Jeff Jackson Live

There has been this ongoing debate about the XXX Church who is now based in Las Vegas. This Church founded by Craig Gross, ministers to the women who have been forced into the porn world so they could provide a means of income. It is not unusual to find XXX Church at the major porn conventions passing out Bibles and shirts that say, “Jesus Loves Porn Stars.” The “Church” has many stories of lives that have been changed because of their ministry. I mentioned before that XXX Church made a recent move to Las Vegas and have started another church called Strip Church (before for you get your panties in a bunch, the church is located on the Vegas strip).

There are definitely opposing Christians to this movement. The organization has posted, in the past, hate mail from conservatives and liberals a like. So, you be the judge and tell me what you think. Is this real ministry or is it just a publicity stunt?

If you are stuggling with porn you can see a post I wrote with some resources click here.

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Here is one of the reasons I like WordPress. I just downloaded the latest versin of WP for the blackeberry. This make blogging very quick and easy. I am now able to share my thoughts as they come. This is also great news for Church Planters and Pastors. Now next time you have a great idea don’t loose the napkin, blog about it.

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Just for fun…I wanted to show you what everyone has been doing on my site.  Happy reading and don’t forget to give your two cents!

Top Five Articles for this month:

1. Is Being Gay Wrong? (this one has brought on lots of emails and controversy)
2. Don’t Go to Church! (lots of fundamentalist mad at this one)
3. 21 Questions to Ask Before Planting (for all you church planters out there)
4. 25 Random Things About Me. (Warning…you might be bored to tears)
5. Spiritual Checklist (this is a must read)

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That is right, I am asking everyone not to go to church but instead to be the church.  How about we raise up a generation that is passion about Kingdom work and not afraid to stand up for Jesus.  It is not enough to just stand on the side lines it is time to get in the game.  So how can we be the church?

1.  Make church and your relationship with God a priority.

2.  Don’t sit back and let the hired guns (your pastors) do all the ministry.  Ministry is meant for the people!

3.  Go for broke! (this is my current life saying…take no prisoners…charge hell with a water pistol…you get it!)

4.  Live your life through the eyes of Jesus.

5.  As Perry Noble says, “Kick Satan in the cookies.”

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I just want you to know how much I respect Dave Ferguson the pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, IL.  I’m an aspiring church planter and I am doing as much research as I can to prepare for the future.  I thought it would be smart to talk to the guys who are planting and learn from their experience (thanks @kevinrapp for pushing me over the edge).  I hit Dave up on Twitter asking him if he would discuss church planting with him and he immediately responded.  I sent him some questions and here are his responses:

1.  If you had to plant all over again what would you do different?

First, if your vision is to be a reproducing church (and I hope that is the case!) than the one thing I would do over was have 2-3 apprentice church planters/campus pastors on my team.  I would have them raise their own money to do a leadership residency with the plan that within 12-24 months we would either reproduce a new church or site.

Second, we should have raised more money.  It was very tight for us from the beginning.  I think God used that – but it was tight.

(I’m answering this question with the assumption that a reproducing infrastructure of small groups is essential to becoming a reproducing church)  I think one of the great challenges is getting second generation reproduction from your small groups.  If your staff team all starts small groups it is a challenge to get the small groups to believe that they will do great under the new leadership of a lay person.  Once you break threw that second generation of small group reproduction you will see real momentum.

Both.  I believe that with a close proximity that multi-site will give you a bigger return but requires greater leadership.  If you can’t do both – do church planting.

Make sure you hear from God everyday. If you hear from God everyday and obey him and teach your people to hear from God everyday and obey him – you will plant a church that will give birth to a missional movement.

Once again, thanks Dave!  I hope this interview helps you as much has it will help me.  I am going to continue to interview guys that are swinging away in the field.  If you have any questions you would like me to ask or people I should interview hit me up here.

If you are interested in planting you should read this post.

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No really? Maybe for the middle schoolers at your church can’t answer this question honestly. But unless you have some very unusual set up circumstances you take a shower, right? I was, of course, taking a shower this morning and I began talking with God and confessing my sins from the previous day and I realized that I had not confessed my sins for two day. Wow! Immediately I became shameful. How can my life honor God if I am walking around with an unclean heart…It can’t. I never miss a physical shower but I easily miss my spiritual shower. How about you? When is the last time you have confessed your sins to God and started the day with a clean heart? I feel great this morning.

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The other day I took my daughter to my favorite fine dinning restaurant, McDonald’s, for our weekly daddy/daughter date.  We were eating our meal when I noticed that my daughter was trying to pick up some small pieces of french fries.  Bound and determined she was not going to stop until she devoured the  small pieces of french fries.  The amusing thing was she had a whole happy meal full of  french fries and she was focused on the crumbs.  I realized at that moment that is exactly how I am.  God has so much for us if we would just take hold of what he is offering.  Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that God wants us to prosper and have an incredible future.  The passage also goes on and instructs us that we need to seek Him with all of our heart, that is when we will find him.  We are too focused on our raise at work, our day on the boat, time away on vacation…when God is saying I have so much more for you unfortunately we choose to focus on the crumbs.  Focus on the bigger picture, I promise God will not let you down.

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There are lots of joys of being a dad.  There is something that is unexplainable when my daughter shows her reliance on me.  Recently my daughter woke up from her nap in a very different way.  She usually cries when she wakes up but this time she had a bit of angst in her cry.  Upon hearing her cry I quickly walked into her room and saw something that I was not prepared for.  My daughter stood at the corner of her bed with her little arms stretched as far has she could reaching for someone to save her.  I scanned her crib to survey the situation and I found her diaper lying in the middle of her bed and poop everywhere.  I forgot to put her pants back on her after I changed her diaper before putting her down for bed and the result of my mistake was a mess!  My daughter starts to whine louder because I did not remove her immediately from the situation.  My daughter was helpless.  Even though it was her mess she could not clean up the situation.  That is exactly how our lives are before we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ.  There are three things that i realized from this poppie mess, I realized that we

1.  We don’t need encouragement – I could have really encouraged my daughter. “Come on Addison you can clean up your mess!”  Same goes for our lives.  Although encouragement makes us feel good it doesn’t help us clean up the mess we have made of our lives.

2.  We don’t need self help – My daughter didn’t need a 10 step program to cleaning up poop.  All though self help programs seem appealing to help clean up our lives…the fact is that they will always come up short because of one key work “self”

3.  We need to be rescued – There was only one way my daughter was getting out of that messy situation, I had to rescue her.  Just like my daughter the only way you will ever clean up your life is to allow Jesus to rescue you from a situation that is destined to produce failure and we can only be cleaned up if  Jesus has our heart.

No matter what situation you find yourself in the only answer is to allow yourself to be rescued.  To learn more about allowing Jesus to rescue your life click here.

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