We’re on the third blog entry about this topic of evangelism. In the first two, I debunked two common misconceptions among many Christians: worship services are the best place to win the lost, and the lost will come to a cool worship service. With this mindset, we tend to think of how we can make our worship services more attractive to non-worshipers, and how we can get word out that we have really cool services. What we really need to understand is that worship services are for worshipers.

In my previous blog entry, I started a conversation about how to grow our church. I brought up two very common points that seem to be jumping off places for many Christians.

How can our church grow? What’s the key? What do we need to do to grow our church? Well, first let’s define what we mean by church growth. Actually, what we don’t mean. Church growth is not recruiting Christians from other churches. If we take 25 people from Cherry Hills, our church has not grown. We’ve gained nothing for the Kingdom. Church growth is reaching the lost. As Jesus said, “making disciples” from those who were not.

We’re singing a hymn this Sunday. What?!? Why is a contemporary service singing anything older than 3 years? Don’t get me started . . .

David said in Psalm 14,

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

For the past few weeks, we have been studying the story of Pentecost in Acts 2. This study includes the coming of the Holy Spirit. His presence manifest itself in the wind, fire, and sound of various languages being spoken in understanding. As this miraculous situation occurs, some determine that they are drunk with wine. Peter stands up to address the crowd.

When a guy and girl fall in love, get married, and go on their honeymoon, they are riding on cloud nine. Their hearts are exploding with feelings of love and they think, “This will never end; I’ll feel this way forever!” I know because I felt that when I got married. But at some point, the honeymoon does end. (Corinne, sweetheart, if you’re reading this, we haven’t reached that point, yet . . .) There comes a point in time when being “in love” must be supplanted by love.

Last Sunday in worship we concluded the first chapter of our study called Acts: Chronicles of the Church. The Book of Acts in our New Testament is a history of the early church. In fact, Acts is pretty much our only history of the earliest years of the church, though we can glean much from the other New Testament writings. I approached the study last Sunday by answering the conventional questions of who, where, when, why, and what.

I received a nice email this week. One of our members (Al Coffey) wrote to say that she is enjoying the journey through Acts with us. She does elder care for a family member and is often unable to be in our sanctuary on Sunday mornings. So today I am celebrating the world of technology that allows her to listen to the Sunday messages, read our blogs, and hear our studio podcasts. Because she is using our online resources, she is as up-to-date with our study of Acts as those who attend our services each week.

iTunes is one of my favorite toys. It’s easy to use, fast, and offers so many different things - music, movies, podcasts, to name a few. One other really cool feature iTunes has to offer is something called iTunes U. Basically, a bunch of colleges, universities, and seminaries have been recording class lectures and posting entire classes on iTunes . . . free of charge!