March 2012 has been a monumental month for our church:

• First, GCCC became an accredited church of the C&MA (Christian and Missionary Alliance);
• Secondly, we installed our first set of elders; and
• Lastly, we held our congregational retreat. 

It's been a non-stop flurry of events. Now in a few days, I head to Israel, Jordan, and Spain for a vision trip called Inspire Me 2012 with Geoffrey Chin (our overseas missions coordinator) and 21 other pastors in our C&MA denomination.

Inspire Me 2012 is a vision trip for pastors and leaders of churches in our C&MA mid-Atlantic district. The trip is designed for pastors to gain a deeper appreciation for what God is doing overseas by visiting various missionaries and their work in the Middle East. Along with visiting the missionaries, we will also visit some biblical sites, such as the Sea of Galilee, the city of Capernaum, the Jordan River, and others. Perhaps the most significant site will be walking up the Via Dolorsa (the Way of the Cross). [Right: Sea of Galilee Photo by Fine Photo Gallery]

I'm truly humbled and grateful that I get to go on a vision trip like this. Here are some of my prayer requests. I would deeply appreciate your prayer for me during this trip.

1. Please pray that this trip will deepen my walk with Christ. I know this is a great privilege and I want to experience the impact as I walk where Jesus walked. Please pray that God would speak to me through these site visits.
    
2. Please pray that I would bring back to GCCC a deeper passion for missions. I partly want to get blessed so that I can be a blessing to you. So please pray that God would soften my heart to see all that He is doing and all that still needs to be done.
    
3. I will have an opportunity to preach at the 2nd Circle Alliance Church in Amman, Jordan, I'm not sure why they asked me, but I count this as a privilege in itself. Please pray that God would speak through me to the Christians that live there and provide the word that He has for them. I will be speaking on Thursday, April 26.
    
4. Please pray for physical, emotional, and spiritual protection for Geoff and I. Please pray that nothing will hinder us from experiencing all that God has in store for us.
    
5. Please pray for my family. The only down side of this trip and this opportunity is that I'll be doing it on my own without my family. Please pray that God will protect them from any harm. Please pray for Sooj, as she will need God's strength to deal with our three rambunctious kids.

Thank you in advance for your prayers!

                                   

Have you ever wondered why God instituted so many different kinds of feasts in the Old Testament (OT) for the nation of Israel? Feasts in the OT provided occasion for fellowship with others and with the Lord as well as a time to remember and celebrate all the wonderful things God did. Some of the feasts that are recorded in the OT were the Feast of Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Feast of First Fruits, Feast of the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacle. Every one of these feasts pointed to God’s faithfulness and goodness to his people. The Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorated the way God’s people had left the land of Egypt in hast after the angel of death had passed over them because of the blood on the door post.  The Feast of First Fruits was a celebration of the Harvest, reminding God’s people of the goodness of the land into which he had finally brought them. During these feasts the Nation of Israel were commanded to celebrate with joyful songs, festive music, dancing, and with abundant food. All people including men and women, boys and girls, servants, widows, orphans, and even foreigners were to take part in the celebration.

Friends, we, too, have such an opportunity to celebrate together and remember God’s faithfulness and goodness with a feast on March 18^th. It will be an opportunity for us to remember all that God has done in our community over the past ten years, how He has birthed this church from an initial small gathering of people to the group we have today. We will also remember His provision in raising leaders over and over again who faithfully served the body during crucial times. God has certainly provided for GCCC and we want to remember that.

Secondly, we want to also celebrate GCCC officially moving from a church plant to an organized church.  During our March 18^th service, we will install our first set of elders, then after the service, along with the leaders of our denomination, we will be ratifying our bylaws and becoming an accredited church of the C&MA.  Afterwards we will celebrate by sharing a meal together. Unlike biblical times, we may not have dancing and singing but there will be good food and a joyful spirit.

Again, it will be an opportunity for us to remember our great God who has done marvelous things in our midst. I would love to see all of you there.  Please invite one another as well as newcomers to this service and lunch. Let’s celebrate together and sing praises to him who has been so good to us. 

I've been a Christian for twenty plus years and in full time pastoral ministry for fifteen of those years. Needless to say I've been to many retreats and conferences as I have also read numerous books and heard my share of sermons. Although I have benefited tremendously from these resources, they have only been my secondary source of spiritual food.

Elementary disciplines like reading the Bible, prayer, worship, and repentance are irreplaceable to one's spiritual growth. The longer I am in ministry, the more I sense the need to practice these essential spiritual disciplines in my walk with Jesus.

Some of us might think that these disciplines are legalistic or even a sign of living apart from grace. If we lived by grace, then shouldn’t our focus lean away from self-effort? Certainly there may be some dangers on relying on these disciplines to earn God's favor, but we need to recognize that our efforts are not in opposition to grace. Author Dallas Willard observed this when he said, "Grace is not opposed to effort but to earning." This means that it is not wrong to expend energy and effort to get to know Christ, but it is wrong to do so with the thought of earning God's favor and love.

John Ortberg presents three different attitudes that we may have when it comes to spiritual disciplines. He compares the three approaches to the differences between a motorboat, a raft, and a sailboat.

Ortberg says that in a motorboat, the person who is driving the boat is in charge. The person determines how fast to go and in which direction. Some people approach spiritual disciplines that way. "If I’m just aggressive enough, if I have enough quiet times, then I can make transformation happen on my own." Some people have been burned by that kind of approach, so they go to the opposite extreme and say, "I'm into grace." Ortberg says that these people act like they are floating on a raft. Ask them to do anything to further their growth the person will say, "No. I’m not into works. I’m into grace. You’re getting legalistic with me." So they drift. There are way too many commands in Scripture for anybody to think that we are to be passive in our walk with Christ.

On a sailboat however, one cannot move without the wind. He knows that he can neither control nor manufacture the wind. Ortberg explains that Jesus talks about the Spirit like a blowing of the wind. All this to say, we should not think of ourselves as either the driving force or the passive calm in our walks with Jesus.We need to be more like the sailor who does all he can to get the boat in a position to catch the wind... to grow closer to Christ.

"Lord, give us a clear vision for our church..."

This has been my prayer for our church this past year.  As I often repeated this prayer, I wasn't sure how or when God would answer; but I was hopeful He would. During that time of prayer and seeking, God graciously spoke a simple word to me. Name. The name that identifies our church: Great Commission Community Church.

A name is important. In the Bible, names often became descriptions of one's character and even at times one's destiny. For example, God takes Abram and names him Abraham. Abraham means Father of Many Nations; Abraham indeed does become a spiritual father to all those who would believe in the Gospel. In New Testament, Jesus takes Simon and names him Peter. Peter means Rock. Jesus goes on to say, "On this rock I will build my church." We know that Peter eventually becomes the leader of the early church.

Also in our culture, parents know something about the importance of names as well. We choose names for our children hoping that certain names will be descriptive of their character. We name our sons Joshua, to reflect his courage, or our daughters Mary, to resemble her faith.

As I reflected on the name Great Commission Community Church, God reminded me of our church's mission and destiny. What does Great Commission Community Church mean? The name comes from a passage in Matthew 28. It is the last mandate from the risen Christ before he departs to heaven. He says, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age."

The Great Commission from Jesus was for us to make disciples of all nations. In other words, we are a church that makes disciples of all peoples. What a great calling! It cannot get any more biblical and missional than this.

With our God-given name in place, it is my hope that starting this fall, we will begin to explore what this looks like for our church.