Eric Taylor

Sunday Rewind

What a busy weekend!  

It all started with our One Prayer Community Service Project.  Almost 200 volunteers from 6 or more churches showed up to help the 10 Auburn City Schools.  My family worked at Cary Woods Elementary and then moved over to Dean Road (where Sonja teaches) and joined the fun there!  Yes, it was HOT!  Yes, it was hard work!  Yes we got scratched up, beat up and banged up... but every volunteer left that day with a heart thankful they could serve the community.  Together the Church (big C Church-- the body of Christ) made a BIG impact in Auburn because we came together in the spirit of One Prayer and lived out Jesus' prayer in John 17, that we may be one!  If you missed it, you'll have another opportunity because we will do it again-- soon!

We experienced an awesome time of worship today with Nathan Harbin and Perry Noble brought it as he always does!  He talked on the subject-- God is Here!  It was a great way to end our One Prayer series.  If you missed any of the messages, go to our webpage and click on the videos tab and you can view them or you can go to the podcast page and listen to and/or download the audio.  Either way... you may want to go back and watch or listen again... All 4 messages were that good!

It's been great to have some great teaching over the last 4 weeks and I have been able to focus on some strategic leadership development and focused time in prayer and we are headed to the beach tomorrow through Thursday.  (We're tagging along with Sonja who has a writers' conference there)  So, while she's in class, I'll be laying around the pool, or on the beach.  The only thing I have "scheduled" for next week is to get up early-- yes, I still do that on vacation-- and spend time reading, praying and journaling.  I don't know what it is about the beach, but it seems like God always speaks to me very loudly when I'm there.  Other than that... I'm taking a vacation from blogging, email, etc so I can be refreshed and renewed and be ready when I get back on stage next Sunday to teach again... and you don't want to miss it... it's going to be a powerful message on prayer... I know it's a holiday weekend, but if you're in town-- get there early... it will be worth it- I promise!

See you in a week!

Study Less... Pray More

I was reading Mark Batterson's blog this morning and it really resonated with me because I've been reading and studying 2 Timothy and moving very slowly through the passages and I actually got hung up on the one that Batterson mentions in his blog- 2 Tim 2:15.  I camped out there for a while and really was compelled to study more intentionally.  But also, while we've been in our One Prayer series, I've been more focused on extended times of prayer.  Prayer and Study.  Study and Prayer.  Which one's more important?  That's like asking me which one of my children I love more!  There is no answer for that.  But I love how Mark put it in his blog:  

"I think we'd preach with more passion if we tweaked the amount of time we pray in proportion to the amount of time we study. So maybe I should say: study more and pray even more."

I have found myself spending a lot of time studying but little time praying through the message.  Those are the times I wonder where the power and passion was.  So... an intentional addition to my Saturday night schedule as well as my Sunday early schedule will be not to "practice" the delivery outloud as much, but to "rehearse it before God" as I pray through each word of my message.  

As pastors and preachers we have an audience that has willingly volunteered 30-40 minutes, sometimes more, of their time to listen to what we have to say.  So, we have to be prayed up, studied up and fired up about standing up and proclaiming the most powerful story in the world.  Here are some things I want to make sure of before I stand up to speak on Sunday:

1.  Have I heard from God?

2.  Am I a clean and useful vessel?

3. Am I calling people to act on what they have just heard?

Those 3 questions will be part of my prayer time as I study and prepare for one of my favorite things -- standing up and proclaiming Jesus.

By the way, you can read the full post that Mark Batterson wrote here.

One Prayer Service Project

I'm getting all pumped up about this Saturday.  We are coming together with other One Prayer churches in Auburn to impact the community.  To be more specific, we are going to be working with our public schools to do some landscaping and general clean up/spruce up around the schools.  Auburn City Schools have a great reputation in our state, even nationwide, and it's one of the reasons Auburn was named by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top 10 places to live.  We have a lot to be proud of in our schools here.  As the Church ("Capital C"), the Body of Christ, we have a great opportunity to impact our city as we come together this Saturday and serve our schools.  

Here's the plan:

• go to http://auburnoneprayer.wordpress.com and register.  This is not required, but it gives us an idea how many people to expect.
• Show up this Saturday, June 27th at 8:00am at the Bruno's Parking Lot (at the corner of E. University and Glenn Ave).  You will check in and be assigned to a school. (your family will be assigned together) 
• Bring any lawn care tools you can- hedge clippers, weed eaters, etc.  And be sure to wear gloves and close toed shoes. 
• Be ready to work until 12:30. 
• Celebrate in the spirit of One Prayer that, together, we all made a significant impact in our community! 
•  Come to Journey on Sunday and continue the celebration as we close out our One Prayer series with Scott Hodge, Pastor of The Orchard Community Church.

Monday Rewind

• Yesterday was BLAZING HOT in Auburn.  I walked outside to talk to our greeters and just about passed out from the heat.  Those guys are awesome to be able to stand out in the heat to be the first friendly face guests and attenders see.  
• Great conversations with some first time guests yesterday.   
• One of those guests gave their life to Christ!  Woo-Hoo! 
• God is continuing to work even in the summer!  We may take vacations and gear down a little, but God is always at work drawing people to Himself!   
• It was a great Father's Day!   
• We watched Craig Groschel talk about "God is... Father".  He nailed it!  Talked about the prodigal son and the Loving Father!  Great stuff! 
• I love One Prayer and I am really being refreshed by not having to prepare messages each week (I am actually writing messages for upcoming series, but the pressure to get it done for the upcoming Sunday isn't there-- that's helpful) 
• As much as I love hearing from great teachers via video-- I can't wait to preach again... it's like Jeremiah said-- it's a "fire shut up in my bones"!  There's some great stuff I want to share in the coming months!  God has been refreshing me and renewing my passion for preaching and teaching! 
• We had an awesome time of worship yesterday- Thanks Joey Seales for always being willing to lead people to experience Jesus in worship! 
• I had an awesome Father's Day nap.  I mean a real deal, drooling on the pillow nap!  (probably too much informaiton!)
• Sonja and I went to see The Proposal while the kids were at the Youth Meeting.  Lots of Laughs!  I think Betty White is one of the funniest people on the planet!  And Oscar from The Office was way funnier as an exotic dancer/waiter/minister than he is as an accountant! 
• Woke up this morning at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep until 4:30.  I've gotta get my sleep patterns back in line.  I'm carrying around a killer headache today and I've got too much to do to get sidelined.   
• Finally-- Saturday we had a meeting of what I'm calling my "Mighty Men".  Just like David's Mighty Men in 2 Samuel 23... these are men I love doing life and ministry with.  I gave them a copy of the Strengthsfinder 2.0 book and Brian Bloye's talk about Spiritual Vitality.  I want to pour into their lives so they can be the best leaders, husbands, fathers and Christ followers they can be.  I can't wait to see how God uses these men over the next few months to help our church get to the next level.  

Book Review- The Disappearance of God

More faulty information about God swirls around us today than ever before. No wonder so many followers of Christ are unsure of what they really believe in the face of the new spiritual openness attempting to alter unchanging truth.

For centuries the church has taught and guarded the core Christian beliefs that make up the essential foundations of the faith. But in our postmodern age, sloppy teaching and outright lies create rampant confusion, and many Christians are free-falling for “feel-good” theology. 

We need to know the truth to save ourselves from errors that will derail our faith. 

As biblical scholar, author, and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Albert Mohler, writes, “The entire structure of Christian truth is now under attack.” With wit and wisdom he tackles the most important aspects of these modern issues: 
Is God changing His mind about sin?
Why is hell off limits for many pastors?
What’s good or bad about the “dangerous” emergent movement? 
Have Christians stopped seeing God as God?
Is the social justice movement misguided?
Could the role of beauty be critical to our theology?
Is liberal faith any less destructive than atheism?
Are churches pandering to their members to survive?

In the age-old battle to preserve the foundations of faith, it's up to a new generation to confront and disarm the contemporary shams and fight for the truth. Dr. Mohler provides the scriptural answers to show you how.  For me, this was a pretty good read.  There was some great insights in the book, but it was a little hard for me to get through.  Still, it will be a resource that I will keep handy when I deal with issues of an ever increasing secular culture.  You can check out more about the book and the author here.

Church Planting in Alabama

I was honored to take part in a meeting at our state denominational office that included church planters, missionaries, associational mission directors, and pastors as well as the head honcho of our state convention, Dr Rick Lance.  It was an awesome meeting that was full of healthy discussion and questions about how we can raise the bar in church planting in the state.  The topics included funding, building and strengthening relationships and networking, coaching and mentoring as well as some other topics.  Usually I HATE meetings that last all day, but this was different- this was very encouraging and energizing because there were some very significant discussions that took place.  I got to meet some folks that I didn't know and reconnect with guys that I haven't seen in a while.  Men like Terry Cutrer, pastor of Moffitt Road Baptist in Mobile.  He's a pastor I want to learn from.  Not only is he an advocate for church planters, he's just flat out wise-- I can learn a lot from him. I hope to be able to connect with him more.  Men like Randall Stoner, Associational Missionary from Albertville, AL.  He's a former pastor, and a traditional guy, but loves church planters and loves reaching people for Jesus.  I got a chance to meet Teman Knight who leads our state office's Leadership department.  I will definitely be spending time with him in the future.  There were lots of guys in the room from all different backgrounds and even a variety of theological differences, but the most encouraging thing from the meeting yesterday is that we were all united in the thought that we want to reach the 2 million people in Alabama who are disconnected from God and the Church.  I loved the way my friend Matt Brooks put it, we want to be about "pushing back lostness" in Alabama.  

Here's what I came away with- I was reminded that in established churches the ratio of members it takes to lead one person to Christ is 40:1.  In church plants that number is around 14:1.  At Journey, our numbers are about 10:1 and that makes me very proud as your pastor.  It shows our commitment to going all out to reach disconnected people.  But that doesn't mean we can relax or get comfortable. It means we have to keep pressing ahead to "push back lostness"  In Auburn.  There are 40000 people who are disconnected from God and the church. It's a HUGE task and it's going to take more than just our church to reach 40000 people.  But, I believe that God is going to use our church to help lead the charge in reaching them!  Some of those 40000 are your neighbors, your co-workers, your teachers, your employees, your roommates, even your family.  Journey will reach a lot of them, but we want to be able to help plant more churches in Auburn, Opelika, and Lee County that will make it hard to go to hell!  I'm more fired up than ever about what God can do through our church.  Maybe it's because we're in this One Prayer series and I'm pumped about working together with other Kingdom minded folks to reach our area;  maybe it's because I haven't had to prepare a message for the upcoming week and I've had more time to pray, think, dream, strategize and envision the future of our city as Journey church and other churches, as well as churches that we help plant, go all out to help "push back lostness" in our city.   I hope you're with me!  It's going to be an awesome adventure as we see God do far more than we could ever ask or imagine!  Get ready Journey Church... God's going to do something great in Alabama and we get to be a part of it!

Eyes Wide Open

Ever so often publishers send me books to review and blog  about.  I used to say yes to most of them but it got to where I couldn't read everything and honestly, the books didn't captivate my attention.   But recently I had a chance to read Jud Wilhite's new book, Eyes Wide Open.  Jud is the pastor of Central Christian Church in Las Vegas.  He's an amazing communicator and pastor and we've used some of their resources at Journey.  The subtitle of the book is "see and live the real you".  That's what captured me.  He breaks the book down into 4 parts- Part 1 is Wide Open to God.  In this section he tells about his own quest for acceptance and how he surrendered his view of himself and embraced God's view of him.  That is foundational if we're ever going to become passionate Christ followers and experience all that we were created for.  He talks about grace, not just for when we first come to faith in Christ, but grace that sustains us day by day.  Then he finished the section by talking about God being FOR US.  It's interesting because we began our One Prayer series with John Burke teaching that same message "God is For Us".   One of the best quotes in the book is, "if you have entered by faith into an agreement with God through Christ, He is bound by His own character to be there for you."  Yes!

Part 2 talks about our Identity- the way we see ourselves and how God sees us... and many times they're 2 very different pictures.  If you see yourself as worthless,  you will start to behave in that manner.  But the truth is our worth doesn't start with our behavior, it starts with God... and believing we are who He says we are.  He goes on to talk about accepting and living in our new identity as a saint.

Part 3 is all about being wide open to change, to embrace our true selves and reject the cookie cutter, wanna be attitude that if I were like this person or dressed like that person or went to this church or that church, then I could get it together.  WRONG.  Jud explains that restoration is a lifelong process, not a quick fix.  He offers this formula- Grace+Truth+Time =Growth.

Then the last part to the book is about being Wide Open to Influence.  He makes a great point that people spend their lives exclusively on individual change and transformation, but that's only half the story.  The full story "includes the call to create culture and restore it" by using our gifts and strengths. He finishes the book reminding us that there is always hope- Hope to change, hope to heal, to grow, to reach our full potential in Christ.  

I loved this book.  It was a very quick and easy read.  It was  a great reminder of who we are and mostly who we are in Christ!  I love the stories Jud tells in the book.  Being a pastor on the Las Vegas strip certainly opens you up to some amazing stories of life change and transformation.  As Jud shares those stories we see how we can experience that transformation personally and lead that transformation as pastors and leaders.  I only have one negative thing to say about the book-- and I know you're not suppose to judge a book by it's cover-- but the cover of this book is way too plain.  Hopefully by the second printing they'll make a change.  But it's definitely worth picking it up and reading it. Click here if you'd like more information on the book or Jud Wilhite.  If you'd like to buy this book now, click the link below.

   

Weekend Rewind

This weekend was the first weekend I've had off from teaching since October.  I'm not proud of that.  One Prayer came along at just the right time for me because I didn't realize how tired I was mentally.  When I let myself get that way, the level of creativity goes way down.  Watching some of the recent messages, I can see that.  So, I took off this weekend and I heard Steven Furtick filled in for me nicely.  I loved the live tweets that Elliott Devore and my son, Seth did during the services (at least I know he was paying attention!)  One of the best lines Furtick used in his "God is Good" message was that God always wants to give us more than what we want for ourselves.  "You are thinking Atari, God is thinking Nintendo!"  Great line!  Click here to to our website and listen/watch the entire message.

Here's what we did over the weekend-- I had my 25 year High School reunion.  I know I don't look that old, but some of my classmates did! Ha!  It was really great seeing some folks I haven't seen since graduation.  We had a blast.  We remembered stories of riding around the Dairy Queen, playing video games at the Game Place, sports stories and stories of favorite teachers.  We caught up on people's lives-- some have had great successes, some have had major setbacks, but it was great to see all of them.  I was able to have some great conversations with several people about what God has been doing in our lives and I began several spiritual conversations that I hope will continue in the coming days.  Every chance I got I bragged about Journey Church... I told them that we live in the best place on the planet and we get the privilege to lead the greatest church in the world!  Even though we scheduled the weekend away from Journey...my heart longed to be there... I missed seeing our volunteers, I missed greeting new guests, and one thing I heard I really missed was the awesome Square Donuts in the Cafe yesterday!  I am blessed to be doing what I am called to do.  I love being your pastor!

10 Verses continued

7.  Romans 8:31-- What shall we say about such wonderful things as these.  If God is for us, who can ever be against us?

I need to be reminded that God is FOR ME... He's my biggest supporter, no one wants me to "make it" more than He does.  He's affirming, encouraging, correcting, disciplining, instructing and reminding me every moment that He is FOR ME.  So stop worrying about it when someone is against me... the worst thing they could do to me would not negate the fact that God will never leave me or forsake me because even at my worst, God is For Me!  Yeah!

8.  1 Timothy 2:5-7-- For there is only One God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity--the man Christ Jesus.  He gave His life to purchase freedom for everyone.  This is the message God gave the world at just the right time.  And I have been chosen as a preacher and apostle to teach the  Gentiles this message about faith and truth.  

For me this is as critical as John 3:16 because it begins with God and His work of redeeming people from their sins at just the right time.  It also helps me remember that I've not been chosen to be a preacher so that I can become famous or hit the conference circuit or even write books... I've been chosen so that I can tell people far from God how they can Know Jesus, Grow in relationship with God and others and Go make an impact for the Kingdom.

9.  Isaiah 61:1-3 (read it here)

This is another verse that reminds me what I'm called to do.  I'm called to be a pastor not because it's a noble profession, not so I can make money, but it's because God's placed His Hand on me and called me out and set me apart, not as more holy or more spiritual or more knowledgeable of the Bible, but as a pastor who is called to preach the good news, to bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom to the captives and the year of the Lord's favor.   By the way... I love my job and I'm thankful that God called me to do it.

10.  Genesis 12:2 -- I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.  

This verse has very personal significance for me because God burned this into my heart just before we launched Journey.  It's wrapped up in the promise God made to Abraham to make Him a great nation.  This promise was made before he had any children.  In fact, it would be a long time after that before Abraham ever saw any results of God's promise.  And he never would see the full results of God's promise because it would take generations.  The reason this verse is significant for me right now is because I want to see God move and work and grow our church NOW.  There are times when I wonder if God has forgotten me, if I heard Him wrong and I should be out selling insurance or something.  Then I read that  verse and it shows me that He's going to make me into a great nations... but the reality is, I may never see it come about fully... it may be that God favors my children to radically impact the nations.  It may be that long after I'm gone as the pastor of Journey, some amazing leader takes our church to heights it's never seen before.  Honestly, I struggle with wanting God to do something great in my time... but I have to remind myself that it's not my church, it's his church and I'm just a vapor, He sees things from the perspective of eternity... His ways are not my ways, His thoughts are much higher than my thoughts... and I'm thankful for that.  So, when things look like they're standing still or that God's not working... I go back to this verse and remember that God is always at work and His promises are true.

10 Verses continued

4.  Ephesians 2:10-- For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago

I love this verse because it reminds us who we are-- His Masterpiece.  He is the artist and our lives are the canvas.  He created us for His glory and His good pleasure.  We are priceless to Him yet sometimes we walk around like we're worthless.  This verse reminds me constantly that regardless what I've done... He takes His artist brush to my life and creates an amazing masterpiece that is VALUABLE not only to God, but to the Kingdom.  That's why we were redeemed by Jesus Christ's resurrection, because we were valued and valuable to carry out His purpose that we were created for.    There are times in my life that  I begin to believe the enemy's lies that I'm worthless and useless and don't measure up, so I pitch a big ol' pity party!  But this verse reminds me who I am and more importantly WHOSE I am and why I was created!  Sometimes we all need a little reminder that we are HIS Masterpiece... more valuable and more valued than anything.  When I live in that reality, it's amazing all the things I can accomplish for the Lord!

5.  Romans 5:8- But God demonstrated His own love for us in this:  while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.    

--ENOUGH SAID!--

6.  Acts 1:8- For you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

This verse has been a vital part of my life and ministry for 20 years.  It's given me a map for missional living and a plan to help mobilize people to impact the world for Christ.   Start where I am- my Jerusalem is my immediate context, maybe it's Auburn... maybe it's even more detailed than that-- my family... it's also calling me to impact a region a little further out, a little more out of my comfort zone... places like other parts of the US that don't have sweet tea and grits! It even calls me to minister cross culturally in places like Jamaica and other parts of the world.  A good question to ask to see if we're being obedient (Jesus did say you WILL be my witnesses) is, have I made an impact on someone that lives outside my immediate region, have I had any contact with someone from a completely different culture as me?  If we never go outside our native culture or comfort zone, I believe we are disobedient to the command of Jesus and we short circuit our spiritual growth and limit our effectiveness. OUCH!