thechurchblog

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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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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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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As part of the process of starting a new church, the topic of how we intend to raise up leadership always comes up in discussion when we talk with folks about how things have been going. Now, there are the usual “pat answers;” such as, “Our leadership is comprised of elders who are qualified according to what the Bible says in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus chapter 1.” While these principles are undoubtedly true, we feel that a few more qualifications need to be true as well.
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I’ve found that this kind of work is full of “ups” and “downs” — and most of the time it is somewhere in the middle. A good friend of mine who is currently living overseas sent this story which clearly illustrates this (albeit from a slightly different cultural perspective). Enjoy! And be encouraged. . .and if you’d like to check out her blog, it can be found here.

There is a trickster character in my country’s folklore named Jhooha. It’s almost like if the guy in the “So a guy walked into a bar…” jokes had a name. There are tons of these jokes / stories. We have read and heard several of them, and the people here think they are hilarious. Sometimes, the humor doesn’t quite translate, but this one was pretty funny.
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My mother sent me an encouraging email forward today. It is a copy of the October 18 message from D. Max Whitfield, Biship of the Northwest Texas and New Mexico Annual Conferences of the United Methodist Church. As some of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church and still have a soft place in my heart for those Methodists. Anyway, Biship Whitfield’s message is all about how in the year 1910, the Northwest Texas Conference had 8,900 people accept Jesus Christ for the first time, resulting in a 25% increase in overall church attendence. The second point of the article is that only 189 out of 415 churches actually met in their own buildings at the time — the rest met in people’s houses! Read it for yourself – I’ve included the complete text of the article below.
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It’s been a little over three months since my wife and I stepped down from our ministries at Mesilla Park Community Church to help plant the new church in Las Cruces. I’ve included the text from a newsletter article I submitted for Mesilla Park’s new monthly newsletter to get everybody up to speed on what’s been going on in that time!
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I’m writing this from Milagro’s coffee shop in Cruces — my first try at posting to the Blog from my Palm handheld. Coffee has become an important element of our new church. It gets us going in the morning, it gives us something to do in the evenings when we meet as a leadership team, and it gives me a good reason to get together with people who I’d like to get to know better.
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