Well I have been hinting about church planting for almost a year now. Now that it is public knowledge I guess I will share about how this all began. Back in October of 2008 I was having a quiet time with the Lord when I felt Him tell me I was to be involved with a church plant. I prayed about it and only told a few close friends that I felt the call to plant a church. Months went by and in December I had the opportunity to go on a ministry trip with my good friend and traveling evangelist Jared Ruddy to Scranton PA. While I was there I felt strongly that this was the place I was to be involved in planting a church. When I got back home I let Jared know about my idea to plant a church in Scranton. Then I didn’t know what to do. For a month I struggled with trying to figure out how this was gonna happen and what it would look like. I knew that I didn’t have the resources or connections to make this a reality. So I did the only thing I knew would work. I prayed that God would send help.

In January of 2009 my prayer was answered. I sat in a coffee house with Jared and he asked me if I still was considering planting a church in Scranton. He told me that he really felt like he was called to Scranton too. I was happy that Jared had joined with me first of all because he is one of my best friends and secondly he is a great visionary. In April things really started to get rolling. One of my other really great friends Chris Smith hoped on board and he and Jared started to lay out vision and plans for the church. I was glad that God had brought us together because I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. We started to get excited as we realized what an awesome and amazing opportunity this was. We had a plan a vision and even a location where we wanted the church to be, but we felt like we were missing something.

That something we were missing turned out to be an amazing couple Luke and Brittney Stasi. Luke and Brittney Stasi lived in Fort Mill SC. Jared went to ministry school with them and when he shared the vision with them they were excited. In June we traveled down to Fort Mill and spent 3 days with them. It was an amazing time. We sat around and shared our vision and dreams and just had fun. By the end of the 3 days they decided to join with us and now our team was complete. In July we all traveled up to Scranton to walk around the city and dream and pray and plan. We had a great time and we all came back excited knowing that God had His hand in all of this.

So with all that said. In 8 months Jared, Chris and I will be moving to Scranton to start laying the foundation for the church. Luke and Brittney have already moved up there so pray for them. Also be praying for all of us. We need wisdom and strategy on how to change this city for Christ. In the next few weeks I will be writing more about our church and the strategy we have for it.

I’m currently reading the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. If you haven’t read this book you should. In one section of the book he talks about marketing products and how the packaging can effect the taste of the products. Sounds ridiculous but its true. In one case 7up did a test where they added a little more yellow to the to the bottle. People started complaining that they changed the taste of it and it tasted like it had more lemon than it did lime. Now in all reality it was the same product, but for some reason because of the more yellow on the package it made the mind think it was different. It got me thinking about how we package Christianity and how we market it to the world. There are a lot of different Gospel packages out there.

We have got to examine ourselves and they way we present Jesus to people. We can’t present Him as an angry person waiting for that one time we mess up and He is going to strike us with lightning. We can’t present Him as a lenient person who will allow everything and anyone to go to heaven. Even though that seems like the easiest way to get people and growth in the church. We can’t present Him as a list of rules. If you do this and this and that and some more of this than you can get to heaven. No one would ever want to be a christian if that was the case.  We have to present Him as a sacrifice for our sin. That while we where still in sin He went to the cross for us and gave us a gift we did not deserve at all. Nothing we did or no list of rules we followed earned us this gift. It was given freely because He loved us. By His striped we have been healed and by His blood we have been delivered and set free from sin. His grace is big enough to cover our sin but we shouldn’t abuse it. You have to live holy because He is holy.

This post took a different direction than I thought it would. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember to think about the way you package Christianity.

There comes a point in every person life when liquid doesn’t sustain them anymore. The milk isn’t good enough and you have to start eating solid food. Same thing goes for the word of God. I can honestly say in my own life I was drinking the milk of the word till I was about 19. I took a few sips here and then. Maybe a small bite once in a while but I never had a full meal. It wasn’t till I was almost forced to read the bible and meditate on it that I realized how good it was. I can not stress the importance of reading and getting rooted and grounded in the Word of God. It’s time that we stop sipping on the milk and we actually go deep in the word and chew it up and meditate on it and discuss it.

That’s why I am excited when friends of mine get ideas like this: WEbibe. WEbibe is a web application where you can set up bible reading plans, comment on scriptures, read other members comments on scriptures, and hopefully grow as a community with other believers and grow in the knowledge of the Word together. It’s in a beginning stage but I can honestly see this thing getting big and revolutionizing how we study and discuss scriptures. I encourage you to put your name on the friends list and test the beta version of it when it is ready. I can’t wait for the full potential of this website to be used.

I hope I hooked you with that line. Now that I have your undivided attention I will get on with what I was saying. I(Ben Hailstone) have a friend with benefits and it is awesome! Don’t freak out, don’t go into shock, and please don’t call my mom and tell on me. I guess I should explain this more: My friend hangs out with me all day and even spends the night. I have an intimate relationship with them. There’s no commitment issues at all. I can even go days with out talking to them, but if I ever need something I can always ask and they will be right there to help me. In fact this one time He even gave His life for me. Hopefully by now you have caught on to what I am saying. I wasn’t talking about some carnal friend of mine. I was talking about Jesus Christ.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with Jesus and how amazing it is. If we treated our real earthly friends like the way we treat Jesus we wouldn’t have any friends. Luckily Jesus is merciful and is full of grace. Jesus Christ remains our friend even though we curse and blame Him for bad things happening or even completely turn away and deny Him. I challenge you to name one friend you have that would do the same. It is so hard for me to grasp the concept of His mercy being new every morning. If we could realize how awesome Jesus friendship is and how we did nothing to deserve it we would live out our relationship with Jesus a lot differently. I guess I wrote this just to challenge you this week to spend more time with Jesus. Why? Not to get anything from Him because we don’t deserve anything. Just spend time with Him because He gave His life and bore the wrath and pain that was meant for us so that we could spend eternity with Him.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer

Well back in the day I used to be a blogging machine. I blogged consistently for almost 2 years at this blog-hailsky.wordpress.com. I was even good enough to be considered in the blog post of the year contest held by Shawn Blanc. I even started a huge argument after the elections of 2008. After the argument ended I stopped blogging. Why? I have no clue. The good thing is that I want to blog again. While I can’t promise faithfully posting new content. I can promise that the stuff I do post will be excellent and hopefully thought provoking. You are probably wondering why I have switched from wordpress to tumblr. I like the simplicity of it and that’s the main and only reason.

Well now that I have got all the boring stuff out of they way I can update you on the rest of my life: Lot’s of interesting things have happened since I last posted. I started to become more Involved with my youth group back home. I am a leader and also heavily involved with the worship team. I also have other really exciting BIG news that involves the church and in the next few weeks I will be releasing that information to you. I’m pretty excited for what the future holds for me. Keep checking back for new posts and content. I’m glad to be back.