We dusted off an old one

In case you missed it, or still don't believe it, Nathan and Rick played and sang a duet Saturday night. It's an old Larry Norman song about what people might have said about Christ.

End of the year giving

Many folks find that at the end of the year they want to either make an additional offering or complete their tithe. Often with the holidays partners are out of town and miss giving in worship gatherings. So, it's not unusual for them to drop by the office the last week of the year or to mail it in to finish their annual giving.

A final deposit for 2012 will be made Friday. If you have a tithe or offering that you want credited to your annual giving it must be received before that deposit at noon. The IRS will not allow us to make your offerings retroactive if you wait until Sunday, even if the date on your check or envelope says "Dec. 31". At this late date we don't recommend mail!

So, if, like Gail and I, you want to add to your giving, or give a special gift to outfit the youth room, please bring your envelope to the church office. None of our staff plans to be in the office on Friday, but if that is the only day you can make the gift, then please call Rick prior to Friday at 441-7548 or 261-7573 and he'll make arrangements with you to receive the offering for the church. Of course, you can also give online up until midnight Saturday!

If you have any questions, please give us a call at the church office.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

Christmas Morning Worship

Christmas Greeting from Dina and Sergey Butenko

The Butenkos are our missionaries in the Ukraine with Campus Crusade.

Santa? Yes or No?

Guest blogger Mark Driscoll on what to tell your kids about Santa.
Click here.

Sunday Feedback December 18

Ready or not, here He comes.
Today's message in the series was about "the One who is to come".

Did you know "Joy to the World" wasn't about His first advent?

Great spirit and worship today. Tell us about your worship and/or ministry experience at NHC this Sunday before Christmas.

We'll Miss George Robinson

George Robinson went to be with the Lord this morning. A long time partner at NHC, George was always ready to do anything in his ability for his Lord and his church. He faithfully served us as a Deacon, and served us well.

"Absent from the body and present with the Lord."

A Legacy of Missions

A man who influenced me in my college days about the importance of missions died last week. Roscoe Brewer was a giant when it came to reaching the world for Jesus. He and I also are part of a small fraternity, having both served the same church as youth pastor.

I challenge you to turn off the TV for a few minutes and watch and listen to this video. He was near death when it was recorded, and I'm so glad it was done. I hope this moves you as it did me.

Why Be Sure About the Real Jesus?

· The primary area of error in false religions is what they believe about Christ. They may talk about Christ and say they acknowledge Him, even as Savior. But the big question is, “Is your Christ the true Christ of the Scripture?” And they get that question wrong every time.

· You may be questioned about Christ by non-believers. Are you ready to give an answer? You need to be! It never hurts to know what you believe.

· If Jesus came into existence at His birth then the idea of God being a Trinity is false. One of the core beliefs of Christianity has always been that God is 3 in one. And that requires Jesus to be pre-existent.

· If Jesus is not eternal and pre-existent than He is not God, because God is eternal. Think about it: How could God be created? If He could, then whoever created him would really be God.

· If Jesus is not eternal then He is a liar, because He claimed to be. We read His own words. Either He was telling the truth or He knew He was lying. But think about it…who would die for what they knew was a lie?

The real biblical and historical Jesus only spent approx. 33 years living as a man. But He is ageless; the “Ancient of days” He is called. He is the eternal God and the eternal God wants to be the Savior and Lord of your life. David marveled about that in Psalm 8. When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are people that you should think about them, mere mortals that you should care for them?

But, He does care about you, and He desires you to receive Him as your God and to spend eternity with Him. That is guaranteed to any and all who will accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. If you don’t know that you’ve done that in your life, and would like to right now, all you need to is to believe in your heart that God sent Christ to die for you; to forgive you of all your sin and to give you a new life. It’s that simple.

Our Holiday Schedule at NHC

(Don't get crazy because of the use of "holiday". The schedule includes New Years Day as well.)

"All Over the Earth"
The MP 13 Band in Concert
Friday, Dec. 9 @ 7PM
Child care provided

Jesus Before Bethlehem
Part 2 of "This Jesus...Not That One"
Sunday, Dec. 11 @ 9 and 11

Discovering Nags Head Church
Sunday, Dec. 11 from 2-6PM

Ladies Christmas Ornament Exchange
Monday, Dec. 12 @ 7PM

Youth Christmas Party
Thursday, Dec. 15 6-8PM

Get Ready: He's Coming Back
Part 3 of "This Jesus...Not That One"
Sunday, Dec. 18 9 and 11

Christmas Eve Worship
Part 4 of "This Jesus...Not That One"
5 and 7PM
Nursery and Kidmo 5PM only

Christmas Day
Sunday, December 25
No Gatherings... Worship with your family!

New Years Day Gathering
Sunday, Jan. 1 @ 11AM only
"Indoor Picnic" covered dish lunch!

Why do you put that disclaimer at the bottom of the outline?

You've seen it. It simply says,

"Any/all outlines whether adapted or in their original form are used “by permission” of their original authors."

What's that all about?

On (rare) occasion, usually during a special series, such as "40 Days of Love", which we did in the fall of '10, I'll use the outlines of the originator of that series. The disclaimer simply says that if the sermon is not my own, I have permission from the "owner" to use it...that I'm not plagiarizing.

Although I doubt there are few, if any, truly original ideas or ways to express biblical truth, the vast majority of what is preached at Nags Head Church is developed by the preachers. Even if we have a guest preacher, as we did a few Sundays ago with Larry Benson, you'll still find that disclaimer. And knowing Larry, I'm sure he "originated" his sermon that Sunday.

Is there anything wrong with a preacher using another's material? Not unless he takes credit for it being his own. I heard a preacher say, "If my bullet fits your gun, shoot it." After all, if it's truth, it's God's truth. Certainly, if a preacher is always preaching downloaded or copied sermons, that would be cause for concern. But at NHC, if a sermon is not "original", it's the exception, not the rule.

Another example is the last series we did, "Freedom from Religion". I knew I was going to miss one of the Sundays, but wanted us to stay on course, and asked Andy to preach. To keep the series (which I developed) consistent, I provided him the outline and direction of the message, or the "skeleton", and Andy was free to put in his own particular illustrations, use his "style" and add the "meat" to the sermon.

Occasionally I'll even have visiting pastors or pastor friends who hear about a series we're doing ask me for my notes. I'm glad to send them, and if they work for him, great! We're all on the same team, and it probably shouldn't really matter who gets the "credit". At least that's how I look at it when sharing my "stuff".

Anyway, I would think that what really matters is not, "Who's sermon is this?", but "Is this biblical and true?" That's a standard that all of our elders at NHC seek to uphold.

Now, I need to get back to preparing for this Sunday.

Sunday Feedback December 4

We started a new series today to help us have a firm knowledge on the Jesus of Scripture.

Nathan's song, "The Real Jesus" echoed the desire of our culture to know the truth about Him.

Did you get to take a tour of the Youth Room upstairs?

See you at one of the concerts this week...Wednesday and/or Friday nights @ 7PM.

Annual Church Conference Report

First, the budget proposal was unanimously approved. And the bylaw change was postponed due to a bylaw that requires such changes be announced 30 days in advance, not one week. It will be re-visited in January.

Rick gave the following report for the Elders.

Annual Church Conference

December 2, 2011

Every year around this time we gather as a church body to make an important decision: where will we go next year? That’s what a budget says. Some might think it’s just about dollars and cents, and that it simply is a guide to spending, which it is, but a budget really is a statement of faith and vision. And if you’ve been to our annual meetings in the past few years, you know that we talk about budgeting by vision. It’s what we believe.

Before we get to that part of our meeting tonight, and to also making a change in our bylaws about scheduled church conferences, I want to spend a few minutes with you laying some foundation for the budget and for the new year to come. It’s not ever been our practice to hide anything from you or be less than truthful, and we’re not going to try and spin the facts, but want to be real and at the same time optimistic about what God has around the bend for us here.

This year saw us accomplish a lot in outreach and saw a strong number of baptisms. But 2011 has not been a banner year for us at Nags Head Church. For the first time in the past 20 years we did not grow larger as a church, and with people moving away, a few leaving us and some just dropping out, I’m sure our partnership is less now than it was a year ago. Some of you have had friends leave us for varying reasons. Some just have fallen through the cracks. And that’s an area of concern, not only for us as your leaders, but we know it impacts you as well.

On top of that, and we believe connected to that are two other trends that concern us. One is that our finances have taken a hit. Certainly the local economy has something to do with that. We’ve seen faithful, ministering and giving families move away because of jobs. And although we’ve seen some new folks come in to the church, those who are new believers typically don’t immediately become tithing partners. And many of the baptisms of this year are youth, who aren’t able or ready to contribute financially.

Trying to be pro-active, I challenged the church to the 3:10 Dare over the summer, encouraging those who haven’t learned the habit of tithing to try it and for those of us who do to add a percent to our giving. Burnie led the Financial Peace University, which taught biblical principles of stewardship. That course will be repeated soon, by the way. And we added online giving, which is the way things are going in our culture, to help giving be more convenient, esp. to younger people. Our staff continued to work outside jobs to help out. Yet, still our bottom line is struggling to meet our needs.

I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about this next statement. We don’t put a dollar sign on anyone. But there are only two ways for our finances to grow. One is for us to give more. But likely most of us here are doing all we can. And since most of us aren’t seeing raises, it isn’t likely for our ability to give to increase. The other is for our church to grow in partners. When we grow in the numbers of people in the church, we see our offerings grow as well. I may not be able to give more next year, but all of us can witness and invite our unchurched friends to come to church with us. That’s how we grow. So, let me ask this question of everyone here: Who became part of NHC in 2011 because you led him or her to the Lord or invited them to come to church? That’s all of our responsibilities.

So, you’ve seen that our 2012 budget proposal is significantly decreased from this year’s budget. At the same time it isn’t a surrender. It does say, “We’ll grow from 2011”, because it plans for growth. We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget. And truthfully, if growth doesn’t happen in 2012 we’ll be making some more difficult decisions this time next year. But we’re going to aggressively work with God at turning the ship back on course.

The sluggish economy, the loss of partners for whatever reasons and our efforts to keep the level of ministry and mission up at the same level have all worked together to create a general feeling of discouragement among many of us, me included. I’m not one to retreat, but to charge forward. But sometimes when your charging too hard you can run out of gas. Out of that discouragement and fatigue, we’ve seen a trend lately of folks having to choose between their ministries and other priorities of work and family. That shouldn’t be a choice anyone has to make. But again, when we’re tired, it’s easy to become discouraged.

So, if you were hear at the last CREST meeting you heard me say that 2012 is going to be a year of transition for us. It’s been a while since we’ve made any major transitions as a church, but we believe as pastors that the time is now. We’re going to work hard to simplify what we do and what we ask you to do, without compromising our mission or our purposes. But we’re going to seek in 2012 not to overload anyone. We’re also going to return our staff to being full-time in our roles, knowing that we need that devotion on their parts to lead us forward in our ministries.

If you’ll remember from when you took Discovering NHC (which I encourage you to retake once in a while) one of the statements I make in that class is that if you can’t deal with change you’ll have a hard time with this church. But we believe there are some necessary changes that need to be made, correcting some things, that will help us be better focused on Christ and His will for this church.

That starts with what we do tonight. I want to challenge you to accept this budget and to stay committed to your ministry and your financial commitments here. I also want you to agree to the bylaw change, which isn’t a major thing, but is part of the transition to make things simpler for us all. So before we move on with both of those, I want to lead us in prayer.

Annual Church Conference tonight

A reminder that our annual Church Conference is tonight at 7PM. Be a part of setting the vision for 2012. I'll have some important things to share as we prepare for a major transition in the next year.

A new 6 week Connection Group for married and engaged couples starting Sunday, Jan. 8. The Group will meet at NHC following the 11AM Gathering. Sign up here or with a Communication Card on Sundays. The group will be limited to 6 couples! We will do our best to provide child-care if needed.