dear nate

Perhaps you’ve seen some of the coverage on ESPN recently. Ten years ago, the Oklahoma State basketball program suffered a tragedy—a plane crash that took the lives of ten people associated with their program.

The link I’m about to give you shares the story of one of the victims, Nate Flemming, and his dad.

You have to read it. And, oh, I dare you not to cry.

Here’s the link: Dear Nate

(I’m so impressed and inspired by the letter’s Nate’s dad wrote him—would love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment on my blog or on Facebook.)

baptisms at newpointe

Love it when we get to baptize people at NewPointe. It’s such a big deal when people are courageous enough to “go public” with their faith.

We baptized six people on Sunday. Here’s one video story that played before a baptism: Dawn Vaughn.

If you want to see all the baptism videos from Sunday, January 23 @ NewPointe, you can…click here.

Interested in getting baptized? Click here.

sunday’s scuds (january 23, 2011)

Sunday at NewPointe brought us part three of the Inbox series and a message by Dwight titled, The Best Investment. Here are the scuds as I heard ‘em:

• There are three things you can do with your life: 1. Waste it, 2. Spend it, 3. Invest it.
• Every person you come in contact with this week will spend forever somewhere.
• If you are a Christ-follower, you have a responsibility to be intentional with the people in your life.
• People matter to God and so they better matter to you and me.
• Do you know why there are so many dead churches in America? Because most of them are not willing to do this (be intentional about investing in others’ lives).
• If you don’t take this on individually, we can’t take it on corporately.
• Three out of four people say that someone would invite them to church, they would go.
• I feel tremendous pressure every Sunday morning…because some of you have friends or family here for the first time and you’re saying, “Dwight, don’t screw it up!”
• God will hold each of us accountable for what we do with the people he has put in our lives.
• God doesn’t do anything without a purpose. There’s a reason you have people in your life.
• God’s Word has not lost its power. We’ve just lost our influence.
• People don’t need to hear a message. They need to see a message.
• Standing on the corner and preaching with a megaphone is not courageous—it’s stupid. What takes courage is investing in someone’s life.
• If you don’t think your example is good enough for others to follow then you need to make some changes in your life.

‘Only God’ update

If you were at NewPointe’s Dover campus Sunday morning, you heard Dwight and Dave update us on the Only God campaign. If the information they dished out was able to whet your appetite, you might want to check out the link below.

It’s a blog update from our partners, Church Solutions Group, which includes photos and renderings of the facilities they talked about. You can click through and see ideas of what the buildings might look like at all three NPCC campuses in the near future.

Interested in knowing more? Here’s the link: NewPointe Church Moving Forward

sunday’s scuds (january 16, 2011)

Last week Dwight started a message series called “Inbox—messages worth saving.” The idea behind the series is this: if Dwight could send each of us an email that covers the most important things he’d want to say to us, what would he say? The answer is found in this series.

Sunday Dwight talked about having margin in our finances. He titled his message, “Money Smart.” Here are some of the scuds:

• If you are a Christ-follower, as you grow in your relationship with Him, He will lead you toward having financial margin in your life.
• When we don’t have financial margin in our lives, we rob ourselves.
• We tend to think that the reason we don’t have financial margin is because of our income. That’s simply not true.
• God doesn’t want you to be money smart because he wants more of your money. He doesn’t  need your money.
• Financial margin does not come without intentionality.
• The reason I want you to have financial margin is not so you can give more to NewPointe. The reason I want you to have financial margin is for you to experience freedom.
• When you’re focused on what you owe, you can’t focus on what you want.
• Many of us have surrendered our finances to a lifestyle.
• It will take drastic measures for you to move toward having financial margin in your life.
• As a church, we’re not even close to our giving potential.
• Money magnifies who you really are. If you’re a jerk, more money makes you more of a jerk.
• Debt creates a master-slave relationship. And slaves don’t get to make choices.
• If you can’t live on 80% of your income (give 10%, save 10%, live on 80%) then your lifestyle is too high for your income level.

dwight’s 25th anniversary press conference

Recently we celebrated the fact that Dwight has been the pastor of NewPointe Community Church for a whopping 25 years. We also decided that such a momentous occasion calls for a press conference. So…we invited the media and let them ask anything they wanted.

 

In all seriousness, 25 years at NewPointe is amazing. If you were there on the Sunday that we honored him (and showed this video), then you heard him say something like this: People ask me how I could be at one church for 25 years. I always tell them that it’s required that I’m willing to ask for forgiveness a lot and that I do a lot of forgiving.

I’m so thankful Dwight and his leadership. He’s made a difference in my life…and a whole bunch of other people’s too.

Congrats, Dwight, on 25 great years.

One more thing: if you talk to Dwight much at all, he still believes NewPointe’s best years are still to come. How exciting is that?!

bubba joe and archie

Bubba Joe had a gig this week and at that gig, he got to hang out with the only two-time Heisman Trophy winner in college football history. The one-and-only Archie Griffin.

Check it out:

Archie was thrilled to meet Bubba (I think)…though he did not ask Bubba for an autograph (which he’ll probably later regret).