Living the Simple Life

Next Sunday, January 3rd is going to be a monumental time for LifeStone Church!  On this Date, South Side Speaks (our outreach group) will make the big transition into the LifeStone Launch Team!  This is a major thing because our team will go from just doing outreach, to also forming the structure, ministries, teams, and foundation of LifeStone.  This team will hit the ground running very soon to start living out our community focus, “Bridging All Cultures to the Cross”. Also on January 3rd, we will be introducing all of our staff for the first time and all of our team leaders.  Each staff and team leader will be giving a full description of their ministry and how it will assist LifeStone Church in “Bridging All Cultures to the Cross”!  It should be a great night!  Below is a list of all church staff and team leaders we will be introducing on that night:

LifeStone Staff

• Associate Pastor
• Worship Leader
• Administrative Assistant
• KidsLife Director
• KidsLife Pre-K/Babies Director
• Media Director
• Assimilation Director
• Outreach Director
• LifeGroups Director (Future Ministry)
• Student Ministries Pastor (Future Ministry)

Team Leaders

• Guest Services Director
• Lead Service Host (Ushers)
• Lead Greeter
• Lead Security
• Cafe Hosts
• Sign Team Director
• Set-up/Tear Down Director

Each of these staff members and team leaders are in place, committed, and already planning/building their ministries and teams!  I have been praying for the last two years that God would assemble a FULL team and staff to launch and build the church!  People thought I was crazy to believe for this!  Well guess what???  He did it!  As I mentioned earlier, this team will be introduced on January 3rd and the LifeStone Launch Team will officially begin!  I am so proud of each of these people and thankful for their servants hearts!  We have the best staff and team in the entire world and I am honored that we get to assist and cooperate with Holy Spirt to build LifeStone Church together!  Please keep our team in your prayers as we are “Bridging All Cultures to the Cross”!

Well, very soon LifeStone Church will be launching its website.  For the last several years, the church blog has served as the online presence of LifeStone Church, but was never meant to become the actual website for LifeStone Church.  This was an avenue to inform and present what God is doing to the online world.  We will be transitioning in just a few weeks to a Launch Team that will launch LifeStone Church on May 16, 2010!  How exciting.  At that time, www.lifestonechurch.org will be directed to our main website, www.lifestonechurch.com.  So now you might be wondering what happens to this blog.  Well this blog will turn into www.lifestoneblog.com.  It will remain a blog for the LifeStone staff to write, update, and share thoughts.  I encourage you to continue to visit this blog although its purpose and structure will change a bit.  We will also have it linked on our websites main page so you can access it from there also if you wish!

This change will happen sometime just after the first of the year!  Thanks for all of the support and encouragement!

Here are some pictures of the most recent outreach we did in South Side.  The South Side Chamber of Commerce asked us if we would help organize this awesome community wide event!  South Side Speaks was able to connect with so many people and families during this event!  We were specifically in charge of all of the kids festivities: cookie decorating, ornament decorating, and even face painting.  We had 34 people from our team there serving in any way we could along with set up and tear down.  We hope we were a blessing to the chamber and the community and are looking forward to next year’s Light Up Night already!!!  Just a huge shout out and thank you to the Chamber of Commerce for inviting us to be a part of this great night!  THANK YOU!

A BIG THANK YOU TO KIMBERLY FLEEGER FROM SOUTH SIDE SPEAKS WHO TOOK THESE PHOTOS!

I would like to welcome Jared and Heather Lanza to the LifeStone Church team!  Jared and Heather have been here in Pittsbugh all weekend looking for a house.  The great news is, they found a place!  The other great news is, they will be moving here in two weeks!  I am so excited for them to get here and join the team!  Jared and Heather have two great kids, Autumn and Lincoln!  Please Pray for their move and transition that will be coming shortly!

Just recently the Church Multiplication Network highlighted LifeStone Church’s newest “Community Focus Video” on their website.  What a great way to let people all around the globe know what God is doing in the community of South Side in Pittsburgh, PA!  Check out the post here.  Thanks for spreading the vision all of my friends at the Church Multiplication Network!

This weekend I will be in Youngstown, Ohio to speak at the NXL “Generation 2 Generation” Conference.  I am excited to share about our vision for LifeStone Church with pastors from all over the country.  I will also be sharing at Victory Christian Center in New Wilmington, PA on Sunday morning.  God is opening up some tremendous opportunities for the vision of LifeStone Church to touch hearts and lives.  I’m so grateful for opportunities like these!

In this video, you will encounter an up and close view of the community we are planting a church in (South Side). This is a video that explains our “community focus” and the overall structure of South Side! Our prayer is that the person who knows nothing about South Side and nothing about LifeStone Church, will not only have full understanding of both by the end of this video, but will create a place in their heart for these people and what God is doing here!

Here are some shots of our first ever South Side Kids Fall Festival.  It was a HUGE success!  So many kids and families came, I’m telling you, it was truly a great night!  Can’t wait till next year!  Shout out to Big Dog Coffee for their partnership in this event!  Thank you for your support and friendship.  We appreciate you guys more than you know!!!

I am excited to announce to the public for the first time, that South Side Speaks is moving FROM Bruegger’s Bagel Shop on Thursday nights at 7pm TO The Brashear Association on Wednesday nights at 7pm (Directions Here).  This is a huge answer to prayer because our former venue at Bruegger’s was getting way too tight and it was hard to host a productive meeting in this tiny shop.  So God has opened this door for us and I can’t tell you how excited I am about it.  I feel like this is more than just a new venue, it is a representation of what God is about to do.  This new venue is a banquet hall that seats up to 100 people.  Everything we could need is already there and we have reserved it every Wednesday night from 7pm – 10pm.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the best part.  We have been allowed to use this banquet hall FREE OF CHARGE! God has literlally given us this amazing venue and it has everything that we prayed our new venue would have!!!  So excited!

This is a season during our process in planting LifeStone Church where many opportunities are coming our way.  We are so grateful for these opportunities but can’t neglect the fact of how important they really are!  All we can do is trust in God that He is in control and leading the way!  Here are some opportunities that are currently in the mix:

1. Building Search – We are currently searching for the building God wants us to use as our home base.  This building will be used for Sunday/weekly services and hopefully (if available) office space.  We have scratched our heads for sometime with this issue and a building has recently surfaced as a prime A target venue.  I won’t go into the details of this situation quite yet, but I will say this, we have met with the owner and we have a very good idea of cost, etc.  The owner is such a great guy and really has connected well with us.  This relationship has become very important to us because this owner has undergone some recent difficult family and health situations.  Our hope is that we can be a support to him through this time, and if this is the building God wants us to attain, He will make it happen as a result of relationship, trust, and partnership.  We actually had a chance to pray with this owner during a meeting!  Please pray for financial favor and provision.  If we are going to get this building, we will need God to make it happen!!!
2. Worship Leader – This week will have a very special guest with us.  He is coming from out of state to participate in an informal interview for the position of the main worship leader for LifeStone Church.  This is a very big week in this respect because Jamie and I have been praying about staff ever since we felt the call to plant this church about two years ago.  God is providing a tremendous staff already with the Associate Pastor, Outreach Pastor, Administrative Assistant, and Media Director already on board and ready to plant this church!  This position is a very big one as you might guess.  The worship leader will not only lead worship in our main services, but this person will build a worship ministry from the ground up.  We have been praying for the right person that God desires to lead and build our worship ministry for some time now.  Again, for this very reason, this week is a very big week for us!  Please keep us in prayer as we go through this process!
3. South Side Speaks Venue – Our South Side Speaks group is the beginning group that will eventually plant LifeStone Church in May of next year.  Our whole goal right now is to serve our community and we are doing just that.  Since Jamie and I started leading this group of 4 in the beginning of August, the team has grown to over 40 people!  Since it is really difficult to get everyone’s schedules to all line up on one night, our Thursday night meeting consists of anywhere between 20-30 people, even though we represent over 40.  The reason I share those numbers with you is because our meeting place at a local bagel shop was great for 5-15 people, but when our team is either all there or even half there, we are busting at the seems.  We have been praying for a new location to meet in that will not only meet our current needs but also give us room to grow into in the future.  We have been actively searching for over a month now and it looks as if we have found a great potential spot.  The only problem with this location is that we would have to move our meeting night from Thursday to Wednesday.  This could be a positive thing or negative thing depending on the schedules of our faithful.  Please pray that this search will come to an end very soon and if this is it, may all the scheduling work out in a positive way for the entire team!
4. South Side Kids Fall Festival – This is the last major opportunity I will share with you at this time.  During our surveys in South Side several months ago, we found out that there is currently ZERO community and family events for the kids and parents.  Absolutely amazing!  Just picture us like Charlie dancing in the streets when he found out that he got a golden ticket to visit WIllie Wonka’s Chocalate Factory!  Because there are no events and current opportunities for families to connect, we have been given that “golden ticket” to begin to meet that need.  Hence, the South Side Kids Fall Festival.  We will be doing this event during the trick or treat hours in South Side on Halloween night.  We have teamed up with a local coffee shop whose owners are just fantastic people!  They have allowed us to use their property for this event.  We will be promoting throughout the entire community and hoping that the candy, hot cider, pumpkins, face painting, polaroid family pictures, cookies, and much more will draw the kids and parents are way.  Our goal is to connect with these individuals and let them know that there is a group of people in this community that care about them and want to provide a safe place for their kids.  This event is also a prelude to our big South Side Easter Egg Hunt/Festival the month before we launch!  Please pray for relational connections with families and kids from this area!

I just wanted to give you an update as to what God is up to and many of the cool opportunities God is bringing our way!  Keep praying for South Side and LifeStone Church.  We need more God and more opportunities!

Welcome GABRIEL LAFORGE THOMAS!

Gabe was born on Wednesday, October 7 at 10:53am at 8lbs. 3oz.  Jamie and I are so proud of him and are so excited for him to be a part of our family!  Our daughter couldn’t be more excited to have a baby brother.  Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers during this new season of our life.  We a tremendous responsibility this little guy will be, but what a great reward he is too!  We are so blessed!

Here is a video of My pastor Jeff Leake sharing how the church planting movement began at Allison Park Church.  This really is a tremendous story! But you know what is even more tremendous?  Through Jeff’s obedience to the Lord, today there are eight churches planted from the revolutionary moment Jeff shares about and two more (LifeStone Church included) will be planted by the end of next year.  This vision he shares about, is currently in the making, God is changing lives, communities, and influencing the city of Pittsburgh for the Kingdom of God!  So cool!

Last night was an awesome night as we hit the streets of South Side with one mission in mind, to bless the homeless.  Our teams went out in the pouring rain, ready to go talk to people and hopefully meet some physical and spiritual needs.  Let me first say this, South Side has a very large homeless population and they are very evident.  Since South Side is flamboyant by nature, it draws thousands of people from all over the city every single weekend.  So needless to say, the homeless are drawn to this community because of the people, the money, and the opportunity.  But tonight, seemed to be a bit mellow because of the rain.  There weren’t as many homeless out and about because the rain was coming down pretty good.  Once the rain subsided later on, is when our groups began to connect with people who are living on the streets.

What an awesome, faith building, team building, seed planting, life changing, need meeting event this was!  We do have a lot of donated materials left over and feel God wants us to be repetitive with this event.  We want to build a foundation for our church that is about serving people and serving our community with no strings attached!  What a tremendous night it was to do just that!  I am so thankful for a wonderful team and an awesome staff that helps tremendously in spearheading these events and making them happen!  Go TEAM!

Tonight, we ran into a guy who was sleeping on a stoop.  His name was Tony.  Tony has seven kids that all live in the city and none of them want anything to do with him.  Tony could barely walk because he was sleeping in the same position for so long.  We were able to give Tony a bag full of snacks, a new stocking cap, a brand new jacket, a thick blanket, a couple sweaters, some soap, shampoo, and deodorant!  Tony was so grateful and so were we!  We were able to pray with Tony afterwards and encourage him that He is worth something to God.  Homeless people need to know they are special to God.  That God has not forgotten them.  They might feel worthless because of decisions they have made that have got them to the point in life they are at.  But they are worth more than GOLD, worth more than FAME, and worth His SACRIFICE! This is the word we want to share with them! (Luke 12:6-7)

If you would like to get involved in our homeless ministry, please contact us through the South Side Speaks contact page.  We would love to connect you with some great people!

While Jamie and I were at church planting boot camp several weeks ago, we were interviewed on our call to plant a church by the Church Multiplication Network. Here is the video. God is good!

I thought I would share an update as to what is happening in our neighborhood group in the South Side!  Well, I guess the more appropriate question would be, what ISN’T happening in our neighborhood group in the South Side?  We had our weekly meeting tonight that began with some teaching about prayer walking and the spiritual significance that it demands in starting a new journey in a certain location.  We then spent some quality time discussing our evaluation process of all of our outreaches.  Each outreach that we conduct will have a pre-evaluation and a post-evaluation.  The purpose of our evaluations are to give us an idea of what is actually happening in each event (strengths, weaknesses, etc.).  Then our goal is that each outreach will build on the previous one.  And we will be able to take something positive from each outreach and apply it to our later events.  We want to be productive and effective.  If we aren’t evaluating what is working and what is not working, then we will never grow as a team!  So, after  going through evaluations and discussing the goals for our next outreach, we shared testimonies and stories about how God is currently opening up doors through relationships and serving!  If I literally wanted to make this the longest post in the history of blogs, I would share them with you, but since that isn’t going to happen, I will just say that God is up to some huge things right now.  As things begin to happen and fully open up, I will share some of those victories, but for now, I will leave them up to your imagination.  Just pray for God’s favor upon our group and team and that God’s favor would lead us to man’s favor!  We finished the night out with some prayer requests for a building to hold our Sunday services in, a new venue to hold our Thursday gatherings in since we are officially growing out of the bagel shop, and a worship leader for services and a children’s director.  Immediately following our group meetings, we hit the streets of South Side and took the instructions and teaching on prayer walking with us.  We all split up into different directions and began to pray for a release of past sins and destructive seeds that were sown into this community over a long period of time!  We prayed for people we walked by and current needs such as addicitons, alcoholism, sexual immorality, abuse, spiritual depression, etc.  We also prayed for LifeStone Church and it’s future impact on this community.  We prayed for staff positions, we prayed for authentic relationships to flow naturally.  We prayed for vision to become a reality!!!  We prayed that we would be a key part of spiritual transformation in South Side.

That pretty much completed our night, at least I thought it did.  Our prayer group which consisted of my wife, my daughter, Ron, Fernando, and myself began to walk into a restaurant.  There was a homeless guy that was just down the street from this restaurant that we ended up passing by several times as we were praying.  I felt the Lord drawing me to him and I needed to talk to go back and talk to him.  So they all went in to get seated and I went back to talk to this guy and invite him to dinner with us.  He declined, but I got to talk with him, share Jesus with him , and then pray with him!  Great Stuff!  So, I went back to the restaurant and walked into the side room where they went to sit down and as soon as I walk through the doorway, our entire neighborhood group was there with a birthday cake singing happy birthday!  How awesome was that!  So shocked!  So surprised!  So honored!  That just proves my point when I say, we have the greatest team and we are so blessed to serve God and the South Side with them!  Needless to say, it was a great night!  But what Thursday night isn’t?  Honestly!!!

If you are interested in getting involved in South Side Speaks (the future LifeStone Church), please either email me or comment on my blog!  We would love to connect with you!  God has HUGE plans for South Side and it is already starting!  I’m telling you, get involved now, so you can be a part of this amazing journey from the very beginning!