Haggai: Rebuilding the Church; Rebuilding Lives

When I got the call that I had been voted in as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia, I was very excited. But after the excitement wore down, the reality set in, and I began to wrap my mind around my preaching plan. I started reading through books of the Bible to figure out how I would start my ministry at Calvary Baptist Church, after all, starting well is very important. I finally read the book of Haggai, and I fell in love. I decided to preach a 4 week series on the book of Haggai. I asked the church on my first Wednesday night of going through Haggai if anyone had ever heard a sermon, let alone a series, preached from that book. I was not surprised that no one raised their hand. In fact, I can't remember ever hearing a sermon preached from Haggai! The setting of the book of Haggai is that the nation of Judah has come back to Jerusalem from bondage. God gives them a message, "It's time to start rebuilding my temple." In my series, I preached on how we no longer have a physical temple. The temple was where the presence of God was as well as the place to worship God; in the New Testament time our bodies and the church take on those roles respectively. So, the application we can get from the book of Haggai is in the way of rebuilding our lives and rebuilding the church for the glory of Jesus Christ. The series was very well received by the church.
When I write a sermon, I normally write it out word by word, in order to wrap my mind around it correctly. Now that I have the finished series completely written out, I would like to be a blessing in sharing it with anyone that would want it. The finished product is 32 pages long. I am selling it for 99 cents on amazon as an ebook. You can find the book here. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it is a blessing.
Don't forget to check out our new church website. I am very excited about finally having it up on the web!

Frozen- "Somebody's Gotta Tell Him!"

I typically don’t overly spiritualize things when I watch a movie. After all, when I’m watching a movie like “the Muppets” I really don’t feel like hearing preaching a sermon to me. Picture that, I can almost hear Kermit’s voice, “It’s time for church, with our very special guest star, Pastor Curtis King! Yaaaaaayyyyyy!” Anyway, that doesn’t work for me. When I watch a movie, I expect to be entertained and turn my brain off. This was no exception when I watched Frozen. Frozen was a fun movie. I absolutely loved it from beginning to ending. It had characters that you could fall in love with, songs that were catchy (I still can’t “Love Is An Open Door” out of my head), the plot was intense; basically, it was a great movie. Bravo, Disney. But there was one moment in that movie when I thought to myself, “Wow! That’ll preach!” You may have caught it, you may not have. Let me tell you what it is:

Remember Olaf? He was the goofy snowman who likes warm hugs. Don’t you just love how he blissfully and ignorantly loves the idea of summer? In fact, he sang a whole song about summer (another song that I can’t seem to shake). After the song is ended, Olaf joins Ana and Christof (sp?) on their quest to get summer back. Ana and Olaf begin to walk away when Olaf yells, “Let’s go find summer!” The camera goes to Christof, who’s jaw has dropped and he utters these words, “Somebody’s gotta tell him.”

When I saw this part of the movie, I couldn’t help see the parallel between them and a saved persons relationship with the unsaved world. Here is how. Picture Olaf as an unsaved person. Olaf is merrily and ignorantly living his life, not knowing of the danger that is to lie ahead, just like any unsaved person. The unsaved person lives their life, they go about their day, they go to work, they raise their children, they eat, the sleep, they live, but they do all of that without knowing that danger lies ahead. Hell fire lies ahead. Their eternity is at stake. It is interesting to me that when Olaf is singing his cute song about summer, Christof says to Ana,” I’m going to tell him,” to which Ana slaps him and replies, “Don’t you dare!” Unfortunately, I know too many Christians who are like Ana. They allow the unsaved to go about their merry way to their eternal doom. These Christians have the message of the Gospel, but they don’t tell the unsaved about it. But as Christof points out, “Somebody’s go to tell them!”

Christian, please listen to me today. We live in a world that is lost and on its way to Hell. Somebody has to tell them about a Saviour that loves them and who died on a cross for their sins. That somebody is you. I once heard a man say, “How can you hate somebody so much that you are not willing to tell them of a Saviour that died so that they can stay out of Hell?” Here is our problem today, many of us go to work, we live in a neighborhood, we have family reunions, and we are constantly around people who do not know Jesus Christ. We claim that we love them and we claim that we are their friends, but apparently we don’t love them enough to warn them about the danger that lies ahead.

Here is my challenge to everyone that reads this: Don’t be an Ana Christian, be a Christof Christian. Sound the alarm! Send out the warning! Let the unsaved know that there is fire ahead but there is a way to avoid it.

Let us all strive to be better witnesses for Jesus Christ.

I am pleased to announce that I have an e-book on Amazon now; it is called Sermons From the Book of Haggai! I preached a series of sermons from the book of Haggai at Calvary Baptist Church in Hartwell, GA. My members received it very well. The book contains 4 sermons, written out word for word, entitled: Consider Your Ways, God’s Commitment, Holiness and Repentance, and Encouragement. The book is only 99 cents and you can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Sermons-Book-Haggai-Curtis-King-ebook/dp/B00JKVC3C8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397244318&sr=8-1&keywords=sermons+haggai  . Happy reading!

Calvary Baptist Church- Hartwell, GA

For those of you who actively follow me (all 3 of you!), you may have been wondering to yourself, "Whatever happened to that blogger that wrote about church and stuff?" Well, I am back. After several months of having absolutely no internet access on a computer, I finally can connect again. I really didn't think I was going to survive, but I did! A lot has changed in the life of my family in these past 3 or so months. First, my daughter is crawling now and that is both a beautiful miracle and a terrible nightmare both wrapped into one thing. Secondly, we are now serving in a different church. I am now the senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia. Hartwell is located in Northern Georgia, it is about 2 hours north of Atlanta and one hour south of Greenville, SC. I am very excited about this change and anxious to see what God has planned for my family and for this church. This post will not be long; I really only wrote it for two reasons: First, our church needs some web presence, other than the Facebook page I put up last week and the web site I will put up next week, we have nothing online. This will soon change. Secondly, and most importantly, we need your prayers. I believe God wants to use me at Calvary Baptist Church, but God can only use me if I have his strength, and I can only have his strength through obedience, and I need to constantly be in prayer and have the prayers of others for that. I absolutely believe in the power of prayer, so please pray for me, my family, and Calvary Baptist Church. Maybe, through our ministry, we can turn the town of Hartwell upside down for Christ.
If you are ever in the area, give us a visit on Sunday. Also, check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/calvarybaptisthartwell I will post again once the website is officially up as well!

He Ran

As I was preparing for my Wednesday night message I came across something really great that I would like to share.
Genesis 18:1-2 says, "And the LORD appeared unto him (speaking of Abraham) in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground."
We find Abraham at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. Taking his afternoon break as was typical in that culture because of the extreme heats. As we continue through the chapter we see that Abraham serves these three men (one of them being the Lord). I cannot say that I am particularly impressed with Abraham's hospitality, after all, it was customary for people in those days to accommodate travelers. Not bringing them into his home and giving them a meal would have been considered very rude. So when we see Abraham giving these three a meal without being prompted it is really only because he was doing what he was supposed to do.
Here is what does impress me: He ran! I am a 24 year old man. You could say that I am in my prime. Life may never get better for me (at least in a physical sense). Despite all of that, I absolutely HATE RUNNING! Let's look at Abraham for a minute: Verse 11 says that Abraham was old AND well stricken in age. Basically, Abraham was not just old, he was very old! Also, because we see in verse one that Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent in the heat of the day, we can assume that he had already been working hard in that day up until that point. If anyone had an excuse to not run, it was him.
Think for a minute about some of the other approaches Abraham could have taken besides running. Abraham could have always ignored the three travelers. He could have always pulled an "Oh, I didn't see them!" Of course, Abraham would not have done that but Abraham could have easily just walked to the three travelers. Think about it, nobody would have blamed Abraham for slowly getting up and making his way over to those three at his own pace. It was a hot day, he had been working, he was old (very old). But Abraham ran.
Why do we run? I am not talking about soccer practice where the coach forces you to run. I am talking about when you run out of your own free will. What cause you to run? Let's quickly look at two reasons why I believe we run, and how that can apply to our spiritual lives:
1. We run because of excitement- Abraham showed his excitement to serve the three travelers by running. One time my best friend and I went to Kings Dominion. We got to the park a little before opening. What Kings Dominion does is that they allow early comers to stand in the main hub and wait for the attractions to open, that way as soon as they open up you don't have to worry about ticket lines you can just get to the ride you want to ride on. We really wanted to ride the Volcano Roller Coaster and we were determined to be the first ones on the ride. We stood right at the rope that blocked off the rest of the park and as soon as they lowered it we ran as fast as we could. We ended up being the first to ride the Volcano because we ran. We were excited about a ride, so we ran to get there. Let me ask you something: Do you serve the Lord with excitement? It seems like too often, as Christians, we find ourselves doing the "Christian thing" simply because we have to. We say to ourselves, "It's Sunday, I have to go to church," or "I guess I should do my devotions today." We treat our Christian life more like it is a routine and less like it is a blessing. The Psalmist says to serve the Lord with gladness! How is your service and your Christian life? Are you excited about the opportunity to serve God? Do you look forward to church? prayer? soul winning? Ask yourself this question, "Is God really pleased with my service, even though it is simply a routine to me?" I believe that the answer is an emphatic "NO!" God wants us to be excited, enthusiastic about our service for him.
2. We run because of urgency- Across our nation and even across the world many marathons are held every year. The marathon is actually in memory of a Greek messenger during the battle of Marathon. The Greeks had just defeated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon and the general commanded a messenger named Pheidippides to send the message of their victory to Athens as quickly as he could. The messenger ran the entire 26 miles, ran right into the assembly and proclaimed “We won”. As soon as he said that, he fell dead.
Some say it is history, some say it is legend, regardless, we can learn a less from that messenger. The general gave him a command, and he ran. He had urgency. Today we need to be urgent about our obedience. I do not know when Jesus is coming, but I do know that we are a day closer than we were yesterday. We need to obey with an urgency as if he was coming back tonight. We shouldn’t look at our Bible reading as a routine, we should view it as very important. We should be urgent about our prayer lives because it is important; we should be urgent about winning our friends for Christ because it is important; we should be urgent about church attendance because it is important. We should never sit at home on a Sunday morning and ask ourselves “I wonder if I should go to church today?” Yes you should go to church! It is important for you to go to church! There is an urgency for you to be in church. It is time we take our Christian lives and re-evaluate. We treat too many other things as if they are important and urgent. We need to ask ourselves tonight, “I wonder have I done my best for Jesus when he has done so much for me?” We need to work for the night is coming when man works no more.
We shouldn't simply obey God, we need to do so with Excitement and Urgency. How is your excitement and urgency today?

Friend Day- Effective Church Outreach

I am, by no means, an advertising or marketing expert. However, it is my job as the assistant pastor of Ballenger Creek Baptist Church to understand a little bit about reaching an audience. I am, more or less, the outreach director of our church, which is basically just a fancy title to say that I tell people about our church. Being in some of the best churches in America (Lancaster Baptist in Lancaster, CA, Church of the Open Door in Westminster, MD, and Granite Baptist in Glen Burnie, MD. I'm biased when I say "best") I have seen how to reach out to communities and get unsaved people to come to church. After all, our target audience is not people who already go to a good solid church, it is those who do not know Jesus Christ as Saviour that we are trying to reach. I fear that when churches hear the words "advertising" or "marketing" they get a false idea and quickly label the person speaking those words as a heretic who is trying to leave the old paths. But what is advertising and what is marketing? Isn't it reaching out to people? And isn't reaching out to people where we get the word "outreach" from? I believe that outreach and advertising are, in essence, one and the same.
Through watching, through reading, and through experiencing, I have learned some things about outreach. As I said, I am not an expert, but I do think I may have an insight or two that can help someone:
First, You should never keep all of your eggs in one basket. What do I mean? There are a lot of churches who only reach out to their communities via door knocking and door hangers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with door knocking, but doing door knocking alone won't accomplish anything. I love Lancaster Baptist Church! One of the great things they focus on is door knocking, after all, it is the best type of outreach for the layman to do in the church. But Lancaster does not simply go door knocking, they also have tv commercials, radio spots, newspaper ads, Facebook ads, and on and on the list goes. Outreach involves much, much more than going out soul winning on Thursday night.
Second, a sharp website wraps everything together. Every form of outreach and advertising you do should lead to your website, which in turn will lead people to your church. Nearly every visitor we have had since we started services in February went to our website before they came to visit us. I personally thing our website looks pretty good. We use a web hosting service called Share Faith, and it is very user friendly. Since I basically control the website, it isn't everything I would like it to be (I am not tech or code savvy) but I believe it is sufficient for what we are trying to do (check us out at www.ballengercreekbaptist.org). There are some church websites that stink. They stink really bad! I'm sure you have seen them: Words bouncing around the screen, GIF's of a stick figure running from the fires of Hell with a Bible under his arm, background music, a calendar with no info on it, and overall not presentable. Most of the time, people will look at a tacky website and assume that you have a tacky church. Nobody wants to come to a tacky church. Honestly, Dr. Bob Jones Sr. said, "It is a sin to do less than your best." If you have a church website, do the best you can with it and make it sharp.
Third, measure outreach by 2 things: Is it Biblical? Is it Effective? I will quickly hit these: I will never compromise on our Biblical stand just to bring in a crowd. Churches are changing the way they do church, they take out the preaching, they bring in the rock band, they change their Bible version all to get a crowd. It is unbiblical and doesn't get people saved and growed (I know it isn't a real word, it sounds good though) for the Lord. Don't lower your Biblical standards or convictions. Is it effective? There are some methods of outreach that churches do that are no longer effective. Some churches still pay a lot of money for a yellow pages add and get no results from it because NO ONE USES YELLOW PAGES. I am amazed by how many churches do not have a Google Places account. Everyone uses Google, Google Places is easy, free, and get high amounts of traffic. This is a no brainer.
Here is the crux of this post. When it comes to effectiveness (I'm going to get some people mad at me for this), door knocking is not very effective, tv and radio spots are not very effective, Google is not very effective. Let me introduce you to the one outreach method that both the church world and secular world agree works the best: Word of mouth. How to you get people to church? You invite your friends, neighbors, and coworkers to church and be genuinely excited about it. People no longer respond to sales gimmicks they respond to relationships. So when you go door knocking, the idea is to build a relationship with those people and then invite them to church. A lot of people don't do this because it takes more time and effort than a 5 minute sales pitch to a total stranger. When doing a Facebook campaign, build relationships with those who leave comments and likes. What our church is doing in October is Friend Day. Honestly, the church is not putting much effort corporately into making this day happen. We are relying on our members to bring their friends, the people that they already have a relationship with. Friend Day does two things, it gets your members involved in bringing their friends to church (and also gives them a deeper burden for lost souls), and it brings people into the church who have never heard the Gospel. As a church, let's not get so wrapped up in advertising and outreach that we forget that the most effective (and I honestly believe the most Christ-honoring way) to bring people into the church is by word of mouth through relationships. The four men who brought the sick of the palsy to Jesus were not strangers with the man who was sick of the palsy, they were his friends. We can not call ourselves soul winners until we bring the people that we care about and love most to Jesus. Bring your friends to church!
I hope this helped someone. I am still learning this stuff, if anyone has any insights from their own ministry I would love to hear from you since I do still have a lot to learn.

Real Faith

Last night I was continuing my study through Genesis at Ballenger Creek Baptist Church. We started on Abram last night. Boy, was I excited! I preached about faith, since Abram was such a man of faith. But as I studied for the sermon I became amazed at faith. Maybe it is because the other week my dad came and preached on faith to our church, and it was a HUGE blessing. The thought came to my mind that when we say that Abram had faith, we normally equate his faith with his actions. Rightfully so! Faith is not a concept or an idea; it is a literal, physical thing that we can see through a person's actions. I fear that modern Christianity has so over spiritualized faith because if we were to have the real, Biblical faith we would realize how little faith we really have. Many of us claim to have faith in
God, but never back it up with our actions. Here are a few verses I found on faith:

Matt 17:20, “And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”- in this passage, Jesus tells his disciples that there faith will produce real, physical results such as removing mountains!

Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.”- Do you notice the concrete words in this verse. Substance, evidence. A pulpit is substance, hope is not substance; a piano is substance, time is not substance. Substance is something physical. Faith is substance.

James 2:17, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”
 

James 2:17 is where I'd like to stop for a second. James is, in my opinion, one of the greatest books in the Bible because it takes the doctrine and faith that was already being taught in the church but then gives it practical application. In essence, James is saying that your actions show the faith you have. I want to challenge you today with something: If you say that you have faith that God will bring revival and people will be saved but our never actually try to win people to the Lord, then you really don't have faith! If you say that you have faith over God's plan for your life but you never go to church or read the Bible, then you don't have faith! If you say that you have faith that God will bless your church but never give tithes or offerings, then you don't have faith! When we say that we have faith, God is saying "OK, prove it. Show me." Faith is not a stagnant thing, it is acting.
Once a little farming town was suffering a drought. It got so bad that the church in town called for an emergency prayer meeting to pray for rain. One family was about to leave their home for the prayer meeting when the little girl said, "I forgot something, I'll be back." The little girl ran away for a second and came back with an umbrella. The father looked at her with confusion and said, "Daughter, why are you bringing an umbrella with you? It hasn't rained here for months!" The little girl then said, "But daddy, we are going to the church to pray for rain. I'm bringing an umbrella just in case it does."
Faith is not just praying for rain; faith is taking an umbrella with you.

 

My Name is NOT Lazarus

I preached last Sunday morning from Mark 2 at Ballenger Creek Baptist Church. The story of the man sick of the palsy and the four men who brought him to Jesus by tearing apart the roof of the house that Jesus was in is one of the most exciting and important miracles of the Bible. This event has many lessons: the biggest problem in life is not physical but spiritual, the power of Christ to forgive sin, the power of Christ to heal, etc. I would like to focus this post on the 4 men that brought the man that was sick of the palsy to Jesus.
Now, you are probably looking at the title of the post and thinking that I am going to write a long post about how the fourth man in this story could not have been Lazarus; you are mistaken. I chose this name because I really love the song "My Name is Lazarus" (here is a link if you've never heard the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJMFSsf2G6A), also I chose the title because I personally thought it was witty (I hope you do as well). Let me make a few observations about these four men today:
No one knows anything about these four men. We do not know their names, we do not know their occupations, we do not know how they all met and became friends. There is really only one thing that we know about these four men and that is that they were determined to get their friend to Jesus. In fact, this whole story would not have been possible hadn't it been for these four men. Let me ask you something today: how determined are you to get your friends to Jesus?
I hate crowds! I will do anything possible to avoid being in a crowd of people. One time my wife took me out for Black Friday shopping and I still haven't forgiven her! I can imagine these four men looking at the huge crowd surrounding Jesus. The crowd was so bad that they couldn't even get into the house. Honestly, I may have given up. These men could have said, "Oh well, we tried!" and went back home. But these men were creative and what did they decide to do? Tear the roof off the house! Now, I don't think I would have been creative enough to think about doing that. But these men were so determined to get their friend to Jesus that they were not concerned about the obstacles, they did not fear the bumps in the road, they would get there friend to Jesus no matter what it took. Such a convicting thought for us modern day Christians who are too afraid to even speak the name of Christ to our friends and loved ones.
The other thing I see about these men today is found in verse 5. It says that when he saw their faith he forgave the sins of the sick of the palsy. Now, I need to be careful with this point. Jesus did not forgive this mans sins because of the faith of his four friends, but when he saw their faith. This man was forgiven of his sins the same way every other person is, by believing and accepting Jesus Christ, but there is still a correlation between the faith of the four and the forgiveness of this mans sin. Here it is: If these men had not had the faith to bring their friend to Jesus, this man would not have had his sins forgiven or his palsy healed. There are thousands, even millions, of people in this world who are starving for the truth. These people are not just in the far corners of our planet, they live in your neighborhood, they work next to you every day, they live in your family. But the only way that they can learn about the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ is by you showing them the way. I believe this passage makes it very clear that when we have enough faith to bring people to Jesus, people will get saved. No, it may not be the first person you witness to, it may not be the second, but if you are tenacious and determined to bring people to the Saviour I believe that God will reward that faith and that people WILL get saved.
Here is the catcher: we have to go! No one is going to get saved by us keeping our mouths shut. We must proclaim the Gospel of Jesus. One question for you to ponder on and I'm done: What have you done lately to bring your friends and loved ones to Jesus?