NewSpring Turns 10

This is NewSpring’s 10th Anniversary service!

It is amazing that nearly 15,000 people filled up the Bi-Lo center showed up to church Sunday, January 23, 2010 for NewSpring’s 10 Anniversary. It has been amazing to see God work through this ministry.

Click here or on the picture to watch the service in full.

Remember… The Best Is Yet to Come!

NewSpring Columbia!

Newspring Columbia is set to open on September 27!  It will be located in Irmo, SC with service times on Sundays at 9:15am and 11:15am.

You can check out more information about the Columbia campus here

I can’t wait to see what happens when NewSpring opens in a city like Columbia! Get excited!

I’ll post sometime soon on a book I’m actually reading for a class. It is The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry by Doug Fields. I have learned a great deal from this book and it has been a great read. Look for it soon.

Screwtape and the Church

The Screwtape Letters is among my favorite, if not my favorite C.S. Lewis book. This book is in the style of satirical letters written from the point of view of the Screwtape demon to his nephew in training, Wormwood. It is not your typical novel, as it is showing every tactic the devil has his demons use in order to influence us and turn us away from God. I highly recommend this read.

To begin, I will talk about a section of the book that caught my attention unlike any other chapter in the book. Wormwood’s “patient” has just been introduced to the church and one might think this is trouble for the devil.

“My dear Wormwood,
I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neightbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces on the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of ‘Christians’ in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real – though of course and unconscious – difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.”

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: HarperOne, 2001. pg. 5-6

Note how Screwtape recognizes early on that the Church is one of his allies. What are his other allies? both mental and physical and mental habits, and other Christians among other things. The church that spans all of time, The Bride of Christ, is not the ally, instead, it is the physical church that some of us attend each week that is recognized as the ally of the Screwtape. How true is that? How easy is it to see a simple flaw in the physical nature of the church and instantly judge all of Christianity. This is a battle that many Christians have been losing for so long. When we put the building before the faith is when we make the church Satan’s ally.

When we make the Church all about concrete, we defile the Bride of Christ. The Church has been here as nations have fallen and new parties have risen. How many different denominations have come from small disagreements over a long period of time? These little differences have caused so many to be drawn away from the Church altogether. The Church is strongest when we are all united in worship, not fighting each other. A civil war is exactly what the Devil wants. Making a big deal out of all these disagreements is exactly what takes people out of the Church, and we wonder why they left…

Please feel free to comment and give some input. This topic is loaded and I can’t do it justice in this short entry. More entries will be coming soon.

Summer Update, C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

In the coming months I’m going to begin blogging on my daily Bible study and second reading of “The Screwtape Letters.” With it, I also have decided to use the gift I got my father for father’s day: “A Year With C.S. Lewis”. This book is like a daily devotional and thoughts from many of C.S. Lewis’ novels broken up into short daily readings.

I won’t be updating daily as summer and work don’t always allow but I will be working on a weekly brain-dump in the form of writings on this blog.

Check for updates because summer has plenty in store, including Family Camp coming Mid-July. Newspring will also be having youth camp July 20-24. God is going to be moving in big ways through all of this. I pray that families can make it out to family camp and worship together for the week.

First Post – My Last “Real” Summer

I’m home in Charlotte, NC with the family for my last summer in school. Sorry for the lack of posts this past semester. Here’s a song that I love and lets me know it is summertime.

Land Down Under” by Men At Work…

Springtime in The South

Only in the Carolinas do we have 6 inches of snow over Spring break, then the very next week have a high of 85 with me in shorts and sandles. Gotta love it though… It feels like Summer outside and I’m as happy as can be.

God is so good. I have had the ability to hang out with some good friends in Charlotte with my girlfriend, spend time with my family and enjoy a bit of Summer weather. Thank you Thomas and Kat! I have some amazing friends and God reminds me of that fact daily. Let’s enjoy the Summer weather before it’s gone again in a week. What has God done for you recently? I know that everyone is freaking out because of this economic crisis but honestly, does God not take care of His followers? Do you have a roof over your head? You’re checking this blog and you have access to a computer. God has blessed me with so much and I am so thankful.

NewSpring Church had a message yesterday entitled, “Where’s My Bailout?”, and I recommend taking a look. Perry shows us what God’s word says about how to use our money for His kingdom and how He will always take care of us when we do this. The stock market is falling… What God do you worship? Money or The Almighty God?

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope that everyone has a wonderful and safe Spring break, or had a wonderful and safe Spring break.

Ps. I love my yellow lab, Sandy, so here are some pics…

This is a pretty funny shot

This is my backyard after 1 hour

It's a tough life...

snow is slowing down

She has some personality... and she likes the Tigers

We see a new side of her when this stuff called snow is on the ground

Long Time, No Post

School has been really busy this semester and I just haven’t been able to take that much time to blog. I have put a lot of thinking into a class I’m currently taking, Systems Analysis, and I have really begun to take interest in this field.

In the meantime, please pray for me as I turn in my Resumѐ to Duke Energy in Oconee County for a summer internship. The position is very competitive and I would really love to have this opportunity to get in a field that I plan take part in after my college career. It would be a great way to gain experience and work over the summer.

I hope to be posting a little more often, but this week is going to be a busy one. Please keep me in your prayers and thanks again for checking up on my blog. God bless.