Boot camp at Freedom Valley

This Fall we are planning to host our first ever church planter's boot camp at Freedom Valley. This event will happen November 2-6 at Freedom Valley, 3185 York Road, Gettysburg.

Anyone who is considering or planning a church plant is welcome to come. Registration is not yet open, but hopefully will be soon.

Boot camp is held and taught by Church Multiplication Network, from Springfield, Missouri. It is an intensive week of prayer, Bible study, planning, and vision development for those who wish to plant a church at some point in the future.

Jason Fitch plans to help with event production details. I am working on recruiting and orchestrating the event with CMN. hopefully YOU plan to be there or in prayer as God brings many new, life-giving churches into existence, and de-populates Hell because of our work!

The ache in a good idea

I love the rush of a good idea. Hope rushes in where frustration once drained off energy and failed attempts brought a dull plodding gait.

But the rush of a good idea often gets tempered with the ache of what you have to give up to get to that new place you dream of.

Our new 1pm Sunday service experiment is already looking like it could be that way. We are pumped about the prospects of breaking our growth barrier. But there is also an ache about what we give up. Like that feeling you get when you met the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then realize that being a couple, while cool, also requires you to give up some freedoms you enjoyed. I am very proud of my staff for choosing to do this even though it costs them a lot. For example:

1. Room for Sunday afternoon events. The church building will be a little fuller, and some ministries will struggle to find time for their big events.

2. Sunday afternoon lunches with our families. Sunday afternoon events, period. Holidays with family things that happen on Sundays will be challenging.

3. Energy. It's just two more hours, but we will leave weekend services, bone tired. And it will take hours to replenish that supply.

4. Desire to linger. When you have multiple services coming, you sometimes tend to reserve some relational energy, and not work as hard at connecting with people when you can because you might need some energy later for the next service.

5. Office time. Each of us have crushing loads of needed study, prep time, record keeping, follow up calls, and time to organize ourselves. But with two ore hours of service times, some of that office time will re-adjust a bit, leaving us with the possible temptation to stress out more.

Are there others? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

wow this week

What a week.

3 more possible church planters contacted me. Could we possible still get the 10 new churches by Harvest Cry next year? That blows me away. Today, it looks possible. There are still 2 more possible planters that I have not even had time to get back to yet. What a crazy, wonderful problem.

Also this week, my team took on a gutsy possible idea to add more work to their schedule- a lot more. You would think that my over worked, underpaid team would shrink away from ideas that make much more work for them. But when they got hold of the possibility that it could mean more people in Heaven for eternity, they lept ahead to the YES!

These are some seriously wild adventurers for God, and I am so happy to be teamed up with them. I pray huge God-blessings on them.

Today, I experienced the first of 12 coaching experiences with Nelson Searcy's network. I am very excited about this stuff!

Also today, Rich and Ashley Fogal and I were given an idea that we think could affect many thousands of people for eternity!

It's late- way late. But I am pretty pumped about all that God allows me to do. This may be hard work, but it feeds my soul somewhere so deep inside.

another great coaching session

I feel like God dropped a very cool idea on me, right out of Heaven.

Today I had my fourth coaching session with the largest group yet. I am very excited about meeting with each of my team members (some paid, and some volunteers) to do our simple yet very powerful coaching strategy.

This is beginning to feel like one of the best little ideas God ever gave me. I hope to build world class leaders and send them out to conquer! These guys are very exciting!

The plan works like this; all of my staff and key volunteers (about 38 people) have put themselves in teams of about 6. We meet to discuss goals and help each other turns aims into do-able goals for the following 6 weeks. 6 weeks later we meet again to discuss progress and explore where to go next.

I still have a couple of openeings left in case anyone reading this is a leader and wants to be coached!

the right question

Last evening Cori Herbert asked me such a wonderful question. It challenged and blessed me, and made me ask myself if I ask God the right questions.

She said; "how can my ministry (Center of the Arts) do more to minister to Freedom Valley"? What a great question!

Recently I have been asking God to help me pray. It is one thing to ramble on to Him- he is such a patient listener. But, access to Him is so incredibly exciting, and has potential that I believe I can use much greater than I have so far.

And so, the new prayer that God put on my heart excites me deep in my soul beyond my ability to explain. The prayer is something like this: God help me develop world class leaders to the point that everyone else wants to hire them! (I will happily bless them in actually taking those job offers too!)

Our newest coaching tool; (Six-by-six, from Bill Hybel's Axiom book) has the potential to finally give me one more nugget toward getting this done. We have just started this simple coaching system, where I am meeting with current and future staff in teams of 6. We meet once every 6 weeks to pray, set goals for the following six weeks, and stir each other up with personal excellence.

I love it! I cannot waith to see this leadership team soar to radical, world class heights!

My great disappointment

So for the third or fourth time, I went to general Council because I was hoping for a piece of agenda that I cared about. I was hoping for change in that area.

It didn't happen. I am disapointed.

But that is not my real disapointment, exactly.

I am not even sure if our little idea would have made a big difference. It was just an 4 year experiment for 40 churches nationwide to create a new kind of district- a relational one. Currently all of our districts are geographical, which means that if your church is within the boundaries of Penn-Del for example, that yours is a PennDel church because of where it is geographically located.

The new district, because it would represent essentially a new wine skin, could have become a laboratory to experiment with and try some new ways to get some things done.

Because, here is my disapointment; in my ministry life time, church attendance in America has zoomed to about half of what it was in the early 80's when I started out.

My heart aches about that. I am weeping as I write this. My colleagues and I have failed. Our land is not reached, our once Christian nation is in apostasy, and I don't know of anyone who has an idea to fix it.

THAT IS MY BIGGEST DISAPOINTMENT; not with the AG for rejecting our idea. Not with my friends who have no idea how to fix it.

My biggest disapointment is with me.

I don't have an idea either.

80% of my culture does not attend church. I have small ideas, like about how to grow a church. I have a few larger ideas to plant more churches. But all of that together is so far from an idea, plan, strategy or way to reach my nation with the gospel.

Oh God, give me souls, or I die.

http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_12940359

Pastor prays 'in Jesus' name'

Controversy marked the Rev. Gerry Stoltzfoos' service as the state Senate's guest chaplain.

By ERIN JAMES

The Evening Sun

Posted: 07/30/2009 01:00:00 AM EDT

The Senate floor, bustling seconds before, came to a halt as the Rev. Gerry Stoltzfoos stepped to the podium.

"I am painfully aware that there are many here today who have embraced belief systems other than mine. I am not here to say that everyone ought to believe as I do," Stoltzfoos read slowly from a prepared statement. "But I can only pray to my God. If you believe in some other power, I invite you to address yours as I address mine."

Then, as senators on both sides of the aisle bowed their heads, Stoltzfoos went on to ask God for guidance, grace and forgiveness in a prayer tailored specifically for the work of a Legislature.

But there was another message in the local pastor's prayer, which he delivered Wednesday morning when he served as the state Senate's guest chaplain.

Stoltzfoos - the lead pastor at Freedom Valley Worship Center near Gettysburg - concluded by saying, "For those of us who are Christians, we pray in Jesus' name."

It's a sentence Stoltzfoos could not have uttered on the floor of the state House of Representatives without violating a longstanding policy of the Speaker of the House.

That policy - to ask that guest chaplains deliver "non-denominational, inter-faith" prayers and refrain from referring to specific deities, such as Jesus or Allah - has come under intense scrutiny since Stoltzfoos declined an invitation last month to pray before the House.

Stoltzfoos had been invited by state Rep. Will Tallman, R-Reading

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Township, to open the June 23 session of the House with a prayer. The pastor complied with a request from Speaker of the House Keith McCall's office that he submit the prayer in advance.

But he declined the invitation after being asked to remove the word "Jesus" from the prayer's closing.

Upset by what he saw as a discriminatory policy, Stoltzfoos contacted The Evening Sun suggesting that the issue might be newsworthy. The story set off a firestorm of controversy that spilled onto the pages of major newspapers and the airwaves of conservative talk radio.

On Wednesday, Stoltzfoos said he has been interviewed by reporters 25 times and is about "800 e-mails behind" in answering correspondence from people everywhere interested in the issue.

"This whole thing just gets deeper and more confusing," he said. "I always have the feeling there are issues on the edge of it that I know nothing about."

The pastor also said he has offers from five law firms to represent him in a free-speech lawsuit against the state House of Representatives.

"I don't like the legal fights, and I don't want to do that," he said. "But neither do I want to let an opportunity pass to defend the Constitution - which I really believe in - or to defend my faith."

Stoltzfoos said he is struggling to make a final decision, and he asked state Sen. Rich Alloway, R-Chambersburg, for his advice Wednesday. Alloway - who invited Stoltzfoos to pray before the Senate after reading about the controversy - said he didn't have an opinion one way or the other.

But, he did urge the pastor to contact the Bill O'Reilly Show.

"This is the kind of stuff that he eats up. I love Bill O'Reilly. He's a straight shooter," the senator said.

Alloway also told Stoltzfoos he thought the House policy is a "little ridiculous" and that he believes "government should not be antagonistic toward any religion."

The pastor agreed that it is a free-speech issue and questioned the logic behind the policy.

"Isn't it OK to be in a room with somebody you disagree with?" he asked rhetorically.

Stoltzfoos was also accompanied Wednesday by Tallman and state Rep. Dan Moul, R-Conewago Township. Both representatives have expressed support for the pastor's stance and gave him a tour of the Capitol building following the prayer.

On the House floor, Moul pointed upward to the words "And ye shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you free" printed on the chamber's ceiling.

"It's hard to believe we've got to be non-denominational and we've got Bible verses right on our ceiling," Moul said.

While Stoltzfoos said he has received mostly supportive feedback, McCall has been the target of harsh criticism and even several death threats since the story broke.

In June, a McCall spokesman said the pre-screening policy had been implemented to protect taxpayers from a potential lawsuit - something that has in fact happened in other states.

But on Wednesday, McCall's chief of staff, Paul Parsells, said there was more to the story. Several months ago, another pastor had delivered a prayer with "political" overtones, Parsells said.

"We had somebody give a pretty offensive prayer on the floor. Members were walking off the floor it was that offensive," Parsells said. "It just caught us off guard and offended many members."

That incident prompted the Speaker's office to require prayers in advance from guest chaplains, he said.

But specific deity references have been discouraged by the office for decades, he added.

The pre-screening policy had been in practice for only a few weeks before Stoltzfoos objected and the issue became public. Parsells said McCall's office admits the policy change was a "mistake," given the feedback.

That hasn't stopped the hate mail, however. Parsells said the office has been inundated with correspondence from people calling McCall a "Jesus hater" and suggesting that staff members "burn in hell."

Blogs and radio shows have perpetuated the controversy by not checking the facts, he said.

"It just boggles my mind," Parsells said, adding that the issue has taken a personal toll on many staff members.

Stoltzfoos, who met with McCall on Wednesday, asked that anyone hassling the Speaker's office cease doing so on his behalf. McCall, a Christian, is a "brother in the Lord," he said.

"There's no need to be nasty," Stoltzfoos said. "I don't want to be cruel to anybody."

But, Stoltzfoos added, that he is disappointed McCall has not chosen to rescind the House's longstanding policy against specific deity references.

If he ever is invited again to serve as the House's guest chaplain, that's not something the pastor said he is willing to compromise on.

"If I accept (an) invitation, I will pray in the name of Jesus," Stoltzfoos said. "I'm not trying to make anybody mad. I'm not on a crusade. I'm just trying to quietly stand up for what I believe in."

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09210/987124-100.stm?cmpid=newspanel4

Pastor prays at state Senate after controversy in House

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- A Gettysburg clergyman said a prayer before a state legislative chamber today and things went a lot smoother than his first try a month ago.

The Rev. Gerry Stoltzfoos opened today's Senate session with a prayer, and, as most Christian pastors do, ended it with "We pray in Jesus' name, amen."

Last month, state House officials asked him to use a "non-denominational" prayer that didn't include the name of Jesus, and under that restriction, Mr. Stoltzfoos chose not to say the prayer at all. When word got out, it created a religious fire storm in cyberspace.

The pastor of the Freedom Valley Worship Center had been invited to do the opening prayer in the House by Rep. Will Tallman, R-Adams, a member of his congregation. After he decided not to give a Jesus-less prayer, Mr. Stoltzfoos was invited to pray before the Senate by Sen. Richard Alloway, R-Adams.

"You've become a celebrity," Mr. Alloway told him today. Mr. Alloway said he thought that it was "a little ridiculous" to tell a Christian pastor not to mention the name of Jesus.

He said he asked Senate officials, "Do we have a policy like that?" and was told the Senate has a more diverse approach to opening prayers. The chamber has recently invited leaders from a variety of religious faiths, including Muslim, Unitarian, Buddhist and Sikh, along with the more traditional Christian and Jewish clergy.

"We want diversity, but we don't want to regulate speech," said Drew Crompton, legal counsel to Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati of Jefferson.

Mr. Stoltzfoos said the same prayer in the Senate that he'd planned to give in the House, but with two tweaks. He added a "preamble," which read:

"I am painfully aware that there are many here today who have embraced belief systems other than mine. I am not here to say that everyone ought to believe as I do. But I can only pray to my God. If you believe in some other power, I invite you to address yours as I address mine."

In the body of the prayer he used the words God and Lord, but not Jesus. In the last sentence, instead of just saying "In Jesus' name we pray," he used the words, "For those of us who are Christians, we pray in Jesus' name."

In an interview before giving the prayer, Mr. Stoltzfoos said, "I'm trying to be as flexible as I can be. I don't need everyone to agree with me."

He said he's been astonished at the national and even worldwide reaction he's gotten by his insistence on using Jesus' name in public prayers.

Since stories appeared in two small newspapers in York County and then in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on July 19, he said, "I have gotten hundreds of e-mails and at least 100 phone calls. It's amazing. I've gotten messages on Facebook and Myspace. People at my church are high-fiving me and slapping me on the back. They are happy that we've had a tiny role in affecting our culture."

Mr. Stoltzfoos said five law firms have contacted him about whether he wants to sue the House to overturn its opposition to pastors naming specific religious figures such as Jesus, Muhammed, Allah or Buddha.

He isn't sure what he'll do. "I don't like legal fights but I don't want to let an opportunity pass to defend the Constitution and my faith," he said.

Harrisburg Bureau Chief Tom Barnes can be reached attbarnes@post-gazette.comor 717-787-4254.

Read more:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09210/987124-100.stm?cmpid=newspanel4#ixzz0MgBFTgKI

vacation lessons

My vacation this year was... well.. a wild ride.

I did interviews about my choice not to pray in the PA House of representatives after I was asked to remove the offensive word Jesus from the closing of my prayer.

TV interviews, radio interviews, print interviews. I might have done more than 20. They are still going on. And emails- hundreds, all but maybe 10 of them very positive.

I also came under a withering spiritual attack of some kind, where spirits of doubt, fear, lust, and depression hurled crap at me at a rate I had never experienced before. Three or four days of having to carefully control every thought was incredibly exhausting and painful. I asked a lot of people to pray, and feel amazed at how pitiful my own strength actually is when actually tested. If God had not intervened... but His grace is amazing. Amazing.

And then I visited the Wave church, -and spent some time with Ron Johnson. In one 15 minute conversation, Ron helped me more than the last 15 books I read. He talked about how leaders must be trained, and while he talked, lights came in in my little brain.

And Jesus met me. Those services were cool, life giving, smart, and so wonderful. But they were nothing compared to Jesus. He walked in and like touched my shoulder, sort of. I melted, and then starting downloading spiritual strength from him by the bucket load. He makes me see myself different, less stupid, less hopeless, more... useful.

More later...

The Wave Church

Sam Masteller has been telling me for years I should come.

This weekend I finally had opportunity to do it. I am right now sitting in the lobby of the Wave Church. Somebody told me that this original location may have about 4500 attendees on a weekend.

I can understand why. Tight services, carefully packed with all the good stuff, and non of the "uh-oh" moments that a lot of churches seem to have a lot of.

Lots of media. The from screen is actually like 5 screens, amazingly arrayed, constantly moving, and full of life.

Three 90 minute services. The worship(music) was 22 minutes. I didn't know a song, but neither did I mind so much, because it was well done, it looked cool, and had lots of lights, smoke, and video. The preaching was 30 minutes. Not 31, by the way. Announcements are video, and live, and what is important to all. 9am was one third full, 11am 2/3 full with 2500-ish seats I was told.

But all that stuff is... well... whatever. What mattered is, I felt the presence of Jesus. Strong, powerful, emotionally rich. I felt like one of our guests who often tell me they want to cry a lot during services.

The altar call at the end took a good 7-8 minutes. Raise your hands if you want Jesus, want to repent of your sin, want to get close to God. 20-30 responses per service I would guess.

All in all, I think a lot of my leadership team should find a way to visit The Wave.