Saturday Night Reflections

Here are a few reflections from last nights worship service.

• Latifah’s music was soulful.

It was better than having Sarah Mclaughlin lead worship! I don’t know how many CD’s we sold, but it was a quite a few. In a few month’s we will need to have our worship style and leader dialed in, but for now it is fun having lots of guests and trying out some different sounds.

• Talking about tithing is hard!

I realize every time I talk about money from up front I am in enemy territory. There is probably no greater idol in our culture than our money. As hard as it is to talk about we all need it. God wants our hearts free from materialism so we can experience the true riches that come from him being first in our lives. Tithing is an essential discipline in keeping first things first.

• I can’t wait till March.

In March we will go to Restoration 2.0. It will be great to worship more consistently and start building momentum in our gatherings.

• We will soon turn our crowd into a community!

What makes a worship crowd into a community is connection. In March we will launch a number of community groups that will help people get to know one another better and go deeper in their faith. Most of these community groups will be from 4-12 weeks in duration. Nobody grows alone! If you go to Restoration get ready to jump into a group in March.

Denver church
Church in Denver

Church Grateful

I woke up groggy and grumpy this morning. The night was just too short. These are the kind of days where I feel so dangerous that I should just turn myself into the police before I hurt someone.

This voice inside my soul told me that I could nuke the universe today or I could choose to be grateful. I have willed myself, by God’s grace, to do the later. I have been doing this all morning and it is literally changing my body. The venti coffee I am drinking is pretty helpful also. Thank God for coffee beans.

So, let me be grateful out loud for a few moments. I am grateful that…

• Close to 50% of those attending our worship gatherings have also served in one of our service projects.
• We have this wonderful spirit of love and community that is pervading our Denver church.
• A bunch of volunteers were treated to a box at the Pepsi center to watch the Nuggets recently.
• We have 50 kids in our children and student ministries. Approximately 25% of these kids have served in one of our service projects.
• God is providing 20 leaders to help us launch all kinds of small communities within our church for the purpose of spiritual formation. I am so psyched about this!
• Two couples in our church have helped some homeless guys get off the streets and have helped them find financial assistance. Very cool.
• We have a prayer team working behind the scenes made up of some of the most spiritually mature people in the city and nation.
• God is bringing some older more seasoned, grey haired Christians into our community to help us equip the other generations among us.
• We have some highly dedicated volunteers building websites and databases and loving on kids and organizing service projects and making everything work. What would we do with out them? I can’t stop thanking God for these amazing people.

I am also grateful that we will be serving a significant number of homeless people tomorrow at our homeless chili cook off. I hope to see you at 1:30 in the parking lot of Church in the City. For more details check out the home page of our website www.restorationcc.us.

Church Unique

What makes Restoration Community Church Unique? We have been saying that we are doing church in a new way. What is the new way?

1. An enormous passion for spiritual formation. We do not want to play church. We will not be satisfied with just showing up and being good. We want to see people restored to he image of God! It’s fun to grow and learn and become deeper people. You have more to offer. You see more. You feel more. You can make a bigger difference in the world. We want to grow up and we will organize ourselves around this goal.

2. We feel a deep responsibility for the next generation. 70-80% of all kids stop going to church when they go to college. We can’t keep doing church the same way hoping kids will like it and want to follow Jesus the rest of their lives. That’s crazy. So we will find ways to equip parents to be the pastors their kids need. This was God’s plan going back to the beginning of time. See Deuteronomy 6 for a way to help kids grow that works. It’s the new/old way.

3. We are more like a health club than a movie theatre. I love going to movies with Kim. I love the popcorn, the previews, laughing and crying, the whole shootin match. But movies do not change me nearly as much as going to the gym. I am writing from my gym right now. This is a place where people become healthier. Yeah, you pay your dues and you suffer some, but it’s worth it. Restoration is a place where people will serve. To be the church and not just go to church we have to roll our sleeves up, hit the streets, look poverty and brokenness and loneliness in the face and seek to be a blessing to others. We want to restore the world and in the process we are restored – changed, made more like Jesus. If we act like him we will become more like him.

Denver Church

Spiritual Growth

Our vision as a church is to see people restored to the image of God. That's a big gulp vision! Only God can restore people to wholeness, high degree's of character and godliness. But we can cooperate and we can create and participate in opportunities for growth.

Here are eight ways people can grow together at Restoration Community Church - right now!

1. Come to our next worship service on Jan 16th, 5 p.m. We will continue our study in the book of Revelation while dealing with the topic of Identity Theft. You can study ahead by reading Revelation 2:12-17.

2. Download any messages you have missed. All of our podcasts are now up on our website.

3. Go to the resource page of our website at restorationcc.us and discover opportunities to gain more knowledge of the Bible and discover spiritual practices that will help you go deeper with God.

4. Volunteer to help with our children and student ministries. Helping kids become disciples will grow your own faith too. Contact Nanci at nanci@restorationcc.us for more information.

5. Lead a small community at Restoration. We are looking for 20 leaders and hosts who want to do short term communities for 4-8 weeks. Contact Ron or Nanci if you are interested in exploring this.

6. Pray for our church. We need to depend on God to help us become a church that restores people to the image of God. Pray God uses us to help people become deep, whole and Christ like.

7. Give. Nothing builds our faith like giving! The Bible is full of promises from God that he will bless us and grow us when we give. The OT standard was 10%. Given how much more we understand grace, thanks to Jesus, surely we should do at least that much! You can give online by going to our website and making an offering through Pay Pal or you can give at our next worship service.

8. Serve. We are de-icing the homes of several homeless people this weekend. Come see Jesus in the faces of the elderly.

These are just a few of opportunities to grow at Restoration. Stay posted for more to come.

Denver Church
Church in Denver