My brain is a scary place. So this may be a post that you skip over unless you are interested in how I process and organize information. As a pastor, each week I have the responsibility to clearly present a message based on God’s Word. It means that I spend time studying each week, making sure that I am prepared to stand up and preach. I typically write out my sermon each week in Apple Pages. But when I write using a word processor, I am forced to write in a very linear process. When I need to reorganize my thoughts, I have to go through a painstaking process to cut and paste to make everything flow together.

Outlines help somewhat, but they still cannot be quickly changed. That’s where mind maps can help. Wikipedia defines a mind map as “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.” I watched a video tutorial on mind maps over at Pastorgear.com and I decided to give it another try.

I downloaded the free version of XMind for the Mac and I started organizing my thoughts. I created nodes for Bible verses, for illustrations, and for my central idea. I started adding in points and thoughts, and very quickly a sermon was formed. I was able to reorganize my ideas very quickly by dragging and dropping. You can collapse and expand your different points to keep everything on the screen. And finally, when you are done, you can export the map out as a text file to use for preaching. You can see a partial map from the sermon last week above this post.

Overall, I’m impressed with XMind. The program worked great and it really helped me to organize my thoughts. For an engineer, this program really matched my analytical and logical skills and allowed me to be creative at the same time.  The process is much better than simply writing a sermon out on paper. You can very quickly see how the message will flow from point to point. I’ve been using Evernote to store many of my sermon ideas, but I want to start incorporating XMind into my weekly work flow. I might even upgrade to the pro version to get some more export options. Just don’t forget that the most important tool in sermon preparation is your Bible. You must do the hard work of studying Scripture if you teach each week. Nothing can replace prayer and Bible study if you want to powerfully present God’s Word each week.

Let me know how you organize your sermons, and if you want to find out more about using a tool like this, check out the video below from Pastorgear.com that got me interested in trying this out.

I had a great weekend, but it’s one of those Mondays where I have a million things to do and not nearly enough time this week to get them done. Here’s a quick rundown on my world.

• Another good weekend at Cornerstone.  We started a new series at Cornerstone based on a survey we sent out where we asked people to rank different tough topics they wanted to talk about.  The top 5 topics picked were: Christians and Alcohol, How do I know God’s will, Are we living in end times, Bible Translations, and Discipleship and Evangelism. I was really surprised by some of these, but we will definitely have fun approaching each one from a Biblical perspective. We might even add in an extra week to cover some of the other topics that were written in.
• We kicked off the series with tackling the issue of Bible translations. I think this one surprised me the most, but judging from the conversations after the message, it really is an important issue to tackle. People are confused with the sheer number of different translations, and our area is full of King James Only churches who are less than gracious to anyone using a more modern translation. I don’t mind when churches stand by the King James version because they prefer it, but when they turn it into a matter of sin, I take exception.
• During the first service, I looked up at the clock and realized that I had less than 5 minutes to wrap things up. Although we are pretty flexible on time, we can’t go way over because of starting the 2nd service.  The problem was that I was only half way through my notes.  So I told everyone to check out my blog this week and I would share the info and resources that I skipped. BUT, I have changed my mind. After seeing how much interest there really is in this topic, I am going to tackle part 2 next week. Let’s just say that this week was your introduction.
• The sermon audio and video will be up in a few hours, so check out our sermon page to catch part 1. The online message is from our 11am service so it’s a little more organized since I knew I couldn’t get through all of it.
• After the second service, we were able to head over to Hillsville and catch Decemberadio in concert. They had an afternoon concert at the Carroll County Fair. I was pretty disappointed in the turnout for the concert, but the band did awesome as always. We’ve gotten to know them over the past few years and I would love to host them again for a local concert.
• And we wrapped up Sunday evening with a great night of youth meetings. It was our first official youth meeting this year where we really started teaching. Our Sr. High group is taking an in-depth look at the process of inspiration, preservation, and translation of the Bible that I covered on Sunday morning. We had a great time together, and I learned that when someone asks what a word means, you better be careful and check out urban dictionary first
• Overall it was a great weekend. I felt like I got hit by a truck when everything was said and done, but that was just the typical Sunday Holy Hangover. God is good.

Now for this week, I have several website projects to wrap up, another sermon to prepare for, and we are thinking about taking off for a few days as a family. We’re watching Hurricane Earl to see how it will affect our travel plans. Pray that it turns northward very soon.

This week at Cornerstone we joined over a thousand churches in starting the One Prayer series. This is our third year participating in the series and it has been awesome to come together as we strive to be the answer to the prayer of Jesus in John 17:20-24.

I shared a message about Unstoppable Unity. Just imagine what would happen if our churches were fully united in purpose and in love. I also challenged our church to go online and read the devotions each day at oneprayer.com.  We will be praying and fasting together as a church during the month of June.

I asked our church to join together from sundown Monday to sundown Tuesday to fast and pray each week. This week we are fasting and praying for unity so that the lost can see Jesus through us.  I’m excited to see what will happen when God’s power is unleashed through people who have joined together to fast and pray.

Jennifer and I have slipped away for a few days of rest at the beach. So fasting for us is a challenge when you are surrounded by so many great restaurants . But rest assured, we are joining with you by praying and fasting for our church.  I can’t wait to see what God will teach us through this study.

We have started a new series at Cornerstone that challenges each of us to live as if each day might be our last.  If we want to live a life of no regrets we have to discover what is really important in life.  What if you only had one month to live? How would you make each day really matter? This question really forces us to re-prioritize our lives. For many of us, we realize very quickly that we lead selfish lives. Our challenge is to focus on the relationships that will leave a legacy that lasts far longer than our time here on this earth. I’m excited about what God is personally teaching me through this, and God is using this to stretch and grow our church as we take the challenge together.

We will be sharing how Jesus lived passionately, how He loved completely, how He learned humbly, and how He left boldly. This series is based on the best-selling book One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life by Kerry and Chris Shook.  If you want to watch or listen to the messages in this series at Cornerstone, you can check out the new sermon player we are testing. We will be integrating this into our church website in the near future.

So, let me ask my readers the question, “What would you do if you only had one month to live?” Would you change anything? Would you spend your time differently?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I thought I would post a link to my sermon from our Easter service. We plan on integrating these videos into our church website in the very near future. We have started using Vimeo to host our video sermons. The cost is only $60 per year for their plus service which allows you to upload longer length HD quality videos. I do need someone from Cornerstone to take our video files and upload them each week, so if you’re interested, please let me know.

Open Doors from Cornerstone on Vimeo.

We are excited to start a new morning worship service at Cornerstone this weekend. For Easter we will have two services at 9:15am and 11am.  Please help us spread the word and let people know. We have grown to the point that we simply don’t have enough parking or seating for everyone who was coming to our 10am service.  For Easter, our children’s ministry has a great morning planned as well. We are not having our 6pm service since many of you are traveling and have family activities that night.

We will be starting a new series at Cornerstone this Easter called One Month To Live. What if you only had one month to live? How would you make each day really matter? What would you start, or stop, doing? How would you live passionately for Christ? We are excited about this series and we are hoping for a huge turnout to hear the life-changing message of hope, found only in Jesus Christ.

Starting April 11th, we will continue or 9:15am and 11am services, as well as start back our 6pm services. This will be a huge step of faith for us, but we believe that God has raised up enough servants and leaders to offer these services. We want to give you several opportunities to join us each and every weekend. God is moving and changing lives at Cornerstone, will you join us?

I felt a little like Jacob from the Old Testament (Genesis 32:24-32) this past week. In preparing my message for Sunday, I had to do some wrestling with God. Have you ever argued with God? As a pastor I should know better, but sometimes I don’t like giving up control.

John Waller was in town for a Sunday night concert, so we had him lead worship for our Sunday morning service. I knew we would have a lot of guests and that I wouldn’t have a long time to share, so I wanted to do an “uplifting and encouraging” message. One that  challenged everybody, but nothing too controversial. God had other plans. We are in a series titled “Love Is …” and we have been going through a Biblical definition of unconditional love. We have gone through 1 Corinthians 13 and shared about unselfish living and forgiveness, but there was one message that I knew must be part of the series. God wanted me to share it this weekend. It was a message on purity and intimacy.

So with all our guests, I ended up preaching a message from 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 about sexual purity and how that purity will pave the way to intimacy. It was a little uncomfortable at times, but I know I was obedient. Even if no one comes back next week, I’m fine. I went to sleep happy and relieved. Because my preaching is not to please the people who are in attendance, but to share truth from the Bible and please God. We need to be challenged to confess and repent when sin creeps into the church. I hope next time I will just trust God completely and skip the wrestling part. It’s definitely not a fun process.

With all the snow and ice we have gotten over the past few weeks, we were expecting a lower than normal turnout this past Sunday. God had other plans, and we had two great services this past Sunday. We did experiment a little by recording our evening service on video, so I uploaded the sermon so it can be viewed online.  If you did miss church Sunday, then here is your second chance to view the sermon. We wrapped up our series on 20/20 Vision by discussing our response to the Gospel.

As always, we will post the audio of the sermon on the church website and on the iTunes podcast. Let me know what you think. Is this something you would like Cornerstone to do each week?

The Gospel Response from Cornerstone on Vimeo.

Are you living your life in response to the Gospel? As Christians we have strong feelings about the gospel. We might not be able to express fully its meaning, but we understand that it is “the power of God for salvation” and that it changes everything. We will learn that the gospel is not just a message to those outside the faith who need Jesus. It also contains the resources we need to make a difference in the world by being different from the world.

This is the sermon from the evening service on February 7th, 2010

We’re starting a new series at Cornerstone this week on Vision. We all need fresh revelation from God. Vision gives us focus, endurance, and peace. Proverbs 29:18 NIV reminds us that “where there is no revelation, we cast off restraint….” In other words, we end up imitating culture rather than influencing it (read 1 Samuel 8 as an example of what happens when we seek imitation over revelation).

Our minds alone can’t even conceive what God has prepared for us. The Spirit, however, searches all things, even the deep things of God, and reveals them (1 Corinthians 2:9-16). This is a great way to start the new year, so invite your friends. My prayer is that we will develop our spiritual vision to clearly see God’s plan for our lives. Here is the video intro for the series.

20/20 Vision: Video Intro for Sermon Series from Mike Morris on Vimeo.

Using Keynote to Create Videos

If you’re interested on how I created the video, I’ll let you in on a secret. I didn’t use any high powered software to create it. I didn’t have much time to spend on this project so I cheated on this one. I did a little work in Photoshop Elements to create the logo, and then I used Apple’s Keynote to create a slideshow for the movie. I used the built-in transitions and effects to handle all the text and images. I setup timings and delays and then set each slide to automatically advance so that it was one continuos slideshow with no clicking. Since most video editing software is pretty tough to use, I have a feeling that more people know how to use presentation software.

Keynote gives you the ability to export a slideshow as a quicktime movie, so I used that to create a high res version. The quicktime file is not a true movie, but it is a slideshow playable on both macs and windows. I loaded it up in Quicktime Player 7 on the mac and exported it as a quicktime movie.  I then loaded the movie into Garageband and added the audio. All together, it took just a couple of hours start to finish. If you are dealing with mostly text, then Keynote may be a better option than a full-blown video editing package.

Holy Spirit Intro Video from Mike Morris on Vimeo.

We started our new series on the Holy Spirit this week at Cornerstone. I’m excited about our church learning together how the Holy Spirit moves and works in us and through us.  We ended the service with a powerful prayer by Francis Chan from his book Forgotten God.  This is our prayer as we start this series. Will you join us on this journey to discover the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives.  The sermon audio will be up on our sermon website later today.

Spirit, we know that we have done wrong by You. Please forgive us for grieving, resisting, and quenching You. We have resisted You through sin, through our rebellion, and through our hardness of heart. At times, we have been spiritually blind. At other times, we knew what You wanted us to do, but we chose to ignore Your promptings. Yet this is not how we want to live now.

We need you to change us. Only through You can we truly worship. Spirit of the Lord, You are the one who brings us to a place where we can worship. You are the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of Life. Thank You for the truth, the holiness, and the life You give us.

We need Your wisdom and understanding as we seek to live this life. Keep us from disbelief, from fear. We need Your strength to help us do what you are asking us to do and to live how You are asking us to live. Speak loudly and drown out the other voices calling us to conform to the patterns of this world.

You are the Spirit of self-control and love. Give us the self control needed to deny our flesh and follow you. Give us a love strong enough to motivate courageous action. Manifest Yourself through us that we may serve and love Your bride, the church, as You do.

Come, Holy Spirit come. We don’t know exactly what that means and looks like for each of us yet, in the particular places You’ve called us to inhabit. But, nonetheless, whatever it means, we ask for Your presence. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

I’m always on the lookout for new websites that share high-quality graphic files.  Here are two places you can find

First, I’ll share the free stuff.  Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina is offering their high quality graphic files for absolutely FREE.  Check out http://resources.elevationchurch.org/ I love their Kingdom focus of helping other churches.

Second, Floodgate Productions has launched a new site offering sermon graphics for sale.  Sermolicious has some great print and video media for sale.  These are great for youth or adults.  Here is a video that shows more about their website.

Sermolicious Promo from Floodgate & Sermolicious on Vimeo.

And finally, don’t forget about Lifechurch.tv Open Resources. I’ve talked about them before, but they are another great source for free graphic files and sermon ideas.

Lifechurch.tv has started yet another online service called videoteaching.com. This time, they are pulling together great video sermons from many different pastors and offering them as free downloads.  What for?  Here are some of the reasons they suggest:

• Expand your teaching team: Introduce your church to additional perspectives by bringing in top teachers from around the world via video. Who would you like to come speak at your church?
• Make a smooth transition: For churches who are without a pastor during a leadership transition, video messages can help with interim teaching. Line up your message calendar with ease so you can focus on finding the right leader for your church.
• Develop your ministry: You might be bi-vocational or maybe you’re planting a church. Either way, video teaching allows you put more energy into reaching your community by freeing you from weekly message preparation.
• Take a break: Regular rest is essential for pastors who want to maintain a healthy ministry. Whether it’s a sabbatical or just a short vacation, video messages are an excellent way to bring quality teaching to your church during a pastor’s time off.

I think it’s a great idea, although I could see some churches not using it wisely.   I know there are video venues of many churches, but what happens when you are watching a pastor every week that is not even connected to your fellowship?  We have used video teaching during the One Prayer series for the last two years and it has been warmly received.  But again, I don’t think it would be wise to use it every week, unless your church was personally connected to the pastor and leadership of the video teaching.

Lifechurch has really just made it easier to use videos like these.  Many churches have provided video podcasts for the last several years that could be downloaded and shown in church, but now Lifechurch has provided the framework and licensing to make it possible for any church to use.  I think the biggest benefactor of this service is smaller churches without pastors.  What do you think?  Good idea or bad?

Yesterday, we kicked off the One Prayer Series at Cornerstone.  We are excited to be part of this Global movement to fulfill the prayer of Jesus found in John 17, that we would be ONE.  We took part in this series last year, and it was a great experience. The theme this year is “God Is …..”

Just stop and think for a moment.  How would you feel in the blank?  How do you describe the character and nature of God in just one sentence?  The truth is that we could spend years just on this simple theme describing the Glory of God.

My sermon yesterday was God Is Enough and the audio will be up later today at our website and on iTunes.  God is enough for every circumstance, and we need to keep our eyes focused on following Christ through everything.  Through our success and our failure, through the good and the bad, we must continually seek Him.  I am excited about what we will learn together through this series. We will be continuing this series through the months of June and July.

I want to encourage you to visit the One Prayer website each day to find out how you can pray with other believers around the world.  You can also follow One Prayer on twitter,on facebook, and on YouTube.

One Prayer 2009: One Prayer began in 2008 with a simple idea: We pray to Jesus asking Him to answer our prayers – what if we became the answer to His? He prayed that we would be one, and One Prayer is an opportunity to see what can be accomplished when the Church works together.

Last June, thousands of churches formed unprecedented partnerships across cities, continents, denominations, and cultures. More than two million believers stood together to learn, pray, fast, and love others. This year, we’ll be joining forces once again as we go out into the world to share, serve and give during One Prayer 2009.

When I read through the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan, one quote really stood out to me. Chan actually quoted a paragraph from John Piper’s Book, God is the Gospel. That one quote was the inspiration for my sermon this week.  I’ll give you a sneak preview.  Read this slowly, and really think about it.

The critical question for our generation, and for every generation is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?

After reading this quote, I had to go and read the entire book by Piper. It dives deep into God’s Glory.  But the question that kept ringing through my mind was simply this, “Is God enough?”

I’ll be sharing more about the One Prayer Series that we are starting this week, but the theme is God Is …

Strip away all the stuff in life:  the good, the bad, the sickness, the success, the failure, the poverty, and the wealth, and simply look at your life. Can you honestly say that God is enough?

At Cornerstone, we have been talking about overcoming fear. Our fears can paralyze us and prevent us from moving forward or following God.  At youth last night, we talked about the story of Benaiah, from 2 Samuel 23:20-21. Benaiah chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day and killed it. While it is definitely one of the more obscure stories from the Old Testament, this story has captivated me and motivated me to not live a safe and comfortable life.

Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in D.C., wrote a book called In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day. Guess what it was about? The entire book was based on the life of Benaiah. How he conquered his fears and became one of King David’s mighty men and David’s chief bodyguard. I read this book when I was facing a tough decision in my personal life. I felt God leading me into full-time ministry, but I still had doubts.  This book, along with God continuing to speak to my heart, gave me the courage to quit my engineering job and jump head-first into pastoring a church. Since that time, I have seen God move in incredible ways, and I have no doubt that I made the right decision.

What if the life you really want, and the future God wants for you, is hiding right now in your biggest problem, your worst failure … your greatest fear?

Mark has shared several video and graphic resources for a sermon or teaching series on the book at the Chase the Lion website. Lifeway has even developed it into a great small group study. If you haven’t read this, then go get it. It is a great book.  Mark’s second book, Wild Goose Chase is equally good. It’s about following the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a poster that I printed out and gave all of our youth last night.  You can find more resources like this on the Chase the Lion website.

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshipping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze a new trail. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away. Chase the lion!