Real World Ministries

Powell and Durant cut a rug

2008-12-16T11:56:00.001-06:00

Christmas Stress

2008-12-15T14:09:00.000-06:00

How often do we hear people saying that the stress of the holiday season overpowers their joy at Christmas time? Why is this? Why do we as individuals take events intended for celebration, family gatherings, and vacations and turn them into another opportunity to go overboard? Because we've been taught to do too much. In every aspect of life, we're bombarded with the need to be efficient, to multi-task, and to execute everything to perfection. This has spilled over into our personal and worship times as well.
We feel the need to find the perfect gift for the relative that we're not even entirely sure we're related to. We spend hours, days, and weeks preparing for visitors, spending money on food and decorations. These things are not inherently bad. They're only bad when we let them take control of all of our time and thoughts, and let them replace our thoughts of being thankful for what this time of year. It is meant to be a celebration of the give of God's son, Jesus. Let's start treating it as such.
The spiritual discipline of "slowing" applies to all of us. I'm not suggesting that we be lazy, but it will not be a catastrophie if our relatives do not get ALL of the perfect gifts. It's okay if your living space doesn't look like a Martha Stewart Christmas special when the relatives come to visit. It's far more important that you're in a state of mind to be able to enjoy them. Ladies, take notes from your husband or boyfriend. He has mastered this philosophy.

Let's spend this December 25th glorifying the Christ-child and not glorifying "Christmas" alone.

December Events

2008-12-14T11:44:00.000-06:00

Hello all, the month of December is here and almost gone again. We've been busy with our new study Begin, Believe, Belong and will be continuing that in Sunday School. Starting on the 21st, we'll be in a new room (in the Reed house, adjacent to the parking lot).
Saturday, Dec 20th, we're also going to be going with the youth to Mission of Hope to hand out gifts. If you want to join us, be at the church at 7:00AM. At some point this weekend or next week, we'll be having some type of Christmas function as a group. I know it's last minute, but I tend to let social events happen as they will; it's my natural love for sponteneity. Keep an eye on the blog and our facebook site as I will try to keep both updated with what's new.

Merry Christmas!
Patrick

2008-08-09T18:18:00.002-05:00

Have you considered that when God calls us, we have to take action? Haven't we all been called by God? If we are his children, then we have been called to take up his purposes.

I'm very excited that we're starting the Sunday School class back for this group. We've had great times of fellowship, enjoyed a fun rafting trip, and have some new members coming into the group. Now it's time to get down to the meat of the matter...the real reason why we're here. The reason is that we've been called to God. We'll be starting a new study in Sunday School on being Uncommon and responding to God's calls on our lives.

The most compelling thing about this is that it is impossible to respond to God’s call without moving to another place in our lives- physically or spiritually.

Hope to see everyone August 10th at 9:15am (same room downstairs).

-Patrick

Upcoming Events

2008-06-03T12:39:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I'm back from vacattion and have a few weeks before I'll be gone again to Ecuador for the Happy Feet Trip. I encourage everyone to visit the Happy Feet blog that Anthony Armstrong has setup at:

http://fbc-hayden-hf.blogspot.com/

Anthony will be posting real-time updates while we're there, so keep an eye out. As for the group, we have been talking about a lot of exciting things. The group is growing, and we're trying to plan for a more regular meeting schedule...more on this to come.
July 25th-27th, we'll be taking a camping/white water rafting trip to the ocoee river. Hopefully everyone will be able to come; we'll also be inviting the HS Seniors to join us. I plan to leave from Hayden on Friday afternoon, and we will raft, grill out, and bible study Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday; returning Sunday evening. Please let me know asap if you are going, and please don't say that you want to , or you think you can. Yes or no only.
In the next week or two, we should have our new t-shirts printed. We'll be selling these as a fundraiser for the trip, so hopefully the cost will be low.
Lot's of good things coming up, keep checking back...

-Patrick

Jesus Talk

2008-05-05T23:21:00.002-05:00

I had an interesting experience last week that I wanted to share. I was out traveling with a gentleman on Wednesday. For those of you who don't know, I'm a Sales Engineer, and I periodically travel with individuals from the companies I represent. I don't directly work for these people, but it's in my best interest to keep them happy. This particular man is an area representative of mine that lives in New York. We were in my car, when he noticed a CD of "The Purpose Driven Life," sitting in my console. He asked if this was some kind of motivation book or something. I told him that it was, and attempted to keep my response from getting too churchy. I feel pretty bad saying that, but it's an unspoken rule in this business that you should always steer the conversation away from politics and religion. I thought that my generic answer would kill the conversation, but he asked more questions on what it was about. I eventually got around to telling him that it basically revolves around the notion that our whole lives should be devoted only to glorifying God. I thought that by this time, if I came out and said something like this, he would probably clam up and end the conversation; I was mistaken. He went on to tell me that he thought that just by appreciating his family and what he had, that this was glorifying God. I answered his question by saying that what he said was correct, but it's only a start, and that God wants us to praise and worship him constantly.

He began talking about his Catholicism. He said that he wasn't really "religious," but basically went to a Catholic church because his wife was raised that way and he wanted to keep her happy. He didn't like the ritualistic parts of the service, and so they didn't go much. Up to this point I had been struggling with doing what was right (diving in head first and witnessing to this man) and trying not to step out of my confort zone. I had attempted to change the conversation so many times just because I was uncomfortable with the idea of witnessing to him, and all the while, God was giving me opportunity after opportunity to engage this guy who was obviously as lost as an Easter egg. When he had made that last statement, I could only think of the two daughters I knew that he had, 8 and 9 years old. I was thinking that they would continue to grow up in a house with no talk of God or Jesus, and no spiritual leader. With that, I finally told him that I wasn't "religious" either, I just love Jesus. I explained to him that loving, worshipping, and following God had nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with your heart.

After some more talk, he stated that he believed in just trying to be a good person. That was my opening; I told him that while that's a great goal, the cool thing about God is that we can't be good enough, and that it doesn't matter. He'll take us in anyway if we just make a decision to live for him.
I wish I could say that this guy prayed with me to accept Christ, but it didn't happen that way. What did happen was that a seed was planted that may grow in this man one day. By the end of the day, he was discussing some of the Christian songs that he had heard and liked. I suppose the biggest impact on me was learning that I don't have to be uncomfortable to share my faith. It doesn't have to be a difficult experience. After all this guy was much more comfortable than I was discussing it, because he was the one that kept bringing it up.

God moved in my heart that day, and I feel like he is really working on me to shed my discomfort and tentativeness with witnessing. My goal from now on is that if people don't want to hear about Jesus, they should stay away from me. Because I'm going to keep talking...

-Patrick

God Moving

2008-05-04T23:10:00.005-05:00

It's late, so I won't post much now, but I definitely have a lot to talk about. I'm very excited about our group and the direction that things are going. We're growing slowly in numbers and picking up steam with our meetings and activities. I feel that as a Church, we're heading in the right direction. I feel like we're humming along in the direction that God would have us to go. I know that He has been preparing us for something, by the way that our meetings, sermons, Sunday school lessons, revivals, and talks have gone. Everything seems to be pointing us in a common direction. That is to die daily to ourselves so that we may live for him. God has been moving in exciting ways in my life, and change is coming slow, but I know that the power to changes our lives comes through faith in God. He's always moving in our lives, we just need to try our best to move in the same direction. More to come later....

-Patrick

This Month's Bible Study Plan

2008-04-27T22:57:00.003-05:00

We our going to start out our group Bible study with this month-long unit. It includes a scripture and response questions for every day of the week. We'll be discussing it at Friday Night Supper Club as well as Sunday Night dinners. These are the times that the class is currently meeting (alternating days each week). I'll be posting a month-long schedule on Facebook soon. In the meantime, start here for your daily studies:

http://www.268generation.com/thirsty/thirsty_journal_frameset.htm

-Patrick

Legitimacy of God's Word

2008-04-27T22:49:00.003-05:00

The major subject that we began to discuss at our Friday night meeting was the foundation for our beliefs. As people desiring to be strong, knowledgable believers, how can we be certain of the reasons for our beliefs? If our principles and beliefs are based on what we have been fed by others, then they are not really "our" beliefs; they are the beliefs of the people that spoke them (and said we should believe what they say). The only way to form true principles based on God's word is to find them in his word. This raises and interesting question. How do we know that the Bible is real? It isn't a sound arguement to say that the Bible is real because the Bible says it is real; that's circular reasoning. This is a good link that gives us a strong foundation for recognizing the Bible as God's word from cover to cover:

http://www.gotquestions.org/proof-inspiration-Bible.html

-Patrick

Francis Chan talk on Total Commitment

2008-04-21T00:18:00.000-05:00

Getting in the word

2008-04-20T23:08:00.002-05:00

On the way home from church tonight, Alisha and I were discussing several points of biblical debate. We both had lots of questions (and few answers) on some very important topics. As we discussed, we noticed that we were both citing several sources on opposite sides of issues, but most of those sources were other people (Pastors, Sunday School teachers, respected elders, etc). We later both agreed that while what other people have to say on a subject is interesting and can give some insight into God's word, we want it from the horse's mouth. This is something that we discussed in depth last weekend (for those who went on the trip). We have been fed layers upon layers of doctrine and theology for our entire lives, but if we really want to find out what God's word says, there's one pretty obvious way...we read it. Our generation needs to get centered on the fact that it is our responsiblility to delve into the Bible and find sustenance for our souls. Try putting this to action in your next devotional time. Pick a topic that you don't clearly understand, and find all the relevant scriptures you can. Use a concordance or the internet to search for scriptures on a topic. Then draw your own conclusions from God's word. You may learn something contrary to what you've always been told.

LOGO

2008-04-20T23:07:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that I have pulled the logo from the blog. This is due to the fact that I have received some constructive criticism on the quality. Something new is in the works, but I can't handle the humiliation of having an inferior logo in the meantime. See Jason Durant for details...

Everything will be Alright

2008-04-16T21:50:00.002-05:00

One thing has been on my mind since last Sunday morning. I have been reflecting back on the Sunday School lesson and an important point that Ken brought up. The lesson was about Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac. It's a story we've all heard several times, and every time we marvel at how disciplined Abraham is to follow God's command, even if it is to sacrifice his son. That's where my perspective of this story changed. I had always viewed Abraham as someone who believed in God, and believed in following his commands without question. The important point that I missed was that the reason Abraham was able to follow God so willingly was that he knew that EVERYTHING WOULD BE OKAY. Abraham not only trusted that God knew best, but he trusted that God loved him and would not command him to follow a path that was detrimental to his future. Keep this in mind the next time your question whether or not God's path is really the best for your life.

-Patrick

Spiritual High

2008-04-14T22:17:00.002-05:00

As humans, our relationships to others vary on a daily basis. Between our friends, our parents, and even our spouses, feelings change with time. Relationships cycle between closeness and ambivalence in all walks of life. Our relationship with Jesus is no different. If you have been a believer for any length of time, you probably look back with fondness on the time that you first accepted Christ. When I was saved at the age of 13, I was on a spiritual high, and felt very close to the lord.

As time goes on, we can grow distant from God, to a point sometimes that we question whether or not we are really among the redeemed! We reason that if we are, in fact saved, why do we not feel the same as the time that it first happened. The fact of the matter, and what we can take comfort in, is that we are not saved by feelings. We're saved by faith.

I say all that, because right now I'm thanking Jesus that I'm on the mountain. Through the events of the past several weeks, I feel that He's been drawing me closer to him, and I also feel that way about the church. I feel that God is preparing our church for something big, and I encourage everybody to be prayerful about it.

I have a lot of things on my mind that I want to post, but I'll save some for later (I know you'll be waiting with baited breath). I'll be updating daily, so keep an eye out.

-Patrick

Passion Report

2008-04-14T09:19:00.002-05:00

I wanted to give an update to all those that weren't able to join us for the Passion Conference in Atlanta last weekend. We had a great time, and I felt like it was an awesome experience for all of us. Since returning, I've been trying to find every talk I can from past conferences, and this one is especially cool. Wait until the end, you'll be impressed.
Patrick

Jesus-Life Integration

2008-03-24T11:53:00.002-05:00

As I was working this week on making reservations for the Passion Conference in Atlanta, I realized how incredibly difficult it can be to track everyone down. Our lives are so busy, and the ways that people used to handle things don't really work in the current day. Our lives used to be so compartmentalized: work was handled at work, home life was handled at home, the weekends were for family and church obligations. Where people once looked for a work-live balance, that is almost no longer possible. Today the working professional (and the college student) seem to strive more for work-life integration. This concept means that instead of trying to balance the two lives that compete for our attention, work and home, we simply integrate them. We send emails in the evening while spending time with our family. We work on homework while watching a favorite tv program together.
Last week during Spring Break, I had to attend a conference for work in North Carolina. Alisha was off from teaching school, so I took her with me. Voila, work-life integration. I couldn't put business on hold, so I integrated a vacation with a work trip. This got me thinking on whether or not we make the same efforts to integrate Jesus into our lives. Although this integration is significantly more important (and benficial) than mixing work with family, I'm not so sure it happens as often. Our lives as Christ-followers tend to be relegated to the same comfortable compartments where we have always kept them. It makes since to integrate our christian activities into our daily lives for the sake of schedule, but how much more of an impact would it have on the other aspects of our lives. Do we integrate blessing of meals into business luncheons? Do we integrate daily bible reading into our to-do list at work? Do we integrate witnessing into our business meetings? That last one hits me hard because the answer is usually no. Make an effort to integrate your faith in God into your daily and hourly activities, after all, we want to make sure that God integrates our prayers on his to-d list, right?

-Patrick

Class Meetings

2008-03-02T09:08:00.002-06:00

I would like to ask everyone to be in prayer for this group. Our next planned meeting is Sunday night after evening worship service. We'll be going to share a meal together and talk about the service opportunities for this group. This is a very transient group, as most of them travel between home and school, but my hope is that we can build the attendance and make a noticable difference in our community. I have been praying for a class attendance of 15 at any given meeting. I hope that we can find a schedule that will allow this to happen. Please pray that God will work in a mighty way to meet the needs of this group's members and bless us to his service.

-Patrick

Charles Barkley's Comments about "Fake Christians" on the Situation Room

2008-02-19T22:13:00.002-06:00

When Charles Barkley appeared on The Situation Room, he was asked by Wolf Blitzer what his thoughts on the presidential race were.

"I've got great respect for Sen. McCain, great respect, but I don't like the way Republicans have taken this country," said Barkley. "Every time I hear the word 'conservative,' it makes me sick to my stomach, because they're really just fake Christians, as I call them. That's all they are."
Blitzer moved on to a different question following the comment, but later followed-up at the end of his interview and asked him to elaborate on what he meant by "fake Christian."
"I think they want to be judge and jury," Barkley replied. "Like, I'm for gay marriage. It's none of my business if gay people want to get married. I'm pro-choice. And I think these Christians, first of all, they're not supposed to judge other people. But they're the most hypocritical judge of people we have in the country. And it bugs the h*** out of me. They act like they're Christians. They're not forgiving at all."

I'll reserve most of my comments as this fits in perfectly with our lesson Thursday night, but I can't resist making one comment. Charles calls Christians who state their views judgemental. Stating what is right and wrong by biblical standards is not being judgemental. We are judgemental when we presume to know the condition of a person's relationship with Christ. We are CALLED to hold each other accountable to God's standards. I encourage everyone to pray for the ever growing population of "moral relativists." This is a real problem and the first way to alter these types of perceptions about the church is to make sure that we are submitting to God in our daily lives. Look forward to seeing you all Thursday night.

-Patrick

Time for God

2008-02-07T16:22:00.000-06:00

First of all, I'll apologize for not posting for a few days. For the past several weeks, I've been traveling quite a bit with work. On top of that, it seems like it's been one social event after another when I've been home. We had a great crowd for the Super Bowl Party at our house and I really enjoyed spending the time with everyone. But while I've been so busy, I've been thinking about the fact that everyone in our group faces the same challenges. It's hard to be everywhere that we're supposed to, hard to find time for friends and family, and often even more difficult to find time for God. The other day Alisha and I were discussing the fact that we don't devote as much time to God as a family as we should. In fact, the only time that we do spend worshiping together is during regularly scheduled church services and when we pray together at night. She noticed however, that we always found time to discuss what we were going to eat for dinner or what we had planned for the weekend. Her opinion was that if we had time for those things, and not for more worship and study, then we were making those things more important than God. She is exactly right. We all live busy lives, but like the book by John Ortber says, "When the game is over, it all goes back in the box." Worship of God and advancing his kingdom is the only thing that matters in the long run, and if we don't find time daily to include God, we're telling him that he's not important enough. It isn't difficult to talk with God while you're driving in the car, or get up ten minutes earlier to make time for Bible study. Next time you find yourself spending more time on work, school, or socializing than you do with God, reexamine things. Then ask yourself who your heart really belongs to: God or Self.

-Patrick

Finding Purpose

2008-01-23T12:02:00.000-06:00

At this stage of our lives, a great deal of the things that we do are in an effort to discover the purpose of our existence. As Christians, we know that our primary focus here should be to praise God, but what about the other things. We do have to pursue careers; we choose to raise families. How do we discover the meaning that God wants us to see in these everyday aspects of life. For anyone who is a fan of the Rick and Bubba show, you have no doubt heard that Rick Burgess lost his son last weekend in a home accident. Through their sorrow, they have gone out of the way to glorify God in this terrible event, and strive to live up to the purpose that God intended for them to glean from this. One of the thoughts that I took away from this was that no matter how terrible or wonderful an event in our lives is, God is trying to teach us something through each one.
Below is a link to an article by Don Piper, the author of "90 Minutes in Heaven." In this article Don discusses his difficult recovery from his accident, and his struggle to understand the purpose in it all. In our first class on Sunday night at 5:00pm, we are going to discuss purpose, loss, victory, and how God molds us into what he wants us to be. Look forward to seeing you there.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/225/story_22565_1.html

-Patrick

In Christ Alone video

2008-01-19T14:56:00.000-06:00

Great song with clips from "The Passion"

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=6f9f1cc50d66e55e0998

Searchable Online Bible

2008-01-19T14:19:00.000-06:00

This is one of the links in my favorites that I use quite a bit. It's a good resource for finding answers in the bible.

http://www.biblegateway.com/

My Favorite Scripture

2008-01-19T14:12:00.000-06:00

I wanted to share my favorite scripture with everyone. I love it when I accidentally find something in the bible that takes me by surprise. 1 John 5:1-5 says:

"1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." NIV

We often focus on how "difficult" it is to have a Christian walk in today's world. This passage says not only that we can overcome the world, but also that keeping his commands is not burdensome. This is a really impowering statement to me. Not only can I rise above the world, but if I believe that Jesus it the son of God, I can be impowered to obey his commands and to accomplish this without it even being a burden. That blows my mind.

-Patrick

Lifehouse Skit- Everything

2008-01-17T18:30:00.000-06:00

Great Drama to the song "Everything," by Lifehouse. I didn't follow it at first, but stick with it, it's good.

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ee73e63418003b47d7d5

Welcome to the Real World Ministries Blog

2008-01-17T17:56:00.001-06:00

Welcome to the new blog for Real World Ministries. If you've made it to this page, you've probably also seen our new pages on the First Baptist Church of Hayden website (http://www.fbchayden.com/) or our Facebook profile (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hayden-First-Baptist-Church-College-and-Career-Ministry/11092500990). I guess now I can go about explaining how we came to start this. My wife Alisha and I finished building our house in Blount Springs in April of '07. Once we moved in, we began visiting area churches to find a place to worship. It wasn't long before we settled on FBC Hayden. We hadn't visited many places, but FBCH seemed to be a lot like our home church (Oak Grove First Baptist) and we felt very welcomed by the people there. At the time we joined, the church was in between pastors, but we felt like the spirit of God abounded. When brother Jeremy Powell accepted the position, we knew we had made the right choice. Jeremy's gift for sharing God affirmed our belief that God was at work in FBCH, and if we would just listen to him, he would continue to bless our church.

As time went on, I felt a conviction that I should be of more service to our church family, and discussed it with Jeremy. He asked me to pray about taking over the teaching position for the College and Career group. I really wrestled with this decision, as I wanted to make sure that I was following God's will, and that I wasn't going to take on something that I could mess up. one Sunday morning, as conflicted as ever, I sat in the pew only to hear a message about how God used Moses (who came up with several reasons why he was not qualified). That day , Alisha and I discussed this and decided that God knew our qualifications better than we did, and we decided to teach the class.

Having said that, I can't tell you how excited I am to get started working with this group. We wanted our class material and our discussions to cover Real World problems that face young adults, and what God's word says about them. Hence the name Real World Ministries. I want to hear your opinions on what issues you would like to study. I want to be able to talk about presidential elections and current events, and how they relate to Christians. I want to talk about how we can feel secure in our salvation at a time in most peoples' lives when they begin to question their faith. I want to talk about whatever is weighing on your hearts. Keep in mind that I certainly don't have the answers to all these questions (or maybe any of them). My only role will be to organize the studies and help find biblical based solutions to real world problems.

I know that the group will be very transient given that most members don't live in the area, but I hope that through creative planning we can find a schedule that will help most of us get together on a regular basis. I don't care if we meet at the church, a restaurant, a coffee house, or a bar (to witness, of course). So please post a note on the Facebook threads to let me know your thoughts on class format. I'll be posting here several times a week with new info, so please check frequently.