I Have Some Questions, Part Five Series

Hey, have you ever gone over to somebody’s house that had different customs than you had in your house? Ever done that? I mean maybe in your house you keep your shoes on like you should and you go over to somebody’s house that they don’t allow shoes inside the house that they don’t allow shoes inside the house and so they’re all stacked out front. You ever done that? Sure. Some of you do that now and we’ll pray for you. But or maybe, if you ever walked into a house and done this -- I’ve done this before, you walk into a house and they say, "Have a seat just anywhere."

And so you sat somewhere and you immediately got the feeling you weren’t supposed to sit there. That that’s somebody’s chair. You know I mean that’s just kinda, that’s where they sit or maybe they had prayer over the meal and they held hands and maybe you don’t do that, or maybe you do and they didn’t. I know I went someplace once that not only did they hold hands, they stood and sang the blessing over the meal, which was really, really interesting.

Our campus pastor in Greensboro, Brett, told me about a time when their neighbors invited them over for a dinner and so they took pork chops over and their neighbors were Muslim. And it’s probably not a good idea. He said the relationship survived the night and they’re now able to laugh about it cautiously. But we all have customs and some customs, they’re not bad, they’re just different.

Today what I wanna talk to you about are customs in the church. We call this church Seacoast so we’ll talk about the customs at Seacoast in line with some of your questions. Some of em I’ll dig real deep on. Others I won’t and you can go to a place on our web site called after the message, and you can get a lot more in-depth into some of the things that I’m gonna talk about, some of the things that didn’t make it to the message today. And then I would also say I’d love for you to go to newcomers. If you haven’t been, either here or at the campuses, you need to go. That’s where we kinda tell our story. We all have a story and we tell our story and then we get a little bit more in-depth on the customs that make us who we are.

So what I wanna do is I wanna start and I wanna get through some questions. Before we do, we wanna do a little segment that we haven’t had much audience participation last couple of weeks. We wanna give you a chance to participate. Little segment we’re gonna call two lies and the truth okay? We’re gonna make three statements about our history; two of them are lies. One of them is the truth. What I want you to do is get your cell phone out and text us which one you think is true. Take a look at this.

Sarah: We’re gonna do a fun little segment for you called two lies and a truth. Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna give you three possible facts about Seacoast history and you vote on which one you think actually happened by texting the appropriate keyword to 99503. All right first possible fact is, once a former Seacoaster got bit by a shark during ocean baptism. If you think that’s true text shark to 99503. Next, an usher one time got attacked by a snake during an Easter service. If you think that actually happened text snake to 99503. And last possible fact is Greg once sacrificed a cat as a sermon illustration. If you think that’s true, text dead cat to 99503. All right get texting Seacoast. Later in the service we’ll reveal what actually happened.

Okay here you go, you ready? Think it’s a shark at baptism, shark 99503, snake at Easter, 99503, dead cat 99503 and we’ll figure out how you guys did just a little bit later in the message. All right here we go, let’s jump in. Why not jump in with a hard one off the start? That sound good? Here’s the question. What percentage of our hard earned tithes goes to pay Greg’s mortgage payments? That one actually came in twice. I’m going to assume the same person.

How many of you know that that is a question with attitude? Huh? Yeah, yeah. Why would a person ask that? I think that there’s a little mistrust going on. What do you think? I think maybe there’s some abuse that has been maybe seen or had at the experience of the church. I thought about it. I thought about why, why would you ask that question?