Meet Brandt Russo

Here's a story out of my local paper about a dude traveling around the country, ministering to homeless people. The crap that went down with Ignited Church unfortunately enhanced the perceptions of hypocrisy in the Church that is all too often a barrier to all too many.

But that's a side story here. A necessary footnote that will bring to light Brandt's ministry. More importantly it will put a face on the faceless.

Journey Church, mentioned in the story and it's pastor, Adam Mayfield, are my church and pastor. The seemingly insignificant thing Adam did by letting them crash at our offices and continue is work there is the most important thing Journey has done in it's 1 1/2 years. But again, the story here is about Brandt's ministry so be sure you watch the video on the left and hear a little about his work.

Click the link…………
HERE

Church Planting Success Story

I just did a search for "lakeland church" church on Google and below you can see the sponsored responses that came up. Pretty cool, we've all sprouted from the same branch and are now blossoming on our own!



The websites for these churches are:

Church of the Highlands, Pastor Don Dodge

Journey Church, Pastor Adam Mayfield

Go Church Lakeland, Pastor Robert Beckman.

From this same branch but growing farther from the source are

Church of the Highlands - Port Orange, Pastor Hal Haller, in Port Orange, FL

Church of the Highlands - Four Corners Pastor Ricc Connor, in Haines City, FL and

Church at the Bay Pastor Hal Mayer, in Tampa, FL.

Welcome our newest limb that we are praying for, a church that is just now coming to life, Fellowship Church, Pastor Jason Herndon, in Wesley Chapel, FL.

I could never forget the church that planted the seed in my soul to join in this mission of church planting, Innovation Church, Pastor David Baxter, in Orlando, FL.

Join us as we pray for these gatherings and pastors as they fulfill their life's mission of growing His kingdom here on earth.

Sunday.....

...was AWESOME! This was the first week for our new worship band. Joe, Alyssa, Lora, Matt................Thank You! You guys did great. The Spirit was with all of us and it showed. Our ultimate goal in leading worship is to become invisible to the audience. Their total focus should be on God and I think we accomplished this through song selection, execution and honestly losing ourselves in worship. With God's help you are making my job easy.

Did he just say that?

Yes, he really said that. You know, the part where you should go somewhere else if your vision doesn't jive with Journey's. We're pretty stubborn when it comes to our mission and it has nothing to do with a country club feel. Sunday's are definately for fellowship and corporate (group) worship but mainly for instruction to create a group of disciples to infiltrate the community. There are more sub-cultures than ever and each need to be reached in a way that they understand. We're not talking going undercover. Stick with the crowd you're comfortable with; golfers, car fanatics, musicians, stay-at-home moms, fisherman, etc, etc. If you're fake people will see you as another God Marketer with no interest in them except their wallets.

The next couple of weeks we'll be laying out our vision and giving examples of steps we can take to accomplish His goals. To learn more about this join a Crossroads class. Next, start thinking about what you can do, what groups can you reach and share your ideas.

It's a group effort.

Give it up for YAHWEH!

Why do we doubt him?

Early show times at the theater where we meet hit us a little sooner than we expected. We were informed of this change on Thursday! Thank you "Spiderman 3". Before we even set up we had already planned an afternoon meeting to fix what went wrong. Talk about pessimism. Well, in the words of Fire Marshall Bill, "Let me tell you somethin'"! Even short handed set up flew by, thanks especially to Tim who got our truss pre-rigged with the lights and dimmer packs. This knocked some serious time off. It then started to become obvious that it had always been God's intention to bring something much better out of these (minor) difficulties. From logistics, signage, traffic flow and even small details like the location of our hospitality and welcome tables, we saw major improvements! Perhaps the biggest plus is that hundreds of people will be informed that there is a Church at the theater. This could plant the seed that God has been waiting to water. How awesome is that!

Frame your problems with scripture. He has a plan, it might not be obvious for 40 years, but that's trifling compared to eternity. Instead of whining and stressing out when we hit some obstacles we should shout, "Stand back! God's about to do something awesome!"