Eddie's Blog

Men's Prayer Breakfast

We haven’t had a lot of luck at Marathon with getting men hanging out together. We’ve tried Men’s Bible Studies and those kinds of things without a lot of success. But I was very pleased with our recent Men’s prayer Breakfast, where we had at least 50 men which was a very good turn out. 

It’s funny, women will get together and they love to sit around and talk, and discuss things, but men seem to feel like they have to have a “reason” to get together. Men are different, they like the fishing, the hunting, the golf outings and those kinds of things, but they have to have that “reason”. So, we thought we would try gravy biscuits, and that seems to have been reason enough. 

We’re trying to get men to realize their responsibility as the spiritual leader of the family. So, we’ll keep on trying different things, and we’ll see what happens. 

I want to thank Wayne Wooten for putting it all together, and making it all happen. It was great! 

The next one is going to be in August. Be there!

Tony Morgan

I met with Tony Morgan this week. Tony has written a lot of books on marketing for churches. He’s also worked with Granger Community Church and New Spring Community Church and now he’s consulting with us.

 

We’ve been talking about trying to get people to connect with God rather than just the programming on Sunday morning. That’s a step that many people have tried to figure out, and that we have tried to figure out at Marathon. How do we get people to connect on a deeper level?  How do we get people to connect as friends outside of a program in the church? How do we get it to happen spontaneously?  Those are just a few of the things that we talked about today.

 

You know, I look at Marathon, and all of the things that we’ve done to bring more people in, and those are good things, but we also want to get people to connect to God on a spiritual and a personal level, outside of just what happens on Sunday morning. That’s the tricky part of the whole thing, getting people to walk with God on a daily basis. We have seen more attendance in our classes, like the Truth Project Class and the Membership Classes. We can see where people hunger on a deeper level for God.

 

So we’re going to keep experimenting!  We’re going to keep looking at what we can do to get that to happen. And as soon as we figure it out, I’ll let you know!

 

My IHOP Experience

I was amazed this morning.

 

I didn’t work this weekend, so Lynn, Faith, and I decided that we would go out to IHOP for Sunday morning breakfast. You know, a nice peaceful “easy like Sunday morning” breakfast. (I don’t know who wrote that song, but they certainly don’t pastor a church.) So, we decided to go out to IHOP for a few of our favorites, and I noticed something…

 

I noticed that there are A LOT of people who are not going to church. It is amazing! You know we think that we are making a dent in this world (and we are making somewhat of a dent), but there are thousands upon thousands of people who wake up every Sunday morning, and go out for breakfast, and church is nowhere on their menu.

 

So, it just confirms to me why we do what we do at Marathon.

 

I guess, what we could do is put in an IHOP at Marathon, and offer pancakes, and we would probably get a few more people coming in. But people get to choose, they get to decide what they want to do in their life, and a lot of the time choosing God, and making church a regular part of their life is a hard thing for them to do.

 

I’ve found out that we usually don’t want to choose good stuff in life. I could have eaten something healthier than what I did, but I went ahead and got the pancakes!

 

So Marathon, we know why we’re in business. It’s to get more people to look at the menu, and choose God!

I love Golf

I love to play golf, and I recently got to play in a “Child Evangelism” Tournament at Village Green in Inman. I was lucky enough to get to play with a long drive champion, and a guy named Rusty who used to play with the Marshall Tucker Band.

 

We ended up shooting -18, and WINNING THE TOURNAMENT!!!  So, that was a REALLY SPIRITUAL moment!!!

 

I really enjoy getting to play in tournaments. You get to be involved in a lot of good things for a lot of great causes, and every now and then, you get to win something!  Pretty Cool!

Perry Noble

This week I had the privilege of meeting with Perry Noble from NewSpring. Perry was in our singles group when we were at Brushy Creek. He’s like my child, and I love it!  He has done so well, and we’re so proud of all of the things he’s done.

 

Perry and I were talking about what it’s like being pastors of large churches, and how difficult it is to come up with something every weekend. I think that the hard thing for a lot of people to understand is that we do something better than Disney World in that we create a new worship experience, a new series, a new weekend EVERY weekend, and never repeat it.

 

I admit that it gets a little hard. It gets to be very tiring, and the energy drain of pulling all of that together can really get to you. That’s why we have to take breaks and I’m going to be taking July off this year just to get a break, because the grind can get to you and it really affects you both physically and mentally to the point where sometimes you can almost get depressed over it.

 

But we also talked about how we have the greatest job in the world. We get to be a part of this wonderful thing that God has created, and we get to reach people for Him.

 

God is really doing some great things at Marathon.