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Are small groups important or what?
“Forgiveness only comes from God, but healing comes from confession in community…The one place in church life where James 5:16 has the best shot at being practiced is in a small group…The beginning of healing is revealing” (Better Together, 117).
I’ve personally experienced this recently. There was a “secret sin” I had been hiding. [...]

Yesterday we met my dad in Mansfield. Noah was able to spend time with Papa. It was fun!
We ate lunch at Skyline Chili. I can’t remember the last time I ate at Skyline. It was a nice treat. We also spent some time at Starbucks. That goes without saying!
Here are some pictures. Enjoy!

 
Noah ready to go!

Noah & Papa

Noah asleep [...]

I love the quote by Francis of Assisi. “Preach the gospel, if necessary, use words” (Better Together, 61).
Showing and sharing the gospel go hand-in-hand.

Our small group met again tonight. We’re praying and talking about the local missions project we’re going to do. I really appreciated the video teaching by Rick Warren and how he unpacked the feeding of the five thousand. Powerful principles! This is exactly where our small groups need to be. We need to be outward focused. We need to [...]

I’m not spending a lot of time with nonbelievers. They don’t seem to hang out at the church building during week. Imagine that! Today’s reading in Better Together reminded me of how intentional I need to be. Over the summer I played in a golf league. That was good. I need to do more things like that.
Today I made [...]

Today’s reading in Better Together is very convicting. Hospitality is a lost art with many people including me. We’re currently hosting our small group, but other than that we really haven’t had many people in our home. At some level our home needs to be a place of shelter and healing for our family. There [...]

We think way too small. There’s a suggested prayer at the end of the Day 9 reading in Better Together. The next to last sentence says, “Father, in faith we ask that in this next year our small group will be able to reach twenty people for you” (46). Twenty people? Wow! This mindset is [...]

We had another great Sunday at OCC! I’m so encouraged and jazzed by our 40 Days choir. I loved the song “I Am a Friend of God.” Hopefully we’ll sing that again soon.
I’ve already heard positive comments about “This Must be the Place.” Rob and the band did a great job on this song. The [...]

I say a loud “Amen!” to the following quote in Better Together today.
“The best thing we can do to reach our community for Christ is to love each other. As we love people into God’s kingdom, we start first by loving other believers. Until the world sees the love of God modeled in Christian community, [...]

One of the things in the Bible I don’t fully understand are the varying degrees of reward in heaven. It actually kind of bothers me. It doesn’t seem to fit God’s character; at least the way I know God. Rewards seem to place the focus on man’s work instead of Christ’s work. There seems to be a level of favoritism in it [...]