Due to our Christmas Eve Schedule we will NOT be having Worship Experiences today!
However, I’d encourage you to gather your family around and watch this video together as a catalyst for discussion. Enjoy the time with your family celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ!
Merry Christmas!!!
It is finally here! You are invited to one of three powerful 75 minute Worship Experiences that we have custom designed to impact your life and the lives of your friends and family! Invite everyone you know and make it a priority to pray and ask God to do what only God can do!
Every single person you bring with you will hear the Gospel in a clear and compelling way. We have been praying and working hard for this weekend believing that God is going to change lives in a powerful way!
You have three options to choose from:
Friday, December 23rd at 7PM
Saturday, December 24th at 2PM or 4PM
If you are within driving distance, do not miss out!
DON’T FORGET:
We will not have any Worship Experiences on Christmas Day. Enjoy that time with your family celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ!
Every year at Freedom Church we receive a special Gift Offering during the month of December. After praying through the opportunities here is what the dollars generated will go towards during this year!
The idea behind the Gift Offering is to let our largest and most extravagant gift this Christmas be to Jesus through His church.
Plan ahead and pray with your family about the amount that the LORD would have you give. Come planning to give on December 23rd or 24th, online (www.freedomchurch.tv/giving) or through the mail (PO Box 2800 Acworth GA 30102).
The best is yet to come and YOU are making a difference!
When GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt (recently tapped by President Barack Obama as his next top outside economic adviser) teaches up-and-coming leaders at the company’s famed management-development center, he runs through a checklist of what he calls “Things Leaders Do.”
In this interview with Fast Company, Immelt reveals his own leadership Top 10 checklist.
1. Personal Responsibility. ’You lead today by building teams and placing others first. “It’s not about you.”
2. Simplify Constantly. ”Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can’t, then you’re not leading well.”
3. Understand Breadth, Depth and Context: ”The most important thing I’ve learned since becoming CEO is context. It’s how your company fits in with the world and how you respond to it.”
4. The Importance of Alignment and Time Management: ”At the end of every week, you have to spend your time around the things that are really important: setting priorities, measuring outcomes and rewarding them.”
5. Leaders Learn Constantly and Teach: ”A leader’s primary role is to teach. People who work with you don’t have to agree with you, but they have to feel you’re willing to share what you’ve learned.”
6. Stay True to Your Own Style: ”Leadership is an intense journey into yourself. You can use your own style to get anything done. It’s about being self-aware. Every morning, I look in the mirror and say, ‘I could have done three things better yesterday.”’
7. Manage by Setting Boundaries with Freedom in the Middle:“The boundaries are commitment, passion, trust, and teamwork. Within those guidelines, there’s plenty of freedom. But no one can cross those four boundaries.”
8. Stay Disciplined and Detailed: ”Good leaders are never afraid to intervene personally on things that are important. Michael Dell can tell you how many computers were shipped from Singapore yesterday.”
9. Leave a Few Things Unsaid: ”I may know an answer, but I’ll often let the team find its own way. Sometimes, being an active listener is much more effective than ending a meeting with me enumerating 17 actions.”
10. Like People. Today, it’s employment at will. Nobody’s here who doesn’t want to be here. So, it’s critical to understand people, to always be fair, and to want the best in them. And when it doesn’t work, they need to know it’s not personal.”
The Best of 2011 Blog series continues with a post from Resurgence. It’s appropriate always but especially this week. Enjoy!
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – Ephesians 2:8
As a family, we are in the midst of celebrating the Christmas season which includes viewing all the holiday classics (Heat Miser is my favorite character) and reading all the old standbys and new favorites. My daughter has checked out 116 Christmas titles from the library with every variation on the nativity story you can imagine. Narrators to the events of that holy night have included the voice of a snowman, a mouse, and even a seahorse.
The shelves overflow with Santa stories ranging from the troubles he encounters when he goes digital with the naughty or nice list to the ways he determines who is naughty or nice. The Santa books far outweigh the nativity books because Santa is a guy we can get our heads around…we like the list. We like the neat and tidy categories that the list offers and the obvious ramifications of our behavior.
We have been given a Savior who drenches us in his righteousness and does not add up our deeds – good or bad – into a tally for a quantifiable list.
We have even successfully marketed a $30 “helper” (watch the video) to make sure we manipulate our children into good behavior so they can make the list—if only for those precious 24 days when the elf is watching. They are described as:
Excellent listeners and even better observers, these scout elves are the eyes and ears of Santa Claus. Although they cannot be touched, or else they may lose their magic, the elf will always listen and relay messages back to Santa. Taking in all the day-to-day activities around the house, no good deed goes unnoticed; these scout elves take their job seriously.
Why we are willing to trust the pointy-eared gnome and not the baby in the manger?
Certainly we have a hard time determining if someone is naughty or nice. It’s not as simple as, “All Christians go on the nice list and all those other guys, the heathens? Clearly, they deserve a spot on the dreaded naughty list.”
The Bible makes it simple though: we all make the naughty list. None is righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10). That’s bad news.
The good news is that, despite our list making tendencies and legalistic leanings, the list was crushed by the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He is the only one who made the list. Because he made the list, we are given the gift of him. His righteousness, his perfection, and his “niceness” are bestowed upon us with list-shattering grace.
We are offered something much greater than a shelf-bound elf that will hopefully report our good deeds to the red-suited guy up north so we can receive blessings. We are offered the grace of God who appeared in a lowly manger as a helpless baby. Sometimes it seems easier to hang our hopes on the elf.
We have been given a Savior who drenches us in his righteousness and does not add up our deeds – good or bad – into a tally for a quantifiable list. It never makes sense in the economy of good=blessing, bad=coal. By grace, our badness becomes righteousness. Our “goodness” often needs to be repented of because it dismissed the necessity of Christ.
Everything about this gift of Jesus given at Christmas is radical—turning bad into good, babes into kings, legalistic lists into glorious grace. Merry Christmas!
