Monday, April 26, 2010

Connection Card Moments

As always, actual connection cards from theMovement. Uncensored and real, these cards will be only edited when it comes to names. Please join us in prayer or in praise. Will post 5-10 per week.


"Thank you Lord for what your doing in my life and in my family. My wife is pregnant and we both quit smoking, doing drugs, drinking ect. Jesus set us FREE."


"I found God at theMovement... I grew in faith and confidence in my lifegroup, and I became a Christian who's not afraid to talk about Jesus to my family anymore. Amen. Thank you!"


"I was baptized last week and I had been praying for my old party friends for months to come to church, they came to my baptism and are here today again and love it, God is amazing and answers prayers!"


"My name is ___ and I am going through a divorce and I am having trouble finding faith in anything anymore. I want God to have it all. I need a prayer."


"I would love to encourage parents of teenagers that there is hope out there. Don't give up or give in to the enemy! Don't allow him to take your child! Just keep believing and praying!"


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Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009 - A look back

What an incredible year 2009 has been. I can honestly say that, outside of our first year as a church, we have experienced more incredible moments filled with God that it truly renders me speechless.

The spiritual growth, the impassioned servant hood, and the awesome favor of God led us all year.

The year started out with a teaching a series called "Disciple". A four-week series that challenged the average or nominal Christian to be all that God had intended them to be. As a result of that challenge many pressed in to God like never before and the fruit was nothing more than extraordinary.

The first week of February we started our series on the book of Genesis. We spent 48 weeks in this book and covered pretty much the whole thing verse by verse. Some of the highlights of the year include:

- We talked about circumcision on Mother's Day
- we talked about homosexuality
- we discussed adultery and lust and incest
- We saw Abraham leave the comfort of UR and pilgrimage to the unknown land of Canaan directed only by God himself
- We challenged men to be manly and not womanly by following hard after their Savior Jesus Christ
- we had an incredible marriage conference that exploded and strengthened marriages across the church
- we held youth events and ski trips and conferences that encouraged us to be more as we pressed in to our calling
- we saw our Kids on the move double in size as incredible leadership was put in place
- Our life groups grew to a staggering number, a number many thought would never be possible in a church like ours (we used to be an "event", now we are a "family")
- we added two services, 8:00 AM and 6:30 PM
- We published and produced a movement live CD and the results have been amazing as people all over are excited to hear new music come out of our church.
- We even considered expanding our reach into Temecula, only to have God remind us that what he was doing in San Marcos was the main priority.
- We granted a new campaign "I love my wife, I love my husband, I love my family" and place the slogan on T-shirts. The result? Sales went through the roof!
- We volunteered in the city of San Marcos and pledged to give away 5000 hours of community service.
- We redesigned the Canvas Café, and now are putting live music and broadcasting services available as an overflow or more comfortable seating those that want it.
- our harvest festival was each remanded success and our largest attendance ever in the community.
- We pray in faith knew that God would financially stabilize our church even in a economic downturn and God came through with flying colors! we closed 2009 100% debt free!!!
- and most importantly, we saw over 400 people give their lives to Jesus Christ in 2009.

None of this would be possible without the incredible hand of God and His leadership in our lives. He cares more about his church than I or any of us will ever care. He died for it, lived for it, and will return for it! the church is the bride of Christ and will forever worship him throughout eternity.

I think God that I have the opportunity to pastor this wonderful church and I can't wait to see what he has in store for 2010. My guess? It's going to be nothing short of awesome.

Here's to 2009 and Godspeed 2010.

Mammoth 2009

So we decided that at the last second we were going to go on a semi-vacation. Mind you, this was not something that we had previously planned nor were expecting but always anticipating when we were going to get to the mountain as a family. You see, the McGinty clan absolutely loves going snowboarding. It is something that we have done as a family for our little mini vacations since the kids were four years old. I grew up loving going to the mountains as a young boy.

My earliest recollections of going to the mountains was when I was around 9 years old and my parents took me to Wrightwood California. I started skiing when I was pretty young and I the first time that I went on the little skiing trip with my friend Marco Ruiz when I was in 7th grade. I already gone once with my parents and I really like the feeling of the snow and the free feeling of being able to go as fast as you can have your eyes water as you fly through the mountains on a pair of long skinny planks.


I remember one of my mom's friends was a pretty crazy person in that she was very high profile and seemed to enjoy a lot of expensive things. As a young boy, I was always attracted to the appearance of what seemed to look like fun. They had PAC-MAN and BATTLEZONE arcade games in their house kinda like Ricky Schroeder from Silver Spoons. Glamour, glitz, and fashion ruled the roost. So, you can imagine there wasn't much shock when we all went skiing and she comes out of the RV camper with these huge fuzzy brown boots, looking like two stumpy legs from Chewbacca walking along the icy, wet asphalt writ with black and charcoal gray snow in what looked like a black lake surrounded by snow.


Ah, memories.


It didn't take me long to figure out that I really enjoyed skiing. Fast forward to my youth filled with fun trips, and a love for going to high-altitude places to enjoy a sport I really loved. I remember thinking to myself that one of the most wonderful things that a person could do would be to have a family and take them on snowboard or ski trips to have memories that will always be savored.


You want vintage 80's? I remember the days in 1988 when my friends and I were the only people on the mountain with a snowboard attached to our legs. Out of 2000 skiers we were the only two that were fastened, sideways, to our board. We would go up to little mountains in Southern California called Mt. Kratka, Waterman or Baldy and enjoy the snow for six dollars on a student pass. Back then, the only snowboarding to be found was in SoCal resorts like Snow Summit. Even then, it was a highly limited sport with people mostly doing carving and trying to avoid the double-plank joyriders known as skiers. The animosity was massive and I remember thinking how silly it looked to ski when you could snowboard!


Back then you would be kicked off the mountain and had your ticket taken from you if you did any kind of jumping whatsoever because you might harm other people. I noted to myself that I knew that snowboarding was going to take off because I would literally have person after person on the mountain that day asking us the same question 100 times a day: what is snowboarding like? Our response was always the same, "it's kind of like skating and kind of like surfing but totally not like those all!" We would laugh because we knew that we were enjoying the sport that not many people knew nor had tried to take on. The equipment used back then was raw and rudimentary but it was so much fun because it felt like you were skating or surfing, like we said, on the mountain.

I was a pretty good skier at the time I did a lot of things on those two planks and I really enjoyed the sport. But one snowboarding took hold of me I knew that I was going to do it forever because of the so much fun and so much freedom.


Fast forward to 2009, my children are both 14 and 12. Together, they have been snowboarding 17 seasons out of a possible 26. Pretty good ratio for a snow lunatic like me. One year, during my first year of college, I remember snowboarding 39 times in one season. Sadly, I know that I wanted more. That was the last true year of El Niño and I remember it like it was yesterday as the skies opened up and filled even the local mountains with tons of fun snow.


So we go up to Mammoth on a last-second trip, and we decide that we are going to have the most fun that we can possibly have as a family on a mountain because we know that we are due for a great storm. Mind you, I hunt storms like a tiger hunts women. (c'mon, I said "a" tiger) A lot of people might give me flack for taking my vacations during the middle of the week during the snow season. I agree that my career as a pastor and what the Lord has allowed me to do it somewhat convenient for a snow lunatic like myself. However, this is absolutely 100% part of the benefits of doing what I am called to do. The majority of my life is spent on the weekends and in the holidays when people go to church most. This includes Easter week's as well as Christmas, Memorial Days, and the like. My weekends are always full where my weeks can be manipulated so that the majority and the most important work always gets done in the right fashion. Insert smiley face.


The downside to what I do is that I'm never able to really go on weekend vacations with friends nor spend Christmas traveling or Easter to go back and see family. Most people travel on Memorial weekends and labor days and do things like that, but I am always aware that I've always got Sunday coming and I'm excited to do what I do. Therefore, I know each snow season that when the snow falls I gotta hit it. By God's grace, he has allowed me to do just that. Another smiley face.

We don't take elaborate or expensive vacations to exotic places but one thing we do is we know how to travel to the mountain and make the most of everything that is before us. The fact that I just finished preaching the 50th chapter of Genesis this year and there was 5 feet of new snow to me it just seemed like God was giving me a signal. :)


So we showed up and lo and behold it was exactly as advertised. The snow was amazing and we were excited as we headed into town. We had never stayed at a new place called the Village in Mammoth. God connected me with a gentleman that truly blessed us as a family. To him I am grateful, although most grateful for God who helped orchestrate it all.


So we get into town and everything is white. Pure whiiiiiiiite. The snow had fallen, there were huge white walls surrounding our car on every turn. To say that we were excited would be an incredible understatement. We woke up the next morning to absolutely perfect blue skies, 70 inches of new snow, and a whole bunch of smiles all around. We traveled up the mountain and knew we were going to have a blast.




One of the most wonderful things that I enjoy as a father is seeing my children enjoy the sport that I love the most. I am not sure that my daughter has exactly fell in love with the sport, although I do know that she really really likes it and sometimes she really, really doesn't. This is probably true for every 12-year old girl on the planet.


My son, however, I believe has fallen in love with sport over the past couple years. What may have started out as a love relationship ("Daddy, Daddy the snow is fun!!!") soon turning into a love-hate relationship ("Daddy, Daddy the snow hurts!"), partially due to my overaggressive parenting and the necessary need for learning the sport quickly ha ha… I think that he has finally found love with my favorite sport. I can only pray!


As a father, you hope to introduce your children to things that you love and enjoy in life. I think every single trip always reminds me how important it is to have my family and those closest to me sharing life together. The fact that we are 11,000 feet in the air on mountains of snow only adds to that wonderful experience, in my opinion. I would hope that each trip is a reminder not only of how rich and sweet fellowship is together, but that there would be a continual reminder that it is only God and his grace that has allowed us to experience this wonderful blessings of playing on the playground called Earth.


It is in our fellowship and our love for one another were God is on display in the most green and even in those times of hardship and persecution and sin and rebellion we can always look to forgiveness and reconciliation and the grace of God that allows us to experience the joys of parenting in the wonderful little sport called snowboarding.



On that note, I think there's a storm coming….:)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

post turkey

Everything is different "post turkey".

For me, it usually starts about two days before the big turkey lynching. I get these deep desires in places I don't even know were inside me to stuff my face and my stomach with as much turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pie as I can possibly imagine. It's like I'm lusting for real but its food and its weird but its there.

Fast forward to the self-entitled "gorge day". I have heard of the sin of gluttony but I don't know about it too much because there isn't too much hype in the Christian world about gluttony. I wonder why? Is it because it's not an epidemic? No. Obesity is one of the biggest threats to our youth and our culture. Is it not because it isn't pervasive? No. Gluttony is everywhere you look. Is it because most Pastors couldn't teach a topic they have no authority in? What is gluttony anyway?

Gluttony is the worship of food to the demise of the body. Some eat too much, some eat too little, and some eat regardless of the physical outcome to their overall health. That's gluttony.

So, in my premeditated, sinful state, I approach the BIG day with the anticipation of a toddler that just saw her binky. In a word: hungry.

I am about to eat to my hearts content. As I preview the casseroles, and the jellies, and the baked yams with marshmallows on top, and the big bird cut open for this annual time of worship? I am quickly grabbing the biggest plate I can find to start stacking food on top of food. With my jumbo-size "Thanksgiving-edition" plate in hand I start filling up food like a real estate developer in Japan: tall and up.

I sit down and take care of it in about 5 minutes. 4000 calories: 5 minutes. There's a record in there somewhere.

Fast forward 2 hours.

I'm tired. My stomach hurts. My body is sending signals that my brain can't interpret. "Go to the bathroom. Go lay down. Go outside and exercise this off. Go have more. Go try to throw it all up. Go talk to your relatives you haven't seen in 4 years. Go fart. Go burp. Just go!"

Everything is different "post turkey".

The same can be said of sin. There are things in my life that look amazing, look incredible, could even be profitable, but they are not permissible. Sometimes we "starve ourselves" from certain things that we know in our hearts are sinful and so we avoid them. Then, when temptation starts rearing its head, we are enticed by the allure and the bogus promises that they convey. "You need this, you have been waiting for this, you deserve a break, this will be make you happier"

The empty promises so easily picked off before as temptation now start to speak to us in our own voice. It's at this point that I have to remind myself of my eating gorge and the effects of my unprovoked, premeditated turkey and stuffing worship. And the feeling it left me with.

Not full. Just bloated.

I pray that God will always keep me full. Keep my appetite on Him and the things He desires for me and the food that He provides that is always perfect, always filling, and always what I need.

Psalm 81:10

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Between the Cleats

I'm sitting in my 61 Comet, sideways, across my red and white velvet seats that are way too close to the go-kart looking steering wheel with rust and no horn. My stereo is the voices of enthusastic coaches with a single goal in mind: teaching kids to play tackle football.

"What's wrong with you, son? We're not growing trees here.. you're supposed to move!"

This guy is Lombardi without a pro team or a winning streak. And I listen and smile and absolutely love the serenity of the heavy grass clogging up the empty space between the cleats.

And it's between the cleats that I find myself experiencing life. Experiencing God. Experiencing a clogged version of life in a crowded and somewhat surprisingly, compact world.

There's more to be said and more to be had and more to be experienced and more to be known and more to be lived. I want to know that reality.

and I know that God's plan includes it. So why is it that my life feels like I can't find traction on the things that lead me to the one thing I need to know best? Why do I feel like I'm stepping in the soggy grass looking for smoother, fresh cut blades all the time?

I mean, is life meant to be lived perfectly or is life meant to become that which is perfect? Do I focus on who I am or who I am becoming? I find myself struggling between the perfection of the now and the perfection that is to come because in everything I do i find so many imperfections within me. Why do I get so brash when a kind word would do? Why do I say things I don't really mean? Why am I so pathetically weak in my faith in one day and full of zeal another?

And then I start getting that clogged up feeling in my brain that feels like an old cleat still stuck working through the soupy grass.

So I sit and I listen in on the chatter heard around my ears as the coaches teach the young boys what it's like to do it "perfect" and in that, perfect it. Trying to be perfect while at the same time pressing on to perfection.

It's soothing. The banter and direction can be heard in any direction, in any corner of the smallish suburban, community park, but sometimes, it is heard just for these ears:

"What's wrong with you, son? We're not growing trees here.. you're supposed to move!"

God/Himself, part two

So I was wondering... looking at the 5 ways God can be Himself... how many churches do not agree with those 5 things?

5 Amazing Truths About Christian Churches

1. Some communities of faith/churches say that there is not just one God.

2. Some churches do not preach repentance from sin and the need of a Savior. Further, some churches say the only acceptable way to be saved is in "their" church.

3. Some churches do not believe that God heals the sick.

4. Some churches believe God came for only some, not all.

5. Some churches believe that spiritual gifts, given by God, are dead.


Question: Does your church believe in any of these 5?
(ask, you may be surprised)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Vision Night responses...

I have heard tons of great things about Vision Night and how many we excited to hear what God is doing in our church. I will post a mini-recap of the night later today.. but for now... here are a few cool responses.

"We are stoked to see what the Lord has put on your heart and can't wait to start helping. Thank you for being responsible with our church and avoiding debt and loans, the Lord is really going to bless our church for that decision."

"I just wanted to let you know how thankful my husband Tony and I are that we found your church about 8 months ago. We really feel like we fit in and we belong. My husband wasnt a big church person before and now ever since we started going to theMovement, he is actually excited and cant wait for Sunday! It is such a great feeling to see your spouse so excited to hear the word of the Lord!Also I just wanted to let you know that we were both at Vision night last night and it was wonderful. The things that the Lord has planned for this church is amazing! I am letting you know now that my husband and I are volunteering for any work that might need to be done in the church, or along the lines of the community service! We are very excited to be a part of this adventure and look forward for more to come! Have a wonderful day."

Monday, August 10, 2009

Vision Night

I had the privilege of gathering together with a few hundred friends tonite. We came together, in part, representing those that are part of this vibrant community of 1000 or so people that call on Jesus as Savior and theMovement as home.

theMovement will always aim to be a place where God can be Himself. In our beliefs and in our walk.

Five Ways God Can Be Himself at theMovement (or any church that dares)

1. He will be glorified as the one and only God.

2. He will be worshiped as Lord over and within the church.

3. He will heal the sick and set people free of sin and bondage.

4. He came to save the world. That means everyone, not just some.

5. He gives spiritual gifts and they are really cool to have.

Five Ways We Can Glorify God

1. We will believe he alone is God.

2. We surrender our lives before him and are a living sacrifice, just like Jesus.

3. We pray for the sick and we see some of them healed.

4. We witness to everyone about our love of God and His love for us all.

5. We employ spiritual gifts and we pray for them and they rock.


So tonite we met and we talked about a possible future the Lord is taking our church on. I am stoked because God is with us and we like that because when God is Himself, He's actually great to be around. When He is with us.. we pray He can be just that: God.

To God be the Glory...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Easter

An amazing day... a day to celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.


My favorite part? Seeing everyone stoked on what God is up to in North County, San Diego. The electricity of what was going on as people were being touched by God through the eyes and ears of those that served the Lord faithfully on this day.


My thanks go out to the mulitude of people that aspired to make this day a day that will celebrated throughout eternity! What a glorious and great, great God we serve. I was astounded by the level of cheer, faithfulness, and overall butt-kicking hard work that made it all happen.


My favorite connection card of the day.. sums it up...


"I came here for the first time today and haven't been to church in a long long time. I just wanted to say that the people here are SO nice and welcoming. It made me realize that God might be real and lives through these people. What a great place!!! I want to live my life for God. I will be back next week!"


Wow.

God bless you all that serve and our part of the team here at theMovement. I love you all!