Living Facedown

Two Questions

If there is a God why do bad things happen?

From what I know about heaven, isn’t it going to be pretty boring?

I find both of these questions fascinating. What I find so fascinating about them is that I usually get asked them by the same people. The same person struggles with both of these issues.

Do you see a connection between the two? (if need be, reread the two questions a couple of times and think if you’ve asked them or heard someone ask)

The connection is that people ultimately struggle with the idea of perfect peace. As “The Source” said in the second Matrix movie, “mankind cannot fathom a world without chaos.” So we try to wrap our minds around the idea of a perfect heaven with no tears, pain, and death and somehow that freaks us out to the point where we really don’t want to go. Something just doesn’t seem right about a place so nice, perfect, shall I say boring.

Not only do we struggle with a nice/perfect heaven, but also with a chaotic/imperfect earth. Why does God allow tragedy here? Why do evil men exist? And we allow the pain of this world to get in the way of accepting a heavenly Father who has created a place for us where there will be no more pain.

So which do we want the boring, perfect heaven or the chaotic, imperfect earth? 

The world rejects both because the world does not see God in either. 

The church cherishes both and sees both as beautiful gifts from God. Heaven is wonderful and will be absolutely the furthest thing from boring. Earth and all of it’s current weaknesses is an incredible place that God has given us dominion and authority to bring in more God worshippers and truly be heroic every day.

Whether you find your life is currently in chaos or peace, God wants to be your Father in either one. If your on the mountain top, the valley, or somewhere in between, God wants to know you and be known by you. In the end, whether heaven or earth, knowing Him is all that matters. That is the answer to both questions.

 (this isn’t me, just a cool picture of outdoor baptism)

This Sunday was a great day in the life of Whispering Pines Community Church. It was one of those days that can keep your excitement for ministry up for several of months.

Around two months ago a man in our church told me about his daughter’s salvation. He explained the conversation they had and how she described her conversion experience. She had made a real commitment to follow Christ with your life and asked Jesus to forgive her of her sins. He then asked if I would baptize her at the beach. I was pumped about the baptism part, but a little weary of the beach idea. I, like most people, like to control my environment and having a baptism service at the beach would offer us little control over the weather and other conditions.

After a couple of weeks I came around and decided to at least try it. If it didn’t turn out very well then we could always go back to doing all our baptisms at a pool.

We set the date of baptism for the evening of June 24^th at one of our local beaches. After the initial conversation with the man about his daughter it seemed like the flood gates opened up in our church. We saw people become new believers and want to get baptized, as well as people who had been believers for several years but had never followed through in baptism. By Sunday night we had 8 people ask to get baptized.

Of this 8, 6 were adults, 1 a teenager, and 1 child. All of them invited their “worlds� to come and celebrate this commitment with them. Our little section of the beach was packed with people (probably around 50-60). We even had beach goers come over and check out what we were doing. One of the ministers of our church was able to share his salvation story with a father and son who walked up to check out what was going on.

Almost on a daily basis I find myself telling someone to just stop trying to control everything and let God control it for you. I love the fact that God is not satisfied with my level of trust right now and continues to teach me this same lesson as well.

Please thank God for moving in such a powerful way in bringing these new believers into His Kingdom. Thank Him for rekindling an old love for Him in the hearts of some of the older believers in our fellowship.

Finally, please join us as we pray that Sunday night was just the tip of the iceberg. Church planting and ministry in general is a marathon, not a sprint. Pray that we are mindful of the long race ahead of us and that we haven’t peaked yet.

Those that have been baptized, saved, discipled, and ministered to are as much a testimony of your prayers and financial support as it is of our work. Thank you!

Love and Laughs,

Billy

Luke 10:2
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Dear Friends,

Many of you have been journeying with this church since before we were a church. Some of you have actually been praying for this church even before Ellie, Elle, and I landed in Port Saint Lucie. For you who have been around awhile, you also know that the most requested prayer need for this work has been for another family to bear some of the load with us. It took God longer than I would have liked (patients schmatients), but He answered this prayer in an incredibly great way. Josh, Melissa, and little Andrew joined this work at the beginning of this year and have been an even bigger blessing than we imagined. Not only has Josh taken the worship arts and done a wonderful job with all of that, but Melissa has been one of the best children’s ministry leaders I’ve seen. Oh, yeah she is 100 times better than I was.

This blog has two parts; first join us as we continue to praise God for bringing this talented, humble, and hard working family to our team. Second, please pray for them as they continue to pursue God’s will for them financially. Many of the Rowell’s friends and family have stepped in to support them financially and prayfully, but they are currently unable to afford health insurance. Ellie and I went through this in New Orleans and the combination of having a child and not having health insurance can cause an emotional toll on the parents. Both Josh and Melissa have had incredible attitudes about this and are praying for God to provide, not just for them but primarily for their new son Andrew. Pray that they will never doubt God’s call for their lives and ministry. Pray that God will provide health insurance for the family.

Your prayers have moved mountains. This Sunday our young church is baptizing 7 people. This has happened because of the passionate prayers of hundreds around the globe.

Thank you for your prayers, financial gifts, and strong words of encouragement.

Think, Feel, Worship

Billy

Last night was a very important night in the life of this brand new fellowship (Whispering Pines Community Church). If you have a moment or two I would love to share this share this with you.

We publically launched the church about three months ago. Since then God has done some amazing things and we have seen our attendance more than double. While that is great news, that cannot be our end goal. Our goal is to take people from the community and make them “attenders” of the church. Our next and most crucial step is to take these “attenders” and make them “ministers”. Attenders don’t affect culture much. Attenders rarely grow the Kingdom or change the world. Ministers are the ones that are change agents and Kingdom growers.

Last night we had part one of our two part “Boot Camp” meetings in one of our new family’s home. We had a total of 17 adults there to learn about the church and how to become ministers here. 17! That means that after next week’s final Boot Camp meeting our ministry team will double.

This is amazing to us. We are grateful to God for each of these families. Some are brand new believers who will be baptized later this month. Others have been believers for several years and are ready for leadership roles in the church. Some are great out front people and others are looking forward to working behind the scenes. The bottom line is that all 17 are eager to not just come and get fed, but to go out and to feed. These 17 are not just looking for God and us to bless them, but that they can be a blessing to others.

Jesus changed the world with 11, I think we’re off to a good start with these 17.

Life is good,

Billy

These four words describe Whispering Pines Community Church very accurately. This Sunday is our last in the Windmill Point Elementary School. The cloud by day is lifting from this setting and moving about a quarter a mile down the road. This is going to be a big change for our church. Personally, I don’t think this is something negative, but God giving us a huge, wide open door into a new development. Please pray for us that we enter this door and take advantage of this move.

WPCC is also on the move by starting a new service at a local coffehouse in June. Calling this a “service” doesn’t really describe it very well. The Exodus Coffee and Culture is allowing us to come in during open hours and engage this culture in a conversation about authentic spirituality from a Christian perspective. This will be for college age adults that will not enter the doors of a “church” but are seeking a real connection with a real God. In case you wonder why I put the word church in quotes is because I don’t think Jesus ever intended people to enter church, but for the church to enter into the world of darkness and bring light into it. They might not come to “church” but the church is coming to them.

One of the truths God has shown me is that the church is not to be a lighthouse (we love to use this metaphor) but a lantern. Lighthouses are stuck in one position. They are not free to travel and go to those who need the light. And, as a friend put it last night, lighthouses don’t even attract people to it, rather encourage people to stay away. God has called the church to be many, many lanterns. Lanterns are great because they can be picked up and taken anywhere. We at WPCC desire to enter dark places all the time, but leave those places bright and extremely well lit.

Pray that WPCC will not just literally be a church on the move, but will be spiritually on the move. Pray that we gather more lanterns together and help these shine as bright as possible. Finally, pray that we scatter these lanterns around our community and not just reflect our culture, but actually change it.

Light is good,

Billy

you may not want to read this update.

 About two months ago a family in our fellowship had some relatives arrive from their home country of India. Annie was excited about seeing her parents since it had been years since they had all seen each other.

About a week after arriving, our new friend, Paul became quite sick. He was unable to keep any food down. Of course, I made some bad joke about tourists and that they should not drink our water. (Yea, fully aware of my lameness.) Paul is not a large man to begin with and by going weeks without eating was beginning to lose a lot of weight. He also went to see a doctor and found out that he had some severe nerve damage and he might have to cut his family visit short and return back to India. His family was heart broken to hear this.

For a few days God put this man and his family on my mind. Our family prayed for him daily, but I felt like God was saying to do something more. The scripture that kept going through my mind was that of James 5. In this chapter, James tells us to call the elders together, annoint with oil, and pray over the sick. I’ve never done this before, but I knew that God was telling me cordinate this special prayer time.

On Monday, two weeks ago, I called the family and asked their permission to pray over Paul in such a way. They were very glad to hear this and gave us a green light to show up any time. I also called four men in the area and asked if they would join in. All four said yes.

 We showed up a couple hours later. One of the sweet things about this was another family showed up just to visit Paul and bring food. They are a believing family from another church and wanted to join in the prayer time. After visiting for a few minutes we read the James 5 passage, surrounded Paul and prayed for God’s healing. The prayer time was powerful and everyone felt God’s presence in a powerful way.

On Wednesday Paul went to see his doctor. Paul had been feeling a lot better and had not vomited since the prayer time, but wanted to see the doctor about the nerve damage. That day, the doctor ran the tests and came back with the news that Paul looked fine. The nerve damage was gone and the doctor saw no problems with Paul’s stomach.

This experience has been wonderful for our church. What a testimony of God’s power! What an easy way to share the story of God with our friends and neighbors! Look at how awesome God works in our lives when we live our lives in a biblically way!

Join us as we thank God for healing our brother. Pray that God will encourage our people to tell this amazing story to everyone who has ears. God is still a God of miracles and that needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

 Life is good,

Billy

 

I must admit that I was rather pumped about preaching my first ever Easter service this Sunday. As a youth leader I always preached to the youth on the Wednesdays before and after Easter, but never actually on Sunday morning. Not only did this excite me, but also how much momentum our church has experienced since we officially launched 5 weeks earlier. It seemed like everyone was looking forward to this Sunday with a sense of expectation.It seems that the one question people always want answered is how many people did we have at our service. In our sixth week of having Sunday morning corporate worship services we had a total of 103 people. That’s great, but the number that excited me is 25. That’s exactly how many children we had in our “Kid Zone” worship service!

During the service we took Communion together as a church body. Those 5-10 minutes were probably my favorite so far in ministry. To see dozens of families (most were complete families with dad, mom, and children) come up to the front and remember our Lord’s sacrifice with joyful adoration was extremely moving for me and many others.

Following the service we had a free cookout for the community at the “Whispering Pines Community Park”. Most of our people were there and helped serve around 180 hamburgers, 170 hot dogs, sides, and deserts to many new friends that came for the food. We are blessed to have so many people in our church that understand their role in growing this church and ultimately God’s Kingdom. I never get the feeling that I’m the hired gun who has to build all the relationships with visitors and new friends.  Each minister (remember at WPCC we have no members, only ministers) dove in and either worked relentlessly to cooking, serving, or relationship building. I think most did all three.

Most who know me well know that I’m kind of a weinie and can get a little nostalgic. At one point during the community cookout I stood and looked at a full pavalion and an overflowing park with kids running everwhere, eating and having a blast. I remembered standing near that same spot a year ago begging God to do this very thing. I had no idea how He would do it, but I believed in my heart that someday that prayer would be a reality. Sunday afternoon, under a clear sky, that prayer was playing out right in front of my eyes. That one day made the past three years and all it’s up and downs completely worth it.

Thank you Father for giving weinie’s like me big dreams. Thank you for making big dreams into even better realities.

Please pray a prayer of thanksgiving for us. Join us as we praise Him for blessing what He has called.

What A Beautful Day,

Billy

It’s been an amazing ride for the past year.

If you want a taste, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hk_CttAc4c

 I hope you enjoyed it.

Life is good,

Billy

“Palm Sunday” is upon us and I was wondering what the Vox family thought of this historical account. Wonderful story of Jesus finally being praised? People not really getting who Jesus was/is? Is it a positive historical account of mankind getting it?

 Any thoughts would be appreciated. Please communicate them with a well thought out thesis statement, four point arguement, and concluding summary (or just do whatever you want).

 Thanks,

Billy 

        A few weeks ago a wonderful young lady began coming with a friend to our youth Hot Spot, “Resolution”. This young lady has an incredible attitude and smile that is quite contagious. Last Sunday she attended our Sunday morning service with her parents. Both parents expressed to me that they were very concerned about their daughter’s health. Apparently, she has had a rather difficult life with many tests and surgeries. Last Sunday they were concerned because she has been very fatigued and there was a good possibility she might have to have another heart surgery. She was getting tested on Wednessday to find out for sure. Our church prayed for her and her family that Sunday and committed to pray for her the rest of the week.

On Wednessday I was able to sit with them while she was being tested. It appeared to be a foregone conclusion that this little girl would have to go under the knife again. During the testing we were told that this sort of test takes about a week to get the results back. However, right before we left, the parents were told that they would be contacted the next day with the results. Of course, this concerned the parents even more. Maybe they already found something and needed to move on it quickly.

The next day came and went and no news from the doctor. Another day of worry and concern for the family. On Friday morning the call did come and with it good news. Our new friend was okay and would not need surgery. Praise God!

This is actually a double or even triple blessing. Not only is she healthy, but God has been speaking to her family through this scary time. Both parents really seem to be open to whatever it is that God has for them and want to know Him more. And (the triple blessing) the entire family is extremely pumped about Whispering Pines Community Church, going through our Boot Camp, and ministrying through our church.

God is good (so is life),

Billy