thechurchblog

Since I haven’t written anything new in awhile (even while Crossroads Church continues to develop and thrive) — I’ve compiled a new category of posts for thechurchblog consisting of the “best-of” everything that has been written over the past five years.  You can jump to it by clicking here.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. What is a Southern Baptist/Independent church blogger doing writing about Advent, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you if you want to keep reading…
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The Southwestern New Mexico Chapter of the American Red Cross honored Crossroads Church today by inducting us into the “Clara Barton Society.”

Earlier this month, the local Red Cross chapter in Las Cruces announced that they were going to close due to lack of funds. This would leave our community (and most of the Southern portion of our State) without a local Red Cross chapter for the first time in, well…, a long time. They expressed an immediate need to raise $10,000 which Crossroads Church was able to respond to and meet.
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I am completely embarrassed by how long it has been since I’ve posted anything here. For those of you who have frequented thechurchblog in the past, let me assure you that the dreams, visions, plans, and progress reported to you previously has continued, and that Crossroads Church is healthy and vibrant. I guess I owe you an explanation, then, for why we’ve been so quiet here on this site, and why the posts have slacked of so drastically. The best answer I can give is that we’ve been busy being a church!
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I arrived at my email this morning with over 300 “bounced” messages which appear to have originated with random people emailing from our thechurchblog.com domain. Let me assure you that these emails are most certainly spoofs — no email has originated from our servers, nor are any of these addresses actual email accounts on our system.

If any of you have sought out and found thechurchblog as a result of receiving one of these bogus, spoofed spam messages, we apologize for the unauthorized use of our name. This action was conducted completely without our knowledge and consent. We are taking steps to see if the spoofed messages can be stopped.

Again, our apologies for any spam you may receive that looks like it is coming from us.

Sincerely,
Mr. Editor

Well, it isn’t the best way to break a blog lull, but I had to post the news that Crossroads Church has a fully developed website. Check out www.crossroadsplace.org when you get the chance. . .

If you’re been following the story of Crossroads Church, you’re familiar with our vision to be the church for the portion of our population that has forsaken all things “church.” These are people who would be out of place in a “normal” church — even one as dynamic and open as some truly are. We connect with these people through our relationships at work, school — any place where we have an opportunity to have influence with another person just by “being there.” Ultimately, we seek to build relationships with people that will(hopefully) show them the way to Christ — but that don’t depend upon their accepting or rejecting Christ. Sound confusing? In a nutshell, if our new friends reject Christ, that’s okay — just as long as they don’t reject US in the process. If we’re not rejected, we’ll have another chance to show Christ to them in the future. To prevent the tragedy of losing such a relationship, we need to understand what genuine love and acceptance looks like. A key point in this is realizing that before God wants people to be good, He wants them to be SAVED. After all, good fruit cannot be produced by the old nature. In other words, don’t condemn the actions unless you’re committed to healing the heart. But perhaps most importantly, we’re seeking ways to understand how pure, undefiled love can be promoted in all our relationships — not just those within the Church.
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Shame on you. Shame on me. Yes, we’re all sinners in a fallen state, so shame shame SHAME!! Actually, one of the coolest things that Jesus did (besides providing for our eternal salvation and fellowship with God the Father in heaven) was take away our shame (see Romans 9:33). Shame is “the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.” So, shame is a feeling. Well I can understand how there is no shame in being a sinner in the eternal sense, but what about the daily stuff that goes on in the life of a believer?
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One of the goals of Crossroads Church is to be able to take the church to the people, not just wait for the people to come to the church. We do that by being ministers at our jobs, at school, in coffeeshops, etc. Jesus regularly held meetings where the people were. We need to do the same — and get over our hangups regarding what constitutes a “legitimate” meeting of the church.
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On Saturday, November 11, the core members of the new church got together for an all-day retreat to do some planning, visioning, and organizing of the new church. Perhaps the most significant event of the day was the development of the name for the new church. We are now officially calling ourselves CrossRoads Church of Las Cruces!
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