7 prayer points duing the 1st Monday fast

Today is NLC’s 1st Monday fasting and prayer. It’s a great time, as a church, to get closer to Jesus and to pray for some big things.

If you’re fasting and praying today, I wanted to provide some things to pray about concerning what God’s doing at NLC. Here are some points that you can pray over throughout the day. Have a great day!

1. Pray that God would use NLC and the churches of Southwest Florida to reach out to the people in this community and decrease the level of lost-ness here.

2. Pray for NLC’s supported missionaries in: India, Sri Lanka, Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Kenya.

3. Pray that God would give wisdom as we think about future facilities.

4. Pray that God would increase the influence of NLC to help pastors and church planters across the US and around the world.

5. Pray for upcoming church plants and their pastors: Fellowship Church – 3/8 (THIS SUNDAY!)  – John & Shandra Youell; Your Place Church – 4/12 – Darian & Tyra Rains.

6. Pray for recent church plants and their pastors: Church at the Crossing – launched 2/8 – Stacy & Amy Turney; Life Gate Church - launched 2/22 – Ashley and Jamie Wilson.

7. Pray for NLC Orlando as they continue to develop into the church that God is calling them to become to reach their community with the life changing message of Jesus!

tlc house

On Sunday, after church, a group from NLC went to the TLC (Tender Loving Care) House to help out.

The TLC House is a house set up to take in unwanted children and children whose parents can’t take care of them for a season. It is staffed by loving people who do what they can to make sure that the kids have an environment to be raised in that is filled with love and points to Christ.

On Sunday, our team did everything from yard work, fixing up the house and barn, to providing food for the kids and adults there.

I heard a message recently that asked the question, “What is God’s plan to show the world that He is good?” The conclusion is simple:

“We are God’s plan to show the world that He is good.”

This past Sunday, the team from NLC showed a group of kids that could easily feel unwanted or unloved, that God cares about them so much and they deserve the best!

Great job to everyone from NLC who was a part!

700 backpacks

Last week, NLC teamed up with another ministry, CCMI (a ministry designed to coordinate community efforts), to send food home to 700 families who otherwise would be without.

CCMI provided the food for the 700 backpacks and NLC provided the labor to make sure that the bags were filled with food!

So, this past week, God became real to a bunch of people through meeting their physical needs!

It’s great to be a part of a church that is impacting the region of Southwest Florida in real ways!

2 r9 Churches Planted!

Over the last few weeks, 2 of the church planters that were at NLC for r9, planted their churches.

On February 8, Stacy and Amy Turney launched Church at the Crossing in Dothan, Alabama, and yesterday, February 22, Ashley and Jaime Wilson launched Life Gate Church in Lexington, Kentucky.

They both had great turn outs for their first services and God is going to do some awesome stuff in them! Here’s what Jamie Wilson from Life Gate said about their time in Ft. Myers right before their launch:

We do launch Sunday…6 days…aaaaahhhh!  We feel pretty prepared though – thanks to R9 (I don’t know what we would have done without that week).  We had our final “practice” service this week and it went really well.  We unloaded in 30 min and set up in 45 and we were short 3 families, so we felt positive about that.  We also had a couple come in that no one knew that was new to the area and found our website; we were really excited about that!

Hope you guys get to come see us sometime.
Thanks for all your help – we couldn’t have done it without you guys (well, not as gracefully anyway), Jamie

And here’s what she said about the launch:

“it snowed and snowed and snowed…but we still had 130 so we were happy about that! the kids area wen’t great, our first series is a pirate theme and they loved it and were telling there parents when they left that they have to come back to get the rest of the pirate outfit (we are giving them a piece each week) so i’m really happy with that. we had 23 kids. ash did great and the worship was awesome…all in all a great day!.”

God is doing awesome stuff through them, and if you are a part of NLC and making it happen, then you played a part in creating more environments where people could invite their friends and family that don’t have a relationship with Jesus. Great job!

I completely understand this…

stay close

It’s no surprise that one of the most topics talked about today is the economy. There is such a state of unrest and even fear in some cases as it concerns job and financial security. It may just be amplified because I live in the area with the greatest # of foreclosures in the country, but I would bet that everyone is feeling it on some degree.

So, what do we do during this time of instability?

Honestly, I believe that this is the perfect time to stay close.

Stay close to God.

Stay close to your family.

Stay close to the family that you have in your church.

During times of instability, we have seen that very often people tend to PUSH BACK and DISCONNECT. They allow that problems that are happening on a financial or emotional level draw them away from a relationship with those that care for them, which leads to bigger problems.

So, let me encourage all of us who may be feeling some stress from the economy that is up in the air to continue to engage those relationships in your world. Keep spending quality time with your spouse and kids. Make time with God a priority. Make it to church as often as you’re in town.

Doing this and continuing to engage will help all of us to make it through this time and on the other side we’ll be stronger, not weaker.

What could a church look like if it were filled with people who were determined to engage during this time instead of disconnect? It would look pretty cool.

expanded influence

Last night, Matt, Scott, and I all drove to Orlando to meet with a church, Fusion Church, and talk with them about a 6 month transition that would end with their church re-launching in September as Next Level Church Orlando (NLCO).

Over the next few months, we’re going to connect with their leaders and try to download as much Next Level Church ‘DNA’ as possible. Their pastor, Nathan, is going to be in Ft. Myers once a month and one of the 3 of us will be in Orlando once a month as well.

This transition is going to be awesome and it’s going to allow them to reach their community and non-Christians like never before. They seem pretty excited, as are we.

This year is a year of expanded influence for NLC. God’s going to give us so much opportunity to reach out to churches and leaders throughout the world. We have such a huge heart to help them reach more people who are far away from God and we’re excited about the opportunity!

It is going to be awesome to see what God does!

mind dump – 1-29-09

Here are some of the things that are on my brain lately:

- I feel like NLC is, maybe for the first time ever, functioning wholistically. We always believed that Connection Groups were essential, and now more people are in them and excited about them like no other time. We’ve always believed that it is so important to impact the community, and now, with the leadership of Lindsay Kistner, we are doing so much to impact South West Florida unlike any time before. We’ve always believed that through service people grow like crazy, and now we’re seeing that happen with the people who serve around NLC and into our community.

- SOAP-ing continues to change my life and allow God to speak to me daily. It’s amazing.

- I’m excited about fasting on the 1st Monday of every month with NLC. It is going to change the spiritual climate of our church and our region!

- Next Level Church Orlando is going to be an awesome church. We met with them Sunday after church and they are a solid team with a great heart and a cool leader.

- If you haven’t checked out the web-site for Matt’s book, “The Up the Middle Church,” you should really do that. While you’re at it, buy the book for yourself and a church leader that you know – www.upthemiddle.com.

- God is giving us so much opportunity to invest in church planters and pastors who have a heart to reach lost people. It’s going to be an amazing 2009!

- Summit Church, here in town, is doing a great job at uniting the churches of SWFL towards a common goal. God has really given them a vision and heart to see SWFL impacted by THE church and I really appreciate their leadership.

- I wish that Todd Milby, one of the leaders at Summit Church, had a blog. His heart for reaching a region is pretty amazing. If you click here, you can here a message where he talks about it.

- Karston is walking now. At some point, I’ll get used to the fact that he’s walking, but I’m enjoying the amazement that I feel each time I see him walk.

- I love my wife more than ever. I can’t spend enough time with her.

- I’ve felt more scattered this week than I have in awhile.

- I went to Collide, NLC’s Student Ministry, last night. Will Hutcherson is doing such a great job reaching out to the youth in SWFL. He is just so stinkin’ gifted in youth ministry it blows me away. On his blog, he reviews what he’s going to be teaching so that parents can tap into it and talk to their kids about it.

- I’m reading the book, ‘Tribes,’ right now – good stuff. I’m also reading, ‘The Audacity of Hope,’ by our president – I’m hoping that it’s good.

- I’m getting back into biking this weekend. I need to start training for a triathlon in April.

new year’s resolution honeymoon

It’s over.

The excitement of the new year’s resolutions has officially worn off.

Now, all is left is determination. We are left with the question, “Am I really going to make this a part of my lifestyle, or is this just a fad that I’m a part of right now?”

Am I going to keep waking up early? Am I going to seriously keep away from french fries most of the time? Will I keep up with my daily time with God? Am I going to keep altering my schedule in order to go to the gym, or am I going to give up on it and make up an excuse to make me feel okay about it?

For me, I’ve been going to the gym. I go with Scott on Mondays and Wednesdays during our lunch breaks and I’ve gone on Fridays as well. This is not the most convenient schedule for me, but it’s all I can do right now.

Am I going to make the inconvenient a regularity for me, or will I let it fall to the wayside?

That’s a question a lot of us are asking right now.

Hopefully, we make the right choice that will lead us towards health and wholeness so that in a year, we’re better people than we are today.

I’ll let you know how it goes for me. Let me know how it’s going for you.

The Up the Middle Church Book is Official!!

Matt’s book, The Up the Middle Church has officially launched! The web-site to learn more is www.UpTheMiddle.com.

Here is the post from Matt’s blog that I copied and am pasting here:

The Day has finally arrived!!!  My New Book, The Up the Middle Church, has launched!

The book is written for pastors, church leaders and church planters who are doing ministry One Yard at a Time!

The Long-Bomb’s get all the press, but the majority of the game is played Up the Middle!

I am confident that every person reading this blog right now knows at least one leader who is an Up-the-Middle leader!

I need your help getting the word out about this… Will you send this link to everyone you are thinking about right now?

If you order the book through www.UptheMiddle.com, there is a HUGE savings over using Amazon.com, or another big name bookseller.

Also, the book includes a special “Questions for the Huddle” section after each chapter which makes the book ideal for entire church teams to read and study together!

So… if you order 5 or 10 copies from UptheMiddle.com, you can save $2 or even $4 per copy!

I can’t wait to hear your feedback from the book,

Thanks for going to UptheMiddle.com now to purchase your copy of The Up the Middle Church.  And for telling others about this incredible resource as well.  I would have given anything to have a resource like this 7 years ago when we began Next Level Church.

There’s a New Normal in the church world today, & it’s The Up the Middle Church.

Matt Keller