Friday, May 29, 2009

Great Commission Resurgence...

I have posted an article today at sbcIMPACT! concerning the Great Commission Resurgence. Let me encourage you to head on over and take a look. I would love to hear your comments. You can get to the article by clicking here.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Webcast...

Cornerstone is in the early stages of providing a live webcast of our worship services. Our belief is that this will enhance our effectiveness by allowing us to communicate our message beyond the walls of our church building. We ran a initial trial yesterday that you can check out at our Cornerstone website: www.windsorcornerstone.org. Just click the link on the left side of the page that says "watch sermon". Both Pastor Eric's message and mine are available. Let me know what you think.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Cornerstone en Espanol...

I had a great meeting this afternoon with Pastor Oscar de la Cruz to discuss the formation of a Spanish-language worship service at Cornerstone. I'm thrilled that Oscar and I share common vision to see a fourth worship service begun at Cornerstone. We're not looking to begin a new church, we're not just letting the Spanish congregation meet in our building, but rather we are acknowledging the presence of the hispanic community in our town and in our church and we are making a place for them within our local Body of Christ.

My name for God today is "Branch of the Lord" (Is. 4:2). It's a perfect description for God as He shows himself today to be a new branch within our church.

My Proverb today is 14:28, "A growing population is a king's glory". God is growing our population through the inclusion of the Hispanic community.

My spirit soars to think of the possibilities--more so than the many other things about our church that I'm excited about. One of the spiritual markers (Blackaby lingo) in my life is the presence of ethnics. My dad was a Home Mission Board Missionary to Native Americans. I grew up around ethnic people groups. Throughout my life, I have had effective ministry in and around ethnic communities. I believe that Pastor Oscar's service is going to be a big part of Cornerstone's future. May it be so!

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Throwback...


The boys and I have long been fans of sugar-sweetened sodas. Maybe it's all in our heads but we are convinced that the sugar-sweetened beverages taste better than the high fructose corn syrup alternative that has been the soda main-stay for years now.
Seriously, Jaren still has an unopened can of Dr. Pepper from the original Dublin, Texas bottling plant. You can share the adventure here.
We have even identified one retailer in Northern Colorado that stocks bottles of Coke imported from Mexico. It seems they still use sugar in Mexico to sweeten things rather than corn. We risk the potential unknown contaminants to get a "real" coke made with "real" sugar.
So you can imagine our joy when we saw advertised "Throwback" Pepsi and Mt. Dew made with sugar. We're stocking up just in case the change their mind at some point. (BTW, let me know if you see any vanilla pepsi out there somewhere).

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

What's Jesus Worth?

It always a fun adventure to read through Leviticus which I am currently doing and as expected I have learned something.

Leviticus 27:1-7 contains instructions to Moses from God concerning the monetary value of human beings. The purpose of the information is to give values so that people dedicated to God may be redeemed by their families. The text reveals the following values of human beings based on age and sex:

A man between the age of 20-60 is valued at 50 pieces of silver.
A woman of the same age is value at 30 pieces of silver.
A boy between age 5-20 is valued at 20 pieces of silver.
A girl between age 5-20 is valued at 10 pieces of silver.
A man over 60 is valued at 15 pieces of silver.
A woman over 60 is valued at 10 pieces of silver.

Of course you are aware that Jesus was betrayed by his friend Judas for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15, 27:3). Certainly the religious leaders who paid this bounty were aware of the law's declared human values. Is this one more attempt by the religious elite to embarrass Jesus and to put him in his place? It could very well could be. A common Jewish prayer in those days included the phrase, "Thank you Lord that I am neither a Gentile nor a woman".

Let me add one more twist to the tale. The religious leaders are not actually the ones who set the price on Jesus' head--God did! In fact Jesus as God set the value of his own betrayal at 30 pieces of silver--the value of a woman. The prophetic text of Zechariah 11:12-13 declares, "'If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!' So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. Then the LORD said to me, 'Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them.' So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD".

My take on this today is the fact that God values all humanity including women and Gentiles. God's word says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Tres de Mayo Worship Service...


Today was an unusual day at Cornerstone in that we highlighted our Hispanic families and let the Spanish language be the dominate language of worship and preaching. The idea to tie a service to Cinco de Mayo came from Fernando Caballero who is one of our primary worship leaders. The songs were contemporary which is our primary style of worship but the words were a mix of Spanish and English with Spanish being used more prevalently. The preaching in the 8am and 9:30am services was handled by Oscar de la Cruz who is a fairly new addition to Cornerstone but a powerful addition. Pastor Oscar will be leading Cornerstone in starting a Spanish language service in the very near future. The 11:00am service featured Pastor Oscar's son, Oscar Jr. Both men did a tremendous job of passionately bringing the Word of God to the church. This was a great day at Cornerstone and an idea that we will certainly repeat in the future.