Ideas for Altars

If you were at suncrest Sunday, you probably were as motivated as I was by the story of Larry and Kelly McManus and the way they are using stones to mark important things God has done in their family.

I came across two GREAT and practical ideas this week as I’ve been having conversations with families about how to create similar memories so I thought I’d share them here.

1.  A Thanksgiving Tree — This is probably best done by families with younger children.  The idea is to use your refrigerator (or another place in your home) to mark all the things you are thankful for between thanksgiving and Christmas.  Start by using some brown construction paper for a “trunk” and a few branches and then each evening at a family meal have each person (child or adult) write one thing they are thankful to God for on a green piece of construction paper.  These become the leaves of the tree and they are added each night.  As it grows, it helps you see all the places God has been good to your family!  (By the way…I think it also starts dinner conversations off in a  VERY positive way and helps all of us in a season where the temptation is to focus on “what I want” for Christmas).

2.  Christmas Card Prayers — What do you do after Christmas with all those cards?  (Most of us don’t want to just throw them away, but after we move them for the 5th time we finally do!)  How about this instead.  Find a rhythm that works for your family – maybe one/week — and work through the cards after the start of the year.  Take time as a family to pray for the people who sent you that card and talk about what they mean to your family.

7 Things I’m Celebrating Today

I’m trying to “mark” the gratitude in my life, so let me celebrate a variety of things you may not know about?

1.  Our student life pastor – Jared Mehrle – was on the lead team that just pulled off the teen portion of a National Convention in Peoria, IL that attracted thousands of teens and led to hundreds of decisions.  This guy has leadership oozing out of him.

2.  From that same conference I got an email from one of our youth leaders today.  I love her investment in our students as she calls them “my girls.”  In part she said, “this was by far my most rewarding weekend ever.  I saw God pounding on my girls hearts, there were lives changed this weekend.  The girls…transformed right before my eyes.  I have had a difficult but amazing journey with them that i can’t even explain. ”

3.  I had breakfast this morning with a group of retired guys who count our offering every week.  One guy told me serving and hanging out with his friends doing this was a highlight of his week.

4.  Our church just keeps growing.  Yesterday we had just over 1000 at our St. John campus and just over 200 at our Hobart/Merrillville Campus.  Our average for the year last year before we launched the second campus was 951.  

5.  Why are we growing?  We have great leaders, a wonderful staff, mission-first elders, a positive vibe from the whole church that you can’t beat…but none of that would work if Christ wasn’t at the center.  Jesus said, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

 6.  I love Deep River Church of Christ – a sister church in Hobart.  They have let us use their building for east campus functions and are led by a great pastor and friend of mine, Ron Buche.  They just did a “miracle offering” in the midst of this challenging economy on Sunday and they exceeded their goal of $30,000.  Incredible…I love people of faith!!

7.  We are having baby dedications in a couple weeks, so we had a meeting on Sunday with the parents.  We have LOTS of babies…including one adorable set of triplets!  The coolest part was seeing these families meet and connect with each other.

Like many of you, we’ll spend time this week with our extended family.  Both Jenny and I are blessed to have great parents and wonderful grandparents.  Add to that tight relationships with siblings, nieces and nephews that are a blast and we know we have much to be thankful for.

How are you “marking” your gratitude today?

Servolution isn’t over…

The teaching series called “servolution” wrapped up 4 weeks ago, but serving people in need continues.  I got this update from one of our community group leaders yesterday — his group served at a soup kitchen and what was especially cool was their chance to interact with the people.  After he gave some of the details on the night, he wrapped it up like this….

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The team that puts this together has a great spirit.

 Not only did we get to help in the kitchen and serve the food, but we had the opportunity to speak to each person there and write down their specific prayer requests.  We then took them into the sanctuary and prayed for each one.  We really enjoyed sitting down and having conversations with people, sharing Gods love.  The idea of serving being an act of worship became very real, and I’m not sure who got more joy out of it…I think we did.  That is such a God thing.  We also got to pray with the church team that does this.  They are real servants.

 Just thought I’d make you aware.  The study has been a good experience for many of us as well.  That book was a good choice.

 God Bless,

Steve

 P.S. The Leader’s Edge was awesome too last night.  Glad to be there!  Will be praying for the vision that was announced.

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I love our leaders and our community groups!

Corn Hole? Bags? Africa?

It’s still crazy to me that 17 Suncrest people are signed up to go on the Liberia, Africa Trip next February.  Lots of passion for this country!

This Saturday, there is great chance to support their trip while having a blast — a bags/corn hole tournament at the “On the Square” Sports Academy in Crown Point at 1pm.

Who will take me on?  (Actually, I’m still looking for a partner…and I stink at bags).  Find a partner, pay your $30 and you are in!

Anyone interested — suncrest folks or not — is welcome.  Email dmazrimas@sbcglobal.net ASAP.

 

 

I love Leaders

Last night we had a standing-room-only crowd in the Annex of leaders.  And there was more energy oozing than I can remember in a long time. 

If you know me, the fact that “I love leaders” is not earth-shattering news.  I believe it is people who lead who shape the world.

It wouldn’t be a surprise either that “I love Suncrest leaders”.  Volunteer Leaders from all across our church gather 4 times a year to improve ourselves, make sure we are centered on mission, and to talk about where Suncrest is going in its next steps.  And I try to make sure to tell them each time how thankful I am for them.  Truth is…we would be nothing without them.

• Last night we had an incredible guest speaker…Dave Dummit planted a church near Detroit 4 1/2 years ago and they have grown to be reaching over 1000 people, already have 2 campuses, and don’t even have one facility yet!    Reproducing is in their DNA.  Reproducing leaders.  Reproducing Community Groups.  Reproducing Campuses.  And Reproducing Churches.

• Last night we made some huge announcements about future campuses.  (Details will roll out on these later.)  But that wasn’t even the best part to me…

• The best part was introducing new “leaders” and “emerging leaders”  (yes, we are always working to create a PIPELINE of reproducing leaders.  Last night we introduced 22 new leaders!  And we introduced 6 new emerging leaders!  I love it…because I love leaders.

A Couple Fun links…

I’ve been compiling some stuff in my inbox that I think is good enough or funny enough to post…so I’m just going to put it all here.

1.  Guess which profession makes the top 15 for “High Stress/Low Pay” jobs put out by CNN Money?  Interesting thing to me…most of these jobs are in the religious or social services sector.  I think they forgot the third quality in the title…”Most Rewarding”.  Click here to see if your job made the list.

2.  Any Stephan Colbert Fans?  In this “Colbert vs. Dawkins” Face-off, the exchange between the comedien and a professor/athiest/scientist is not only hilarious, but kind of insightful.  Click here to watch the video Clip.

You gotta laugh at this…

On Sunday, Blake Bergstrom will be teaching at West Campus.  (East campus, you get a great message from Doug Gamble!)  Blake is an incredible communicator and a pastor at Crosspoint Church in Nashville.  I wish I was going to be here to hear him.

Blake has a lot of things he could be known for, but (for better or worse) he is best known nationally for a slip of the tongue in a message he gave to students a few years back at a church he was serving in Colorado.  This slip of the tongue has resulted in about 125,000 views of this clip below.

It is every preacher’s worst nightmare…And I love how he handled it.

Mexico Trip

I flew out of Indy to Mexico early Friday morning with the other “Fellows” (18 pastors from around Indiana) in the Wabash Pastoral Fellowship.   I’ll try to reflect on it over a few blogs.

This is the 5th time I’ve been to Mexico.  One was just a cruise stop in Cozumel.  One was a mission trip, taking Suncrest students to Ensenada to build houses.  One was to visit a church we planted near Mexico City.  And one was to visit some good friends who had moved from Indiana to Monterrey.

All of those trips had their differences, but on the scale of uniqueness this trip easily wins.  We are in far southern Mexico (though it isn’t terribly warm since we are up in the mountains).  “Chiapas” is the name of the state and the city we are based in is “San Cristobal de la Casas”.  It is a fascinating city of about 150,000 people with incredible cultural heritage.

The most enlightening parts of the trip have been our journeys to villages that are still marked by their indigenous traits.  Monday morning we experienced “Day of the Dead” ceremonies in a village outside of San Cristobal.  Most of the people at the church service didn’t even speak spanish…only the native tongue of their people.    Afterwards, the native people prepared a very special meal for us.  The picture above is me drinking the VERY native ‘atole’ and eating a bean mixture in a corn wrap.  (It looked like a tamale, but didn’t exactly taste like one!)

We’ve been quite privileged to have very accomplished and educated religious leaders, educators, anthropologists, and artists interact with us throughout the week.  I’ll write  a full post on the Day of the Dead soon…it is a MAJOR Holiday in Mexico and some of their practices are fascinating.