North Point Online launches August 16, 2009, live from Buckhead Church at 6:00 pm eastern (5:00 pm central). Steve Fee will be leading worship for the first service and Andy Stanley will be kicking off a new, four part series called Losing Your Religion. The bumper for the series looks awesome (as always with NP); hopefully they’ll make that available to the public to embed in blogs, Facebook, etc. soon.

Anyways, new promo video just released today.

Here’s the manly, Terminator version, as Andy called it.

Rolling Hills Baptist Church sells property to help community.

I’ve posted that link on Twitter several times but thought I should put it on here as well. It’s still messing me up.

This is the church BEING the church; realizing it’s not about a building or time frame, but about community with God, each other and the world.

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus said “…on this rock I will build my church…”; later in Matthew 28:19 Jesus commands his disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”. In the original text, the word we translate as nations is the Greek word ethos, which can be interpreted as both bordered territories and ethnicities. I think too often we interpret that scripture as going to third-world countries, yet how many “nations” are represented in the United States alone? I’m all for sending missionaries to other countries, but if we interpret Matthew 28:19 literally doesn’t that imply we’re all missionaries? You may not be called to China, but what about your place of employment?

Another problem I’ve seen (and participated in, so I’m pointing the finger at myself) is so-called “outreach ministries”. Again, instead of being salt and light in our world, we convince a group of people in the local church that it’s their ministry to go into the community and “reach out”, which usually has nothing to do with serving or love. Shaun King (pastor of The Courageous Church in Atlanta, GA) posted something on his Facebook page that really intrigued me. His wife was getting her hair done and her stylist asked, “Does your church have an outreach ministry?”, to which Shaun’s wife replied, “No. Our church IS the outreach ministry.” That’s what Rolling Hills Baptist Church is doing; they’re (literally) putting their money where their mouth is by assisting those in their community who need something more important than an expensive building. Not that I’m against comfortable seats and concert level PA systems – I’m actually very much in support of all that. I believe Christ has called us to excellence in ministry. But when a church puts its WANTS and WISHES above the NEEDS of the community God called it to LOVE and SERVE, there is a problem.

Tony Morgan once asked, “If your church closed its doors tomorrow, would your community notice?” In the case of Rolling Hills I believe so, because their “church” isn’t about the building they meet in, it’s about people showing people the love of Christ.

I grew up in a church that is part of a pentecostal denomination, so for years I heard not only the call to salvation, but also the call to be baptized in the Holy Spirit…… with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.

I’ve visited other churches which also make the claim that speaking in tongues is the only initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In fact, every pentecostal denomination I know of has put in their doctrine the belief that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit (although the two largest pentecostal denominations are considering removing the limitations on initial evidence).

I DO NOT believe any spiritual gift is necessary for salvation (nor do I believe that water baptism is necessary for salvation), but I DO believe spiritual gifts are still available to Christians and that the Holy Spirit is still active in the world today, but my question is this: is speaking in tongues the only initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit? And why or why not?

A couple of bloggers I follow both had posts today featuring a website that assigns your blog a MPAA-style rating based on words, categories and topics.
Of course, this brings up a good question: what should a “Christian” blog’s rating be? Scott Williams of LifeChurch.tv wrote about his experiences working in the corrections system for over 13 years and how, due to the things he saw and heard, that job would be rated R. Similarily, I worked at a behavioral health hospital for a year and due to the things I saw and heard would have to give that experience an R rating. I may have seen some of those people at their absolute worst, but I was able to help several of them change their lives for good and that is what it’s all about.

Some (myself included) argue that if books received ratings, the Bible would be rated R, or worse. And while there are some who will disagree, I believe the best way to lead someone to Jesus is to show them unconditional love. Which means getting to know them, hanging out with them and being “there” for them where they’re at. That means you don’t wait for them to clean up. That means you might hear things that would be rated R and see things that would be rated R. And it WILL get messy. Just look at King David as an example; he committed adultery and murder, all while serving God. And then later we read where he kills one of his sons. But I’m constantly reminded of something Perry Noble loves to say:

“The ONLY difference between a non-Christian and a Christian is JESUS… that’s IT!!! If we lose sight of that we lose sight of what He REALLY did for us on the cross!”

So what’s your blog rated? I thought for sure mine would be rated R, but as it turns out, it’s only PG. But I think that’s because the website only rates the front page instead the whole blog; I have a feeling if they rated every post I wouldn’t have gotten a PG rating.