thechurchblog

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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People are tired. They’re tired of working for unappreciative bosses (supervisors, teachers, pastors, etc.), tired of wasting time on repetitive tasks, tired of having to work a job to make a meager living. People are tired of the way things are — and they wish things could change.

I’ve had the chance to talk to a large number of people as part of the process of planting this new church. Many seem interested in the new church — but often because of the simple fact that they’re tired of their old church. (Lots of them have in fact been through several churches in their past.) They’re tired of “not getting fed,” tired of “too many glitzy programs,” or even tired of “spending so much money on staff and buildings.”

You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of lost people going to hell.
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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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Mesilla Park Community Church (MPCC) announced last Sunday (6/11/06) that the church is going to branch out in two areas — church planting and multi-site churches. This is part of MPCC’s vision to double the lives we reach every five years. This will hopefully meet an urgent need in our community — to transform the church from a place where people have to come to church, to a place where the church goes out to people.
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I’ve had a long reading list sitting on the shelf next to by bed for about two months now. I don’t get too many opportunities to get lost in a good book these days — usually just a few minutes before I fall asleep at night. However, I am slowly making it through my list. The first book I grabbed is Don Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” (Thomas Nelson). It is the first “Christian” book that I have actually read cover-to-cover in about six years.
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Let me start by giving my apologies to C.S. Lewis and his fabulous essay in “Mere Christianity” (synopsis here) — not to mention Josh MacDowell. These days, spiritually-minded people seem to want to lump Jesus into one of these three categories. Of the three, the Guru crowd is certainly growing by leaps and bounds. . .
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“rawbbie” writes:

I have recently moved to Las Cruces, that’s not included in my profile. I’m actually from Farmington. I left a great church when I moved down here, one that I chose with much prayer and agony. Now I’m chosing a new church with much prayer and not yet any agony but it will soon come. I guess I should start at how I got to choosing my last church and then you’ll see how hard my new decision will be.

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Justin writes:

“Here is something from one of my ethnomusicology clases. It’s is a model (by a man named Ian Collinge) is from a discussion board from one of my classes. We were discussing ‘heart music’ and whether it was a good idea for people in Africa to learn Chinese or Brazilian worship songs, as some are doing. Ian bleieves that it is important for a local body of believers to develop a collection of worship music based on four elements of a group’s identity.”

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