1. This weekend in our Hostage series, Enslaved by Insecurity, has the potential to revolutionize the way you see yourself. It may be the most freeing sermon some people have ever heard. Can’t wait!

2. I’ve loved hearing from churches and church leaders from all over the country calling in and going online to buy their tickets to The Uprising this week. It’s buzzing around here! Two days left to get tickets for your whole team at our Early Bird price of $79. Really. Only $79. C’mon…bring your who team, pastors, and take advantage of our “Buy 5, get 1 free offer.”

3. From basketball games to country music concerts, people all around me are looking forward to big things this weekend. I get it. Did I mention that The Uprising is 41 days away?! You won’t believe what God’s got in store…the risks…the challenges…the NEXT. Come let Him awaken the revolutionary spirit He placed in you to reach your community for Jesus. This could change everything.

This past weekend at Quest, we concluded our series, Christianity Isn’t…, with a week on what Christianity IS. There aren’t many things that leave me at a loss to control my emotions, but when it comes to Jesus…I can barely keep it together.

At it’s core Christianity isn’t a religion, a creed, or a denomination; it’s not an experience, a feeling, a song, or even a belief system. At it’s core, Christianity is a person…Christianity is Jesus!

For all the myth that Christianity isn’t. What it is – Jesus – far outshines all competition. Jesus is simply exceptional. He is the central figure of the human race. Two billion people claim follow Him, the entire world sets its calendar by His birth and measures history by His death. And He’s been on the cover of Time Magazine 21 times (and we don’t even know what He looked like)!

Jesus is most talked about, studied, feared, worshiped, and adored man on the planet, yet he never traveled as far as from Lexington to Cincinnati from His home. He had no reality show. He didn’t have a best selling book. He didn’t blog, tweet or update His status on Facebook, yet the globe is captivated by Him.

How is it that simple, unschooled, carpenter, born to single mom, in obscure village…who died a penniless, homeless, felon, without a friend to defend Him has captivated world for thousands of years?

Millions upon millions have been drawn to Him…century after century…generation upon generation…household after household…drawn by the absolutely pure, unconditional, sacrificial Love of Jesus.

After weeks of letting Jesus dismantle the myths that have kept us distant from Him (some of us, for most of our lives), it was clear we couldn’t just stand up and teach this weekend like any other.

A few moments that stood out:

• Weaving worship, teaching and communion together brought us so close to Him in worship  – and created one of the most beautiful worship experiences we’ve ever had together. Thanks to all of our artists who changed things up this weekend at the last minute so we could experience Jesus together in such a remarkable way.
• Even as I was transitioning between sections of my talk and worship, I was undone singing Immortal, Invisible, listening to S.M. Lockridge’s That’s My King, and worshiping together as we sang This is Our God. Almost every service, the room just couldn’t stop applauding His greatness.
• Seeing Stephanie stand at the foot of the cross, reading her letter about falling in love with Jesus and the ripple effect in her life was remarkable. In just one year ten of her closest friends and family members came to Christ!
• Revelation 3:20 says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks. We’ve opened the door of our hearts to many things and given ourselves away to far lesser things. It is not too difficult to answer His knock and receive Him for yourself! (By the way…if you found yourself still processing this weekend, it’s NOT TOO LATE!)
• Our artists singing Please Come…representing the heart of Jesus crying out for us to respond to the love we were made for was irresistible.
• And…I loved seeing DOZENS & DOZENS of people who opened the door of the hearts to the One who made them to love them!! Serving those who came to Christ in this series communion myself was an incredible privilege. Congratulations, friends!

I stayed in the auditorium most all afternoon as people processed what they’d just experienced of Jesus – and as many more came home! This was one of the thickest weekends we’ve ever experience. I heard more people describe this weekend’s worship experience as one of their favorites of all time than most any weekend in our history. So thankful to Jesus…the One we worship, the One who rescued us, and the One who invites us to please come. He is remarkable.

I’m never surprised that God moves and works in our midst, but I gotta tell you…I did NOT anticipate all He had in store for us over these last six weeks of Christianity Isn’t…! And this weekend, I think we’re in for a rare experience, as we conclude this series, turning the page to what Christianity IS.

As we were prepping for this weekend’s conclusion of our series something unbelievably rare happened. After months of prep, in these final days leading up to this weekend, God called an audible. For one of the very few times in Quest’s history, we got a clear redirect – a sense from God that we needed to turn our plans upside down and approach this weekend very differently than we had prepared over the last several months.

I am pumped out of my mind for what He’s about to do. Already this series has fundamentally shifted our understanding of who He is, what it is He desires from us, and how we see Him…but this weekend I believe we’re going to experience Him in a way we will not soon forget. When God calls an audible – He wants to catch our attention.

Please pray. INVITE. Get your hearts ready. Make the phone call. (Who do you know who needs to experience Jesus for themselves??) Pray bold prayers. Offer to give someone a ride. Buy their lunch. Or just tell them you’ll sit with them, and invite them to come see for themselves. I believe this will be a rare weekend where we will all experience God in unique ways and many, I pray, will respond to what Christianity IS.

You’re invited. Please come.

Saturday @ 5:55 in Lexington | Sunday @ 9:30 & 11:30 in Lexington & Frankfort

I’m loving this series…it seems God is using it mightily. Love watching Him dismantle myth after myth in our lives. BE HERE and BRING SOMEONE for conclusion on what Christianity IS…I’m asking God to make this a fundamentally shifting weekend for all of us.

Here are a few things that stand out from this weekend as we let Jesus wreck the formulas we’ve tried to apply to our faith:

• Loved laughing so hard this weekend. Thanks Love Doctor. (Who hired that guy, anyway?:))
• Getting ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day was a blast. Loved hearing couples talk like that as they looked into each others’ eyes. Hopefully guys weren’t slouches and wives made ‘em remember Valentine’s Day:)
• Seeing people’s formulas written out on the board was a stark reality of how we often approach a relationship with God. He loves us too much to let formulas like that stand in our lives. He wants us to KNOW Him for who He really is.
• The Rich Young Ruler had a scorecard (and his score looked good!), but didn’t really want his safety net cut. Neither do we, but that’s what faith is. That’s what Jesus loves us enough to ask of us.
• We get mixed up thinking God keeps a scorecard. He doesn’t. He’s not waiting for you to get everything right or perform well enough for Him to bless you or love you. He’s not waiting for you to get the formula right. He wants you to throw the formula out the window!
• Jesus doesn’t want you to recite a formula or religiously follow a ritual…He wants your Wholehearted Devotion!
• When God doesn’t do things the way we want, we always think we know better…but what if we’re wrong? Lazarus’ story is challenging and flat out remarkable. Mary and Martha wanted Jesus to heal their brother; instead He raised Him from the dead. The dead man came out! What can’t God do? Mary, Martha and Lazarus trusted Him relentlessly after that…so can we.
• Your God is too small…we don’t want a small, predictable, easily manipulated God…He wouldn’t be worthy of our worship.
• Jesus prayed in John 17 that we’d be one with each other and with God…and that we’d know the Father loves us as He loves Jesus. It’s a breathtaking reality a formula can never create!
• Jesus always has more in mind for you than you have in mind for yourself.
• When you give Him your trust and your wholehearted devotion…He knows He has you. And YOU are all He ever wanted!

Jesus turned so many things upside down with His teaching. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Turn the other cheek. It’s more blessed to give than receive. It doesn’t line up the way we think things should. It just doesn’t seem fair.

But the good news is that… you don’t want fair. God was unpacking something so substantial this weekend at Quest Community Church. If we could get this one straight — if we could get our arms around this topic — it would dismantle half of the internal battles we face. Here’s just a little of what stood out from this weekend as we dove into the reality that Christianity Isn’t Fair.

• From my 12-year-old son to the hearts of the 12 disciples and religious people in Jesus’ day – we all think we want fair. If everyone else has a cell phone, an iPod or a laptop – we want one too.
• We all want to know we’re not getting the short end of the stick – we all want the same perks as everyone around us (or better!).
• Jesus — smelling fairness in the heart of His disciples in Matthew 19 (and in the fledgling future leaders of His church!) — tackled the underlying unfairness of Christianity head on in Matthew 20.
• When we demand fairness it’s usually because we’ve compared ourselves to those around us and we feel superior…like we deserve better.
• We keep scorecards against people in our lives – and inherently, against God. We track how things stack up for us, and hold onto our scorecards as proof of what we deserve.
• Amber’s story helped us begin to grapple with our own questions of fair. (Thanks for being willing to share your pain with us, Amber.)
• The truth is…to live by the scorecard is to die by the scorecard.
• Fair is the last thing you want.
• Romans 3:23 reminds us that we have all sinned. We all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Knowing this, God comes to our rescue and treats us UNFAIRLY…giving us undeserved grace, unmerited love, unwarranted mercy, unreasonable forgiveness, unimaginable access to Him. This is God’s unfair treatment toward those He loves!
• In the parable of the vineyard workers, the ones who were treated unfairly were those who received the lavish gifts of God – not those who “earned” their wage.
• Trying to earn the grace of God will leave you standing outside of His grace with your arms folded – filled with resentment and bitterness.
• Don’t treat God’s gifts lightly! James 1:17 tells us that every good and perfect gift is from the Father. Let’s not take it for granted because we live in such a prosperous nation.
• You don’t want fair…you want forgiveness. You don’t want comparison…you want compassion. You don’t want to be graded…you want grace.
• Loved the story Phil Yancey told in What Good is God? of why Jesus talked about prostitutes getting into heaven faster than religious people. Every one of us who recognizes that we are “the low” has access to His grace. We are all “the low.”
• Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? is one of my favorite books of all time – I meant it when I said you want to get it!

In the end the desire for fairness is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Father’s heart. The grace that floods down from the cross and spills out of the veins of the only perfectly loving and holy person to have ever lived is the greatest miscarriage of justice that has ever occurred. Jesus was crucified…the innocent punished for the guilty. He died to pay a debt He didn’t owe because you and I owed a debt we couldn’t pay.

You don’t want fair, friends. You don’t want what you deserve. You want the unfair grace of God. Let’s live in the lavish overflow of His grace together.

P.S. Need to spend some more time on this one? Watch this weekend again online here.

As Transformation Pastor Helen Musick took us into week three of Christianity Isn’t… I got to experience Quest online with some of our Quebsters. Loved it! This series is blowing my mind. When people see Jesus for who He really is, they want Him. I’m in awe of the ways He just keeps making Himself more and more clear in this remarkable community. Congratulations to those of you who ran to Him this weekend, and in this series. You are brand new!

Keep pressing in, Questers. Keep letting Jesus wreck the myths and misconceptions you’ve held about Him and His Church. And keep praying for the people you love to see Him for themselves. I’m praying for them with you!

Here are a few of Helen’s reflections on this weekend:

• Seeing dozens of people laying down their garbage and trophies at the foot of the cross was remarkable. It’s all filthy rags before a holy, loving God.

• I said it this weekend, but let me say it again: Wherever those of us who are followers of Christ caused anyone to believe that Jesus is mostly interested in how you behave…it’s not true. He is only interested in your heart.

• Our Pastor says it best: “Jesus didn’t die to make you good. He died to make you His.”  My twist on this truth for this weekend:  Jesus didn’t die so you would behave. He died so that you could belong to Him.

• “Humility is being honest with God and others.” Thanks John Lynch, author of True Faced for a great definition of what humility is.

• Danni Sue, thank you for courageously carrying your garbage bag that read “abortion,” something most women hide in shame. You surrendered to Jesus and showed us that hope and redemption is possible…and that it’s found at the cross. God is Redeeming the Choice through you.

• Redeeming the Choice, a brand new post-abortion recovery and healing group is launching this Friday night at The Mat. Women…Jesus has more healing for you than you can imagine. You’re invited to join us this Friday night.

• For many of us who grew up in the Christian church of the south, trying harder and behaving better may have seemed like a pretty good plan, but it’s caused more damage than good.

• Obedience brings blessing. The principles of the Bible provide a structure for your life that will serve you emotionally, physically and relationally – they just won’t save you!! Only a Savior can do that.

• Being a Christian doesn’t mean you BEHAVE BETTER. Being a Christian means you Embrace Grace. And you do this by admitting you aren’t good enough, accept and live in the gift of grace, and come to the cross, recognize He died for you sin and surrender your life to Him.

p.s. Seeing more than 100 of you standing in line to turn in your applications for the Accelerate Leadership Development Program was ASTONISHING!! That many people ready to lay down their lives is a powerful force in the Kingdom of God. So proud of you!

1. Can’t describe what it felt like that God was doing last weekend as we kicked off our January series, Christianity Isn’t, with Vision Weekend: Christianity Isn’t What You Think, but I gotta tell you: after prepping all week, I’ve got the sense this whole series may blow us away. Bring someone with you who needs to see Jesus for who He really is!

2. I’ve loved the feeling of churches and church leaders from all over the country calling in and going online to buy their tickets to The Uprising this week. It’s buzzing around here! Two days left to get tickets for your whole team at our Super Early Bird price of $59. PLUS…bring all your key leaders and take advantage of our “Buy 5, get 1 free offer.”

3. As we’re counting down the days until The Uprising, how about this glimpse at what we’ll experience on April 14, 2011?

Uprising 2011 Promo from theUprising on Vimeo.

p.s. Everyone who registers for The Uprising by Sunday at midnight will be entered to win a free Flip video camera!

There are many causes in the world that matter. There are many organizations doing work that has real value…but the Church has a unique mandate in all the world.

Jesus has entrusted HIS mission into our hands, our hearts…our lives. With every heartbeat and every step He took, Jesus was undeniably clear on His primary mission: PEOPLE. His whole  life screamed: ‘I have come to seek and save the lost!‘ (Lk 19:10)

Jesus gave up His life to rescue us. He loves us. He is passionate about us and He never gives up His pursuit of us. We are the reason WHY. He knows the stakes are eternal for every single man, woman and child He ever created. He knows us intimately – inside and out, and He made us to LOVE us. And for those who run to Him, He invites us to join Him on a rescue mission that will blow our minds!

Christianity isn’t about living by a set of rules or doing the right thing or about church as normal. It isn’t what you think. It’s so much MORE.

What if 2011 was the year everything changed? For you? For the people you love? Get here this weekend for VISION WEEKEND (and bring someone with you!). God is just getting started with us!!

Sometimes as I’m prepping for a weekend, God rocks my world and I get the sense He’s about to unleash something that matters in seismic ways for us as a church. This weekend I feel like He’s about to do just that.

For the first time ever we’re launching our entire year with VISION WEEKEND. This weekend will kick off a seven week series called Christianity Isn’t. First up this weekend: Christianity Isn’t What You Think. I’ve gotta tell you, what God has in front of us blows my mind!

The truth is, when I get a chance to talk about the truth of God’s word and look at the life of Jesus and what He said the church ought to be like, it does something in me I can barely describe. It’s so substantial, so real, so thorough, so reticent with my experience with Him, that I find myself pumped out of my mind with anticipation for what He wants to unleash.

Most of us have had experiences with church (and with Christians) that have left us mixed up about what Christianity is really all about. But Jesus was never mixed up. His purposes were undeniably clear, often unexpected, and undeniably revolutionary. This series will unpack His heartbeat in ways that will blow our minds and that have the potential to reorient our lives.

As we head toward Vision Weekend, I have two requests:

1. Pray for my prep

2. And invite like crazy!

Bring everyone you know with you. Go for it…risk it! People are looking for a way for life to do life differently this year. They’re looking for the keys that will really make a difference. You can give them their best shot this weekend. I’m praying for every single invite that goes out!

I can’t wait…I’ll see you this weekend.

Pete

p.s. Get to ELEVATE tonight at Celebration at 6:30 for fantastic worship, the Lord’s Supper, and a great way to get your heart ready heading into Vision Weekend! What a way to kick off the year together!