Contagious with Christmas!

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, which as you might know, is the beginning of the Christian Calendar and the season of preparation for Christmas. As such, our up-coming series starts this Sunday and is called, "Searching for Christmas." If you are a regular newhoper, I am sure you will be around for all our Christmas Worship Celebrations and our Christmas Eve service on the land as we worship the Christ child together and then write our favorite verses of Scripture on the floors of our new building!

Today, though, I want to ask you about your friends?

* Who do you plan on inviting to our Christmas series?
* Who are you praying for right now?
* Into what neighbor, friend, or family member are you investing and planning to invite to, "Searching for Christmas?"

If you were in church yesterday, you heard some powerful testimonies of brand new newhopers coming to our church and finding incredible community, support, and faith through this movement. It is rising up like never before, newhope, because we are investing and inviting people into our church family and faith in Jesus Christ!

As we move into a critical season in which people are VERY OPEN to visiting a church, I want to invite you into a kind of contagious Christianity. In a word, I am talking about love. The entire mission of the church is summed up in one word, "love." I Corinthians 13 says, "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." (I Corinthians 13:13)

A Hasidic story puts it like this, "A father complained to the Baalshem that his son had forgotten God. “What, Rabbi, should I do?” he asked. The Baalshem answered, “Love him more than ever.”

The reason the church must always remain focused on loving people, even those who are not even among us yet, is because it is at the very heartbeat of God. When God's children forget about the Lord, God continues to love them even more and uses the church to communicate radical love to a lost world in need of God's grace and redemption.

There is a groundswell movement of excitement and passion taking place in the life of our church right now. There is palpable buzz circulating around our up-coming move to the Southpoint Campus. As I have watched this building rise, I have been aware of how the groundwork is critically important. If the foundation is faulty, the whole building will be unstable. If the foundation is solid, the building will be stable and stand firm through the ages.

The truth is, the same can be said for the church! We need to have a solid foundation on which to build. If we don't, the whole structure of our relationships is in danger. If we have a solid base of love, we will experience deep and meaningful relationships and the world will be a different place because of you and God's Spirit living in you!

As we continue trusting God to build the life and ministry of newhope, let's remember that the foundation of this church is radical love for God and all His people. That my friends is the message of the incarnation and Christmas!

Who are you going to invite to Christ and newhope this Christmas season? I can't wait to see you there, with your friends on your side!