Welcome to the Victory Blog

On September 5th and 6th a group of Victory men attended Men’s Advance themed, Band of Brothers: No Man Down. Hosted by Pastor Dennis and special guest speaker Chip Judd and held at the beautiful Simpsonwood Retreat Center, this Men’s Advance included four power-packed sessions and an Extreme Rescue Mission that gave us the tools we need to help keep ourselves and our brothers from becoming the “man down”.

All of us, from different walks of life, came together to be challenged and equipped spiritually, mentally and physically to effectively deal with those areas in which the enemy attacks hardest and has had the most success in taking men out. We had times of dynamic worship, challenging instruction and open, honest sharing. Of course, we also enjoyed fellowship, building relationships with other guys and good food.

The Extreme Rescue Mission consisted of a number of team-based physical challenges which forced team members to rely on one another and cooperate in order to succeed. It was a lot of fun and at the same time, provided an excellent interactive illustration of principles learned during the teaching sessions. One of the guys, Pete, had this to say: “The messages from Chip and Pastor Dennis were right on. The challenges were a lot of fun. Every man at Victory should take advantage of this great opportunity and attend Men’s Advance in the future. It’s truly life-changing! I can’t wait until the next one!” (If you attended this event and were impacted by it, we would love to hear your story. Please submit it here.)

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There were quite a few photos taken at the event. If you’d like to view the entire gallery, download photos or order prints, click here.

One of the most practical ways we can demonstrate what community looks like is to share with those in need. So, in conjunction with This Is What Community Looks Like, we held our semi-annual food drive for the Norcross Co-op on September 13th and 14th. What a great opportunity to show God’s love by pulling together as a church and providing food for families in our community.

Hundreds of our members gave of their time and resources, both by volunteering to help with the collection and by donating bags of food. Shirley Cabe, Director of the Norcross Co-op, wrote:

Dear Victory Family,

On behalf of the Norcross Cooperative Ministry Board, staff, volunteers and clients, thank you so much for your recent food drive. VWC members donated 525 bags of food. This food will help many families in our community. Again, thank you for your donations and your support.

Blessings,

Shirley Cabe 

When we started Victory, one of our goals was “to turn people into believers and believers into disciples.” We have tried to set up in our church a means to help people move through this process. That means is found in small groups, or as we call them, V•Groups. In fact, it is only in the context of a small group that we can or will truly become disciples: moving from a basic acquaintance with the reality of Christ, to a growing trust in God, which will then lead us to serve others and, ultimately, to share our life with others in total abandonment to Christ – doing church daily – getting church outside the walls.

In Acts 2, we see that the lives of thousands of people were transformed into lives of simplicity, sincerity and sacrifice; a transformation which mightily impacted the community around them. Notice that the transformation didn’t happen in the large, formal gathering at the temple, but as they met day to day in small groups in their homes.

Although we like to believe transformation takes place in our church services, the reality is that only limited transformation takes place in large meetings. Our weekend services are NOT what community looks like. Rather, doing life together outside the four walls of the church building is what community looks like. How do we do that? We have to get into small groups. And, in case you’re still not convinced, here are more reasons why it’s important to be in a small group:

1. Pastoral Care – One person can only care effectively for so many people. In any church with more than about 50 people, the only way anyone can have adequate pastoral care is if the church is broken down into small groups.
2. Learning to Love – God wants to put us into environments where we will learn how to love. Small groups are the perfect environment to learn how to work through the difficulties of relationship – to exercise our love.
3. Discipleship – Jesus commanded us to make disciples – not just believers. In order to become disciples, people need a safe, small group environment where they can talk through life’s issues and how God’s Word applies to them.
4. Sharing our Gifts Together – God has given all of us gifts with which we are to minister to others. Small groups are a safe place to learn how to operate in our gifts and minister to others. Large corporate gatherings just can’t offer this opportunity.
5. Accountability – The small group is where God starts the accountability process. It is a safe place to bring everything to the light, to confess sins and to receive ministry.
6. Sharing Life Together – We weren’t meant to do life independently. If we are not sharing our lives with others we cannot be healthy, let alone become all God created us to be. We need to share our lives with others.
7. Effective Community Outreach – We’ve got to take the church outside the walls. There are so many needs in our community; we have to break them down into bite-sized pieces. We can most effectively do this through small groups. (As with UNITE! Compassion in Action Weekend.)

As you can see, being in a small group is not only valuable, it is an essential part of the Christian life. You simply will not experience the life God intends for you to have without the authentic relationships found in a small group. So, if you haven’t joined a V•Group yet, I encourage you to do so this week. Don’t wait any longer. You already know what community looks like and why it’s so important. Now it’s time to act on that knowledge and become a church without walls.

As a small token of our appreciation for all the hard work,  dedication and faithfulness of our leaders, through which so many things have been accomplished for God’s Kingdom this year, we hosted a Family Fun Day at Stone Mountain Park on Labor Day just for them. With a live DJ, an all-American cookout, relay races, games, water play, inflatable games and so much more, it was a day of fun for all ages!

It was amazing to see the hundreds of people who lead all the ministries, classes, outreaches and V•Groups come together to eat, laugh, play and have a great time. We are truly blessed to have such a committed and  gifted group of people spearheading everything we do as a church. It is such a joy and an honor to work together with you to share God’s love, both within our church and with the communities around us. Thank you Victory Leaders!

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Here are just a few of the photos taken at the event. There are many, many more. If you’d like to view the entire gallery, download photos or order prints, click here.

PS – If you weren’t there, but it sounds/looks like a lot of fun, know this: we’d love to have even more people – people like you – join us at next year’s Leadership Appreciation Day. As an ever-growing church, we’re constantly looking for more people with dedication and a passion for God’s Kingdom to serve as leaders. To find out how you can get more involved as a leader, click here.

Way too many people in the Christian world are trying to do life alone. A study conducted by the Department of Mental Health showed that if you isolate yourself from other people, you are three times more likely to die an early death, four times more likely to suffer emotional burnout, five times more likely to be clinically depressed and ten times more likely to be hospitalized for an emotional or mental disorder. The fact that so many people in our culture do isolate themselves is a little bit scary, don’t you think?

When we live in isolation, without any true friendships, we start to develop blind spots as we get older. Our personalities begin to get quirky, and we start to lose our ability to relate well with others. For some, this comes about because they isolate themselves, whether out of fear or independence. But, there are others who, despite trying to have friendships, are rarely successful. Often, these people simply don’t know how to make or keep friends.

Honestly, not a lot of us have really deep friendships. Think about it. Who are your two or three deepest friends? Do you share you life with them? Are you able to really open up and be honest about your deepest issues? Do you even have friends like that? Sometimes we struggle to find people who can get into our life, hold us accountable and spur us on to God’s best for our lives. Many of us simply aren’t aware of the things that can hinder us or what it takes to have true friendships. So, I’d like to talk a little bit about those things.

First, I encourage you to take an honest look at your own life and the ways you relate to others. There are a number of things that might be keeping you from developing close friends. These things include:

• Not being friendly. There are a lot of people who live in their neighborhoods, work in their jobs and even go to church without ever opening up or being friendly to the people all around them every day.
• Being narcissistic. This means “having an exaggerated sense of self importance coupled with a remarkable absence of interest or empathy for others.” A lot of people don’t really care about others. They think the universe revolves around them.
• Having a rejection complex. Many people have grown up in environments where others have rejected them and, as a result, they now feel they can’t let themselves get too close to others for fear of rejection. Their tendency is to reject others before others reject them.
• Being insecure. On one hand, the world is constantly reminding us of how we don’t measure up. On the other hand, many people are shy or have never been confident enough in their ability to build relationships.

Thankfully, one of the things Jesus came to do is to set us free from all these areas. Jesus cared about people. He was secure and confident in who he was. His personality was very attractive to others. Now, when He comes to live inside of you, He will change those things about you that keep you from having true friends. You see, it is those things that are not like Jesus that drive people away from us. In fact, the more you let Him take over your personality, the more friends you will have.

If we want to promote true friendships in our lives, we must first be forgiving. Way too many friendships go by the wayside because we’re unwilling to forgive or understand where they’re at. Then, we must be confidential – that is, don’t gossip. We lose friends quicker by gossiping than any other way. Also, remember that a true friend speaks the truth in love. We’re going to have times, if we’re really being true friends, that we’re going to have to confront a friend about an uncomfortable issue in them. We all have blinds spots. Sometimes we say or do things that we have no idea are offensive or hurtful. Because of that, we need to have people in our lives that we can ask to hold us accountable when they see these things in us. And, we need to be able to receive their correction. When we are being a true friend, we will listen to and encourage others. And, we will be consistent and committed.

These are the characteristics of true friendship. How do we remember them? Well we can start by following the words of Jesus. He said, “Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.” (Matthew 7:12, The Message) While most of us have heard of this – the “Golden Rule” – many people don’t realize that really, this is the secret to having true friendships. In other words, rather than waiting for others to befriend you, you start talking to them, encouraging them and serving them. You start exhibiting the characteristics I mentioned above. As you do, people will want to be your friends – probably more than you’ll know what to do with. And, as that happens, you will begin to experience the fullness of life in community – the life that God is inviting us to – a life that is full of True Friendships. That is what community looks like!

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This last week we were blessed to receive some new video footage from Nicaragua where our Advent Conspiracy, Christmas Gift to the World offering helped to drill a new well for the base of our missionaries there, Mike & Debra Turner. Click the picture below to see the well being dug and hear Mike talk about its impact on the base, the community and the lives of hundreds of children.

It is so exciting to see how God uses our faithfulness in meeting the practical needs of others to minister and provide opportunity to know Him.

Thank you, Victory, for your generosity on behalf of others.

I recently watched a phenomenal video in which a Cape buffalo calf was attacked by a pride of lions and then also by a crocodile, but was rescued from them by its herd. Amazingly, the calf got up and walked away, virtually unharmed. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.)

This clip perfectly illustrates the safety of being in community. It was only because they were in a group (a community), that the herd felt confident enough to attempt this rescue. If that calf had been alone, or if the herd had not come to its rescue, it would have been doomed.

This is true for us as well. The Bible says that Satan “roams about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” We all need people around us. We all need community. Yet, so many people have isolated themselves today, even in the church, so that when something bad happens, they have no one to help them. They don’t realize that their isolation leads to suffering, bondage and, quite often, destruction.

In my first year as a Christian, I learned the value of being with people. While I started my journey alone, someone came alongside of me and began helping me grow as a Christian. He mentored and discipled me, keeping me on track and holding me accountable. Today, there are way too few people in the church who have this process at work in their lives. Without real personal relationships, they’ve never learned how to grow in Christ. The missing element is accountability.

Accountability means to be regularly answerable for each of the key areas of our lives to qualified people. There are areas in all of our lives in which we tend to struggle and for which we need to be answerable. The major ones are our spiritual life, work life, home life and moral life. Accountability provides the motivation and safety we need to grow in these areas. I’ve discovered in my life that wherever I’m struggling (especially if it’s for a long time), that’s where I’m not being accountable; I’m not letting people into my life.

Now, if we want to become accountable, we need to be aware of a few challenges that need to be overcome:

1. The Challenge of Independence. Everybody has a little independence in them. We don’t want anyone to tell us what to do. But we need to learn how to honor and submit to some level of accountability. If we don’t do this, we will start to make bad choices; choices that lead to destruction.
2. The Challenge of Structure. Everyone is challenged at times in the area of structure. For instance, those who are failing in their finances are usually doing so because they have no structure in their finances. Without the structure of a budget, money will be wasted. In fact, in every area of our lives where we don’t have structure, we open the door to chaos. We have to overcome the unwillingness to build structure into our lives.
3. The Challenge of Success. While all of us want to be successful, many of us don’t know how to handle success. The highest risk for failure is usually during times of success. The more successful you are, the more accountability structure you have to build around you because while you may make fewer mistakes, they will cost you much more.
4. The Challenge of Personal Vulnerability. We need a willingness to let people in – to let people see our failures and our faults. Very few people do this. It is very hard, requiring a vulnerable attitude towards ourselves. But we have to realize that we’re probably not all we think we are, and that we’re very likely to make mistakes.
5. The Challenge of Trust. We’ve all had people in our life that we’ve looked up to who have violated our trust. Unfortunately, because of this violation, many people have decided to not trust others or let anyone close ever again. They’ve built a barrier around themselves to seal people out. What they don’t realize is that when we do this, we actually seal in our issues and problems and they become strongholds which keep God out and the devil in. In order to break those strongholds, we have to learn to trust again.

Being in community and having accountability are essential to our lives. We cannot be all that God created us to be without them. Living without accountability is just like being that buffalo calf – only without the herd and the happy ending. So, I urge you, if you don’t have accountability in your life, ask God, right now, to direct you to one or more people who will hold you accountable – people who are wise and have had success in the areas you need to grow in – people you can build a trusting relationship with. Then, talk with them regularly. Get counsel often – before there’s a crisis – so that when a crisis comes, you’ll already have the tools and relationships you need to handle it. If you will do that, I promise you will see tremendous growth and change in your life. You will move from just being a believer to being a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

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Over the years, religion has taught us to live two lives: one which everyone sees and another that we keep hidden – the real us, who we are when we’re alone. So many of us never share our real lives with others, and this is killing us. Yet, the Bible is very clear that our visible life should be congruent with our inner life. If it doesn’t, we’re being hypocrites.

How do we get away from this? Read Acts 2:41-47. The early believers met in homes, made time for one another and shared their lives together. They felt like a family and there was a natural attraction to them. They had community. And, out of that community arose signs and wonders and many people were saved every day. You see, in order to experience real Christianity, we have to have real fellowship – not just the sitting around talking at a coffee shop kind of fellowship, but the kind that fosters real, genuine, deep relationships where we can truly open up and share what’s going on inside.

For this we need authenticity. Authenticity means that something is what it claims to be. Unfortunately, we live in a world where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. This is just as true with people. You have to get real close to tell what’s real and what’s not. From a distance, you just can’t tell. So many people live a fake life to impress others. They won’t let anyone get too close for fear of being exposed, and so, never truly become authentic Christians. Instead, they spend their whole lives trying to manage an inauthentic image.

Think of our lives like an iceberg. The visible part – that is, what everyone else sees – is only the top ten percent. This is where we show our best – in our family, church, career, possessions, accomplishments, etc. But look at the other ninety percent – the real us which remains hidden below the surface. This is where we hide things like the truth about our marriage, financial condition, relationship issues, sexual life, areas of suffering and so on, not to mention anger, pride, discouragement, disillusionment, depression, guilt, shame, suicidal thoughts and more.

Most people, having no community in which to deal with life’s issues, spend all of their time and energy just managing what’s below the surface to keep it hidden. But it’s what’s below the surface that can sink your ship and kill you. And, think of this; if you’re focused on managing your sin, you can’t fulfill God’s purpose in your life.

Truthfully, we all have stuff hidden below the surface in our lives – mainly because we haven’t been taught to live in community. But the good news is that Jesus wants to set us free. He wants us to bring our hurts, failures and flaws out into the light of authentic community where we can deal with them. Confession is essential to healing. We can walk around forgiven, but we’ll remain unhealed if we don’t confess to one another.

To confess, we need authentic fellowship. Yes, we actually have to speak to other people about our stuff. It’s the only way to get our feelings and struggles out into the light. This means we have a little maturing to do. If we’re going to have authentic fellowship, we need:

Safe environments where it’s safe for us to come clean, to confess. We have to be able to talk openly and be non-judgmental, willing to listen, caring/loving, forgiving, willing to help/get involved and discrete. And we have to speak the truth in love.

A willingness to be vulnerable. When you open up and confess, you bring things to the light and that’s where God is. It’s the devil that lives in the darkness. The only way we’re ever going to be free of anything – whether sexual sin, alcoholism, drugs, etc. – is if we’ll humble ourselves and confess.

The desire to change. The purpose of getting things out in the light is so that we can change. It doesn’t do any good to just talk about something. You have to really want to change. And because we just can’t do it on our own, if we really have a desire to change, we will get in a small group.

We need others around us in safe authentic relationships. Think of exercising, dieting or any other change of habit or lifestyle. We do much better when someone is there helping us. How much more so do we need them for our deeper issues?!

So let me ask you, what are the top two or three areas in your inner life that need to change? What are you going to do about them? Are you just going to keep on keeping them to yourself? Are you just going to talk about changing them? Or, will you pursue the life-changing power of authentic fellowship? Once you have authentic fellowship, you really will change – and not just yourself, but everyone around you as well!

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