Yesterday & Tomorrow

The yesterday is literal, the tomorrow is more figurative.

What an incredible day we had at Capital City Church yesterday! It's always a blast to have the children open our service! The rest of the praise time was great. My favorite worship leader of all was up there. She's got a fantastic voice, awesome heart, and she's beautiful too! :-)

We wrapped up our vision & direction series with a look into James chapter 2. Faith without action is dead. Action without faith is dead. I don't remember where I first heard this quote, but it is very good, "Faith without action leads to narcissism. Action without faith leads to despair." The two cannot be separated successfully any more than a man can be cut down the middle and continue on. Action, works, deeds, whatever word you use, are a result of our faith. They are born out of it. The fruit of faith if you will. Action does not earn us salvation or God's favor, He has given freely to us. However, action does prove that our faith exists.

I announced yesterday a couple of things in our future. The move to cross-generational ministry is one that I have been talking about in this blog already. We are going to take some aggressive steps to pay off our debt and to make major increases in missions and outreach monies and resources. Very soon we will be announcing the details for adding a second service. The time frame is not yet set, but when I say VERY soon, I mean it. It has been burning in me for a while and the time is about here for it.

We ended the service a bit differently, I had people write their names on an offering envelope and then, after some prayer, had them write on that envelope what their "action" offering was going to be. What was it they were committing to obey God in by putting feet to their faith. This included opportunities to serve in the church as well as serve people outside the church in the community. Then everyone came forward and laid those envelopes on the front of the stage. I can't wait to process through the responses.

After a little time of relaxing in the afternoon, we had our church picnic. Fantastic turnout! Great food, great conversations, and lots of fun. Nearly perfect weather, too. I was a bit nervous after announcing no rain and then have a light rain falling as I am greeting people in the lobby at the end of service. But, it cleared up and was beautiful by the time for the picnic. Nathan and I did go down to a couple of teams in cornhole. Our undefeated streak is over. We had a blast with some good clean competition.

Well, I'll post more later, but I have some training to do to reacquire our position atop the CapCity cornhole whatever. :-)

P.S. Breawnn took some great photos of the picnic. You can find them by clicking here.