Mike Edmisten Follower of Jesus. Husband of Nicki. Father of Ryan & Brock. Communicator of the Word.

Checking Out

My family is heading out for a little vacation this week. Going to visit my brother's family in Virginia. Got lots of fun stuff planned. Fishing, hitting a schweeet seafood buffet, taking Ryan to a Wiggles concert (that ought to be a wild time!), and lots of R&R.

I'll be checking out of the blogosphere during our vacation. In fact, I'll be offline completely. No blogs, no email…I won't even be sending a smoke signal. I'm shutting down!

The comment feature on my blog will be disabled while I'm gone. I'll let you know when it's back up and running. Until then, check out some of the blogs in my links section. Pretty good stuff.

I've always heard that Virginia is for lovers. Hopefully they'll let me visit anyway. :o)

Later!

Ranch Wrap Up

What a week! Avalanche Ranch was rocking all week long! I heard lots of people say this VBS was the "best ever." Our kids were psyched every night when they walked in. Our adults were at the top of their game. Some of our guests commented that as soon as their kids walked in, our adults smiled and greeted them by name. Awesome!

Best of all, several guests left our closing program and said, "We'll see ya Sunday." Doesn't get better than that!

We're gonna have lots of post-VBS stuff on our website really soon. Be sure to keep checking back to relive all the fun of Avalanche Ranch.

Getting Fed

Man, Steven Furtick is a no-holds-barred kind of pastor!
One reason that I read whatever he writes. The dude just flat brings it, as is evidenced by this post from his blog. No, I didn't ask permission to quote his entire post, but I doubt he'll care since he's so kingdom-minded. Check it out.

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Proverbs 26:15
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
He is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth.

What a great picture of nominal, noncommittal church attendees!
We all know that one of top 3 reasons people leave churches is the (infamous) claim:
“I wasn’t getting fed there.”

Maybe you weren’t.

Or maybe the church set the table, presented the bread of life, and you were too stinking lazy to bring it back to your mouth, chew it, swallow, and digest it, like a big boy.

You know, I don’t mind helping my 2 year old eat his Easy Mac.
But if he can’t pick up a fork and bring the food to his mouth by age 20, we have a problem.

Churches are filled with those who have known Christ for decades, and still need a bib, a high chair, and want Daddy to do “open wide, here comes the airplane” tricks with the fork before shoving it into their mouths.

I try to serve up the Word, hot and fresh every single Sunday.

But if you refuse to apply it, study your Bible and pray some during the week, join a small group and dig deeper with others…
If you refuse to bring it back to your mouth, I can’t help you.

Get your own fork, and learn to feed yourself. Stop burying your hand in the dish and spitting out every thing that doesn’t give you a spiritual sugar high.

Eat some vegetables. Serve. Pray. Practically apply the Bible to your life.

And I’ll keep cooking…

Church Signs

I'm not going to publicly criticize any individual church. I don't play that way. I just have some thoughts on a trend regarding church signs. So many church signs that I see have nothing but cheesy platitudes and not-so-clever sayings displayed every week. And then some of them step it up a notch and post narrow-minded, legalistic mantras. Some go further still when they seem to condemn lost people to hell with a smirk or even a smile.

Let's just think about this logically for a second. Last time I checked, people who need Jesus actually do own cars. And they drive them. Lots of times, they drive them right past church buildings. And yeah, a lot of them probably do read church signs. And unfortunately, I wonder if that actually does more harm than good.

To reiterate, I'm not criticizing any one church, one denomination, or anything like that. This is a widespread trend.

If a person actually is looking for a church to visit, your sign should give them information about what's going on at your church. Your sign should communicate that, not only is stuff happening at your church, but also that you are excited about what's happening. So excited, in fact, that you would love for them to join you.

I realize in our current culture that is saturated with media outlets, a church sign seems to be a very tired, old way of advertising. In fact, many churches are now installing signs that have no marquis message to change. (Not a bad idea, actually.) But if your sign does have an area for changeable messages, then use it to tell me about what God is doing in your church. Tell me what is going on and when it is happening.

I know that you are a church. And I know that I don't attend your church. So please don't tell me that:

This is a CH–CH

What's missing?

U R.

Don't tell me that I don't go to your church. Tell me why I should.