Greg Peters Live

These are the top ten reasons why I am looking forward to Easter:

10. The weather is going to be gorgeous!

9. Our family will spend the afternoon together and enjoy a great meal.

8. There is just something about serving the Lord together with so many others in our church.

7.We have some great things planned to offer our guests

6. We are doing something at church that we have never done before and it will be phenomenal!!

5. We have some awesome elements of worship planned.

4. I am looking forward to preaching the message God has given me!!

3. Each year we reach new families who will become a part of our church family.

2. I know that people will choose to give their life to Christ! 

1. Because I serve a resurrected Savior!

I wanted to give a few thoughts to consider after reading my previous post.

• The older generation has great wisdom to offer
• I prefer to learn from others mistakes rather than my own (although I don’t seem to do it often enough)
• Everyone should have a mentor
• Not much blesses a young person more than that of an older person believing in them
• Those in the 4th quarter of life can bring stability and maturity to a church
• Regardless of age, humility, a sweet spirit and a servant’s heart is always refreshing!

• About 50  volunteers did a phenomenal job with landscaping our new parking lot!
• The campus looks great!
• Can’t wait for Easter next weekend!!
• Had some tremendous guests this weekend and alot of them!
• Worship was powerful!
• Loved preaching through Haggai the last couple weeks!!
• This week it was about Our Purpose is to Point to Him
• The Jews were to rebuild the temple so everyone could see the power, person and presence of God. The Jews were to Point to Him!
• In Haggai 2:1-9 we talked about everything from discouragement to the millenium kingdom.
• I told the congregation that I was going to walk on thin ice this weekend and would do so because I will be turning 40 this year and because I am losing my hair.
• I have never done this before but I want to share with you a very small portion of my sermon notes that was based on Haggai 2:3- That’s the way it is with a lot of older folks – they are always living in the past, always wanting the young to do things their way, live up to their ideals, always pouring cold water over new ideas and a fresh vision – you know something, there is a real danger in that.
  It seems the older you are the more resistant to change you can become, and, if I may say so, often the more selfish you become. Criticizing what others may be trying do, suggesting that nothing is ever good enough.
• I then shared about when the foundation of the temple was originally being layed, Ezra 3:12-13 – My interpretation of the passage was that the old farts were weeping and the young bucks were celebrating.
• When I talked about the above stuff there was not really any tension but there were alot of laughs. Why was that? Because the Lord has sent us some wonderful peolpe who are in the 4th quarter of their life!
• My cautions to the older crew was totally in line with the admonition of Scripture. Plus, it was totally proactive and not at all reactive! We have a great group of mature believers who are both mature in years and wisdom!
• To me, one of the blessings in my ministry is the way the mature members in our church family believe in me, support me, encourage me and speak confidence into me! Thanks! I love you guys!!!
• Went to hear Hillsong tonight and had a tremendous time of worship!
• Had some real good times of fellowship with some of our church family this weekend.
• I am praying for our church family as we invite family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to join us on Easter weekend!!
• I love pastoring Parkview!!

In the last post I stated that we shared with our leaders the 5 essentials in developing leaders.  I gave 2 of the five and now in this post I will share the latter 3 principles.

1. Reward equippers over doers. This principle is the one area where I have probably failed to lead the most. I have thought we were doing great when our leaders were effectively doing and as a result we have produced some phenomenal doers but are lacking in equippers. This is only one persons fault – mine! It is real simple – what gets rewarded gets repeated. I have been rewarding doing and that is what has gotten repeated. We should ask ourselves – Am I doing ministry through a team? How successful are the people around me? How many people have I empowered to do ministry? Doers add and equippers multiply!
2. Grow people where God has planted them.  All the lay leaders that a church will ever need are already in the church. What a terrible joke it would be for God to have a divine plan for your church or ministry and not resource the plan with the needed leaders!  God will not be calling your ministry to new heights and not empower you with the necessary leadership base. You have people who God has planted in your ministry – it is your responsibility to equip and empower them.
3. Make lifelong learning a priority.  We have all heard it said that leaders are readers and readers are leaders.  It is also true about learners and leaders.  If we are not learning we then become our own leadership lid.  The learning that is required to attain maximum effectiveness is not learning that comes accidentally or unintentionally.  We must target specific areas where we need to grow. This is one area we can actively do something about! Begin growing in your learning today!

Rick and Carol Siboni taught all our leaders this past Saturday on the subject of leadership development. Our desire it to make leadership development part of our DNA and culture.  We are asking all of our current leaders to pass the baton and find another individual who can be empowered to become all that God intends for them to be.  The one passing the baton would help empower and develop the “baton receiver” in the areas of head (strong theological worldview), heart (integrity, passion and character), and hands (relational and leadership skills).

Each one who is being asked to find a person to empower has been given 5 essentials for developing leaders. I will share 2 of the 5 in this post and share my thoughts about each -

1. See people through the lens of potnetial.  When you believe in people and help them see who they can become they tend to see the vision you give them and rise to new levels in their life.  All many people need is someone to believe in them! Satan wants us to see ourselves a notch down and take us there. God wants us to see ourselves a notch up and take us there. Every time someone has taken the time to invest in me and believe in me, my life has seemed to gain obvious positive momentum. We must see the potnetial in others and help them reach a whole new life level.
2. Cast down the idol of excellence. One of my favorite sayings is that people are weird and so am I.  The truth is there are no excellent people – there are no people who have no baggage, dysfunction, or skeletons. So if you are waiting for the perfect person wait no longer. God can use a messed up you and a messed up “baton receiver”. Both of you must be on the way to health in the areas of head, heart and hands, but thankfully God can use you before you become excellent – which by the way, that will be heaven.  Then as you move forward, you will strive to give God your best and serve with a spirit of excellence. When you stumble you will stand back up and move forward with the same continued spirit.

• To God be the glory – many responded to the Gospel of Christ this weekend. It all started with 6 people trusting Christ at our Sat. night service.
• Several people personally handed me their card where they checked the box that they had personally trusted Christ as their Savior.
• When we experience such an incredible weekend, just know that it is a team effort.
• If you serve at Parkview, in ANY WAY, you had a part in people coming to faith this weekend!!
• So many of our leaders left it all on the feild this weekend.
• Our church is truly blessed with a great elder team, staff and ministry leader team.
• I am so tired that I am having trouble focusing long enough to complete this post.
• A special thanks to Rick and Carol Siboni for facilitating our Leadership Training event on Sat. morning!
• Our desire is to make Leadership Development a part of our DNA
• Many volunteers work so hard to get over 3,000 feet of irrigation installed in our new parking lot. That is over a half mile of pvc!
• We need 40 people this coming Sat. to help lay sod and mulch. 40 people could save us as much as $4,000 in labor. Come make a difference!
• Please be in prayer for our Easter services!!
• Enjoyed Steak-n-Shake tonight with the family!

What is in your DNA? Looking at it from various angles, in one word descriptions my “DNA” consists of a few things: extrovert, adreniline, passionate, processor,or to sum it up for those of you who are familiar with Myers Briggs testing -ENTP.

I also wanted to consider the DNA of Parkview? By nature, who are we? Following are some brief descriptions of our DNA:

• Passionate about God and are tapped into Him through Jesus
• God loves people and so do we
• We are not afraid to try
• We are not afraid to fail
• We promote an environment of grace
• We serve beyond what we are asked
• We are creative

Now, what do I wish was more in our DNA -

• My prayer is that we create a greater culture of leadership development
• My prayer is that we speak the truth in love – with an emphasis on both
• My prayer is that we enhance teamwork

I am very thankful for who we are and I am very thankful for who the Lord is leading us to become.  I also think that it is good to have out in front of us some areas in which we are currently growing and yet aspire to see more growth.

• leadership development
• faithfulness is under-rated and skills are over-rated
• leadership training this Sat
• Leadership and Self-deception, it’s a book
• Passing the Leadership Baton, another book
• who am I handing the baton to
• I really need to grow as a leader
• Systems create behavior
• We need better systems
• Can’t expect what you don’t inspect
• What gets rewarded gets repeated
• Empowering leaders should be more rewarded
• great leaders have character, strong theological world view and relational skills
• elder expansion
• thankful for my team of elders and staff
• need to wrap up one important thing before we move forward to build
• pray that happens soon
• need to wrap up Easter sermon today
• pray MANY will be saved
• good weather for sunrise service would be a bonus

• The weekend was fun, fast paced and exciting!
• We had a really good time with family and frineds this weekend!
• I really enjoyed launching our series in Haggai!!!
• Haggai will get in your spiritual space!
• The Jews said that one day they would get around to finishing the temple but now was not a good time.
• They were paneling their homes while God’s house laying incomplete
• The foundation had overgrowth from 16 years of no construction.
• We  keep thinking one of these days and before we know it 16 years have passed.
• So many people have good intentions
• Satan loves good intentions because they accomplish absolutely nothing.
• For the Israelites the temple was just not important, for many Christians the house of God is just not important.
• People work 5 days a week all the time and would never consider going to church 5 weeks in a row. Many parents see that their kids make every game in a 13 game season and yet never even think about going to church 13 weeks in a row.  What does God think?
• Haggai said, “Consider your ways”
• Stop and think about the course of your life!
• Because of their inactivity, their money bag had holes in it
• God allowed the Dow to drop, unemployment to sky rocket and the housing bubble to burst.
• Had 2 good meals today with families from church.
• Very tired now and looking forward to a good nights sleep.
• Full week ahead.
• Be blessed!

The post below was sent to me by Jessica Farmer. She gave me permission to pass it along. She was connecting her devotion to this past weekends message of “we must toil in the soil” Matt 13. Enjoy -

It is soo cool how God uses personal devotions to remind us of and confirm what we learn in church. I found this in my Beth Moore bible study ( Jesus -90 days with the one and only ) She is discussing how we tend to have social prejudices when it comes to sharing the love of Christ with others…..unfortunate but true. Pride causes us to feel we are better deserving than say , a woman of ill repute. Luke 7: 39-48 tells the story of Jesus in the house of the Pharisee. The pharisee says to himself ” ….that obviously Jesus doesn’t know WHAT KIND of woman she is ” . In the original Greek the word are * poios -meaning-what * and *dapedon – meaning – soil . So he was literally saying “He has no idea the dirt/soil she comes from” . Beth goes on to say that Dirt is dirt !
I felt like this was for me tonight and was just so excited to share it. We must TOIL IN THE SOIL ! no matter what kind it is !! Thank goodness the Lord loves all kinds of DIRT !—–Jessica Farmer It is soo cool how God uses personal devotions to remind us of and confirm what we learn in church. I found this in my Beth Moore bible study ( Jesus -90 days with the one and only ) She is discussing how we tend to have social prejudices when it comes to sharing the love of Christ with others…..unfortunate but true. Pride causes us to feel we are better deserving than say , a woman of ill repute. Luke 7: 39-48 tells the story of Jesus in the house of the Pharisee. The pharisee says to himself ” ….that obviously Jesus doesn’t know WHAT KIND of woman she is ” . In the original Greek the word are * poios -meaning-what * and *dapedon – meaning – soil . So he was literally saying “He has no idea the dirt/soil she comes from” . Beth goes on to say that Dirt is dirt !
I felt like this was for me tonight and was just so excited to share it. We must TOIL IN THE SOIL ! no matter what kind it is !! Thank goodness the Lord loves all kinds of DIRT !—–Jessica Farmer