A few things that made this Sunday REALLY great! #1) We had the highest attendance of the summer and a good number of visitors. #2) These three guys (above) did a great job leading worship. I could honestly not have dreamed of a better group of people to work with in service planning and worship leadership.
#3) This is our new student pastor Bryan and his fiance Amy. Sunday, Bryan preached for the first time at Pillar. He shared his dreams for the ministry he will have at Pillar and compelled everyone to be faithful with what God has given them no matter how big or small that might be. I have known Bryan for a long time and have had the ability to watch him develop into a strong leader and person of faith. He has been a great addition to the team at Pillar and I can’t wait to see how God uses him. Since February he has been working on a volunteer basis to start Ten Fold. We praying and planning to bring Bryan on in the fall on a full or part time basis.
#4) This is Davíð Örn Sveinbjörnsson. David and his wife Fjola were a part of our ministry in Iceland and spent Saturday evening with us before going to Pillar on Sunday. He talked to the church telling them how thankful he was that we have chosen to obey God’s call to Iceland. He also challenged us to continue to be faithful throughout Scandinavia.
#5) I taught the children’s class on Sunday and got to teach the kids about how God was the mastermind behind the Bible. It was a great day!
For those of you who read from remote and far away places- please forgive me for this post. There are a few things that I want to emphasis to the “Locals” who are involved in our ministry:
As you know Jen and I are leading a team of 12 to Indonesia in two weeks. We have an absurd amount of money to raise for this trip. People from all over have been extremely generous and thousands of dollars have rolled into my office over the past few weeks. Even with that though we are very behind on our efforts to raise funds for the trip. So… we have decided to pull out all the stops for our final two fund raisers. We hope to make these events unavoidable for you.
1st- We have a yard sale on July 26th from 8am-3pm…. I know, a yard sale!?! - but this is no ordinary yard sale… this is the grand daddy of all yard sales. Whats that you ask? “What makes this the grand daddy of all yard sales?”
We have packed an entire gym full of every imaginable piece of crap on the east coast. The room is a spectacle in itself- from fanny packs to snow ski’s we have it all.
Live music- Some of Washington DC’s most sought after solo performers will be performing live ALL DAY. Acts include: Ben Cartwright (of Bonanza), The artist formally known as BOBBY-O and much much more.
And the show stopper- what you will not find at any other yard sale on planet earth… “The Antique Road Show” - The Road Show will be available between the hours of 10am-12pm. After you buy your “Item of Value” you can immediately (for a small fee) have your item assessed by a member of the Antique Road Show. Your segment of the road show film will be posted to You Tube for the world to see.
2nd- ahhh… wouldn’t you like to know…. (to be continued)
Well since todays post was about songwriting I wanted to take the opportunity to brag on our worship leaders Amanda Long & Keilan Creech. These guys are super talented and are such a big part of our experience with Jesus each Sunday Morning. A few months back they headed to the recording studio to put down one of their songs for our “First time Guests” packet.
Anyway back to the story… Amanda took this 90’s worship tune (Refiners Fire) and worked her magic. Click the player below to give a listen.
I am an amateur songwriter and have been for most of my life. I started playing music when I was about ten and wrote my first song before I was twelve. I don’t claim to be a great songwriter but I absolutely love writing songs. A few months ago I decided I wanted to get some of the music up on this blog to share with the world but just haven’t taken the time to gather and post everything. So as a noble start I have posted seven songs. I encourage you to read the lyrics and feel free to comment if you wish. I hope you enjoy what is posted. If you can find a use for any of these songs in a live setting you are welcome to use them without written permission. Please also keep in mind that most of the recordings provided are “scratch tracks” and are awaiting their day in the studio. Maybe when I retire and actually have the money and time I need to get them recorded. Maybe I’ll make an album with an over 65 Gospel quartet. Click the tab at the top of the page that says “Songs” or click HERE
Dr. Piper makes some pointed comments about the prosperity gospel. From our own churches this movement is wreaking havoc on Christendom and leading millions worldwide away from the cross.
My oldest son Noah absolutly amazes me. For the past few months he has been spending his spare time reading the blogs of our friends and family. My first instinct is to say, “Noah, go outside and play” but somewhere along the way I realized that he is reading and building relationships with our friends. Not to mention the fact that Jennifer and I do the same thing in our spare time. So if we know you and you have a blog there is a good chance that my 6.5 year old son has read every post on it. Over the past few weeks his obsession has gone to a new level. He started asking his mom and I if he could write something on her blog. We allowed him to post a few things on the blog. He learned to upload pictures, type and publish his post. So this weekend I asked if he wanted to start his own blog. He looked at me as if the possibility had never occurred to him and said, ya ya ya! So here it is… my six year old’s blog.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah)
Today I had a great time hanging out with some church planters. Daniel Floyd from lifepoint invited a few guys to lunch today at their new church office. Dave & Aaron Profitt, Jamie Limato & Josh Soto were all there from Alethiea, the Lifepoint staff and Chris Rodenhizer. We talked primarily about Leadership and gained some great insights into the ministries of these churches. I have to say that it is really nice to have a group of planters working in the same area that have such a heart for the church. Everywhere I have been in ministry I have attended ministerial association meetings. They are usually a joke! Meeting with these guys is like meeting with a group of friends. We genuinely like each other and want to see one another’s ministries succeed.
One of the guys who was there, Jeremy Pickwell writes some insightful comments about church planting on his blog.
If I was to just walk into our house and slap some paint on, over time the paint would begin to peel off and look real nasty. So we must sand, and wipe down, and patch holes, sand some more, tape, lay down tarp, prime, maybe prime again, and finally paint…and maybe even paint again. The point is, it took us forever before we were even able to paint. And that sucked. We wanted to just paint. But I think many church planters get in the same boat. They just want to open the doors. They forget that there is a lot of prep work that goes into it. And most of it isn’t fun.
I thought his comments were a must read for every planter. Inevitably, every church plant I have ever participated in has had some vision vultures who have said something like… “Why dont you just get to it” - “You are making this more like a business than a church” - “You are making this harder than it is”. If you are considering planting a church. I would say to you you cannot do enough pre-thought & pre-planning and preparation. It is part of planting a church.
Big take away from today: Daniel Floyd said, “high calaber leaders will rarely buy into the vision of a low quality orginazation.” It made me wonder how many potentially great leaders, or potential church planters have visited pillar once and moved on because nothing they saw or heard communicated our big dreams to them.
“He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity ” (Pr. 21:23).
A few years ago the Post was doing an article on God-song (read it HERE). In the interview I made some comments about the Christian dance pop group Jump 5. Now, I don’t know the guys from Jump 5, I have never seen them in concert nor have I ever popped in their CD. The only thing I know of them was their reputation in the music industry. The comments I made were flippant and partially unfounded. I nearly forgot about the situation until today I was sorting old emails and came across an email from one of the guys in the group who read the article.
Hey pastor Clifton!
This is Chris from the group Jump5! I wanted to write in reponse to you article in the paper! We started this group about 7 years ago, I being the eldest of the group was 13 when this group started and now I am almost 20. In the beginning this group was very talented but very pure minded to the business! We were pushed around by the record label and yes writing our own songs was something that we all wanted to do and pushed the record label to let us do! But we according to the record label were stupid kids who didn’t know anything! So we recently this summer got new managment and we left the record label and we just put out a Christmas CD in which we wrote 6 songs and we did 3 traditional song! I hope this email will change your mind about the ministry we have been trying to convey to our peers! I am not worried about what the group looks like in this position I am only concerned because there are not many teens out there trying to reach out to people in the way God has given us the oportunity to. We the group are very strong in our faith and know where we stand and we know that God put this group togeher for reasons beyond what we even know! We have been a vessel to hange lives and, God has saved lives through this ministry he started with us. Is it really a concern on who writes the songs? Saving and changing lives and doing what God has called us to do is what we are to do! Thank you so much for reading this email!
For all of you church planter nut jobs out there who are working your tails off to start churches here are a few practical helps for you that I have utilized over the past few years.
You can get a huge map of your community from your county mapping office. For example yesterday I went to the Prince William County Mapping Office in the county complex, paid $7.50 and walked out with a 6 foot map of the area directly surrounding my church plant. Pin that baby on the wall, mark your peoples houses with pens or stars. It will remind you to pray, give you a new perspective. These maps are also much more up to date than the commercial ones that you will find online they often include new and planned construction.
These are usually a few hundred bucks so this is a sweet one… If you happen to be a S. Baptist you can get a free demographic report of your community, customized to your requests and sent to you (via email as a PDF). Order one HERE.
For those of you who are preaching, want to be Biblically faithful, but may not necessarily be Greek scholars, The Resurgence has produced an outstanding website to help you. Check it out HERE.
For those of you who have “friends” who struggle with porn addictions HERE is another free resource that we are using in our church plants.
If you are just starting the process of planting and would like to have an experienced planter that you could bounce some ideas off of I would love to hook you up with someone. I can’t tell you how helpful it has been to me to have people that I could call to ask questions and get feedback. Please send me an email at clint@god-song.com and I will do my best to establish a relationship that will help you to make wise decisions.
When I was 19 My pastor let me preach. Not only did he let me preach but he gave me prime time and an introduction that very well could have been for Billy Graham. His belief in me made a huge impact on my life. When I planted a church I decided that my pulpit would be a place where nervous and untrained men could experience the sacred desk. Over the past three years many of the faithful men in our congregation have preached on a Sunday morning.
A few days ago Ben Arment posted this outstanding paragraph about the pastors role as a mentor. Check out this gut reply that came from a young guy called to ministry.
From the mouth of God.
Ben, as you may know I am a public school teacher trying to transition into full time ministry. I am longing to be mentored like that. I am even applying to the Protégé program with NCC and Mark Batterson. It would require me to liquidate my life and move my family 1500 miles east while also having to raise financial support to live on for at least a year. The funny thing is I think I am actually willing to do that to get the kind of mentorship and experience that I am seeking. BTW I am a member of a church that runs 3500 in worship and 2500 in life groups on Sundays.
I was named after dirty Harry, yet I am nothing like the famed tough man. I am dirty in a depraved, spiritual sort of way and hairy in the more obvious since of the word but I am not the gun slinging hero that my mother thought of when she named me. I am a follower of Jesus a husband and a dad. I have talented passionate wife who I have known for approximately the same amount of time that I have been able to tie my shoes. I also have three kids; Noah who is loyal, Ruthe who is joyful and Isaiah who is hilarious. I am the pastor Pillar Church in the suburbs of Washington DC.
For those of you who read from remote and far away places- please forgive me for this post. There are a few things that I want to emphasis to the “Locals” who are involved in our ministry:
Hey pastor Clifton!
