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Nashville Flood Relief

May 2, 2010 in Missions with 28 Comments

If you’ve been watching the news you probably have a pretty good idea of the devastating floods we’ve experienced here in Nashville over the weekend. I’ve been here my whole life and I’ve never seen anything like this!! There are entire subdivisions submerged underwater. Check out this video CNN showed that illustrates the power of this Nashville Flood.

We literally have dozens of families in our church who either have lost or are dangerously close to losing everything and hundreds more who are going to have serious damage from these devastating floods.

We’ve closed all of our Cross Point offices for tomorrow and are encouraging our staff to help with local flood relief.

If you can make it please feel free to join us. We’re going to meet at the Bellevue Campus at 10 AM to divide into teams and start helping with clean up.

If you can make it please bring a broom, shovel or anything else you can think of that might be helpful in our clean up efforts.

For those of you around the country who have asked how you might help we’ve set up a special FLOOD FUND where you or your church can make a donation. Many of our families who are losing everything DO NOT have flood insurance. Any donation will be extremely helpful as we try to help our families put their lives back together.

Running For Hope

April 15, 2010 in Missions with 26 Comments

I’ve made no bones about it.

I hate running. I. Hate. It.

Most of you know I’ve been training the past few months for the Music City Half Marathon which is now ONLY 9 days away.

So the next logical question is, “Why Run?”

Well, there is really only one reason. To make a difference.

New Hope Academy is a school on a mission to set people free. Black, white, rich, or poor, we are limited by our prejudices and our fears. And we all have them. I know I’ve wrestled with them on and off throughout my life.

New Hope provides a radical opportunity for relationships to form across racial, economic, and cultural lines within the community—thereby empowering the poor, bringing people together, and cultivating racial reconciliation.

They believe that changing our culture begins with understanding and that understanding takes place in genuine relationships. Separately, we remain impoverished and underprivileged—the poor and affluent alike. Together, we become empowered and enlightened lifting one another to a Christ-centered life.

I LOVE this school and everything it stands for! Will you help me help them?

I’m trying to raise $1,000 to support New Hope. For more information or to make a donation CLICK HERE.

Thanks in advance for partnering with me to make a difference (and please pray I survive this thing).

Cross Point at Her Best

March 4, 2010 in Cross Point Church, Missions with 17 Comments

I love our Cross Point Serving Saturday’s. There is no doubt in my mind that it’s Cross Point at her best. So proud of the over 700 volunteers at our 3 campuses who served our city well this past Saturday!

One of my favorite stories came from a group of women who served at Mending Hearts. Mending Hearts is a home which helps women who are suffering due to alcohol or drug addiction. They seek to provide an opportunity for them to get their lives back in order and move forward. A group of women spent the day just pampering these precious women by doing their hair and make up. One of the women told one of our volunteers that this was the first time she had her hair cut since prison where she had to cut her hair with nail clippers.

Matthew 25: ³⁷“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Have you felt God prompting you to serve anywhere lately?

Help Haiti Live

February 27, 2010 in Missions with 1 Comment

If you’re in the Nashville area you can still buy tickets HERE for tonight’s concert. If not, join us online live RIGHT HERE for an unforgettable concert. It’s going to be fun to partner together to make a difference in the lives of these precious children in Haiti.

You guys know how much I believe in Compassion and what they’re doing around the world. Brandi and I have sponsored a compassion child for years now and I’ve been to India to see firsthand the difference this organization is making. I can’t think of anyone I trust more to handle a crisis like this with integrity, grace and the love of Christ.

Let’s Serve Our City

February 25, 2010 in Missions with 9 Comments

I’m so excited this Saturday is “Serving Saturday” at all of our Cross Point campuses. I heard from Ryan yesterday that over 700 Cross Pointers are currently signed up. Serving Saturday is a missional opportunity we offer once a quarter where we send out a massive group to serve in our local communities.

There are people who are serving our city in different capacities daily, but there is something about this church wide initiative that creates so much momentum.

Here’s Ryan explaining what’s going to happen Saturday. If you’re not signed up and want to participate make sure you contact the campus you attend today to find out where and when you can plug in.

A Father to the Fatherless

February 9, 2010 in Missions, Parenting with 36 Comments

There are some 11 million abandoned kids roaming the streets of India. I’ve been aware of that statistic for a while but nothing prepares you for meeting it face to face.

This is Puja Ghosh who is just five years old. I had the amazing opportunity to spend some time with her over the past few days and I can confirm that smile is just as beautiful in person.

She lives with a family here in the Khalpar slum who found her in a pile of trash. Her mom literally tossed her out like you would a loaf of moldy bread.

I know many of you have unhealed wounds from your parents. These are deep wounds because your parents are the two people on earth who by God’s design are entrusted to pour unconditional love into your heart. So when that doesn’t happen for one reason or another it bruises our very souls. It can be the deepest of all hurts.

It’s one thing to grow up in extreme poverty.

It’s one thing to grow up in a 3×5 tent.

It’s one thing to grow up wondering where your next meal is coming from.

But it’s a whole other thing to grow up with the realization your mom and dad threw you in the trash. To know you were so undervalued that you were discarded as worthless and left for dead.

Lack of love is the deepest and most painful form of poverty that exists.

I’m so thankful for the family that is taking care of Puja. She goes to our school here in the slum and is actually doing very well. She says she would like to one day be a teacher. I think she’s going to make a great one. I’m also thankful for the wonderful teachers who are pouring into her ever day. Not only will they teach her to read and write but they also share with her from the Bible about this God who claims to be a father to the fatherless. A truth she so desperately needs.

Will you guys join me all over the world in praying for Puja today.

Father God we lift up Puja in prayer to you today. We can’t even being to imagine what all she’s been through in her short life. While my kids have been growing up playing games, being tucked into bed, and flowered with love she’s been searching for food, sometimes sleeping alone, and desperately searching for love.

God, I know you have a plan for her. You allowed her cries to be heard from that pile of trash one day and I believe you’ll now hear our cries for her.

I pray as she deals with the pain of abandonment that she will come into a personal relationship with you, who promises us that you will “never leave us nor forsake us.” I pray as she struggles with not knowing her parents that you God will wrap your eternal arms around her as the Father to the fatherless.

As she grows up and is tempted by her wounds to seek love from loveless people and other things, I pray you will flood her with the thought that you love her more deeply than she can fully comprehend. That you couldn’t love her any more or any less than you do in this very moment.

Amen.

Thank you guys for all your prayers during this trip. If everything goes right I should be back in Nashville later tonight.

Clowning Around

February 8, 2010 in Missions, Spiritual Growth with 30 Comments

Got a call from a buddy right before my trip who in essence said, “Pete why are you going to India right now? You need to be promoting Book #1 and I know your writing book #2. You guys are having record settings weekends at Cross Point, you’re getting ready to open a 4th campus and you’ve got a new teaching series you need to work on. Couldn’t you have found a less busy time?”

He’s got a great heart but I think there was a part of him that felt as if I was almost being a little irresponsible. Almost as if I were clowning around when more important things needed to be tended to. None of his concerns were new to me. I had selfishly thought every one of those things myself.

We tend to put things in categories:

Things that are important. Things that aren’t.
People who matter. People who don’t.

Henri Nouwen explains in Clowning in Rome(which is rocking my world right now)…

Clowns are not in the center of the events. They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, and make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire. The clown don’t have it together, they do not succeed in what they try to do , they are awkward, out of balance, and left handed, but…they are on our side. We respond to them not with admiration but with sympathy, not with amazement but with understanding, not with tension but with a smile.

The church today is full of lion tamers and trapeze artists whose dazzling feats claim our attention and elicit our applause and yet what the Kingdom so desperately needs is more clowns.

In a way this is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 20: ¹⁶“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” In other words the way up is down.

In God’s Kingdom it’s not the ring leader or the trapeze artist who grabs the spotlight but it’s the clown who simply prays, God may I evoke a smile and awaken hope today, even in a city terrorized by violence, poverty and despair.

I’ve never spent way too much of my life trying to get to the center of the ring. Time to head in a different direction. Time to be a clown!

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