I have started a message series at my church, Canyon Creek Church, on the life of David called The Ultimate Fighter. Several MMA fighters have helped us introduce each message. Here is the greeting from Urijah Faber.
Here is the link to the message series, if you are interested.
On December 12th, fight pastor and Canyon Creek Church will be hosting a live pay per view showing of UFC 107. Come watch BJ Penn vs Diego Sanchez with other fight fans, live at Church! The doors will open at 6:30pm and the cost is $10.00 per person at the door.
Free tickets will be given to everyone who comes to Canyon Creek Church on Sunday, December 6th! The fight night will also be the official debut of fightpastor.com. Come watch the fights and support the official launch of Fight Pastor.
Our September teaching series at Canyon Creek Church is called Righteous Relationships. Relationships are a vital part of every person's life. Often times we fail to see how all our various relationships are interconnected. This series will help each of us have relationships that grow, thrive, and honor God. September will be incredible. Don't miss it! If you happen to be gone on a Sunday, be sure to visit www.canyoncreekonline.com and check out our podcasts.
The week of UFC 100 was a sad, yet exciting week for me and Canyon Creek Church. Sad in that one of our church members and a close friend of mine Mike Long passed away while fishing in Alaska. I blogged on Mike previously so won't say much more about that. It was reluctantly enjoyable week also because I got to go to all the UFC 100 festivities with some buddies of mine from the church.
While we were in Vegas I was running around trying to meet fighters, get autographs, and get pictures taken. (Shameless I know, but what can I say, I am a HUGE MMA fan). As I was waiting in an area where fighters stroll by a freelance reporter from the Las Vegas Review came by and asked if he could interview me. He said it would take about 60 seconds so I said sure. He asked me some basic questions like why was I into the UFC, etc. It got interesting when he asked me what I did when I wasn't stalking MMA fighters and I told him I was a Pastor. This led to a series of questions about how MMA fights fits within my belief system and how my church feels about their pastor being so heavily into the UFC. I mentioned we host viewings of pay per view fights at our church. Anyways, he ended up contacting my wife via Facebook and asked for more information about me and our church and let us know that his paper would be printing an article about me and my interest in the UFC. The Las Vegas Review Journal Article After this article hit a couple follow up pieces were done by other papers, blogs, and websites. My favorite was the article written on Yahoo Sports and actually used our church website as the front page picture. That article tripled hits to our website and to my blog site (which I am changing to www.fightpastor.com). It also led to me being contacted by several MMA sites and magazines interested in me being a freelance blogger on a pastors perspective on fights. Our team at church have been getting pretty excited about the ministry potential. We are currently in the process of developing a non-profit called Fight Pastor with the hopes of developing a missional influence in a unique area. More info on that to come!
The week peaked on July 11 which was the UFC 100 Fight Night at the church. We had about 80 guys who came to watch the fights at the church. The cool part was about 20 guys from the community came because they read the yahoo sports article and were looking for a "clean" environment to watch the fights. (See, a cool ministry is evolving!) That night the fights were entertaining, the crowd was energized, and everyone left having a blast. Side note: I like Brock Lesnar but was personally embarrassed by his tirade at the end of his fight. I felt it was completely classless and way too WWE for my taste. I did appreciate Dana White's rabid response against Lesnar's actions and the follow-up Lesnar apology. For all the Dana White opponents out there, you have to admit he is trying everything he can to keep MMA an honorable main stream sport. Great Job Dana! The fight night at the church was awesome. Kaylee Eylander, our resident Canyon Creek Church photographer, crashed the testosterone filled party and took pictures. Here are some of my favorite pictures. Enjoy!
This past Sunday, as a part of our Scarred message series at Canyon Creek Church, I showed off the nasty scar on my leg. I get asked often where that scar came from by random strangers. It always allows me to warn them what happens when you don't use the safety clip while running on the treadmill. Since I get asked the story often (and for pictures almost as often) I thought I would share the story in blog form!
It was a Friday morning, Di had left to volunteer at my boys school, so I took advantage of that free time by working out. After lifting weights I started running on the treadmill while watching a DVD of my favorite show The Ultimate Fighter. The rest of the story is still a tad foggy to this day. As best as I recall, I ran for about 10 minutes when I tripped. Somehow I hit my head against the railing along the treadmill and knocked myself out. Being a typical man, I failed to have the safety clip attached. Laying at the foot of the treadmill, knocked out, it rubbed the skin on my right leg down to the muscle. The picture above is what I woke up with. My brother-in-law affectionately dubbed it the nasty, which has stuck to this day. As nasty as this looks, it didn't really hurt. The treadmill burned through my nerve endings while I was unconscious leaving me without pain. This was super handy until the nasty got severely infected (now that hurt!).
Since it had gotten infected it needed to be removed and I needed to have a skin graft. The surgeon removed the nasty using only a local anesthetic (which receiving hurt worse than the actual accident). Half way through removing the nasty he discovered it was much larger and deeper than he had originally thought (it was actually about 3/4 of an inch thick). He apologized for not giving me enough local and warned me that this is probably gonna hurt (understatement of the year) and proceeded to finish cutting the nasty out. I have always considered my self a pretty tough dude with a high pain tolerance but I have to be honest and say it hurt so bad I cried.
Anyways, the doctor finished up the skin graft, bandaged my leg up, and sent me on my way. Di and I left two days later with our kids to Disneyworld. I was in a wheel chair the first half of the trip so we got to cut to the front of every line. Unfortunately I don't remember that trip because of the pain killers I was on. Everyone tells me the trip was fun.
After several more months of visiting the plastic surgeon, my leg got better and now all I am left with is a nice gnarly scar. As we have said during the entire message series, that scar is a reminder of pain I once had that is now healed. I hope you enjoyed the treadmill story. The moral is......always use the safety clip.
This has been a whirlwind of a last two weeks for me. The ups and downs have been many. It started with dreaming about our 5 year anniversary service at the Lynnwood Convention Center. I can't believe it was 5 years ago that I moved from California to Washington with a dream in my heart to plant a church. It really seems like yesterday that I was the youth pastor at Phenomenon. Here I am, leading a church I started with 50 radical people 5 years later. What a journey the experience has been! I was pumped for that anniversary service. I was excited to look back at our history but anticipating sharing what I see the next 5 years looking like. As that service approached Canyon Creek Church was full of momentum, the enthusiasm and growth of our church was at an all time high. Christian and I frequently joked about things not being able to keep going this well. (But we hoped they would!
Then last weeks events shocked our church community. One of our own made the biggest mistake of his life and it was the equivalent of an atomic bomb being dropping on our church family. I have to be honest and say I have never felt more helpless in my life. I like to know what is going on and be involved in controlling outcomes but this was out of my control. I have shared so many times over the last few days that my emotions have shifted from hopeful to fearful (90% hopeful, 10% fearful). I can honestly say that every time fear would begin to overwhelm me someone from our community would call, email, Facebook, text message, or stop by. The support from our church community has left me in awe. I have told my friends in ministry repeatedly that I have never seen such a large group of people rally in such a short period of time. I have never felt more blessed and humbled to serve as pastor of this church than right now.
It was Wednesday evening, after long discussions with parents and youth leaders, that I began to conclude what I thought initially impossible.....that our church is going to come out of this stronger than we went into it. So I was now up to 95% hope and 5% fear but wanted to see how the news was going to affect our church that Sunday. Sunday came and far exceeded any hopeful expectations I could have had. Including Sunday night, over 650 people were here this weekend. On the heels of our biggest tragedy comes our largest weekend (besides Easter and Christmas) ever. Canyon Creek Church, I believe in you! In the 12 years I served as a youth pastor that was my favorite line to say to students. I wanted them to know that I believed in them. That is honestly the way I feel about our church today. We are going to stronger because of this! I can't believe less than two weeks after our "defeat" I am so overwhelmed with hope for our future!This Sunday launches our Vision Sundays where we take a few weeks to highlight where we see the church going over the next year. It has become a CCC tradition. We hand out vision cards, debut the new years them, and begin 40 days of prayer and fasting. I had prayerfully decided several weeks ago that our theme for 2009 would be You-Turn. Our them verse for the year would be Romans 8:28. In the aftermath of the trial we just experienced I can't imagine there being a more appropriate theme for this year. Here are the words that Paul wrote: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I think we are already beginning to see the truth of this verse in our community.
My prayer is that in 2009 things turn around for many people! Canyon Creek Church, I BELIEVE IN YOU! Together, we can make a lasting impact and see many people make a YOU-TURN!
Thanks for helping this young pastor overcome his fear......(and believing in me).
Brandon
