Quick thoughts on Easter at CC

A couple quick thoughts about an incredible Easter weekend at Centerpoint:

Actually, it started on Palm Sunday when dozens of adults responded to embrace the reality of the cross rather than the shadow of ritualistic religion. That morning in Promiseland, nine children accepted Christ as their Savior, along with several students from our ReGeneration student ministry that night. I talked and prayed with one father after the service who had been burdened to pray for his child until 2 a.m. that morning only to find out when he was leaving the service, his child had accepted Christ!

We opened Easter weekend with a Good Friday service where we worshiped together and reflected on Christ’s brutal sacrifice in the short film, Who Killed Jesus?. Then, we remembered the cross and what it means for us through communion. It was powerful to hear how God moved in hearts through this time of reflection.

On Easter Sunday we celebrated an event that happened in history – the resurrection. It was the largest attendance we have ever had at Centerpoint because YOU invested & invited. We had to add chairs to the worship center two separate times and each of those chairs represented people who were impacted and radically changed by the Gospel. Many adults accepted Christ, a father and his two daughters recommitted their lives to Christ, and the Holy Spirit clearly moved in the hearts of many others.

If someone were to ask me what we did that was “special” this year for Easter, I really wouldn’t know what to say. No special lights added. No special set. No special giveaways. We just prayed, invested & invited, removed as many of the unnecessary barriers to Jesus as we could, and proclaimed the Gospel clearly. God did His thing.

We pretty much do that every week. God pretty much did what He’s been doing every week - changing lives!

Now it’s your turn. If you had a friend visit with you this week, then use this as an opportunity to ask them what they experienced. It may open up a conversation about Jesus. A new series starts Sunday called Storytellers which is another great time to invite someone.

Lastly, thank you to those who served this past weekend. You didn’t park cars, greet guests, serve in the café, play music, do A/V, hold babies, take care of children, lead small groups…instead, you became a bridge to the power of Jesus Christ changing people’s lives!

The best is yet to come…

Bryant Golden

Just Being Good Sends People to Hell...

We recently completed a series called, “Come Home” about the life of Jonah. It may seem odd to reference Jonah on Good Friday, but Jonah’s story pictures the depth of God’s plan for the world. "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Jonah’s story was a picture of the coming Messiah and His message of grace to an undeserving world.

But Jonah’s story is also the story of many of us as Christians. Jonah was a good guy. He was committed to the moral guidelines God had established but he wasn’t fully surrendered to God’s purposes in the world.

Jonah reveals in chapter three that he is consumed with the fact that he’s uncomfortable, depressed, and bitter about God’s grace to the “undeserving” and ready to go home to the safe and prosperous confines of the familiar. God calls him out for being obsessed with the wrong things and shockingly unaware of his own desperate need for God’s grace. To paraphrase His words, “Jonah, I am concerned about this generation of people (120,000 Ninevites), what are you concerned about?”

As many of us approach Easter weekend, we are in many ways surrendered to living morally. We are “good Christians” but are we concerned about the right things? For instance, are we concerned about this generation of people who are dying and going to Hell? Jonah foreshadowed the death, burial and resurrection of Christ that would cancel the debt of sin and release us from the power of sin. Do we forget already how shockingly undeserving we are? Are we aware of the desperate need of those around us or are we going to just purchase some new clothes and work in a church service this weekend?

Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face—whose mercy you have professed to obey—and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world. (William Booth)

This Easter it’s more than responding to the Gospel by obeying the laws of God to make yourself feel better; it’s about surrendering to his concerns for the world. Take advantage of this Easter weekend and invite a friend to hear the message of Jesus. Be bold to start a conversation that may open a door.