Community

The first Thursday of every month, I get together with a group of pastors from Covenant Churches on the front range.  Arvada, Longmont, Ft. Collins - we come from all over. All of us are in some way part of the student ministries at our churches.  Every time I walk away thinking, "I love meeting with these people. There is something encouraging about conversation with people walking the same journey as you."

Who are the people like that in your life?  Who are the people that you meet with and walk away feeling refreshed?

I am convinced more and more that we NEED these people in our lives.  Without honest, challenging, uplifting conversation with trusted friends it is so easy for life to become heavy.  

How would you describe the rhythm of your life right now?  Light?  Heavy?

If your answer is, "light."  Awesome!  I challenge you to find someone to share that with.  Let the blessings you receive in life become a blessing to others.  Let the good things you experience become a testimony of God's grace present.

If your answer is, "heavy."  Maybe it's not so awesome, but I challenge you also to find someone to share that with.  And I don't mean the vague, veiled, "pray for me," kind of sharing that can make us feel like we have done just enough.  Yes, it's appropriate that we don't share every detail of every struggle with every person we meet. However, there needs to be at least one place, at least one person where we can let down every wall and be brutally honest.

Do you have a person in your life with whom you are brutally honest?  Who is the person that allows you to drop every wall and barrier?

My prayer right now for my life, and for each member of our community, is that we would seek, find, and celebrate these very relationships in our midst.

Do you have these places of honesty and trust?  Celebrate!  Let them know how much they mean to you.

Do you need a place like this?  Pray for God's guidance.  Then, with discernment, lean into a relationship that you think could go deeper.  Take the next step of trust.  Confess the struggle you have bottled up inside; admit the fear that weakens your knees.

The body of Christ is a place to find healing, strengthening, transformational relationships.  We have the very presence of God in our midst, and that is something to celebrate.

Heavy seasons aren't necessarily joy filled, but they definitely ARE seasons God wants to work in and work through.  Let us be a community of people God works in and works through as we share both the heavy and the light of our lives together.

Thank you Christ, for your presence among us. Amen.

Financial Peace

Sixty-five individuals just finished a 9 week course called Financial Peace University.  It was awesome.

Here are some of the highlights straight from the mouths of our participants.

- "I just saved $1,000 for the first time in my life."

- "Having an emergency fund in place gives me peace."

- "My spouse and I are now communicating regularly about finances, it's wonderful."

- "I did my taxes on my own!"

- "I paid off $2,500 in debt!"

- "My husband and I now have a shared language about money.  Now we can have money conversations instead of money fights."

- "I cut up ALL of my credit cards.  I will NEVER go into debt again."

During our course, we learned the "Seven Baby Steps" of financial peace:

1) Save a $1,000 emergency fund (do this fast, do this now, have a garage sale this weekend!)

2) List all of your debts, smallest to largest.  Pay minimum payments on every debt and then ATTACK the smallest debt with every other dollar you can find.  Once you pay off that smallest debt, roll your payment over to the next smallest.  This is called the debt snowball.

3) Save 3-6 months worth of expenses.  This is a complete emergency fund.

4) Put 15% of your income toward retirement in a 401K, IRA, Roth IRA or other tax-favored accounts.

5) Start saving and investing for your kids college education.

6) Pay off your mortgage early.

7) GIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE.

During our time together, we regularly looked at one another and said, "I have never really talked to anyone about this before."  Conversations about handling money God's way can be so freeing when they lead to new behaviors, greater purpose and clearer vision about how to handle the resources God has given us.

At the end of the day, it's not about getting out of debt, it's not about saving more for yourself, it's not about giving more to the church.  Rather,

It's about becoming more and more like God.  God is the ultimate giver and he wants you to experience the joy of becoming like him.

If you weren't able to make it to the course, but are interested in learning more, go here.  Also, let us know if you would be interested in going through Financial Peace University and we can point you toward other courses in our area or even consider offering the course again here at Centennial Covenant Church.

Between this course, our Sunday morning connecting hour class on Jesus and finances, and the High School curriculum "Generation Change" more than 90 people have been learning about and growing into lives of handling money God's way. 

Praise the Lord that he is moving in this way in our community.

The Light's Better in Here?

Senior Pastor, Steve Thulson

Remember the classic sitcom “I love Lucy”? At least on really old TV re-runs?

One evening, Lucy’s husband Desi comes home from work and finds her on hands and knees scanning the living room carpet. When he asks “What are you doing?” she explains: “I’m looking for my earrings.” He’s puzzled. “Don’t you keep them in the bedroom?” “Yeah” she says, “but in here the light is better.”

I can’t say I’ve ever searched for lost earrings, but I’ve done plenty of looking. What gets lost for me ranges from my favorite coffee cup to letting Jesus be my strength for a life in his love.

Sometimes – especially when it comes to looking for what matters most in life –  I’m looking in places where I’ll never find what I need and want.

Why do I look there? Because there “the light is better.”

 Down deep I assume that the solutions to my problems are what I (or others helping me) can understand, manage, and fix. The “better light” for finding lost peace might be getting more money, getting more safety, or getting more liked by others. For a group like our church, we might assume that what’s needed will we be found where we have the “light” of certain programs, traditions, policies, or events.

Could it be that what is most lost is in some other place?

Like the depths of our hearts? Could it be that what alone can show the way is some other light? Like a dark place of loss called Golgotha?

What if the greatest of losses – every single one we endure – can there be drawn into the THE Light of an empty tomb, into “the life that is truly life”?

It’s worth looking there, don’t you think?

(P.S. I never watched all that much of “Lucy.” I found the story in a good little book on organizational health by Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage, page 6.)

A Celebration of Generosity

                                     

Senior Pastor, Steve Thulson

When word came – first to our Pastors, then our Elders, and finally our Congregation last Sunday morning – there were jaws dropping, tears, applause, even cheers. When a few days earlier, Ministry Assistant Jamie Durbin had opened the church mail and saw the anonymous check from a brokerage firm, she had to ask Ron Mol if she was seeing the comma and dot in the right places.

For the reduction of our mortgage debt, Centennial Covenant received a gift of $400,000!

We praise God for his gracious provision, and thank these generous friends!

This reduces our debt from $1.2 million to $800,000 which will allow far more of the ongoing generous giving from our other 175 households to be applied to direct people-to-people ministries.

Last Sunday we shared even more beautiful examples of generosity.

-          Each week, our children place coins from their allowances in a basket – gifts for Jesus and his work. Darlene and Stefany have observed, though, that some kids – from a family scraping by at the poverty-line – tend not to put in just coins, they put in dollar bills. They make sacrifices.

-          Last week we received thank-you notes from two families in the community who had been in financial crisis due to unanticipated health problems. We had been alongside them with gifts from our Benevolence Fund.

-          We have been experiencing a gradual but steady growth in ongoing financial support of our core ministries and mission, getting closer to the levels we approved last Fall!

Don’t you think these gifts are from the Spirit and please the Father every bit as much as the extraordinary donation to reduce our debt?

And then there’s the generous grace of God we celebrated last Sunday in Dale Flander’s strong teaching and stories like Donna Osborne’s. She told us how her lost hearing seems to be returning at least in part. And even greater is the powerful freedom she has experienced by God enabling her to forgive a man who kidnapped and terrorized her years ago. Dale’s reminder was to let such “highs” be windows to everything our Lord is doing all the time – even in the “lows” when his goodness is not quite as evident.

God is good. All the time. And all the time, God is good. Right?

Healthy, Missional

Maybe you’ve stumbled on this phrase in conversation, read it in a book, heard it in a sermon, or seen it printed in a church bulletin.  We, as a gathering of Christ followers, desire to be healthy and missional as we seek to glorify God by “following Jesus on a shared journey of transformation in his mission to our broken world” (hint: that’s our church mission statement for those who haven’t come across it before :).

What does that mean?  What does it mean to be healthy and missional as Christ followers?

That’s a great question, let’s explore.

Healthy: we don’t want to be unhealthy. We are not seeking brokenness, infighting, distrust, and discord.  Rather, things like balance, rhythm, engagement and rest, confession, grace and truth, and compassion all come to mind.  All communities, whether churches, clubs, schools or companies, have the potential to form harmful or healthy patterns and characteristics.  We at Centennial Covenant seek to be mindful of our health as individuals and as a community in all areas of life.  We want to be healthy.

Missional: God has been at work in this world from his time of creation and he is still active today.  He has a purpose, a vision, a direction for all things.  He is on a mission.  As Christ followers, we want our lives to be about His mission.  We want to be people who join in the work that God is already doing.  We want to be missional.

So, how do we measure that?  How do we know if that is where we are and where we are headed?

It’s not an exact science, but the denomination we belong to, the Evangelical Covenant Church, has spent some time thinking about this question and they have come up with a great list.  This list is not a perfect measure, but it is an excellent point of reference as we ask ourselves and we ask one another, are we healthy and missional in our lives of discipleship.

Here is the list: 10 Healthy Missional Markers
(you can find the full version online here)


1) Centrality of the Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16)

2) Life transforming walk with Jesus (John 3:3,30; Phil. 1:6)

3) Intentional evangelism (Matthew 28:18-20)

4)Transforming communities through active compassion, mercy and justice (Micah 6:8)

5) Global perspective and engagement (Acts 1:8)

6) Compelling Christian community (Acts 2:42-47)

7) Heartfelt worship (Psalm 138:1a; John 4:23)

8) Sacrificial and generous living and giving (Romans 12:1-8)

9) Culture of godly leadership (Hebrews 13:7)

10) Fruitful organizational structures (Exodus 18:13-26, Acts 6:1-7)
(Again, the full version can be found here)

I invite you to wander through these 10 markers over time, read the passages, and examine whether God is drawing you to a growing edge in any of these areas.  Then share with a friend or your family.  Tell somebody what God is telling you.

Looking forward to continuing with you on this shared journey.

Grace and Peace,
Karl