I hate to sound like a broken record, but man! When it comes to camera work, editing, etc., North Point Community Church
and her satellites just have everyone else schooled.

I know, North Point didn’t get there overnight; but I’ve seen churches with the same or more resources to pull from and they still look like something I would see on the local Christian TV station at 2am. In addition, a lot of the techniques used at North Point aren’t rocket surgery – it’s just letting talented people do their thing and use the gifts God has given them.

But the real reason I admire North Point is they put it all out there for everyone to see. Successes, failures, etc., doesn’t matter. If other churches can learn from them, then it’s available, and usually for free.

Anyways, here is the video that is the finished product; for the full story behind the production of this spot (which was used in their 10B4 video announcements), click here.

North Point LIVE Interview from North Point Media on Vimeo.

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?