Israel Trip 2010 – new dates -

What can you do to really increase your understanding of the Bible?  Let me make you an offer.  This winter I will be leading a tour to Israel departing Saskatoon February 21st through to March 5th.  This will be my 5^th trip to the Holy land and with each trip I have used the same Jewish tour guide.  He is a remarkable man who will help you understand the scriptures in a way you would never have imagined.  You will come back to Canada with a brand new appreciation of your faith.  You will have a renewed hunger to study the places you have had the opportunity to visit.

Imagine with me riding in an open boat on the Sea of Galilee while reading the story of Jesus walking on water.  We will walk into the Garden of Gethsemane and you will enter the empty tomb or at least what they believe is the best possible location for the empty tomb.  I will take you to the top of Mount Carmel where Elijah fought the prophets of Baal.  We will walk the ancient cobblestone streets of old Jerusalem.  You will sit on the slopes of the Mount of Beatitudes leading down to the Sea of Galilee where Jesus fed the multitudes.  This is just a small sampling of the many places you will experience on our tour.

We will also be going into the country of Jordan for a one day trip where we will see one of the wonders of our world…Petra.  Much has been written about Petra but you really have to see it to believe.  I was blown away the first time I walked that path in that remarkable country.  Petra does have Biblical associations which you will learn about while journeying there.  For many people the trip to Israel truly ends up being a trip of a lifetime.  The greatest joy I have is when I return and hear people say, “I read my Bible differently now.”

I have a full two week itinerary and a price schedule for you if you are interested.  Please contact Kathy Janzen at our church office either by phone or email and she will get you the information you need (ask Kathy about the trip, she’s been there).

cornerstone@sasktel.net

Time for Worship

I love to worship God.  Sunday morning is honestly one of the high points in my week.  For me it’s not about going through the motions of religion.  And even though I’m the worship pastor, my joy in worship takes me so much beyond the fact that planning worship is my job.  Psalm 122 says “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let’s go to the house of the Lord’”.  I am that person.  I am glad.   This is the presence of God we are talking about.  We are destined to worship Him in eternity.  Yet Church time often becomes an optional item on an already packed list of leisure activities.

“The average person is awake 112 hours a week (assuming he or she sleeps eight hours a night).  If a person goes to a weekend worship gathering that lasts two hours, then 98.2 percent of their week is not in a weekend worship gathering.  To most people, “church” involves only 1.8 percent of their time.  The rest is supposedly not “church.”  This is pretty crazy because in reality you and I and other Christians are the church 100 percent of the time”  (Dan Kimball in Emerging Worship).

It’s funny then that time always seems to be an issue when it comes to church.  At Cornerstone, give or take, our Sunday morning worship time lasts one hour.  When you look at the hours, it’s a pretty small investment.  But it’s also a pretty large misunderstanding of what the church is.  One hour on Sunday is not Church.   Church is not the building.  Church is not the one hour program.

Church is you and me.  As followers of Christ, once we make a commitment to follow Him, we become the body of Christ.  We are the church.  Every day of the week we wake up in the morning and by the power of the Holy Spirit the first breath we breathe is church.  Christ followers live a life of a worshiper with all aspects of prayer, devotion, commitment and the study of God’s word.  This is our daily joy to live.

When we arrive on Sunday morning, in essence, we are continuing to explore what we have been doing all week.  That means we need to be reading our Bible, preparing our hearts in prayer, working to give, and serving others.  The only way Sunday morning has any corporate meaning is because worshippers are gathered.  Notice the language here.  You don’t come on Sunday to worship.  You already come on Sunday morning as a worshiper.  If we don’t come as a worshipers, then maybe we need to do a little more soul searching.

What God want is for us to be glad; to delight in His presence at every opportunity.  Coming to worship should never be an obligation or a chore.  Neither should other things in this world become more delightful in our eyes so that at the earliest opportunity we opt out of being in God’s presence.  A song written by Chris Tomlin says in the chorus that you and I were made to worship.  Worship is often a word we associate with singing, or with prayer.  It is a much bigger word than that.  Worship is about God in His mercy reaching out to us in relationship, and about us responding in love, adoration, and obedience.  Could life really be any better than joining with other followers of Christ in worship?

Pastor Lorn Gieck

You and I were made to worship
You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
You and I embrace surrender
You and I choose to believe
You and I will see who we were meant to be

Made to Worship by Chris Tomlin

Lead Pastor Blog II.VII

It’s a rainy Tuesday morning. I have found myself this past weekend revisiting my dreams for Cornerstone as well as for my own life. I have been pondering the vision of Cornerstone changing our world.  I find it disturbing, dangerous, frustrating, humbling and a host of other emotions to spend much time dreaming. Are you currently chasing something that has your complete attention?

I don’t know if many of us slow down long enough to think about what is consuming our time and attention. One week slides into a month. One month leads to another and a year is gone. What have I accomplished from eternity’s perspective? I am at a stage of life where that is what matters to me. I guess that is why I find this dreaming stuff frustrating when I look back to see what has been accomplished in and through my life.

Joseph is my go to guy in the Bible when it comes to dreaming. He was an imperfect character as all men in the Bible were. Received a very cool dream from God but then he flaunted it in front of the family. Essentially he tells them that in his dream they are going to bow down to him. At this stage of his life let’s just say that Joseph did not have humility mastered. Later on in Genesis 37 as he goes to check on how the family business is doing we read in verse 19 “Here comes that dreamer!” Clearly his brothers were not saying it with any sense of respect or awe. No matter how you slice it that did characterize Jospeh, he was a dreamer. I’m not sure we have many Joseph’s in our midst these days. Men and women of vision. Individuals who have heard from God and are chasing the dream.

I really believe we need those people. We need dreamers to dream new great God-inspired dreams for the church today. If life is just about the stuff around us then life is so small. I don’t want my children and grand-children to spend their lives chasing what we can see. I don’t want the people of Cornerstone to spend their lives chasing stuff.  Honestly to me that is such a small way to spend our lives. It has no lasting influence.

Joseph reminds me that dreams don’t just happen. They definitely don’t happen in a straight line. Joseph had many ups and downs on the way to his dreams becoming reality. He had long periods of time where it appeared his dreams had been derailed. It must have been tough at those times to still believe. Genesis tells us that Joseph had another party who was guiding, guarding, watching over the dream. God had not been derailed in His purposes being accomplished in and through Joseph.

Perhaps that is where I am today. Maybe God is just reminding me that He is in control and not me. But right now I want more. I want to see more of Cornerstone’s influence in this world. I want to know that my individual life is having a lasting impact. God I want more. I want to see changed lives…lots of changed lives. I want to see broken people healed. I want to see lost people find the answer in Jesus Christ. I want to see hardened people softened. I want to see the uncommited become commited to the life changer named Jesus. I want to see the unmistakable hand of God at work.

What are you chasing today? Do you have a dream that has captured your attention? Is your life being spent or invested? Does Jesus have your attention? Do you think Jesus has the attention of Cornerstone Church?

I find this stuff so humbling, frustrating, disturbing and yes even dangerous. It is really hard to just be comfortable when it feels like God is poking me.

This change the world stuff is ……….

VBS (Vacation Bible School)

Unfortunately, we are taking a break this year from VBS.

We know many parents and children will be dissapointed in this decision but don’t worry there are some other fabulous church’s in Saskatoon who are hosting VBS this year.

Here are a couple of churches that are putting on VBS this summer so feel free to check them out and get more information.

West Portal Church:

July 5th- July 9th    6:30pm-9:10pm Contact Katrina Funk at 382-1622                 http://westportal.ca/?page_id=13 for more info.

Lawson Heights Pentecostal Assembly:

Aug 17th-20th Contact Shawna Lavender 931-7100

St. Anne’s Parish:

Aug 9th-13th     9a.m-12p.m  Contact parish office at 931-4700

If you have any questions or concerns I would be more than happy to talk with you.

Contact me ( Mandy) at the church office.

Well, at least the Canucks showed me SOMETHING in Game 4…

Fair warning.  This blog is about the Vancouver Canucks.  Sort of.

My “playoff beard” is just starting to get it’s legs, and this past week it has been pushed to edge of elimination/shaving, one game away from being banished for another year (Melissa can hardly wait.)

As I sat on a tour bus watching game 4 between Chicago and Vancouver instead of singing along with Michael W. Smith inside (I much prefer the early 90s concert memories I have of Smitty to today anyway), I found myself muttering the same thing over and over.

“What the heck happened!?!”

See, I could show you the newspaper articles, and the video clips, and TSN reports, and all the notes from before the game (trust me, I read them. All of them.)  To a man, every player on my beloved Canuck team spoke of how they knew what they needed to do.  How they needed to have more discipline.  Make smarter plays.  Be tougher during the play, and not between the whistles.  The said all the right things.  They sounded united. Focused.  They used the right words with the right inflections, and said it with enough conviction to have you believe that they understood what was at stake, and we’re prepared to go do whatever it took to make sure that what they knew they needed to do happened.

Then they went and laid a giant collective egg.

That was definitely not how this was supposed to go.

And yet, hours later while I was laying awake in bed replaying the sobering game in my head, an even more sobering thought hit me:

Am I the same way?  Are Melissa and I, as a couple the same way?  How about as a church?  As Christians?

Now I really didn’t like the outcome of the game.

I’ve wrestled with this over the last few days.  All I can do is speak for myself, and from what I see in our culture around me, but far too often, I wonder if we as Christians know the right things to say.  We sound sincere, like we get it.  We sound repentant, even passionate about being “missional”, and “community-focused”.  We say the right things, have the right slogans, and, even, perhaps even most disheartening, the right intentions.  We actually want to do the right thing.

But then we take a hit.  We discover that it’s gonna cost.  That there is work involved.  And so we back off.

I’m so passionately frustrated when I see this pattern in my hockey team, and so quick to judge others for the same thing, but just as quick to rationalise and create excuses when it happens in my own life.  It a trait I’ve been working hard to change.

So my question is this:  What if we, as Cornerstone Church, were a place where when Christians said something, they followed through?  Where when we say we believe in the grace, faithfulness, and goodness of God, our lived reflected that trust? Or when we say we believe that mentoring and coming alongside young adults, or serving the poor, or giving our time is important, we actually DID exactly those things? Or when we said that everything we have belongs to God, and then reflected that when we set our own budgets?  What if we were a place that DID what we SAID? (wait, that sounds familiar…).

I want to be a part of that kind of Church.  I think we’re moving in that direction.  But we’ve got some more ground to cover.  We’re we jump to action, and where we have an abundance of people who just simply want to follow through on what God is calling them to.

Because this is so much more important than a hockey game, or a shiny tin cup we can dance around with.  It’s about eternity, and faithfulness, and fully grasping and joining the Adventure Jesus invites us to be a part of.  It’s about obedience, and follow through, and Jesus doesn’t just ask politely for that, like a “good idea, but only if you really feel like it”.  He commands it if we want to follow him (James 4:17).

I know some of you may already be great at doing this.  Awesome!  Please, continue to show us and teach us how.  But for the rest of us, we need to show up.  After Watoto last Sunday, I leaned over to Melissa and said “We can do more.  We HAVE to do more.”

Let’s just start with doing what we say.  (for a good example, google Vancouver Canucks, game 5.)

Lead Pastor’s Blog II.VI

Cornerstone you have my attention. I will take a short blogging break from examing our congregational test scores from April 25th to comment on our recent track record of responding to Matthew 25.

In January 2010 we started our year looking at Matthew 25 and the story of the sheep and the goats. Let me refresh your memory. In that story Jesus essentially says that whatever we did unto the least of these we did unto Him. So, if we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty, visit those sick or in prison we effectively minister to Jesus Himself. Not only that but he also tells us that those are the faith entrance requirements for eternity in heaven. My challenge at the beginning of the year was for us to do something within those categories during this calendar year. Get involved in some way in helping the poor. Let me give you some recent results.

In October 2009 we gave you the opportunity to sponsor a child through Compassion Canada. Each Sunday we had people manning a table where we could sign up to help a child in need. During that month over 30 children were sponsored. On Sunday April 25th World Vision was here and they told me we sponsored 19 children. On May 2nd Watoto Children’s Choir was here and we sponsored 21 children in Uganda. Since October Cornerstone has sponsored over 70 children from various places around the world. This does not include children sponsored through Haiti Arise as I know some families have responded to that need in Haiti.

I applaud your response to Matthew 25. Remember Jesus said that whatever you did to the least of these you did to me. You have been obedient and I want to encourage you for being obedient. We cannot be a church that turns its attention away from the very real needs in our world. We will not be a church that talks a good game but does nothing. We will not stop responding even when it means we sacrifice in order to meet the needs of those in our world. Part of our vision entails meeting practical needs in our world in the name of Jesus Christ. We are changing our world through our participation in Matthew 25.

However, I believe something esle is happening as well. Not only are we engaging in the vision of changing our world but what is happening is that we are being changed. Jesus Christ changes lives. Jesus Christ is changing our lives. That is such great news. If we are going to continue to be obedient to Matthew 25 we need to have our hearts become more like the heart of our Saviour.

Cornerstone you have my attention. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” By the way, we set an all time attendance record on Sunday May 2nd for Cornerstone. We saw 663 people attend our services that day. God is at work. Come on, there is still more to do so let’s keep it up.