Pastor Brandon left on Monday night for a 2 week trip to Israel for a bunch of other Student Minsitry guys and gals.   The trip was put together by Hume Lake and we all thought it would be a terrific "professional development" opportunity for Brandon.  We're committed to helping our Pastors and Ministry Staff keep growing through new and stretching educational and missional opportunities.    

You can follow a blog of a trip HERE, if you're interested.  

I'm excited and just a bit envious about Brandon's opportunity, since I've never had an opportunity to go to Israel myself.  I'm sure walking where Jesus walked will make the Bible come alive in unique ways for Brandon and hopefully through Brandon for the students he teaches.  

Pray for Pastor Brandon (and his wife, Jenna, and son, Micah)  as you think about it over these next couple of weeks.  

Just before Christmas on Sunday, December 16, we took a few minutes in our worship services to look ahead to 2013.  We think this is vital information for all who call GraceSLO home . . . and for those who are just exploring GraceSLO.   In case you missed it, here's the brief audio and a few slides. . . . 

Vision 2013 Audio 

This first slide represents a picture of what we believe God is doing at GraceSLO right now and directions we want to keep moving. . . 

Slide #2 shows ongoing ministries related to the "Serve & Welcome" direction, and, below the line, some new initiaitves.  

Slide #3 shows the "Give & Go" direction. . . ongoing ministires above the line and 2013 projects below the line. 

Slide#4 shows the "Connect & Grow" direction  . . . with current and new priorities.   

We hope you're as excited about the directions God is taking GraceSLO as we are.  Thanks for your faithful service and giving to the Lord here at GraceSLO.   God is using you to accomplish His work.  

I believe the Gospel really changes lives.  The Gospel doesn't just JUSTIFY, it SANCTIFIES.  Change happens as we increasingly internalize the finished work of Christ . . . as we more and more realize that our standing before God doesn't depend on what we do, but on what Jesus has done.   As that happens, our lives are slowly, but really changed from the inside out.   

One of the changes I believe the Gospel brings about in our lives is in the area of generosity.  The Gospel makes us generous people.  I think that's happening at GraceSLO.    The Gospel is making us a generous people.  

Here's what I shared just before last Sunday's Benevolent Fund offering . . . in case you missed it . . . and I've thrown in a few more stats . . . 

Through your generous giving, the people of GraceSLO have, in just the last month, provided . . . 

• $11,265 for Hurricane Sandy relief through Samaritan's Purse and Calvary Presbyterian church in Allenwood, NJ
   
• 100 Thanksgiving bags for needy familes in our community.  Here's a pic . . . 

• 110 Turkeys for hungry families in our community
   
• 300 coats for needy, cold people in our community
   
• 100 Christmas gifts for babies of teen moms in our community
   
• 28 Christmas gifts for children from the homeless shelter in our community
   
• hundreds of hours of time and energy to accomplish these mercy ministries

On top of all this "over and above" giving, our General Fund giving is now slightly above our budget year-to-date.  

Isn't it exciting?   Do you see what I mean?  The Gospel makes a generous people!   It's happening!  Focus on the Gospel . . . drink in the Gospel . . . meditate on the Gospel . . . fix your eyes on Jesus . . . and watch what happens!  Thank you for your generous giving to the work of the Gospel at GraceSLO.  Let's excel still more. . . joyfully! 

(By the way, Dori Iunker, our Children's Ministry Director, just shared that she's got 16 more children from the homeless shelter for whom gifts can be purchased.  Grab a name from the tree on Sunday in the courtyard.) 

I give thanks for our GraceSLO Elders.  These guys are laying their lives out for the Lord and His people . . . teaching Covenant Membership and other classes, leading Growth Groups, shepherding the church family, leading in worship services, sitting on leadership teams and coming together for long, grueling meetings after their own long work days.   Theirs is a commitment of time, energy, and emotion.  

Last Thursday night we met for 4 hours to discuss a quite full agenda that included time with Brian Lockhart, the new Director of Empart USA.  

(If you're new to GraceSLO, North India has the highest concentration of unreached peoples in the world.  Empart is a church planting movement in North India through whom we support a Church Planter's Transformation Center.  This Center trains 25 church planters at time in a live-in program and then sends them out to plant churches.  This is our second year of financial partnership with Empart.  I have had an opportunity to travel to India with others from GraceSLO on two occasions.)

Brian is a really neat guy, who just happened to attend Cal Poly.  He flew in from Colorado just to spend time with our team.  He had a friend Sam with him.  You can see Sam and Brian in the pic above with our Elder team.  Todd Talley couldn't make the meeting that night.   Pastor Al who oversees our missions area is also present in the pic.  

Because our partnership with Empart represents a significant investment for our church, our Elder Team feels a great stewardship responsibility.  Aware that organizations can and do sometimes change, we're committed to continuing to do our "due diligence" through ongoing evaluation of Empart, its leadership and its finances.  Our meeting with Brian was a part of this ongoing process.   In other words, we want to avoid writing checks with our eyes closed.  We want to be active and involved partners.   Our continued and future investment depends on this ongoing evaluation.  

Our elders are encouraged by the growth in the Empart USA organization, their record keeping and financial accountability. For now, we're excited about our ongoing partnership with Empart in North India.

I'm looking forward to taking another team from GraceSLO hopefully in November 2013.  Want to be a part of the team?  

Our family has been singing this song this week and has had fun figuring out this video. . . 

Every day you wake, every breath you take. . . He's given.  Enjoy today!  

In case you didn't notice, 890AM, our local Christian talk station, quietly went off the air November 1, 2012.  Logos Broadcasting Corporation, which also airs K-Life, has posted a letter explaining their decision at their website HERE. 

What this means for GraceSLO is that our weekly radio program which aired Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings is now no more, as well.   We're disappointed because the broadcast was both a service to ongoing and occasional shut-ins and an outreach to the local Central Coast Community.  We are open to other broadcast opportunities.  

In the meantime, all GraceSLO messages are still available here in our ever-growing website Resource Library and via our iTunes podcast.  

And speaking of the podcast, how about a few people CLICK over there and leave some current reviews.  The last reviews were left in 2006!  

Stumbled on to this fantastic prayer written by Scotty Smith and thought it was so applicable to the themes we're learning in "The Life of Joseph"  . . . . 

(CLICK HERE for messages you've missed!) 

A Prayer about God Working in Hard Providences and Pain

Posted By Scotty Smith On October 17, 2012 @ 5:48 am In Prayer | No Comments

Article printed from Heavenward by Scotty Smith: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scottysmith

URL to article: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scottysmith/2012/10/17/a-prayer-about-god-working-in-hard-providences-and-pain/

On Tuesday of this week, our Ministry Staff met offsite to layout the GraceSLO 2013 All Church Calendar.  I love being with our team, but I don't always enjoy these particular days.   Because our staff is both good at what they do and passionate about what they do, it can be a challenge to look outside of our individual ministries and think about the big picture and the sheer volume of ministry we're creating here at GraceSLO.  With some new staff who have never been a part of this process and to help us begin "on the same page," yesterday, I shared these 12 reasons we're committed to continuing to simplify . . . 

• As staff, we want to live and model sane, balanced lives and help others live sane, balanced lives.  
   
• People need to be spiritually led and fed.  Leading and feeding involves helping folks determine time and focus priorities in the church.  We are called and commanded to guide people toward spiritual growth.  
   
• We want to be relationship-driven, not program-driven.   
   
• We want to encourage, not undermine family time.  Sometimes what we do in ministry actually undermines the family, instead of nurturing it.  
   
• We want to reduce competition with the elder-determined priority of Growth Groups, the most effective setting for spiritual growth, discipleship and assimilation. 
   
• We want to avoid projecting/teaching that spiritual busyness = following Christ.
   
• We want to challenge spiritual consumerism.  The local church is not a purveyor of religious services, it's a Gospel community.
   

• We want to leave room for and encourage relationships with non-believers and community involvement. 
   
• We want to move people to service, not just event attendance.  
   
• We want to fight the tendency to measure our ministry success by the number of people at our ministry events.  Event attendance does not equal discipleship. 
   
• We want to grow authentic Gospel community.  Event-based ministry alone doesn't accomplish this.  We believe Growth Groups are the most effective way to grow real Gospel community among 1000+ people. 
   
• We want a united, coherent ministry, not competition among our ministries.  
   
• There is a power in focus. Less is more. (Apple and  In-n-Out are two models of simplicity and effectiveness.) 

I'm not yet sure if we simplified our 2013 calendar or not.  I know we didn't add much, but I'm still evaluating if we subtracted anything.  It's excruciating to subtract.  Everything we do is valuable and worthwhile.   But sanity and shepherding requires that we subtract.  Families must say "no" to great opportunities.  Church families must do the same.   

You need to know our leadership is thinking about and working on these issues.   We want you to be thinking about these issues, too.   For now, our first priority beyond Sunday morning worship service attendance for any and all who attend GraceSLO  is connection with a Growth Group.   

After our meeting yesterday, Judi Peet suggested a "sabbatical month" for our church.  One month in the year where we didn't do anything but worship on Sundays together.  I love that idea.  It sounds inviting and delicious.  I'd love two months!  

What do you think about that idea?  

In Sunday's services, I mentioned that today, Tuesday, October 9 is the deadline to register to vote in the upcoming election.  

(Someone corrected me afterwards and told me there's a later deadline if you don't want to receive everything by mail.  Not sure about that, but I'll look into it.) 

You can register to vote online HERE.   Every election is an important election and this one is no different.  

If you're new to GraceSLO, you may be curious about how we handle political matters in our church. . . .

Here's a message, I preached a while back entitled, "The Gospel & Your Politics" which addresses these issues.  

Here at GraceSLO, we're focused on preaching and teaching the Gospel.   We believe that is our primary and first calling as local church . . . . to preach the Gospel to believers and unbelievers week in and week out and whenever the church gathers.   We're careful with any thing which threatens, confuses, or displaces this Gospel focus . . . including politics.  This is in line with Paul's approach and priority in ministry. . . 

For I determined to know among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

--1 Corintihians 2:2

We want the Gospel to be crystal clear when people come to GraceSLO and we don't want people who come to our church to confuse the Gospel with nationalism or a particular political platform or agenda.   Some of our leadership have VERY strong political convictions, but we recognize that Bible-believing Christians can hold varying political convictions.  We believe Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents can follow Christ and should come together to worship in the local church.   When we come together, we come as followers and worshippers of Jesus Christ.  When we gather, we come together as citizens of a heavenly kingdom, distinct from and transcending all earthly kingdoms.  When we come together to worship, we lay aside our political labels and convictions at the door.  

Despite our organizational boundaries, we believe political issues are extremely important issues for individual Christians.  We encourage individual Christians to be involved in the political process of our free country, integrating their Biblical convictions as they go to the polls.   We believe some Christians should run for office and affirm that as a legitimate and God-honoring vocational calling.   Every election is an important election and Christians should be active, informed citizens.  

Given our Gospel focus, we're careful with how we handle political issues in our church.  Here's what GraceSLO does. . . 

• GraceSLO does encourage voter registration and voting.
   
• GraceSLO does pray for elections in a general way. 
   
• GraceSLO does pray for political leaders of all political stripes.  
   
• GraceSLO does carefully address Biblical issues that happen also to be political issues (marriage and the sanctity of life/abortion are two examples).
   
• GraceSLO does open our facilities as a community polling place.  

Here's what GraceSLO does not do . . . 

• GraceSLO does not endorse political candidates.
   
• GraceSLO does not hand out voter/election guides.  
   
• GraceSLO does not endorse political platforms.  
   
• GraceSLO does not permit  political candidates to speak in GraceSLO ministry settings. 
   
• GraceSLO does not permit our congregational directory or database to be used for political purposes or campaigns.  
   
• GraceSLO does not permit ministry settings or small groups to be high jacked or overrun by political agendas or political passion.  When we gather together, we gather to understand, process, apply and live the Gospel together.   We want to be charitable and tolerant of one another and our differing political views. 

We understand that some people wish we'd do more as a local church in the area of politics.  We understand that some people wish we'd do less.  We've tried to find a healthy balance that reflects our Gospel-focus.  

Here's a message that has been helpful for our elders as we've thought through and discussed this issue.  Its quite good and I couldn't agree more!