FBLO Live on the Net

Jun 23rd

Posted by Mike Norton in church

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This Sunday, June 24th, First Baptist will be streaming its first live service using the UStream website. You can watch along starting at 10:50 AM PST.

To watch the service head on over to our UStream site for the First Baptist Live Oak feed.

What’s that at the Door?

Jun 23rd

Posted by Mike Norton in church

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So, it’s 7:30 A.M. Saturday morning and the family is still asleep. All of a sudden out of no where our dogs start going nuts! Someone is pounding on the door to our porch. Pounding because its locked, a little run in with a bike thief one summer night a couple a years ago got us into that habit.

Me What is going on? What are they barking at?

Tanya I don’t know. Oh, someone is at the door.

Being jerked out of a deep sleep is never good for ones nerves. Your mind races with all sorts of scenarios. Who could it be? Is it good, bad, or trouble? She gets to the front door and finds one of our church members pounding on the door.

Suddenly someone showed up to help pull all the weeds from behind the education building. She brought 2 others. Now, ordinarily this would be great news, but at this point of the story I would like to introduce you to what we call in my line of work as a “Well Intentioned Dragon.”

A well intentioned dragon is a person who means well but goes about doing it in all the wrong ways. Instead of being helpful they are usually negative. In this case a remark was made about us being in bed still at 7:30 on a Saturday that still has Tanya reeling over it. The funniest thing about this is that we had a church wide clean up day only a week ago and this WID had not shown up.

So, what is a pastor/minister/insert something here, to do? Nothing. Pray, calm down, try to put a positive spin on it, and remember that people do not always have the tools to communicate properly in our day and age.

We work with people. People need the Lord, and we need to reach them, even when it is hard to do.

Pascal, Templates, and You

Jun 21st

Posted by Mike Norton in templates

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Ok, more randomness :) Im sitting here trying to find a new theme for this blog. No luck so far. I could whip out ye old Photoshop and Dreamweaver and start hacking away, but I just don’t have that much drive to do so.

I’m caught. I want something that looks good, but is simple. I am so tired of the flashy things, like moxie spoke of in her comments on my last post. I just want it to be simple. With that in mind I think Ill play with some very basic themes. I mean who cares what it looks like right?

Well, we all do. Down deep inside of us all we have a desire to please something bigger than us. Blaise Pascal said it best when he said.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus

Mind you good old Pascal, yep the very same one who gave us the principles behind the pascal computer language (If that does not get you in the way back machine I don’t know what will) said this sometime between 1623 and 1662. Wow, that guy was pretty smart for an old dead guy.

What I’m trying to say is this. Does it matter what it looks like? Does it matter what we look like? Yes and no. If we try to please the one who fits that vacuum in our heart then we will be ok, but if we try to please the world that wants to fill that spot, well, then it gets messy.

So, what are your opinions on a template for the blog? hehe, I bet you thought this was supposed to be much deeper didn’t you? Well, perhaps it is, only time will tell.

,

Conventional Wisdom?

Jun 21st

Posted by Mike Norton in church growth

3 comments


Conventional wisdom says to stay the course, don’t rock the boat. But what are you supposed to do if you like a little adventure in your life? Church life, the life of the actually congregation, not an individual mind you, can be summed up in many terms, exciting, boring, luke warm, and dead are just a few. Church growth strategists encourage pastors to take an inventory often to determine where they are at. This is an easy chore for those who have churches that are alive and moving. For those of us that are in congregations that are, well let’s be honest, less than stellar when it comes to wow factor, we find it hard to take this inventory.

Many in my field agree that the days of the 50′s are over yet we are still finding that we try to do things the same way we did back then. Being a younger pastor, quickly sneaking up on 40, I did not experience the 50′s boom in church life but I have felt the affects of it both positive and negative all my Christian life.

We now live in the twenty first century. People have changed in how they react to things socially, financially and recreationaly. I’m sad to say that gone are the days of people flocking to a church building simply because it is what they always did or had nothing else to do. They will not come because we build it. If we want to continue to be faithful to the great commission we must find a way to be relevant!

I wish I could offer you what we need to do to be relevant in this post, but I can’t. I am still struggling to figure it out myself. I’m no expert, I’m not some super pastor, I’m just a guy; a guy who loves Jesus and has been called to serve him. This is what blogs, social networking systems and the lot are all about. We need to come together and share ideas.

So, what do you think? Is this getting out there? Let’s be frank not stuffy. Hit it.

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