38 new members joined last month. A young gal came to our college gathering for the first time two weeks ago and came to know Christ. A car was delivered every week this year to a family in need. We hosted and fed 100 homeless neighbors on Thanksgiving day. Our Wednesday program for children tripled in size. Over $18,000 was collected on Christmas Eve for the He Cares, We Care ministry. And we started 50 new Community Groups. Not a bad year.

I am taking a few days to be with my family. I will not see you this weekend, but you won’t want to miss Steve Mayer’s message about looking to God as we dream for 2008. I’m already excited to start!

“We spend an inordinate amount of time focused on shopping and buying gifts, but really, what does any of this have to do with the birth of Jesus? We have families all over the nation killing themselves to buy a tree they can’t afford, running up their credit to buy toys and other gifts, all in an effort to make someone else happy.

“What if families decided to forego gifts, and instead, used their shopping days giving back to those in need? What if more of us went into our closets, grabbed old toys and clothes, repackaged them, and provided them as gifts to those without? Instead of gorging on food, what if we used some of the dough to feed those who are in need? What if we blew off those gift cards to electronic retailers and signed up with Network for Good, and gave someone a gift card to their favorite charity?”

These are the words of CNN commentator Roland Martin. It almost sounds as if he helped put together our December series!

I hope to see many of you through the weekend and on Monday evening. I can’t wait to celebrate Jesus as we end 2007 together. Don’t forget that the whole family will be together this Christmas Eve. Come at 6pm or 7:30pm with your whole crew. Here’s the scoop:

You will have the choice of dropping your infants and toddlers off at the Promised Land or keeping them with you for the entire service.

• 3-5 year olds will stay with the family in the sanctuary for the first half of the service, then guided by our helpers to the stage for a story, and then to the Promised Land for the second half of the service.
• Kindergarten through 5^th grade will follow the 3-5 year olds, except they will be taken to the Great Room (rather than Promised Land) for the second half of the service.

May the next week bless your family greatly.

See you this weekend.

If you are a regular attender, you probably know that this weekend (Saturday and Sunday) is when we usually receive your gifts to the He Cares, We Care ministry.

This Christmas, we’re making a small change: we’re postponing the benevolence offering for the weekend, so that we can receive it at the Christmas Eve services instead. This way all donations made on Christmas Eve will be used in their entirety to serve families in our community.

Our culture is hyper-relativistic. The idea of absolute, unchanging truth has become a passing fad, and it seems that everyone understands this. But it presents a problem for those with an undying love for an eternal, unchanging God. So what happens? We draw lines and perceive a battle. I wonder whether there is another way.

I love chess. I don’t get to play it much these days, but I love it just the same. Basic rules have always told us that the one who commands the center of the board wins. Then, in the early 1900’s, the Russian Aron Nimzovich came up with a new strategy called Hypermodernism. Here, you give up the center of the board and react to your opponent as he perceives your weakness and moves against it. The results are less anticipated and because of that, it is surprising how much stronger your end-game can become.

I never thought much about it until I heard Erwin McManus use it as an example for living. In a world that behaves more and more like Nimzovich, I wonder whether we should hold less to the old perception of “culture wars,” instead releasing our hold on the traditional center. Rather than hide our weaknesses, we would reveal them transparently and authentically. It would allow us to relate better, and help us to respond with a stronger and much more relevant end-game.

I hope that you are gaining new insight through the Simply Jesus series, and that it will help you to celebrate Christmas more meaningfully. This week we will tackle another challenge that can keep Jesus from the center of the board — and we will learn it from a very short man! Hope to see you there.

This week’s snow made it feel a bit more like Christmas. I am ready to get the skis dusted off. And the tree hasn’t fallen over yet! Guess it has been a good week. With my message last week I couldn’t help going out to the mall right after the Saturday service to see the crowd. Its fun when you have the right perspective. But the commercialism is dangerous when you go about it mindlessly.

So are you still reading the Sermon on the Mount? Good. I bet some of you didn’t realize how much you knew that was in there but didn’t know that’s where it was! Remember, if you make up your mind to take the Jesus route this Christmas, then you will need to train your soul to respond to your eyes. Consumerism is part of our culture. Put your heart in place and stay the course. Nothing does it better than large doses of time spent with Jesus (with some hot chocolate or eggnog of course).

This is week two of our Simply Jesus series. Josh will be looking at a second issue that many will face this Christmas season. It isn’t actually unique to Christmas but this season takes it up to a peak level. And if you don’t face it yourself, you know someone who will. Come find out what it is and hear what Jesus had to say about it.

Stay warm and see you this weekend.

Mark Batterson pastors National Community Church down in DC. I have met and read him. He mentioned in his blog that his goal is to turn “attenders into inviters.” I like that. You know you did something right when those attending start becoming excited enough to invite their friends.

And it really should just happen — it shouldn’t take a program or a drive. It should just be the natural result of people who are excited about being part of a community that has purpose. That’s my job: to make sure we focus on purpose. Jesus did that. “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full.” This coming week we will be announcing 38 new members for PAC. Somebody must have become an inviter!

If you want to read Mark’s blog more regularly, you can find it here. I included a link at the right of this blog — here you can also see some other links that I like. Check them out. Better yet, pass your favorites along to me.