Podcasting is an amazing technology that we now have access to some of the best preaching in the world at the click of a button. We can grow closer to God, we can listen to the message from our church if we were gone that weekend. A world of information and growth has been opened up to us. You can even listen to many seminary courses via podcast and get the equivalent of a seminary education for free. Its pretty amazing.

Here is the flip side. I see a disturbing trend developing among Christianity in America. We are more excited about listening to a “famous” preacher than we are concerned about actually doing the work of God. In a sense its kind of like watching some reality TV shows. You simply sit and observe other people achieving something great in a show like The Biggest Loser or Extreme Makeover Home Edition. You are not actually achieving anything, you are just watching other people do great things.

I feel this is what some people in churches do. They are more content on actually watching and observing other great teachers and preachers do ministry than they themselves are actually doing it. This is a dangerous thing for American Christianity. We need to get out of the pew and actually do the work we watch other people doing. It creates a lazy, self centered, me first Christianity. Its easier to listen to a podcast than it is to actually minister to our friend who has serious issues.

God did not call us to listen to other people teach and do nothing ourselves, he called us to make disciples. Listen to podcasts, but do not let it substitute doing actual ministry. There must be a balance in our lives.

I am not saying there is no truth to this, there is lots of truth. Our conscience must always be clear before God. I am speaking to the person who uses this statement as a crutch as an excuse to justify their own bad attitudes, to justify their own dysfunction even when its been confronted.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:4, “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent, it is the Lord who judges me” Wow, ouch. Just because our conscience is clear doesn’t automatically we have done everything right.

Brings a good reminder to the exaltation of the “Christian Conscience.”

I know he would never remember but I’ve run into him a few times over the years along with his wife Ann and they have always been very kind, courteous and genuine. No one would argue, even a die hard Gator or Hurricane fan that Coach Bowden is a great man whether or not you agree with his faith in Christ or not. 

If you follow FSU Football at all, the last decade was not on par with the previous decade and up to FSU standards. I was struck the most after hearing Coach Bowden share about his bout with cancer was that it happened in 07. 2007 was a tough year for FSU. We went 7-6, 0-6 according to the NCAA because we had to “vacate wins”…….ridiculous.

Anyways, Coach Bowden never once mentioned, as he was getting lampooned by sports analyst talking heads, catching heat from Boosters, about his cancer. He could have easily pulled the cancer card and shut up the mouths of the haters and lowered the heat level on him and his job. 

My question is what are you using to make excuses for you? Inevitably all of us are feeling some pressure in one area of our lives. Do we make excuses for it, or keep our mouths shut and handle it with integrity like Coach Bowden?

The biggest reason I hate being misunderstood is because for me I feel like it is attacking one of the most important things in my life, my character & integrity, in other words, my motives. It is very important to me to always make sure that I am doing things out of a pure heart and pure motives. I’m by no means perfect but I feel like I generally do a good job aiming to please the only one that matters, Christ.

As a leader you will always be misunderstood at some level because people on the outside never really understand the fullness of every situation and decision you have to make as a leader.

I’ve definitely learned in moderating and participating in several incredibly heated arguments over the years that there are two sides to every story. There is always another perspective to think about. Bad leaders listen to one side, make assumptions and then execute judgements. Good leaders listen to both sides, get all the pertinent information available and then work out the best solution for both parties involved.

Unfortunately, I feel many times basic scriptural principles are ignored when conflict arises. In scripture it is very clear that when we have an issue with our brother we should go talk to them. We should not go talk to someone else about them. (Matthew 18) 

Reality is many of us as Christians intellectually understand this simple truth, the problem is, we just do not practice it. We are educated beyond our level of obedience. I have never once in my life seen a situation get resolved by talking to someone else first and gossiping rather than the person you are offended with.

Unfortunately, I have seen countless “mature” Christians rip churches and relationships apart because of their inability to deal with issues in a biblical way. I am not perfect at this, but I want to get it right so bad and more than anything, I want this to be as deep as possible in the DNA of SouthCoast Church. I will viscously protect the unity of our church and be absolutely militant about people handling conflict in a biblical way.

If there is anything you need to get off your chest, than do it, have a hard conversation now, get it out there and deal with your issues, I promise you’ll feel better when its over. 

We are a church plant, so last time I checked, we don’t have hundreds of thousands in the bank, we don’t have a lot of wiggle room, but I felt we needed to do something to serve a single mom. We can’t build anyone a new house, we can’t give away a car, but we can do something, we just had to figure out what that was. 

I think too many churches wait until they are at a certain point to plant another church, to bless someone, to serve someone, etc. I think we just need to stop waiting for enough money or for the timing to be right and just do it. I think we as humans do the exact same thing. Newsflash, you will never be ready, just do it. Nike had it right the whole time.

I really believe that its more blessed to give than to receive. At SouthCoast one of our core values is, “We believe irrational generosity is the only way to live; sacrificially giving our time, money and resources.” This is at the core of who we are and we are going to do our best to be a blessing to the people in our community and around us even when it doesn’t make sense logically.

Now I understand that for many of you objections are flying around in your head already. Some Christians look at people in the porn industry with a heart of judgement because of what they do, rather than looking at them as humans created in the image of God with eyes of compassion.

With that being said, this in no way waters down the importance of the gospel. I 100% disagree with their lifestyle and I am not condoning it. I believe that it is unbiblical, sinful, and like anyone else, if they do not repent of their sin they are destined to hell. But with that being said, I believe that these people need the power of the gospel in their lives just as much as you and I. They need to know the love of Christ and the sacrifice that He made for them. They need to know the same compassion that we experienced through another person, not condemnation.

In addition to all this, the reality is is that some of you reading this blog and will in one breath condemn pornography, but the reality is, is that you are held in its clutches. You also need the life transforming power of the gospel. If that is you, feel free to email me privately and it would be my honor to talk and pray with you. E-Mail me at ross at southcoastchurch dot tv

Why do I want to go? A few reasons. One of the things that drew me to Miami was the extreme, unreached nature of this city. It is one of, if not, the most unchurched city in America with less the 3% of people attending any form of a church. With the high Latino, generally Catholic population, we can estimate about 1-1.5% protestant Evangelical. There are literally not many cities in the planet that have less evangelicals than Miami percentage wise. I want to be where there is a need. Its how God has wired me. I’m no better than someone in a city with many great churches, its just where God has me. I am drawn to take the life changing power of the gospel to dark places, places where there is massive need. As you could imagine, there is a massive need at a porn convention.

Secondly, I want to see how xxxchurch.com ministers to people in this lifestyle. I don’t have any experience with this lifestyle or with ministering to people who do this for a living, but Miami is absolutely full of sexual perversion, it is a huge issue in all of south Florida. I think this will help make me a better minister of the gospel. I also believe it will give me deeper compassion and brokenness for my city.

Thirdly, this is my city. Miami is where I live, raise my kids, plant this church, its where I am committed to doing life. I want to see the spiritual climate changed in such a way that there is no market for Exxotica Miami to come back here. I want to go in praying, believe God for miracles and life change. I have to do something about the spiritual climate in my city. Its not someone else’s job its mine. In all of my years of ministry I’ve never seen complaining to other Christians about the state of our culture save one person. I’m sick of Christians doing that. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Lastly, it sure didn’t seem to be an issue to Jesus. He had no problem not only hanging around prostitutes but actually defending them in front of others…….when they were not saved. When was the last time I hung out with a prostitute or someone of ill repute in our society and just loved them? I can’t remember.

I think many Christians unfortunately do not live lives like those of Jesus Christ. I believe He would go to the darkest parts of our cities. He would go to the sick, broken people and preach the gospel and love them and serve them. Remember, Jesus didn’t come to save those who are healthy, but those who are sick. 

So what am I asking you for? I am not asking for your money, its coming out of my pocket. I am paying for it myself, I think of it as a spiritual investment in my city. We pay the ministry so that they can print up  Bibles, rent booth space and print up materials to give to people at the convention. I am asking for your prayers. We will be there Friday, Saturday & Sunday and training and dinner together with the team Thursday night. Amy is going to come along for part of it with me. I know we are going into a spiritually dark place so I am going to fast tomorrow (Wednesday) and pray and consecrate myself to God. Pray that God gives me the discipline and victory over lust in my own life at this convention. Pray that I would honor Jesus and make him known. Pray that lives would be transformed. Pray the same prayers for Amy.

I would love to know that you are praying for us this weekend. Please leave a comment and let other people know also. Retweet out this blog, link it on your Facebook profile, spread the word, I’ll take all the prayers I can get. Thanks!

Pastor, if you do not talk about money in your church, you are contributing to one of the biggest issues of our culture. Fatherlessness. Be bold, who cares if a handful of people leave your church? Generations of future and current children will be saved because you were bold enough to preach about it.

When I get to heaven I am going to have to take all the things that God has “loaned” me and give them back to him.

My material goods are on loan, my spiritual gifts are on loan, my money is on loan, my time is on loan, my kids are on loan. You get the point. Lets steward every single gift that God has given us because ultimately, its all his. Let’s not be selfish with what we have, its not ours, God loaned it to us.

You better take care of it and steward it well. Or else!

Many parents, let me rephrase that, thousands of parents go to their kids football, baseball, soccer, etc. games all the time, every day. It seems like on countless SportsCenter specials I’ve seen an interview with the parent of a kid talking about how they “never missed a game.” Now while this is commendable, and I by no means am trying to rain on anyone’s parade, and in most cases in America, we need more parental involvement, not less, I want to offer a slightly different perspective to some who are trying their best to parent their kids.

I was blessed to have two parents who are still married today, attend as far as I can remember, most every activity that I did. Sports, band (I don’t want to hear any ugly band nerd comments:), spelling bees (same goes for this one), field days, concerts and what not. They drove me all over the place and all over our little town. Honestly, I don’t remember if they went to everything I did, but I know that they made it a priority to go to most of it.

Here’s what I’m getting at. I think that we as parents need to go to our kids soccer games and concerts and all that fun stuff. We should not miss those moments. Our kids want to be supported, they need to know that we accept them regardless of how they perform and they need to know that they are a priority in our lives.

But here is where I see the danger. Sometimes I feel like parents wear the “I’ve never missed a game in my entire life badge” like it validates them for being a good parent. Unfortunately, parenting is a lot more than just attending things. I want to suggest that sometimes, if we actually go to every single event that our kid does, it could actually be a harm to him or her.

I think its important that I as a parent raise my kids to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Sometimes, my job may get in the way, I may have to be out of town, there may be a moment that something literally has to be done right then and I won’t be able to attend a certain event. I think that in small doses this is healthy for our kids. They need to know that all of the planet does not stop to watch them kick a ball back and forth.

I am by no means using this to abdicate my role as a parent but to challenge all of us as parents to really check our motives. We need to find the balance of raising great kids, being good parents and being excellent in what we do.

So in conclusion, should our kids be a priority? Absolutely! Should we use them as an excuse to not be excellent in what we do? I don’t think we should. Simply attending every event that our kids participate in at the detriment of other priorities in our lives is unhealthy for us and them.

God has given us multiple stewardships in our life and we have to figure out how to steward them all.