Thoughts on theCUBE

We started this journey two years ago when the question was asked by our church leadership, what are we going to do with this new building that will be erected soon? I prayed really hard over that question for several months, and I kept being led back to the two school buses that unloaded over a hundred kids just a block away from our church. In my eyes, we were no longer building a youth room, a gym, a worship center, or anything really of the sort. We were building a destination. A place where kids will experience Christ's love first hand. A place where we would use the resources that God has gifted us with to help families with teenagers have a safe place to send their kids after school.

And that's how Afterschool @theCUBE was born. Props to one of our youth group students for the name theCUBE. When you see our new building, you understand why.

Here are a few thoughts about our little 6 month experiment:

• It was essential that we had our 2 paid workers. They were the glue that held the whole thing together. They knew the kids by name, and the kids knew them. Evangelism is done best through relationships. Our workers proved that this was 100% true.
• God's timing and my timing were very different (Lesson learned!). Originally, I didn't want to have theCUBE open on Fridays. I thought no one would be there. Fridays turned into our biggest day for attendance, at one time having as many as 65 kids there at once.
• Having a solid, stable volunteer corps was also essential. I'm sure they felt under-appreciated at times, but I can't say enough about how important it was to have someone present who was a little older than our paid workers. It gave parents piece of mind, our church leaders confidence in the program, and best of all, it allowed us to have more kids at theCUBE!
• I should have budgeted more money for food & drinks!
• You can't always say yes to every request. Know your limits. Know your purpose. I got asked several times to do a lock-in for the Afterschool outreach or to open up on days that there were school holidays. Those things didn't fit within our plan or purpose, so we didn't do it.... no matter how tempting it was to have great numbers at a lock-in or a day where kids didn't have school.
• Stuff breaks when it is used a lot. I'm actually surprised more things didn't break.
• If we had charged families for this program, even a small amount, I don't think it would be nearly as successful. But since we didn't try that, I don't know that for sure.
  
• If you build a big building and it sits empty, who are you really serving?
• For every naysayer, there were 10 people thrilled that we were reaching kids who don't know Christ. It's important to listen to concerns, but even more important to make sure you don't lose sight of Matthew 28:19-20.
• When the program started to become "successful", my first thoughts went towards how we can bring our youth group kids and our CUBE kids together. As I prayed about it more and more, I realized that wasn't really that important. Yes, Christ wants us to be one body, BUT there are lots of churches that do lots of things very differently, yet we can all resolve to the mission presented before us in the aforementioned Matthew 28:19-20 passage.

What a ride it's been. There have been some amazing lessons learned along the way. I can't wait to see what God has in store for us next...

Sing so loud it hurts...

I had the privilege of worshiping with some good friends and colleagues this morning up at Salem Lutheran Church in Tomball. It was our monthly gathering of DCE's and DCE Types for the Houston area. Salem has always had awesome facilities and they stepped it up a notch with their new community center. Even more so with their Student Ministry room inside the community center where they have worship... the same place we worshiped this morning as ONE body.

Usually at these meetings we worship, then break into some small groups for some discussion time on various topics. Today though, Duffy (Salem's Youth Pastor) really felt led to just worship. I'm glad he did. It was some really moving, refreshing worship. And it wasn't my voice that was hurting after singing, but my back. That's how you know you were really singing... because when your back hurts, it means you were using all of your lung power to sing praises to God.

When was the last time your back hurt from singing praises out? I know it had been awhile for me...

Perry Noble Thoughts...

Ran across some thoughts from Perry Noble, Senior Pastor at New Spring Church... thought they were interesting...

* We can’t lead publicly if we aren’t yielded to God privately.
* Do people leave your services saying, “That was a great service.”? Or does God say, “Wow that was a great service.”?
* Satan doesn’t want to split your church—he wants to spilt your staff.
* God most often puts his most powerful gift in his weakest vessels.
* It’s not a bad thing when people leave your church.
* You don’t need to close the back door to the church. The church is a body. If you close the back door to your body… (well... you know). Sometimes an enema is the best thing that could happen to a church.
* People can say what they want about your church but no one can deny the presence of God.
* We don’t want to build a monument and become a museum. We want to continue to be a movement.
* Without Him, we suck…and you do too.
* ABOUT THEIR MUSIC: Yes it’s loud and we like it that way. Some of our senior citizens bring and wear their own earplugs.
* If God tells you to say “balls” in church then say it. Everybody will love it…well, the men will love it. The women who buy their sweaters at Cracker Barrel will hate it.
* Know who sets the rules for me and my family? ME. If you don’t do it someone else will and it will kill you.
* I believe there’s been a major breakdown in communication between the church and Jesus.
* The communication breakdown is this: instead of asking Jesus to build HIS church, we’ve been asking him to build OUR church.
* If you think you’re perfect and your poop don’t stink, God can’t use you.
* I believe that every church in America is one or two changes away from doubling in size.
* Every denomination in America for the past 30 years has been declining. If that was you’re money you’d be doing something about it.
* You will never be comfortable hearing the voice of God if you’re not comfortable with change.
* When’s the last time you went and bought an organ music CD and played it in your car? (So why do churches have organs?)
* Everybody here can look at another church and call the change that church needs to make….but can you do it for your own church?
* How many of you would be willing to give your life for your kids/grandkids to come to know Christ? Okay….how many would be willing to give up your style of music to save your kids/grandkids? (Ouch!)
* If what’s going on in your church is manageable then God’s not there. You can’t manage a move of God.
* I’ve always thought it was weird that people plan revivals.
* Don’t ever let the money drive the decision. Let the voice of God drive the decision.
* If it’s God’s will... then it’s God’s bill.
* Pastor, your job when it comes to youth ministry: make sure they have enough money.
* Why do so many teenagers show up to our church? We spend money on them.
* We’ve got to get out of the business of competing with one another (other churches) and instead start completing one another.
* When you pay attention to a jackass, you can’t cast vision.
* The jackass in the church is the person who always screams, “I want to go deeper.”
* You’re only as deep as the last person you served.
* You wanna go deep? Let’s check your giving record and see how deep you really are.
* The people who say, “Y’all are just into numbers,” are the people who have no numbers.
* The reason I’m obsessed with numbers is because I was one of those numbers.

The kitchen looks a lot different w/o the uppers. Will look totalls different in a few hours! #fb

Thankful for our General Contractor!

I am very thankful for our General Contractor! This is next door to Canes. They lost about 100 ft of an upstairs wall...

Saturday Night

Can't beat a 16th Bday party for a fun filled Saturday night!

Brett Bortnem

Gas war

There's a gas war going on btwn bucees and chevron @ entrance to greatwood on 99. Down to 1.99/gallon!

Brett Bortnem