We are close to celebrating our second year as a church and as we looked back on these last two years we were encouraged to see we have been able to set up some guard rails when it comes to giving.  Below is a list of a few of the things we have in place to be as effective as possible as a church.

• As a pastor I don’t touch money.  Sometimes people will try to give me money on Sunday mornings and I decline.  I don’t know who gives, and I don’t know how much people give.
• We have a team of people who collect and count money on Sundays.  They count in teams so there is always accountability.
• We have a budget that we create each year that we pray through as God leads us as a church, and we present that budget to North Village Church.
• We also have an outside church who looks at our budget to give us insight and wisdom on our budget.
• When the pastors spend church money we have someone in our church who looks at what we spend money and we have to turn in reports each month.
• We have someone in our church who takes care of the accounting in our church.
• We have someone outside of our church that we pay who looks over our finances each month to make sure it is done accurately.

It seems really common to hear people say we need to trust God.  Just trust God.  When painful things come up or things happen and we don’t understand why, we always conclude, “Trust God.”  The statement is true, but when we look at Scripture we don’t see God telling us we need to trust Him, but more so teaching us that He is trustworthy.

If He was just a God up in heaven telling us we need to trust Him or that we need to let go and let God He would be a wicked God who is toying with our emotions, however, Scripture teaches us He has revealed Himself through creation, throughout history, through Scripture, through our relationships and ultimately through the cross.  He doesn’t just call us to trust Him, but shows us He is trustworthy.

Therefore, when we have times when we are struggling to trust God then instead of trying to “trust God” more we would do better to turn to His glory and see that He is trustworthy.

This summer we are going to gather the men of our church to read through “Counterfeit Gods” by Timothy Keller.  If you haven’t heard of this book I highly recommend it.  Keller talks about how idols are just as relevant in our time as they were in earlier generations, but they aren’t always as easy to see.  Most of us could see how things like money or sex could become idols, however, Keller suggests anything that captures our heart and mind to the point that it determines our happiness can become an idol.  Anything from serving the poor, family, jobs, or ministry.

Start:  June 7th (Tuesday, 7pm)

Location:  Live Oak Bible Church.

On March 6th we are going to start a spiritual journey as a church.  It will be 35 days of reading devotionals, praying, fasting, and encouraging one another to press into Jesus.  It is going to be awesome!

On February 20th, 9:30am we are going to tailgate for the Austin Marathon.  The races creates police barricades around the building we meet in so we decided instead of fighting the marathon we would cheer on the runners.  It should be a blast!  We will meet at the corner of North Cross Dr. and Burnet Rd.

On March 20th, 2-5pm we will host our 3rd Austin Dog Fair as a church.  It is a lot of fun.  We invite local vets, shops, trainers out to the Brentwood Park so that dogs and their owners can have a party in the park.  It is really helping dogs make new friends!

There will also be games and contests like trickiest dog, ugliest dog, fastest dog, bobbing for hot dogs, and an agility course.  See you there!

Each year my wife and I sit down to work on our finances as a family.  In the past we would consider the additional income from salary increases based on job performance, however, over the last two years of starting a new church we have taken a $15K deduction in salary, no increase, and taken on more expenses.  Our property tax has increased $150 a month alone in the last two years so needless to say it makes finances a challenge.

Don’t get me wrong it has been worth it.  God has provided for all our needs and beyond as we have stepped out in faith, but it has been a challenge.  Things break down, you always want more, credit cards make it easy to overspend, and each year it seems like children bring on new expenses.  As you step out in faith to start a new church be sure to count the cost of the financial sacrifices it will take on the front end.

Recently, a friend of mine in California started a company to help with some of these challenges.  It seemed like every financial quarter the credit card companies would reward us for going into debt and he started dreaming that perhaps we could be rewarded for getting out of debt.  It is called Payoff.com.  It is still in the beginning stages, but it is something I am excited about. It is going to create an online community to be around other people who are excited about paying off debt.  That is pretty awesome!

As you begin to dream about starting a new church I would do everything possible to pay off as much debt as possible.  God was so good to us to lead us to a place to pay off school loans, credit cards, car loans, so that we could enter into the church planting stages without any debt, but our house.  I wish payoff.com would have been around when we paid off that debt so we could have been around other people as we pressed toward our goals.

We are in our second year as a church and slowly articulating the vision and purpose of our church with a bit more clarity.  When we started the church it was a goal to not to push a vision and purpose onto a church, but instead allow it to come out of the church.  Over the last year this is what we have been able to articulate:

Vision: To see every man, woman, and child experience the life transforming power of Jesus Christ in Greater Austin.

This is a huge vision and we want to see it happen in our life time.  To help this vision become a reality we have partnered with 19 other churches in greater Austin as well as planting new churches.  For 2011 we are planning on starting 3 churches.

Mission: To see every block in every neighborhood in North Central Austin have someone praying and caring for the spiritual needs of that block.

Again, a huge challenge, however, instead of asking the Christ-follower to pray for all of Asia or even greater Austin our hope is that they would pray for the 20 houses on their block.  In addition, we hope to partner with other churches in our immediate context who are like minded.

Purpose: To become a family family of Christ-followers who are committed to connecting the people of North Central Austin with the life transforming power of Jesus Christ.

We are family working together toward our vision and this means full participation from everyone.  It isn’t 100 people watching professionals do the ministry and applauding their effort, but all of us stepping out in faith to experience God doing the miraculous in us.  We have defined a Christ-follower as:

• Connecting with Jesus
• Connecting with North Village Church
• Connecting with the community
• Connecting others with Jesus

We had a great year.  Got to go to Disney World, celebrate our first year of North Village Church, 10 year anniversary in Miami, Kennedy started kindergarten, Tucker turning into a little boy, and even though there were some painful moments over the last year God’s grace continues to pour out on to our lives.

God has been so gracious to our country that we don’t really know what it is like to be hungry.  If we wait for our meal for more than 15 minutes we start looking around to complain about the waiter taking so long.  However, there are some parts of our world where people go hungry every day.

I remember growing up as a kid and having nights where we were really hungry.  We would eat cheese and mayo sandwiches, we wouId add pickle juice to our water for flavor, and I remember going over to my friends house and seeing so many boxes of cereal and thinking, “When you get rich you get to buy a lot of boxes of cereal.”

Continue reading →

On Saturday we did a food drive for a local neighborhood.  It was awesome!  It was our 2nd year to host the food drive.  Last year we saw almost 700lbs come in and this year we saw just over 1100lbs of food come in to donate to the Capital Area Food Bank.  That is total food weight minus packaging materials.  Isn’t that awesome?

On Sunday we looked at a passage in 1 Peter 4 as it called us to share in the sufferings of Christ.  It isn’t that participating in the sufferings of Christ makes up what is lacking in Christ’s death on the cross because Jesus fully takes the penalty of our sin at the cross.  It is that through faith in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection we get to participate in the reconciliation of humanity, and last weekend we got to experience a part of that reconciliation.

The food drive primarily focuses on one neighborhood.  Can you imagine the impact as we begin to open the food drive up to neighborhoods all over North Central Austin!