Dave Bowman

Weekend Rewind

A few thoughts on an unusual weekend...

• This weekend was a lesson in "listen to God and do what he says" for me personally. In the second service I stepped out and did something that I felt God was leading me to do - call people to surrender to Jesus in the middle of the service...before I preached. AND...God was telling me to ask them to stand and come forward to surrender to Jesus.

• I have to be honest...I was a little nervous! What if nobody comes? What if I'm the only one standing up there all by myself? What if I'm just getting caught up in the emotion of the moment? What if this really isn't God telling me to do this?

• But as I walked out I knew I had to step out and put my pride aside and just trust God for the results. Results? 28 PEOPLE WALKED THE AISLES, STOOD TOGETHER WITH THEIR HANDS IN THE AIR AND SURRENDERED TO JESUS!!! ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL!!!

• BTW - Jon, Yvette, the band and the rest of our programming and tech teams did a fantastic job of leading us in worship that set up the whole thing. Way to go guys!

• Then we wrapped up the Strapped series. Had a lot of fun talking about generosity.

• I love teaching what God's word says about money because if we follow God's word and handle money the way he tells us to we won't get all screwed up financially!

• But this is a hard area for some people to surrender. Martin Luther said, "The last thing to be converted is someone's wallet." We see the truth of that over and over at New Horizon. When someone lands on our doorstep they quickly get into groups, serving teams, CR, they start reading their Bibles and attending regularly. But it takes the average newcomer 18 months...a year and a half...to start giving. Some never make the transition at all.

• It's amazing to me how many "Christians" will receive the salvation passages of the Bible but not the giving passages. How do you do that?

• When we look at a blood-stained cross it should motivate us to be the most generous people on the planet.

• Here are the three thoughts on generosity I shared yesterday:

- Generosity begins with a commitment

2 CO 9:7 Each man should give what he has DECIDED IN HIS HEART to give...

Generosity begins with the basic commitment of putting God first with a FULL TITHE. Personally, I refuse to give God anything less than the bare minimum of what he has commanded us to give. 

- Generosity is about trust

2 CO 9:8 And God will generously provide all you need.

We may not be able to trust Wall Street, Washington D.C., or our 401k, but God is bigger than all those things. He's big enough to trust with all my needs.

- Generosity is about expectation

2 CO 9: 10 ...(God) will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

Get ready to have your mind blown because God will take your generosity and use it to CHANGE LIVES. 

I can't wait to see how God chooses to work in and through the lives of those who make the commitment to be generous!

What I'm Praying For

“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you." Luke 11:9

In one of Jesus' most famous teachings on prayer he emphasizes the idea of persistence - keep asking, keep seeking and keep knocking. Evidently God is interested in our expression of passion and desire when it comes to prayer. In fact, Jesus says when we pray with persistence we can expect answers.

With that in mind, here are my current prayers for our church:

• For the spirit of mammon (money and stuff) to be broken and a spirit of generosity to be unleashed

• For more people to step out and take a risk in following God's leading in their life

• For the number of adults on serving teams to double

• For the number of teenagers in our student ministry to double by the end of this year

• For us to be more committed to each other as the "family" of God

• For our church to grow to 2000

Would you pray persistently with me?

Weekend Rewind

Just a few thoughts on what went down yesterday at New Horizon...

• Hit the mid-stride of Strapped this week with Pt. 2, How To Be Rich. No, I haven't turned TV preacher!

• Worship was awesome yesterday! Love the new song, Forever Reign:

    Oh, I’m running to Your arms,
    I’m running to Your arms
    The riches of Your love
    Will always be enough
    Nothing compares to Your embrace
    Light of the world forever reign

Perfect set up for what we were talking about yesterday!

• Here are some thoughts from the message:

- God's dream is to make you rich, but not in the way you might think. He wants us to live richly in the goodness of his grace. 

- The greatest expression of his grace is Jesus! "Jesus was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty we might become rich."

- We have spiritual riches out the wazoo! (If you missed the video, you won't have any idea what that means. Sorry!)

- Talked a little yesterday about Unstoppable commitments and what we've been able to accomplish so far because of faithful giving. So far we've added 3 new staff members, upgraded NHC Kid's space, gave new shoes and winter coats to CC Spaulding kids, sponsored 2 M25 Food Drops and sent $3000 to Haiti earthquake relief. All because so many have faithfully given! 

- Bottom line - God blesses us richly, but then calls us to live richly with generosity towards others.

• Speaking of CC Spaulding Elementary School, this past week we completed our yearly backpack project. Once again NHC'ers filled up 300 backpacks with all the supplies the kids would need to get started this school year.

Thanks New Horizon for stepping up once more to meet this need in our community!! Thanks for letting me be your Pastor!! You guys are awesome!!

Weekend Rewind

Yesterday we began our new series, Strapped...and I have to say (and I know there are some people who hate it when pastor's blog this way, but...) it was GREAT DAY! 

• It was great to be back from 2 weeks off. Susan and I got away for some time alone and that was great! Married couples, YOU NEED TIME AWAY ALONE...NO KIDS ALLOWED!! As much as we all love our kids, they can be a serious hindrance to marital connection. Every marriage needs time away from the kids.

• Love the sense of worship that is developing in our church. I wept through Inside Out. Love that song! And love the other new song Jon and the band did yesterday, Forever Reign. I think that's going to be an NHC fave!

• This was week 1 of our new series on m-o-n-e-y.

• Usually when we talk about money you can feel the tension in the room. Money is a HUGE discipleship issue...HUGE!! And it's usually one of the last discipleship issues that we surrender to Jesus' Lordship in our lives.

• And that is directly related to what we talked about yesterday - how to live with joy even when you're Strapped. 

• We kicked off the series in 1 Corinthians 8 where Paul writes about the Macedonian church. If you ever want an example of a great church, just look at the Macedonians. Paul says they were going through "severe trials." It was so bad that they were in "extreme poverty." BUT...(yes, that is a big but...) they had joy that overflowed to generosity.

• They were living strapped, but living with joy.

• So how do we do that when we're living strapped? First, you've got to fight for your joy. Joy doesn't just happen. It's a choice.

• First, you have to choose to maintain your perspective on the blessing of God. No matter how bad things get, there's always someone in the world that is worse off than you are! Keep it in perspective.

• And then you must look for God in your circumstances. He's there! And when you look for him you'll find 2 things: 1) A God who will give you the strength to keep going (Phil 4:13), and 2) A God who can be trusted (2 Cor 1:8,9)

• But the biggest key to joy when strapped - Give your heart to God! You've got to choose who you're going to serve - the God of the universe, or the god of money. Which one is it going to be?

• Matthew 6:24 = Jesus says you've got to choose! 

• So what are you going to choose? Surrender to God and experience real joy, or continue to freak out over the economy and your money?

• Overall, it was a powerful day. If you missed it, check it out online here.

• I said yesterday that this will not be a practical, money management series like we've done in the past. Why? Because we have a great place for you to learn those things called Finding Financial Freedom. FFF is a FREE 2-hour seminar where you'll learn to save more money, get out of debt, and live in the financial freedom that God designed us to live in. Did I mention it's free? Free seminar...free food...free childcare...FREE! All you have to do is sign up and show up. So...sign up here...NOW!!

Who Do You Feel Sorry For?

Excited About Fall

Today I was having a little one-on-one time with Dwayne Sayre, New Horizon's new Student Pastor. He has been with us for about 3 weeks now, so I was interested in what he was sensing in the Student Ministry and the church. The word he used was "momentum." I think that's a pretty good word to describe us right now.

As we approached the summer months this year we made a conscious decision not to just roll over and give in to the "summer slump" that every church experiences. You know what I'm talking about - attendance slumps...giving slumps...inviting slumps...first time guest numbers slump...everything tends to nose dive during the summer.

But not at New Horizon this summer! We have GROWN this summer. We baptized over 50 people this summer...saw 34 families dedicate children...first time guest numbers are up over last summer...attendance is up over last summer. All in all, we've had a summer "bump" not a summer slump.

And now we're heading into the fall, which is one of the prime ministry seasons, and we're expecting God to continue to bring more people to himself at New Horizon. In September we launching a brand new series called One that is going to be one of the most challenging series we've ever done. Then in October we'll focus on reaching our unchurched family and friends with our fall outreach series, My Crazy Family. (The title alone should tell you this one is going to be fun!)

The New Horizon staff and volunteer teams in all of our ministry areas (Kids, Students, Groups, Care, Programming)  are hard at work creating environments for this fall that will help more people to encounter God and engage in community.

SO GET READY! THIS FALL IS GOING TO ROCK!!!