outdated methodology
• rapid leader turnover

2.  The leader God uses is open to Significant Lay Involvement

• The role of the pastor is not to do ministry
  
• The role of the pastor is to equip the church to do ministry

3.  The leader God uses exercises GREAT FAITH

4.  The leader God uses SHARES their faith

These produced some great discussion in our meeting, I’d like to hear all your thoughts.

• First off sorry for the lack of blogging over the past two weeks I have been MIA and big time busy, I may try to line some guest blogger over the next few weeks as well
• Sooooooooooooooooooooo Today was a good day we had 170 in attendance, that is crazy good!!!
• Worship went awesome, the new tune went great and the whole set was killer
• Emily’s dedication was very cool, she is such a little cutie pie
• We hit the 7 Realities of Experiencing God today and will dive into them in depth over the next few weeks
• I hope this series is helping everyone out, I will let you know what the next message series will be this week
• You guys rock, Lighthouse is growing health because of you all, keep up the good work

Ok, this past Sunday we talked about God’s Will and what He was doing in the Seacoast.  I expressed that I believed that it was God’s Will to see those who do not yet know Jesus in a real & personal way come to faith.  I also expressed that I felt it was God’s Will to see the poor of our community helped.

So my question for all of you out there is, What do you feel is God’s Will for our community?

• I am SHOCKED in a good way about our attendance on Sunday!  It is a holoiday weekend and our attendance and offerings were off the charts, You Guys Rock!
• It was good to see some long last faces in the crowd, welcome back
• The Worship team did awesome, they really set the stage for the service
• Week 2 of “Experiencing God” Doing & Being, To do God’s will requires that we humble ourselves and be His servants, we can trust Him because He will always act in love toward us and Hi direction is always right.
• Look for the sermon notes and some extras this week.
• I am really proud of our leadership, everyone of them is stepping up and taking on new challenges, since we split our leadership into two boards things have been expanding and growing.  I thank all those in leadership who were willing to do less so that others could do more, we are seeing the fruit of our your sacrifice.  Thank you for modeling humility and servanthood you all ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• It is so exciting to see new people getting into the ministry mix and help make each Sunday a success.  There are new people laboring behind the scenes each week and even though they are not seen by all  I see and God sees and we could not get it done without you.
• WE NEED MORE HELP-we desperately need folks to be a part of our nursery team.  Did I mention we desperately need folks to be apart of our nursery team?  Carolyn is having a baby and she is our go to person when someone does not show, soooooooooooo  we need about four more people to step up and serve in there.  We have had some great volunteers come forward but we still need more, the more people who volunteer the less often everyone will have to be in there, many hads make light work and keep our nursery open for those who are are guests.  I know you will not let me down.

So we started a new series of messages based on the Henry Blackaby book “Experiencing God.”  I have tuaght this material a few times over the years  to youth and in a small group setting, but at this point in our churches growth and development it seemed like it was time to teach it again.

So throughout the series I will be doing some “Extra” teaching via the blog; I hope it is helpful and please use the comments feature to ask questions so that I can help you dive deeper in your personal encounter with God.

Sometimes your kids get sick.

Sometimes they throw up.

Sometimes they trow up on you.

The joys of being a parent!