Archiving this blog...

This blog will continue to be accessible. You can find my sermons from the first 3 years of the Launch on the right side bar. But moving forward, I will be blogging at cornfieldlabyrinth.blogspot.com. I don't know how frequently I'll be blogging, since I'm making more use of twitter, facebook, and constant contact. You can get to the new blog by clicking here

The Blog is Still on Summer Break

But the sermon mp3 archive is still being updated. Check out the right side bar to listen to recent sermons.

Launch Blast - March 7th

We dealt with a pretty tough subject on Sunday. As a part of our Life Together series, we explored how the act of confession (as in confessing our sins) can be a tremendously meaningful and necessary habit to develop.

Let me just go ahead and confess that I was preaching to myself on Sunday. This isn’t something that I do well or do much at all. But as I dug into those Biblical passages about the need to confess our sins, I was deeply moved by the power and meaning of that act of confessing.

Now in case you missed it, we looked at James 5:16 where it’s written that we should confess our sins to one another and pray for one another so that we may be healed. And without a doubt, it’s the confessing to one another that’s the hardest and scariest part.

So I just wanted to follow that up with a couple of thoughts for some ways to grow in the exercise of confession.

Practice the habit of confession privately at first. Make it a regular part of your daily routine. Every time you pray, try to include a time where you allow God to show the parts of your heart in which he wants to do a little work.

Practice the habit of specific confession. Identify specific instances and specific behaviors. Remember the point isn’t to make yourself feel guilty. The point is to be set free from the effects of our sin and to experience healing and wholeness. It’s about receiving the deep assurance of complete forgiveness.

Find a close and trusted friend that can be an accountability partner. Someone who will tell you the truth, but will also look you in the eye and say that your sin is washed away by the blood of Jesus. If you are married, consider trying this with your spouse. If that doesn’t work, Pastor Chuck is available for marital counseling.


I pray that we would all find the experience of confessing our sins to be a tremendously healing and sanctifying action within our Life Together.

Peace.

Launch Blast - February 28th

Hey there Launchies,

If you weren't around on Sunday, you missed a good one.  Jaron preached and he brought it home!
He preached about authenticity being a core value of our LIFE TOGETHER as a community of faith.  As I was sitting there listening to Jaron, one question kept popping into my head - "what's my mask?"

What do I mean by "my mask"?
I'm talking about the fake front I put up to hide who I really am or how I'm really doing.  I'm talking about the Super-Me that I try to impress you with.  It's the Shiny Happy me that I hope you see (and believe) because frankly, the real me isn't all that impressive or attractive.

Here's the deal.  This isn't just a minor deal.  There are big implications to this tendency to act like we've got it all together before we head to church.

The biggest concern for me is the fact that our neighborhoods are full of families that are just a mess.  Full of people whose lives are broken and falling apart.  And for most of those people, church feels like the least safe place they could go.  How many times have you known a family that had a major crisis or a marriage that fell apart and those folks just disappeared from church? 

Shouldn't it be the opposite?  Shouldn't the body of Christ feel like the safest place to land when your world gets ripped out from under you?

What would it take for us to be the kind of place where people could just be real?

What would it look like for us to be authentic in our life together?

How do we get there?

I'm not sure I have any answers, but I know this:  It starts with each one of us identifying our Super-Self costume and chucking it in the garbage.

What's yours?

Launch Blast - February 21st

I have to admit, I'm dancing on the inside watching the snow melt. (Just be glad I'm not dancing on the outside).

Anyway, hope you are having a good week. If you missed it last Sunday, we heard from Dr. Sue Makin who has spent the last 11 years in Mulanje, Malawi which is right in the same neighborhood as the village that our Meet Malawi Team is partnering with. Sue had some great things to say and I was dancing on the inside again when she quoted one of my favorite verses: John 20:21 "As the Father has sent me, I also send you."

The honest truth is that life is complicated and fast paced and stressful. Sometimes its all we can do to just keep our heads above water. But somehow in the midst of that, there remains this deep underlying truth about our lives. We are SENT. Just as Jesus was sent to the world, WE ARE SENT to the world. Maybe the trick isn't trying to add MORE to our already crazy lives. Maybe the trick is to add SENT-NESS to the things we are already doing.

This week, I hope you can find a way to weave your calling (as a SENT one of Jesus) into the daily routines and places of your life! I challenge you to spend some time thinking about what that might look like for you! If you really want to get crazy, maybe even trying praying about how you might live SENT!

And in so doing, may you find PEACE (which is what Jesus gives right before sending in the above verse: "Peace be with you.")

Hey, don't forget - we've got the annual meeting on Sunday at 10:05 am. It'll be short. We won't have the normal reports or presentations. Just a quick run through of the official business (which is the approval of pastoral terms of call). But please don't let the brevity of the meeting lead you to think it's not important. Don't worry, we'll have the coffee ready to go!

Oh yeah - one other thing: We are mixing everything up in worship on Sunday. Everybody is doing something different! You don't want to miss this! I promise.

Sermon mp3's are still available!

The blog may be in temporary hibernation, but we are still adding the weekly sermon mp3's to the blog. You can access them in the right column of the blog.

Under Construction...

I'm taking a little break from blogging. Over the next month, I'll be retooling the blog, working on some new content, and thinking down the road a bit. But there won't be any updates for several weeks. When the blog re-"launches", we'll let ya know!

Happy Holidays.

No Worship at Barkstall this Sunday...Join us Downtown Instead

One last reminder. We won't be at Barkstall this Sunday but will be having a single joint service at our Downtown Campus at 10am.

That's 10am at our Downtown Campus!

See you there.

Advent Conspiracy TOTALS....

I can hardly believe how amazingly generous the good folks in our church are.
Just in the month of December, we collected over $30,000 for the Meet Malawi Project. And the total we have now collected for Malawi is right at $50,000.

Just amazing!!!

Stay tuned for updates on the progress of our project to dig a deep well and a church and school.

Well done good and faithful servants!

Water for Malawi

I'm sitting here looking at the ornament Leslie Barr made to go along with the Malawi donations she gave. Awesome stuff. I hope she sticks with that theme for a few years!

That got me thinking about all the incredible ways our folks creatively and enthusiastically shifted their Christmas celebrations around to be able to give to the Meet Malawi Project.

I am super excited to reveal the grand total raised through the Advent Conspiracy. We'll be announcing it at the 7pm service at the Launch!

Hope to see you there.

Christmas Eve Services...

Just a reminder about the candlelight service at 7pm on Christmas Eve at Barkstall. Hope you can join us. We'll be announcing the totals from the Advent Conspiracy Offering toward our goal of raising $35,000 to build a church and school in Malawi.

Also, please remember that there will be NO WORSHIP SERVICE at Barkstall on Sunday, December 27th. Instead we'll have one church wide service at our Downtown campus at 10am. I'll be preaching that service! Come on down.

A little holiday music...

As we inch closer to the holidays, here's a Christmas song from Jackson Browne about Jesus. Love the words - the images though need Jaron's touch. Merry Christmas. As the song says, " I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer from a heathen and a pagan on the side of the rebel Jesus."

Advent Conspiracy finale

Today we wrapped up the Advent Conspiracy series with our A.C. Offering.
The funds raised through this offering will go, in full, to help build a church building, a school, and a deep well on the site of our sister church in Malawi.

You can listen to today's sermon by clicking here: AC #4.

Stay tuned for the grand total raised through the Advent Conspiracy...

The GIVE Blog

Yesterday at the Launch we got to hear from Scott and Suja. They are an amazing couple with an inspiring story. Suja and Scott shared about their passion for giving and told us about the GIVE Blog that they have started as a means for encouraging people to give more. I personally was blown away by their goal to give away 30% of their gross income. What an amazing example of extravagant generosity!

I was also captivated by the challenge currently being put forward by Scott and Suja on the Give Blog. For every donation, up to $100, made by new donors to one of 5 charities, Suja and Scott will match it. They will match up to $10,000 for each of the 5 charities. Their goal is to inspire up to $50,000 in new giving which they will then match with $50,000 of their own. What a huge impact that could have on those 5 charities.

There are also great links to all kinds of stories and resources about giving. There is even a blog post written by Christy Hurt that mentions our church and the Advent Conspiracy.

If you want to know more about The Give Blog, you can get there by clicking here: Give Blog

Giving is GOOD for you! Here's proof...

In the lead up to Christmas, CNN started a 12 day series on the value of GIVING. I'm pretty intrigued by the idea of seeing how this media company handles the idea of giving. You can see today's story by clicking on the link below:

The Power of Giving

Well, there you go. It's literally good for your health to GIVE.

May you give well this Advent.

Oh and speaking of Giving Well...You can listen to yesterday's sermon on that exact topic by clicking here or by clicking on the link under Sermon mp3's in the right side bar.

Peace

Clearing the clutter

Happy Advent!
Yesterday at the Launch was one of those good but hard messages. We asked a fairly simple question: Do our spending habits at Christmas actually honor Jesus? But this question is rooted in a fairly straightforward point: Our "stuff" clutters our view of Jesus and our experience of life in Jesus. Stuff Clutters. It just does. So stepping INTO the Advent story requires, on some level, that we clear away the clutter so that we can see Jesus more clearly.

You can listen to yesterday's sermon by clicking here: Clearing the clutter.

I'd love to hear any stories from you all about how you are clearing space to experience the presence of Christ this Advent Season!

Advent Conspiracy Starts Here...

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
We started the Advent Conspiracy on Sunday. This year's theme is Simply Deep. It expresses our sense that the deepest, most meaningful aspects of the Christmas story are wound up in some of the simplest aspects of the story. It is a story that is simply deep. At the same time, sometimes what keeps us from really seeing and experiencing those deep truths is the lack of simplicity in our lives. Clutter distracts us from the deep.

The messages for the 4 weeks of Advent will all build on each other somewhat. So if you missed it this past Sunday, you can click on the link below and a player will open allowing you to listen to the message.

One great reason to listen is so that you can hear about this year's Advent Conspiracy Offering which will again be going to our Meet Malawi Project. We've got a crazy big, God sized goal this year and we hope you'll consider being a part of it. We think it's a phenomenal way to tell a better story this Christmas!

Here's the link: AC Sermon #1

I hate commercials...BUT YOU GOTTA SEE THIS ONE!

I've never even heard of that candy bar, but when if I ever see it, I'm buying one. (and I'm buying one for my wife too!)

New edges in the Kingdom...

This is a fantastic video that features a bunch of folks who are exploring the new shapes and new postures of life together (read that as church if you need to) in the Kingdom of God. If you've got about 10 minutes, this video paints some vivid and intriguing pictures of some of the new possibilities for what church community actually looks like.

Here's my challenge to you. Watch this video and start dreaming about what God might be whispering into reality in terms of new shapes, new postures, new understandings of what church IS.

TransFORM: Missional Community Formation from TransFORM on Vimeo.

Meet Malawi

This was one of my all time favorite Sundays. (And not just because I didn't have to preach).

Today at the Launch, we got to hear from our Meet Malawi team. All but 2 of the 13 team members who went to Malawi were able to be with us. They took turns each sharing significant aspects of the trip. We saw pictures, heard songs, listened to stories, and shared in the vision for what God is doing in us and through us. We celebrated communion using cups, bowls, and baskets that were made in Malawi. And we affirmed together the relationship of mutual encouragement we will be developing with the church in Lisanjala, Malawi. We took up the offering Malawi style (which meant we kept taking it up all service long!) We even imitated Malawian worship by having our longest service ever!

It was impossible to miss the energy, passion, and transformation that the Meet Malawi project is creating in our midst! (It was REALLY visible during the video clip of Tim Jefferson dancing!)

If you missed it and you'd like to hear the stories for yourself, look over on the right column of this blog. Under Sermon MP3's, just click on the link that says Malawi Presentation. After it loads, it will begin to play automatically.

Extra special thanks to the Malawi team for sharing today!