Easy like Sunday morning October 12, 2009
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For the first time in my life I understand what “easy like Sunday morning” means. The last couple of years of college and all of my working life, Sunday mornings have been anything but easy. I generally arrived at the church by 7am if not before. It was a morning of rehearsals, ministering to people, and troubleshooting. Even when I resigned from Noland Road Baptist last November – life at the Bed and Breakfast wasn’t “easy like Sunday morning”.
So, easy Sunday mornings are a novelty for me. Yesterday I woke up and went walking. Came home to eat breakfast. Played with the kids for a while. Got ready for church. Had time to check e-mails and read some sports. And then went to a church service at 11:00. It was a good morning.
The Deliberate Church August 13, 2009
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I’m reading “The Deliberate Church” right now by Mark Dever. I did not like the first 6-7 chapters of the book. In fact I almost stopped reading it multiple times. My copy of the book is filled with question marks and notes surrounding the parts I didn’t agree with. The major beef I have with Mark is his view of preaching. His statements about the pre-imminence of preaching and how it is paramount to everything else the church does, grates against my understanding of the gospel. Now hear me out. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t preach, on the contrary, I hold a high view of rightly preaching the gospel message. I just don’t see it as the sole defining mark of a church.
My friend Ben encouraged me to push through the first part of the book and I’m glad he did. The last few chapters have been very insightful into the role of a pastor, gatherings, and the ordinances. I just read a statement about evangelism that someone could right a whole book about – I won’t because I don’t like long posts – but let me share it with you.
“Evangelism programs are not necessarily or categorically bad. Some are quite good. But I fear we sometimes depend on them so much that we forget that the church itself is God’s evangelism program. The mutually loving relationships in the church are designed by God to be attractive to an unbelieving culture.“
This is gold. If we can get this right at Crosstown Church, the gospel will come alive in our neighborhood. A part of the gospel requires us “to tell”. But just as important is the opportunity “to be”. The church living what the New Testament says we should, will be unavoidable and appealing to those far from God. Wouldn’t you be interested in people who acted like this?
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. Colossians 2:12-14
6 years later May 26, 2009
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I took the kids to Arlington Park Baptist Church on Sunday. This was the church we served in during seminary and it was our first full time ministry position. The whole morning was nostalgic. I got to visit with close friends and people who played a major role in my formation as a minister.
As I sat through the service, I realized that it was 10 years ago to the day that we first visited APBC. I was green and inexperienced. Yet these people invited me into their lives and even gave me the opportunity to lead them. It seemed like the honeymoon period lasted a couple of years. There were difficult days to be sure – within the first year we lost our pastor and the youth minister – but Carey and I felt loved, accepted and supported by this group of believers through all of it.
It was a treat to walk through the halls and see face after face that meant so much to us. A part of me wished that we were still serving alongside these people. But I am confident that God called us away to St. Louis in 2003 and that He was slowly directing our path toward church planting even then.
Regardless of where we are or where we end up, it’s nice to come back home every once in a while.
meChurch April 2, 2009
Posted by clintcarter in Church, Humor.2 comments
As we look to the future and starting a new church. Here’s one type that we’re considering. Are you interested?
community February 12, 2009
Posted by clintcarter in Church, Church Planting, Life.5 comments
Shout out to all of my small group peeps in the STL.
As we’re planning, thinking, and praying toward a church plant in Tulsa this summer, the concept of community comes up over and over again. Here’s my working definition for now – “small groups of people who meet together regularly to do life, grow in the Word, serve each other and their neighborhoods and city”. The question is how do we birth and nurture community groups among people who at this point don’t even know God?
We’ll be drawing heavily from our experience in Saint Louis. Carey and I started a small group ministry during our time at Hazelwood Baptist. It was birthed out of a desire to minister to young couples. We saw so many with marriages on the rocks, little to no support systems, very little ties to the body of Christ or God’s truth that could provide stability and hope in their lives. Our senior pastor at the time had the same burden and encouraged us to start.
God laid a collection of people – strangers at the time - on our hearts and we invited them to our house on Thursday nights. The stated goal from the outset was just to “do life” together and grow through our time in the Bible. Immediately, God started doing some incredible things. People began choosing to honor God in their marriage relationships, in their careers, growing spiritually, finding places to serve in the church. And we experienced community the way it’s described in Acts 2:44-47. Those were the most enjoyable days of ministry that we’ve ever experienced and some of our most meaningful friendships grew out of those groups.
A lot of God ordained things happened in those small groups, but in hindsight I think we missed one vital ingredient. We were great at serving and giving to each other in times of need – we weren’t so great at intentionally doing that collectively for those outside of our small group. We should have taken what we had and found places to serve in our community – whether in schools, local businesses, or neighborhoods - with no strings attached. And I shoulder the responsibility for that as a leader.
I’m praying that in Tulsa, God will once again create the same type of community we experienced in St. Louis. But that this time a big part of our formation will revolve around compassion and service. And I’m praying that these small groups of people will reproduce exponentially around the city.
One more again January 12, 2009
Posted by clintcarter in Church.2 comments
I got the opportunity to lead worship for the students at FBC Duncan last night. It was rejuvenating to be leading worship once again.
The cool thing is that John (the student pastor) has asked me to develop and build a band for their Sunday night services while we are here in Duncan. I worked with some great students last night and there is a lot of potential. It will be a blessing to have the chance to minister in my area of gifting. I want to do all I can to equip and empower them to be in good shape when we leave for Tulsa this summer.
My voice and my fingers just barely held up – haven’t been doing much singing or playing guitar over the last 2 months. Maybe I should adjust my schedule to play more guitar and less X-box?
Good news November 17, 2008
Posted by clintcarter in Church, Church Planting, Tulsa.2 comments
The first thing we were really excited about is that Noland Road is going to continue to partner with us in this church planting adventure. Carey and I sat down with the church’s Global Focus National Team and shared our vision for Tulsa. They were very encouraging and offered monthly financial support. So we officially have our first ministry partners which is awesome!
The best part isn’t the funding (although that’s vital to this endeavor). The best part is that they are taking a vested interest in our call and want to be involved on an ongoing basis. We covet their prayer support and the chance to host teams from NRBC in the future to sponsor ministry projects and opportunities to serve Tulsa.
Without a trace November 12, 2008
Posted by clintcarter in Church, Life.5 comments
Checked the Noland Road Baptist Church website on Tuesday to discover no remnants of my time there. That is an incredibly quick turn around for a church website. I only just resigned on Sunday morning - props to my main man Curtis for staying up to the minute. I expected to make it at least 3 days, but no such luck :)
It got me to thinking about how quickly life can move on without us. The worship minister before me was a guy named Larry. He served at NRBC for 17 years. Yet if you check out the website or even visited the church, you’d never know he had been there – unless someone that he impacted told you about him. The book of Psalms talks about our life being like a mist – here one moment, gone the next. The changes I made in the structure and style of the ministry will be short-lived. 2 years from now most people in the church probably wouldn’t even know me. The good thing is that none of that is important. That’s not why I’ve devoted my life to serving God.
The first measure of success is obedience to what God has called. The second is the people I invested in and whether I encouraged them to take a step toward God. On that front, God established some significant friendships that have affirmed in recent days that God used me as a catalyst in their lives. I praise God that He chose to use me in that way and pray that He will continue to do so in the lives I encounter.
What if Starbucks marketed like a church? November 7, 2008
Posted by clintcarter in Church, Humor.6 comments
Starbucks is incredibly successful at inviting people into an experience and then drawing them back again and again - the American institutional church, not so much. This is a great parody that might provide some insight into the why.
(HT)
Why does Tulsa need another church? November 3, 2008
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Whenever I mention that we’re looking to plant a church in Tulsa, people look confused. They think “Tulsa is a part of the Bible Belt. It is a learning center for the charismatic church. Surely there are plenty of churches to go around.” Let me throw some numbers out for you to consider.
In 1990 those who regularly attended church in the U.S. numbered 52 million. In 2006 those who regularly attended church numbered 52 million. So the church held it’s own – overall it didn’t grow nor did it decline. But while the church plateaued, the population in the United States grew by 52 million. Meaning that in 1990, 21% of the U.S. population attended church – and now 16 years later only 17% of the population attends church.
Tulsa – from 1990 to 2000 the population in the Tulsa Metro Area grew by 94,000 people. During that same period Evangelical church attendance in the Tulsa Metro Area only grew by 1,500 people. 125 new churches would need to be started just to reach the population increase of that decade.
As of the year 2000, the overall population of the Tulsa Metro Area was 803,000. Only 20% or 162,000 of those people regularly attended an Evangelical, Mainline, or Catholic church. That means that there were 641,000 people in need of the gospel. Six hundred and forty-one thousand individuals and that number has continued to grow over the past 8 years. See the largest slice of the pie below – that’s the number of Tulsans not connected with the good news of Jesus Christ.
There are many other reasons for planting churches and I will be diving into them right here over the next few months. But first I wanted to show the expanse of the need. As Jesus said, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields.” Matthew 9:37-38
All of these figures are based on the research of The American Church Research Project.
