Alright – 2009 is just a few days away.

At Journey we have issued a 1 Year Bible Challenge.

The challenge is – read through God's Word in 1 year. I've been blessed to complete this 3 times and am going for my 4th year in a row. It has been an incredible experience for me and I know it will be for everyone who takes on this challenge.

There are a few ways you can do this:

1) Buy a 1 year bible – here is some links to ones we are recommending.

http://astore.amazon.com/godfirsrevo-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=2

2) Use a 1 year bible reading plan with your existing bible

http://www.ewordtoday.com/year/

3) One Year Audio Bible: 

Check out: http://www.bibleonradio.com/

All of these are great ways to get into God's Word. The important thing is to do it. If you miss a day, or two, or even three. Don't fret it, just jump right in and pick up on the day you left off.

It’s a new year and it is a time to refocus. To look at priorities, look at what happened this past year, and begin to look forward to what 2008 has to offer. I just completed my first days journey into the one year bible and am excited to get into the flow of some structured daily bible reading again. We are encouraging our congregation to do the same. If you don’t have a copy of the one year bible, click here for some inspiration.

I also started my first book of the year – Breakout Churches by Thom Rainer. The book is the church version of the very popular Good to Great by Jim Collins. I was floored by the opening words of the book. "It’s a sin to be good if God has called us to be great." Wow what a statement. What a way to start the new year. Does God have awesome timing or what? That statement gives so much to reflect on.. Wow..

  To start the year off I began handing out copies of The Simple Church also by Thom Rainer as a reminder to our leaders to keep focused on the core things we need to be doing: Loving God, Loving Others, and Serving the World. It’s the mission of journey church and my heart is that we stick to it with everything we have got in 2008. In our leadership meetings during the first couple months we will be discussing concepts from the book. I will hopefully be sharing many of them here.

Final cool thing was that I reloaded up my iPod which I hadn’t been using for a while and started listing to podcasts from all over the country. one of my favorite churches and speakers to listen to is Rob Bell from Mars Hill Bible Church. He recently hosted one of my favorite authors Donald Miller who wrote books like Blue Like Jazz. Donald is a great story teller and in the message he shared about the ingredients of a great story and related the concepts back to our stories. Like Thom Rainer he contends that God didn’t call us to live boring, medoicre stories or lives, God has called us to be great.

Donald talks about one persons quest to own a volvo and live in a big house. Is that really a compelling story? vs someone who went out and had a desire to build 1000 wells in africa that would save literally thousands of lives. Now thats a story. A compelling one.

I believe with all my heart that God has a story for each of us. A real page turner. Don’t fall into the trap of just getting by or being just good enough. As a child of God you are called to something great!