CCC Gainesville | Blog
Here are the top posts for 2011 from Christian Counseling & Education Foundation.
10. Who Talks About Idols Among Friends?
8. Christians and Non-Christians, Married
7. How to Talk to God When You’re Suffering
6. What Christians Really Believe: “I Must Try Harder”
4. The Angry Person: Always the Last to Know
2. The Secret to Dealing with Fear and Anxiety
1. “If Only…” Living with Regrets
Will & Breanna Connor are originally from southwest Michigan. The Lord used a Gideon’s New Testament to bring Will to repentance and faith in Christ in 1997. Breanna came to faith as a young girl with an early desire to “be a missionary”, and began to live that out during her teen years on short-term trips to the Dominican Republic and Ecuador. Will and Breanna wed with the intent to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the foreign mission field, and for the past thirteen years have been preparing to do so. Together they have served as house parents for teenage mothers at both a rural maternity home and an urban transitional living facility for nearly four years, and have also been to Mexico short-term. Will has served on a variety of short-term trips in Haiti, Rwanda, Colombia, and India. They were appointed with Pioneers in 2010, a mission organization which “mobilizes teams to glorify God among unreached peoples by initiating church-planting movements in partnership with local churches”. Will and Breanna will soon join their teammates (a nurse practitioner and a midwife) in north India to begin ministry among a rural Himalayan people group of about 80,000 who embrace a mixture of Hindu, Buddhist, and animistic beliefs. Accompanied by their four children (Silas (11); Lydia (10); Ezra (3); and Asha (10 months)), they will seek to develop relationships for the kingdom among neighbors, and through business relationships and medical clinics. Breanna has an A.S in Nursing from Truman College in Chicago, and B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Florida. She has been a practicing R.N. for the past 7 years. Will has been a practicing histotechnician for the past 7 years, holding HT(ASCP)QIHC licensure. He also has a B.A. in Applied Linguistics from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and has been slowly pursuing a M.Div. from Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Ministry. Will and Breanna are members of Creekside Community Church in Gainesville, and particularly enjoy sharing life with international students in town.
Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins on Saturday?
Owen Strachan seeks to answer that question with winsome wisdom.
Does God care who wins? Here here
This week I had a great planning time with the team of guys who are pulling together GraceCon 2012. The weekend together really has the promise to be a powerful and fun time together. The speakers we have, Brandon Lauranzon and Mike Osborne are great. You are going to enjoy them.
They will base their talks on the book of James. Here is a helpful image that gives you a sense of some major themes in James.
The leaders have a goal of 100 men at GraceCon 2012. If you’ve registered already, thanks. That’s a serious help to the leaders who need to plan. Not registered? Check you calendar and register now, please. It is easy, just click here and fill in some quick info—then make a donation using the payPal button. Students, you guys are free. You’re welcome!
2010 stands out, to me, as the year that Christ Community successfully transitioned from living and thinking like a “small church” to that of a “medium size church”. Below is a small piece of an article Tim Keller wrote called Church Size Dynamics. At the end of my excerpt is a link to a longer excerpt. If you want to go straight to the 15 page doc, cheers.
We tend to think of the chief differences between churches mainly in denominational or theological terms, but that underestimates the impact of size on how a church operates. The difference between how churches of 100 and 1,000 function may be much greater than the difference between a Presbyterian and a Baptist church of the same size.
A large church is not simply a bigger version of a small church. The difference in communication, community formation, and decision-making processes are so great that the leadership skills required in each are of almost completely different orders.
Size Cultures
Every church has a culture that goes with its size and which must be accepted. Most people tend to prefer a certain size culture, and unfortunately, many give their favorite size culture a moral status and treat other size categories as spiritually and morally inferior. They may insist that the only biblical way to do church is to practice a certain size culture despite the fact that the congregation they attend is much too big or too small to fit that culture.
