Welcome to the Victory Blog

Imagine it: the smell of barbecue in the air, the DJ’s got the music thumpin’, nearly 1,500 men – ranging in age from 10 to over 80 – hanging out, talking, laughing, shooting hoops, kicking soccer balls, throwing footballs, pitching fastballs, driving golf balls* and having a great time. There’s a sense of excitement in the air and the anticipation is growing…it’s just about time to eat! (And, you know the way to a man’s heart…)

Although it’s been a hot and steamy day, the sun’s heading rapidly toward the tree line, shade is growing more abundant and a welcome breeze is picking up. It’s a perfect evening for another spectacular men’s event at Victory World Church…it’s Champion’s Night 2010.

Soon, dinner is served and the guys line up for heaping plates corn on the cob, BBQ baked beans and of some of Atlanta’s best barbecue**, generously served with a smile by a squadron of Victory ladies…and don’t forget the great sweet tea (we are in the South, after all!) and some amazing peach cobbler and banana pudding for dessert.

Now, with our bellies full of great food, and our hearts full of mirth, it’s time to head into V1 for the main event – special guest speaker, three-time NBA champion, Bruce Bowen. But first, a bit more fun and the awarding of some sweet prizes! If the air was filled with excitement before, now it’s positively charged! The music is rocking the auditorium, lights are flashing, great sports moments are playing on the big screens, the stage is set like a basketball court, every seat is fill and there’s even a few guys standing along the walls.

Emcee Billy Boughey, along with 212º Pastor Rolando Gonzalez and Fusion Pastor Johnson Bowie, gets things really hopping by tossing basketballs autographed by Bruce Bowen to the most enthusiastic guys in the crowd. This is followed by an off-the-chain dance routine by the 212º dance team, then, an arm wrestling contest – this is, after all a men’s event; displays of strength are in order – and the awarding of prizes. Congratulations to:

Henderson, winner of an autographed basketball – arm wrestling
Eldridge Harris, winner of an iPod Touch – longest golf drive
Oloalu Bolu, winner of an iPod Touch – most soccer goals
Juan, winner of a Wii Console – fastest pitch
Mike Bowen, winner of an Xbox 360 – most touchdowns
Sam Dennard, winner of the Breakfast with Bruce Bowen Raffle

Having awarded these prizes, there’s still one prize left…one really, really sweet prize…the Grand Prize – a 50″ Plasma TV and PS3 bundle! For this contest, the two highest scorers in the outdoor hoops contest plus one randomly picked from the audience wildcard player are invited onstage for a shootout. Whoever makes the most free-throws in 30 seconds wins the Grand Prize. And, with 19 baskets, the winner is…Jeremy Simmons, guest of Victory member Tony Bolin. Congratulations, Jeremy!

And now for the main event…Pastor Dennis introduces our special speaker, Bruce Bowen, a man who is regarded as one of the best defenders in the NBA, was elected eight times to the NBA All-Defensive First and Second Teams and was a member of the San Antonio Spurs teams that won the NBA championships in 2003, 2005 and 2007.

As he speaks, we find out he’s also a man who loves the Lord and has a powerful testimony of overcoming tremendous odds only by the grace of God. He tells of his alcoholic father who was mostly absent and drug-addicted mother who couldn’t give him the care he needed. Bruce had a rough childhood filled with hard lessons.

He speaks of fatherhood, challenging every father in the room to connect with their kids, to be there for them, to stay aware of the fact that they’re watching and learning from everything we do, to pour into them selflessly and not take from them selfishly. He talks of learning to trust Christ to be the father he never had. He challenges us to not fear failure – it can mold us and make us better, if we let it. True failure is when we don’t try.

In closing, Bowen challenges all of us to be optimistic using his name and quirky bow tie as a memory aid – B.O.W. – Being Optimistic Wins. He’s met with a standing ovation before Pastor Dennis closes out with a brief Q & A session and then a prayer. The night’s over, but the memories will last. From start to finish, this was an awesome men’s event. What a great time!

*Inflatables by Funtastic Events Inc.

**Catering by LowCountry Barbecue

This past weekend, I invited our 212º Youth Pastor, Rolando Gonzalez, to close out our One Prayer: Unstoppable teaching series. As many of us have heard, God has really been pouring out his Spirit in the 212º services and I wanted him to share some of what’s been going on with the rest of the church. He did so with a great message about the Unstoppable Kingdom. Here are a few of his key points that we all need to hear and receive into our hearts:

• The Lord enjoys spending time with us; he wants to spend time with us.
• God has a plan and if we can get out of His way ‘great things’ will happen for His glory.
• God is a lot happier and more joyful than we usually think he is
• In his presence is joy
• A lot of the things of God are pretty simple; they start getting complex when we try to take them apart, try to explain them
• God has set things in place and in motion and nothing can stop him
• His kingdom is who he is – meaning that God is not standing away just watching, but he’s currently active in his kingdom – Jesus is involved with his kingdom
• We know that God is everywhere, but sometimes it’s like He is more in one place than others; this “more” of God is His glory or presence
• His presence is what makes the unusual usual
• We were made to function in God’s glory, in his presence
• The Holy Spirit loves to bring revelation of the Father’s love and reveal Jesus Christ to us
• When the Spirit comes, He brings the unstoppable kingdom

If you want to experience God’s amazing presence and power as a part of his unstoppable kingdom, I urge you to listen to or watch the rest of Rolando’s message and then surrender completely to the Holy Spirit. You will definitely be encouraged. And, don’t miss the powerful collection of testimonies on the video that he played during service. I’m going to include it here as well. God is on the move. As we unite together with him, we are and will be unstoppable!

It was quite an honor to welcome a good friend of ours, as well as one of our Executive Oversight Board members, Bishop Wellington Boone, as special guest speaker during our services this past weekend. A number of years ago, I felt the Lord challenging me that if Victory was going to be a truly multi-cultural church, I would need to submit to an oversight board that was also multi-cultural. In that process, the Lord led us to Bishop Boone, who continues to both challenge and encourage us in ways that we’d never get if we were only accountable to people like ourselves.

Throughout the course of our four weekend services, Bishop Boone spoke on the theme of Unstoppable Hope, a subject close to his heart and ministry. Although none of his four inspiring messages were the same, each one centered on the Hope that we can have and share with others through the love and faithfulness of Christ. Rather than try to condense everything he said here, let me just encourage you to listen to or watch online the message he gave during our 10:30am service on Sunday. Or, even better, you can get all four messages in CD and DVD format at our bookstore. You’ll definitely be challenged and encouraged.

This past weekend, our Fusion young adults’ pastor, Johnson Bowie, spoke during our services. His message was right on and more than a little challenging. Continuing our ONE PRAYER: UNSTOPPABLE series, he spoke about the power of a Church united in Unstoppable Righteousness. If you missed it, go listen to, watch and/or download it now. Even if you didn’t miss it, you may want to hear it again! Here’s a glimpse of what he said:

“What would WE look like if we had unstoppable righteousness like JOSIAH did?” Josiah was one of the kings of Israel long ago. After becoming king at the age of eight, he restored the Temple of God, which was in disrepair and zealously sought to root out every vestige of idolatry from the land. 2 Kings 23:25 says about him, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did — with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength.” (NIV)

And, I believe the word of the Lord is that He is giving us this same spirit… the same spirit that was in Josiah to rediscover righteousness in the midst of a crooked and dark world, where there’s so much tolerance that it’s disgusting, and for us to rise up, tear down the idols and pursue God…that we would have an Unstoppable Righteousness! A righteousness that would tear down every idol in our lives, everything that we give passion, praise and attention to other than Jesus.

Now, in NO WAY am I saying that your good deeds make you right before God or get you into Heaven. The Bible is overwhelmingly clear that it’s only because of JESUS that you are made right before God. Over and over again we are told that righteousness is by Grace through Faith. In other words – it’s because of Jesus, and only because of Jesus, that I am righteous and perfect and holy and acceptable in God’s sight. But God doesn’t just save me and tell me to go to church and live like everybody else on the face of the earth.

Romans 12 urges us to live our lives as living sacrifices. Galatians 5 tells us to choose the things the Holy Spirit loves and not the things our sinful nature loves. In fact, it tells us to CRUCIFY the sinful nature and its passions and desires. In Matthew 5 Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst for Righteousness are blessed. And it’s my prayer that today God would bless us with a hungering and a thirsting for RIGHTEOUSNESS again!

Righteousness is not an end to itself. Christ-likeness is never the end goal. Us living really well is never the end goal. What God wants is YOU! He wants your heart. He doesn’t just want your good deeds… What He wants you to do is get rid of anything that separates you from Him! So purge the sin. Purge the idols. Purge the thoughts. He wants ALL of YOU! He is madly in love with you and wants all of you!

And our righteousness comes from that place. The reason why we choose the good and refuse the evil – the reason why we choose the things of the Spirit over our sinful nature – the reason why we want to do good is because we’re so radically loved by God. Not to GET HIM to love us, but because He ALREADY loves us!

The church across the face of the earth needs this unstoppable righteousness again!

During our services this past weekend, I was pleased to have Olin Holly, one of our Executive Pastors, share a message that God had put on his heart. He opened our newest series with a bold message about Courage. During the next few weeks, we’ll be uniting with over a thousand other churches around the world exploring the theme, Unstoppable. Rather than repeat most of what he said, I’d like to encourage you to listen to, watch and/or download his message here. We can all use more courage in our lives – so it’s a message well-worth hearing. For now here are a few highlights:

Courage is the ability to conquer fear; to act in accordance with one’s beliefs in spite of criticism, persecution or the possibility of failure.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

“Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.” – Harold Wilson

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” -Anais Nin

How can I have unstoppable courage?

1. I must have a real and personal relationship with God.
2. I need God’s perspective on my situation.
3. I must be confident that the Lord has already equipped me for success.
4. I cannot be hindered by the intentions or expectations of others.
5. I must proceed boldly until the task is complete.

This past weekend, it was a great pleasure to welcome another very good friend of ours to speak in our services, Pastor Stephan Christiansen, all the way from Oslo, Norway. He brought a message that was both good to hear, and challenging too…especially for most Americans. If you didn’t get a chance to hear the message, let me encourage you to watch or listen to it online.  It will stir you up in your spirit and get you thinking about stepping out in faith into the things God is calling you to.

For now, let me whet your appetite with a few of the things he said that stood out to me:

Who did Jesus give the great commission to? It was a group of simple fishermen; guys who prior to this hadn’t traveled more than 50 miles away from home. He called them to go places they hadn’t gone before and do things they’d never done before…to be pioneers. God is inviting us to do the same!

Pioneers…

• Are people who will go where others won’t
• Take big risks for the sake of the Gospel – risks that others won’t take
• Are rarely found with a remote control in their hands
• Understand that they can be in the deep will of God and still have very difficult circumstances
• See things others aren’t seeing
• Do things that others aren’t willing to do

And the list goes on, but I’ll stop for now. If you want to be on the cutting edge of what God is doing in our day, go listen to this message and take it to heart. Ask God to show you where and how he’s calling you to be a pioneer for his kingdom.

This past weekend, we had the pleasure of welcoming another good friend of ours to speak in our services – Ari Sorko-Ram. Our church has supported him and his wife Shira in their ministry (MAOZ Israel) in Tel Aviv, Israel for a number of years now. We are so glad to be a part of what God is doing among his people there. Ari brought a message about God’s heart for Israel and for the nations, which may not be new to God, but it may have been new to many who heard him. If you missed it, I encourage you to download, watch or listen to his message online. If you were there, I encourage you do listen to it again. He raised some very interesting points. Here are a few that stuck out to me:

• God only has Plan A; there is no Plan B.
• God has established a way and an order to do things. When that order is followed, whether in a family or among nations, God’s blessing flows. God’s order is to the Jew first, then to the nations. We shouldn’t understand this t mean that one nation is better than another. No, we’re just talking about God’s order. He says to the Jew first, NOT to the Jew better.
• The firstfruit , which we are to give to God, is 100% of something  – not to be confused with the tithe, which is 10% of everything – returning that which is God’s to him. The first fruit may not be the best fruit, but God wants us to put our efforts into it. He says that if we’ll put our best effort  into the first fruits, God will give us an abundant harvest.
• Our role, as non-Jewish believers in Jesus is to provoking Israel to jealousy, so that they will turn to Jesus as their Messiah. This is when world revival will take place, and then the Messiah will return.

As we conclude our 20th anniversary celebration, we thought it fitting to welcome our good friend, Dr. Samuel R. Chand, President Emeritus of Beulah Heights Bible College and member of our Executive Board, to come and speak to us out of his passion to help others succeed. His message was, as always, exuberant, hilarious, poignant and exactly what we needed to hear as we move forward into the new things God is doing in and through Victory. I’ll go ahead and write a brief synopsis here, but it’s going to be a teaser only. I really want you to listen to or watch this message…again and again, if necessary, until it sinks into your spirit. So here’s the teaser…

God is calling us to some amazing things. 2010 is OUR year.  In fact, despite what the media prognosticators are saying, 2010 is going to be our best year! This is true for Victory as a church and for us as individuals. But in order for this to happen, we need to Grow It! We are going to experience these things only to the extent that we have the capacity for it. The fulfillment of whatever God has called us to comes down to the issue of capacity.

We need to make up our minds to grow our…

1. Pain capacity, – There is no growth without pain.
2. Relational capacity – There are two kinds of people in this world – people who make deposits and people who make withdrawals. We have to be able to relate to both.
3. Exposure capacity – The more we’re exposed, the more we’re willing to do things.
4. Identity capacity – Our identities are shifting all the time – we’re not the same people we were ten years ago…at least we shouldn’t be.
5. Crisis capacity – Don’t waste your crisis, learn from it.
6. Character capacity – Character is what you do and who you are when no one is watching.
7. Risk capacity – When you’re 100% sure, you’re too late. “Jump out and play in the traffic.”

Now, go listen to the whole message. It will change your life!

It was such a pleasure and a privilege to have John Maxwell, one of our dearest friends and long-term mentors, speak this past weekend as we continue our 20th Anniversary celebrations. The word he brought was, not surprisingly, excellent. I’m not going to repeat it all here, beyond the few key points which follow, so I strongly encourage you to watch it, listen to it and/or download it from our website. If you were there this weekend, you know this message is worth hearing again, and if you weren’t there… well… what are you waiting for?! You don’t want to miss this!

For now, here’s a small sample of his challenging, yet uplifting message:

• What we do on the outside is a result of who we are on the inside. Everything happens from the inside out
• When you’re better on the inside than you are on the outside, and when you’re bigger on the inside than you are on the outside, over time, your influence will be greater on the outside.
• Conversely, if we’re bigger and better on the outside than we are on the inside, our influence will become less on the outside.
• The first person you lead is not someone else, it’s yourself. If you wouldn’t follow yourself, why should anyone else?
• There are four basic levels of getting better on the inside than on the outside:
  1. The Give Me Stage
  2. The Use Me Stage
  3. The Search Me
  4. The Make Me Stage

If you want yourself as an individual, and Victory as a church body, to have increasing influence in our world, you need to get the truth of this message embedded in your spirit. Listen to it and meditate on it. And as John said in his message, if we’ll continue in this path, over the next 5-10 years, it’s going to be unbelievable what God is going to do through Victory. We haven’t seen anything yet!

This past weekend, I invited Fusion Pastor Johnson Bowie to begin our newest series, Emmanuel: God With Us with a message about Peace. And, he did a great job, bringing a word we all need to hear regularly. If you missed it (or even if you didn’t), you can get the audio/video recording here. For now, here’s a brief synopsis:

About 2,000 years ago, after about 400 years of seeming silence from God, an angel showed up in a little town in Israel and told a little Jewish girl named Mary that the Holy Spirit would miraculously place a child inside her and that this child would be the Son of God – His name would be Jesus; He would also be called Emmanuel: God With Us.

Because of that, we can know now that God isn’t just “up there” somewhere, billions of miles away, looking at us through some high-powered telescope. No, He’s right here with me and you in the middle of it all. And truthfully, with everything that is going on in the world right now, and everything that’s going on in our lives, we need to know that He is here – God With Us is present, because wherever Jesus is, He brings His peace.

Now, Jesus’ peace doesn’t guarantee the absence of trouble or trials.  In fact, Jesus actually promised us that WE WILL HAVE troubles and trials.  But, He says that despite it all, we can have peace in the midst of it – His peace – knowing God’s presence moment by moment forever.  It’s a deeper peace than the world can offer. No matter what gets thrown at us, through Emmanuel, we can now have:

• Peace with God – Through Jesus, we were reconciled to God.  Before Him, we were lost, filled with shame and either running from God or rebelling against Him. But Jesus came and sacrificed His life for ours.  And now, we’re not just ‘okay’ with God, we’re holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation!
• Peace with Others – “Our hostility toward each other was put to death.” (Eph. 2:16 NLT) Through Christ, we are one.  He came to break down the walls of hostility between you and other people – whether they’re based on race, ethnicity, politics, gender or anything else.  We can love our neighbors AND our enemies.
• Peace with Life – Through Emmanuel, we can know God as our Father. When we get scared, hurt or afraid, the last thing God wants us to do is run to someone else, or sit over in the corner crying.  No, He wants us to come to Him like small children, with tears in our eyes, hands in the air so He can pick us up, and we can tell Him everything that’s happened, and somehow, everything’s okay when we’re in our Daddy’s arms.

Today, God is saying, “Stop going to the world for peace!”  The peace the world offers is nothing more than mere pain-killers for our lack of peace.  Alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, food, TV, internet, relationships, a bigger house, a nicer car… anything to distract us from the reality of our own lack of peace. It’s like hitting the morphine button in the hospital to “make it all go away.”  But those things only work for an hour or a day before reality is staring us in the face once again, and we still have no peace.

Emmanuel offers a peace that the world cannot offer. Are you going to receive it? I can’t tell you that your situation will ever make sense, or that it’s going to get better right away. But, I can tell you that when the storm is crashing all around you, there’s a way to keep the storm from entering your heart… it’s to know that Emmanuel is with you; that you aren’t forgotten; that He will never leave you or forsake you.

GOD IS WITH YOU!