Eric's Blog

Becoming a Contagious Church

This was an assigned book from our coaching network for December. This is a great book to help spark some evangelistic fire in your church. Here are a few of my favorite quotes...

"The righteous will live lives marked by patterns of obedient, God-honoring risk-taking."

"One of the greatest leadership challenges you'll ever face is trying to convince people to follow your example and look beyond their own needs to the "main thing" of valuing and reaching those outside God's family."

"Contagious churches have learned that they must communicate to their culture without compromising with their culture."

"Beneath every evangelistic effort there must be a pure love for Christ and a wholehearted devotion to his gospel, which is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.""

Becoming a Contagious Church walks you through a 6-Stage process to developing an evangelism strategy in your church. You can pick up a copy here.

Sunday Night Reflections

Today we continued our Fireproof series by talking about Love for a Lifetime. We look at Jesus' words on marriage and divorce from Matthew 19:3-9. Marriage is both a covenant and a decision and is meant to last a lifetime. The Biblical definition of love is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and includes actions not feelings. True love is not based on feelings.

Our Love Dare challenge for couples this week is to renew your vows to each other. If you don't have a copy of them I have include them below for you to use.

I _________, take you __________ to be my wife/husband. To have and to hold from this day forward, For better, for worse, For richer, for poorer, In sickness and in health. To love and cherish as long as we both shall live. After renewing your vows, spend a few minutes praying together about your marriage.

I am excited about Thursday. I will be attending the Catalyst One Day event in Atlanta. Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel are speaking. I can't wait!

The One Minute Manager

Another book I read in December 2008 (for my records). Here are some of my favorite quotes...

"Effective managers manage themselves and the people they work with so that both the organization and the people profit from their presence."

"Helping people feel good about themselves is a key to getting more done."

"A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening."

"The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people."

"The number one motivator of people is feedback on results."

"Everyone is a potential winner. Some people are disguised as losers, don't let their appearances fool you."

"Goals begin behaviors. Consequences maintain behaviors."

This is a great book about one minute tips on managing people.

The One Minute Manager reveals three fundamental concepts:

• One Minute Goal Setting—Understand the importance of clear goals
• One Minute Praisings—Learn how to help people reach their potential
• One Minute Reprimanding—Learn how to correct poor performance and keep people on track.

Rules of the Red Rubber Ball

This is a small book that has been sitting on my shelf. I read it in December 2008. There are several books that I need to blog about for my records. I am behind so here are a few quotes from this one...

"Doubt is to be expected, but not obeyed."

"Everything worth having comes with struggle."

"For creativity to serve you well, you must exercise it daily."

"Pursuit must become your daily routine, not a New Year's resolution or a once-a-year sport."

Rules of the Red Rubber Ball is about finding and sustaining your life's work. It is written by Kevin Carroll.

Every Sunday Matters

The Power of Sunday

Sunday is . . . game day . . . impact time . . . evangelism hour . . .resurrection day

. . .prime time . . . focal point . . . the super bowl, world cup and world series all

rolled in one! Sunday matters! THIS Sunday Matters!

 - Quote from Nelson Searcy's Worship Planning Seminar.

It is easy to sleepwalk through a Sunday service but every Sunday Matters! Don't take your ministry lightly. What you do matters. Pray! Prepare! Be on time! Serve with excellence! Don't forget the goal: A Life Transforming Worship Service Each Sunday!

Ministry Opportunity at New Life

Full-time Worship Arts/Praise and Worship Leader:

We are currently looking to fill this position in May. Must be able to lead from the keyboard or guitar and work with new and experienced musicians. Must be able to lead worship at a very high level, bring musical excellence to the service, be creative, and along with music desire to use multiple media elements to bring both those inside and outside the faith closer to God. Email us @ newlifetoday@bellsouth.net for more information.

Sunday Night Reflections

Today was a great day. Bruce preach the second message in our Fireproof Your Marriage series called, "He First Loved Us." Next week I will be talking about "Love for a Lifetime." Since I was not preaching today I was able to go around and thank a lot of our volunteers and spend time in both of my kids classes.

I got to rock Katie while she was watching a video and have a snack with Seth and hear about their Bible story and memory verse. I really enjoyed being able to do this. One of the kids told me after the service "thank you for coming to my class" and Seth mentioned it to God tonight in his prayer. Then he gave me a big hug and thanked me for coming to his class.

Wednesday night is our leadership meeting. We have been watching the Catalyst videos from 2007 as part of our leadership training. More on that later.

Thursday is my tele-coaching network. Last week we met in Tampa, Florida for a day of face to face coaching. I really enjoyed it and was challenged in several areas.

We passed out our Resurrection Seed packets today. Our focus this year is on "Giving to God's Vision." It is based off of Exodus 25: 1-9. The vision God has given us is to hire a worship leader. The Resurrection Seed offering will be going toward bringing this person on staff. Please pray about this and ask God what He would have you do.

That's all for now. Have a great week!

Sunday Night Reflections

Here are a few pictures and videos from our fun event at the Clemson Women's BB game after church on Sunday. Sorry, I can't get the videos to show away bigger. If you know how please let me know I have spent to much time trying.

   

   

Fireproof

WOW! We just had the second small group meeting of our spring semester. We had 8 couples over to watch "Fireproof". It is a great movie. I highly recommend it.  This Sunday we are starting a new series called, "Fireproof your Marriage" based off of the movie. Then each week our couples small group will be studying the same topic from the service. Seriously, invite all the couples you know to this service.This is going to be a great series. I can't wait!