Author Archives: Michael Dennis

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About Michael Dennis

I live in Austin, married, two adult kids, dabble in comedy and pastor at North Village Church that I started in 2009.

Trailer Packing

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Trailer PIctureThis is our trailer for when we set up church on Sunday mornings. We met today to have a packing party and we pulled it all out and packed it all again. We shuffled the boxes around and tried to identify what goes where and hopefully we will be able to keep it organized.

The hardest part is when we break everything down on Sunday morning and new people want to help us pack up and clean up. Which is awesome, but usually things just get thrown into a random box and overtime we are back to chaos. However, now we have lists, better labels, pictures, and specific tasks.

In the end it really isn’t that much and for only having a 12′ trailer we have a lot of extra space.

Day 4, Spiritual Journey

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The depths of the cross are overwhelming to take in, it leaves me in awe continually that the blood of Christ that was poured out on my behalf. Below are a few truths to reflect on:

• Redemption: All Christ-followers have been redeemed and forgiven. Our salvation has been purchased, as a ransom, through the blood of Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God who died as a payment for our sins and took upon Himself our guilt and punishment for those sins (Ephesians 1:7).

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Spiritual Journey

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Over the next 35 days we will enter a spiritual journey with Jesus and with one another. It will be a time to read through scripture together and fast from areas of our life that are distractions. Not only remove distractions but replace them with spiritual disciplines. Some of us will fast from food and some will fast from technology. It will be different from everyone, but the focus is to draw close to Jesus and one another.

We do this because we believe all of us at our core are spiritual beings, but we have so many distractions that we are able to connect with Jesus and hear from him and see what he is doing. This morning we read from Colossians 2 and were reminded that when we place our faith in Jesus we are made alive. Made alive to his purpose and through him we have been given a new identity.

Living Lives of Influence

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What if we lived with influence in our lives? A simple way to begin to move into this role is to examine our time, talent, and treasures.

Time: What if we set aside time to pray for the spiritual and physical needs of our neighbors, friends, family? What if we asked them if there was anything specific we could pray for them about and actually set aside time to pray for them? Then after 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or whatever feels comfortable we go back and ask them about what we were praying for? For some of us it might feel awkward but if we want to live lives of influence then we are going to need to take some risks. We can play it safe, have surface conversations, and never see anything exciting happen, but we will miss out on influence.

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3rd Preview Gathering

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Group ShotOn Sunday we gathered for our 3rd preview. Starting a new church is a little like going on a blind date because you are still learning each other, learning about yourself, and people are learning about you. Which kind of creates those awkward moments, but we just embraced them and had fun.

In September we will start meeting weekly and we are really excited. For us our weekly gathering on Sunday isn’t our focus. It is important and we want to do it well but it isn’t our focus. We hope it becomes a gathering for people to come together, be encouraged, and then work together to meet physical and spiritual needs in the community. Our next focus is a supplies drive for Lucy Read.

Branding God

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Snapshot 2009-07-30 12-39-23I saw this picture on a site and I have always thought this kind of stuff was a little silly, but somehow people keep making it because people keep buying it. Churches tend to follow this model when they create t-shirts for everything they do as they turn their people into walking billboards. Here are few of the comments below of how the general audience perceives these products:

Whatever happened to “Thou shalt not steal”?
I’m betting this isn’t licensed.
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God’s provision…

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The scriptures tell us that when we meet Jesus, when we trust in Him, when we respond to Him we will find God’s provision. I know it will be difficult because most of us want to avoid the pain and when it comes to our first response it can be to turn inward to how we are going to resolve it, how we are going to fix it, how we are going to manage it; and we put complete responsibility on ourselves. When we do that we are tapping into a provision that is limited, because when we put the responsibility on ourselves we create a mindset, a lifestyle, and an emotional capacity that exists within our limits. The benefits of living a life within our limits is that it feels safe, but it is a safety that is limited.

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Marketing

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Honestly I am not a big fan of marketing. It feels a little pretentious, but this week we are making our first attempt at putting door hangers out. Different people have different opinions. Some will say avoid marketing because it will come across corporate and it is simply targeting “churched” people and if our goal is to see church be something different it won’t be effective. Others I have talked to encouraged me to spend 25-30K in marketing and if we didn’t we were wasting our time. Well, sense we don’t have 25K-30K set aside for anything, much less marketing, we knew we couldn’t go that route.

In the end we decided to do a little marketing. Most of our focus has been through relationships and word of mouth, but we also wanted to create some type of awareness for people to at least know we are out there. In the end we don’t expect a tremendous amount of people to respond to a door hanger, but we do want to begin to create an awareness and maybe just a little marketing will help move us in that direction.

Laundry Love

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On Saturday we got to serve over 30 families by helping them with their laundry. It was really easy and they were greatly appreciative. It was also a lot of fun. We were able to network with a number of families that need assistance with children’s clothing and other tangible needs that we are in process of following up with.

If you would like to help we have set up some coin jars at Amy’s Ice Cream and Hey Cupcake or you can join us next month for a little laundry love.

God has a plan…

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It is easy in life to find ourselves in a place where we start thinking I wish I could have a “do over”. I wish I could go back in time and do some things different. Maybe you have experienced that in marriage where in a split second it goes from casual to chaos and you are thinking, “How did this happen?” How did we just blow up at each other like that? Can we just start over?

It is in the midst of those chaotic moments remember that God has a plan…

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
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Why the Bible?

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We live in a time where the Bible is seen as speculation and at best a suggestion to consider. We are skeptical, we doubt, we wrestle and often times the Bible can be intimidating. At the least it is literature that has been widely read and considered by many to be the word of God. Yes, it was written by human authors, but there was a supernatural presence that created a supernatural message that in the end communicates one central message.

There are 66 different books, 40 different authors from a variety of backgrounds, 3 different language, on 3 different continents, written over a period of 1,500 years and communicates one central message: there is a creator, he is loving, there is pain and guilt, and that pain has been removed through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Spiritual Journey

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On August 9 we are going to start a 35 day spiritual journey as a church.

Often times our spiritual journey seems to take place in isolation with flashes or moments of community, however, on August 9th we are going to enter into a spiritual journey together to connect closer to Jesus and one another. Each of us will identify an area to fast from (television, radio, phone, web, food, hobby, etc.) and devote that time to prayer for our community and our relationship with Jesus.

The theme for our 35 day journey is “Partnership”. Our guiding passage for the next 35 days is found in Philippians 1:4-6:

4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

My greatest desire is to see each of us see how we can tangibly partner with Jesus Christ in the gospel over the next 35 days and that this spiritual journey would begin to create a lifestyle that continually experiences the fulfillment of walking in Christ and with Christ.