Category: The Gathering

I am sad to say that our series “Accept No Mediocre Marriage” comes to its completion this Sunday with a discussion on divorce.

Believe me, none of us need to be beat up about divorce any more than we already are.  There are two things we’re going to be talking about this weekend that are compelling enough for you to come, and compelling enough for you to bring friends, a brother, a sister, your mom, your dad: anyone who needs to take their marriage to the next level.  And that is, how to stay out of divorce court and then, what do you do once you’re on the other side?

We’ll talk about the three times divorce is justified, and what to do if you’re a victim of one of these.

We’ll also talk about what men owe women; what wives owe their husbands that can keep you from getting to a place where you hate each other and must separate.  We’ll also talk about what men need to know about women.  And we’ll end the talk with the four essentials to staying out of divorce court for good.

Marriage is a good thing.  It is a God thing.  It is the best of things.  And if we do the right thing, and we know what to do and do it, the outcome, the payoff, the benefit is beyond measure.

If you know someone who has grown cynical or sour on marriage, if you know someone whose marriage is stuck and needs to go to the next level, bring them with you this weekend to The Gathering, or point them to our Live Event on November 12th.  Either way, if you’ve ever wondered what you could do for a friend, here is your chance.

Sex is a part of our everyday life because it is literally everywhere: advertisements, scandals, surveys, all the things pointed to try to help us understand this powerful idea.

Tomorrow as we continue our series on “Accept No Mediocre Marriage,” we’re going to talk about the six stupid sex myths that drive us crazy and keep us apart.

There are some people who believe that talking about sex should be kept out of Sunday morning.  I say it’s too powerful, too prevalent, and too abused to ignore God’s teaching on this beautiful gift that God has given His Creation.

Join us tomorrow at 9:00 or 10:30 as we continue on this journey to see marriage from God’s perspective, to understand how we can go from an average marriage to an amazing marriage, how stuck marriages can get unstuck, how good marriages can become great, and how we can grow great relationships over time.

According to financial expert Dave Ramsey, money disagreements and fights are the number one cause of marital discord in America.

That’s why at The Gathering this weekend we’re going to be talking about marriage and money, and how you can use money to make your family better without sinking deeper and deeper into debt.

If you are one of those who has said, “No one ever taught me how to deal with money, how it works, what to do with it, how to get more of it. All I was told was, ‘Get a job because you need to pay your bills,’’’ that makes you in the majority.

So this weekend at The Gathering at our 9:00 and 10:30 services, you’re going to get real, practical answers so you’ll be able to say in your marriage, “We like money, we know how to use it, and how to get more of it.”

Remember this.  Money is not the root of all evil.  It’s the love of money, which means the misunderstanding and misuse of it.  This weekend at The Gathering you’ll learn that money is a great servant, but a terrible master.

No one likes conflict.  As a matter of fact, if you like conflict, there is something really weird about you.  All of us ultimately want peace.  We want things to go well – in our family, in our job, in every area of our life.

Well, the truth of the matter is, conflict is part and parcel of our everyday lives. How do we ever think that two, or three, or four, or ten deeply-wounded people could ever be together, work together in a harmonious way without acknowledging conflict and finding ways to bring about resolution?

Paula and I have talked to literally hundreds of couples over the years who have said, “We never fight.”  But all of a sudden, Bubba just simply walked out.  Yup, that’s it, isn’t it?  What happens too often because we fear conflict and confronting, we simply stuff it down.  And the more you deny and submerge true conflict and anger, the more your emotions deaden so that over time you don’t feel anything. The problem is the anger, and the hurt is still there and oftentimes comes out as a burst of rage.

That’s why this weekend at The Gathering we’re going to deal with the 8 commitments of casualty-free confrontation.

Here is the truth about marriage, family, any relationship.  You will either fight for your marriage or against your marriage, and, if you avoid it long enough, you’ll lose your marriage.

This weekend at The Gathering we’ll continue in our present series, “Accept No Mediocre Marriage: the Top Ten Things They Don’t Tell You Before You Say, ‘I do.’”

This weekend we’re going to talk about change.  We’re going to begin the service by interviewing Paula Foster and find out how she brought about a radical change in my life.  It is my firm conviction that while we can’t change another person’s heart, we can be instrumental in the change and maturation process if we just know how.

Oftentimes we try to force someone to change by nagging, criticizing, or comparing them to others, which I have discovered only drives people deeper into their dysfunction.

But just because we can’t change the heart of another person doesn’t mean that we can’t cooperate in the process of change.  This weekend we’ll talk about how you do it in a healthy way, and how you join God in the process of creating a great person.

This weekend we continue in our present series, “Accept No Mediocre Marriage: the Top Ten Things They Don’t Tell You Before You Say, ‘I do,’” with a talk about communications and how important it is to learn how to talk to one another.

Isn’t it amazing that before you get married it seems like you can’t shut each other up?  You find each other’s conversation and humor just mesmerizing.  But not long after you say, “I do,” it seems as though the silence between you is deafening.

Tomorrow at The Gathering we’re going to talk about the four absolute essentials of effective communication in marriage.  Here is the problem with these skills: no one teaches them to you. But they are right there in the Scriptures.  Jesus uses them.  All healthy communicators use them.  And yet somehow they never get passed on from father to son, or mother to daughter.

Tomorrow at The Gathering would be a great day to bring some friends who are in a marriage that is stuck and drifting apart because they can’t find a way to carry on a meaningful conversation.  Statistics tell us that in America, the average married couple talks to each other 4 minutes a day.  No one can survive under those kinds of conditions.  Even good people will lose their marriage if they don’t learn how to communicate effectively on a consistent basis.

I was more than a little stunned this week when The Tennessean came out with an article saying that marriages have dropped 30% in the state of Tennessee; not just Tennessee, but in the entire South.  People are opting to live together without marriage.

The question is, why?  Why has marriage lost its appeal? Or maybe it’s appealing, but we’re just scared.

People say we’re afraid of commitment.  I think it’s something deeper than that.  We don’t understand that marriage is more than just sex, having kids, and living in the same house. Much more.  And that idea is what we’ll talk about this weekend @ The Gathering: Are you married and advancing toward your B.S.A.D. ?

Also, check out the David and Paula Show this week where we talked about David and Paula’s Rules for Dating and commented on Bobby Bowden’s newest book, Called to Coach.

Join us tomorrow @ The Gathering when we’ll continue with installment #3 of our current series, “Accept No Mediocre Marriage – The 10 Things They Don’t Tell You Before You Say, ‘I Do.’”

What air is to the body, trust is to a relationship.  What money in the bank is to your ability to function financially, trust is to your ability to be married and healthy at the same time.

Tomorrow we’ll be dealing with 4 truths about trust that we tend to neglect. We’ll be talking about the 5 levels of trust, and also the 5 levels of distrust, and how couples often get married before the have built their trust reserves to a sufficient amount to make the kind of commitment marriage requires.

We’ll talk about how to make trust deposits and describe those things that become trust withdrawals.  If you desperately want your marriage to work and you want to get unstuck, this weekend could change everything for you.

How about this?  Bring someone with you to either the 9:00 or 10:30 service.  This could be the day everything turns around in your marriage.  Remember, this is the most important relationship in your life outside your relationship with God.  When it works, it’s like heaven.  When it doesn’t, you can fill in the blank.

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’ll continue our brand new series, “Accept No Mediocre Marriage – The 10 Things They Don’t Tell You Before You Say, ‘I Do,’” with issues that relate to our family of origin.

When you marry another person, you not only marry that person, but you marry their family history as well – good or bad.  So this weekend at The Gathering we’re going to be talking about why it is so hard to leave behind family pain and disappointments.  Why do we often duplicate the same weird, bizarre, self-destructive behavior that we’ve seen in our families? And why do we long for the kind of love and support in ways that are destructive rather than doing them God’s way?

All of us have been wounded by our families; some on purpose, others simply by doing the best they knew, and falling short.

If you know someone who is reeling from past family history, maybe living in blended families, figuring out how to make it work, what is it that families really do and what happens when they fail to do the very things that we desperately need them to do, you’ll find answers and direction this weekend at The Gathering.

Also a note to all of The Gathering family who attend our 10:30 service: if it’s possible to attend the 9:00 service, it will be much appreciated. There is still room at the 9:00, but the 10:30 is almost completely overflowing.

I hate to be the one to say this, but by all measurements, even the most positive marriage in America is in trouble.

Last weekend Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer who has ever lived, embarrassed himself at a tournament he has won seven times.  Coming in dead last and shooting the worst tournament of his professional career, Tiger admitted he hadn’t been practicing and preparing like he used to because now he needed to spend time with his children.  And we all applaud that, don’t we?

But you know the back-story.  Unfaithfulness in marriage, a toxic lifestyle, living in the shadows has cost Tiger more in emotional, relational, professional, and reputation capital than he’ll ever earn in two lifetimes.

But it’s not just Tiger.  Look at the news headlines about the CEO of HP, by all measurements one of the most successful CEO’s they ever had, got fired over sexual harassment, extramarital affairs and no telling what else was going on.

I think I make my point.   It doesn’t have to be a high-profile professional athlete or business leader to convince us that when half the marriages in America fail, when 1 million children in America lose the presence of their father in their home, when 1.4 million children drop out of school before high school because they have no parental support at home, and when divorce costs the U.S. economy in excess of $50 billion, something has got to give.

The other thing that is strange about this whole phenomenon, is if you listen to what’s being said in the pulpits across America, very little is being directed toward marriage, parenting, or the family. Why is this?  Maybe we’re afraid to offend because there are so many people living in pain, we don’t want to remind them of where they are.

So what happens?  We accept in our relationships what we tend to accept in our professional life – mediocrity. We just believe that’s the way it has to be.  Marriage is an outdated idea, an old-fashioned notion that doesn’t hold up in the current stresses and strains of modern day life.

I am here to tell you that is not true.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  That’s why for the next ten weeks @ The Gathering at both services, we will be dealing with the ten things they don’t tell you before you say, “I do.”  Yeah, it takes skill.  It takes one set of skills to get married, it takes another set of skills to be married, and yet another whole set of skills to stay married in a healthy, energizing, productive way.

And while we can’t cover all of those skills, we’re going to raise to the surface the most powerful principles when understood, learned, and applied, that can change your marriage from something that is mediocre and miserable, into something that is great and excellent.

You can make marriage fun again.  You can have a great relationship with your spouse that gets better and better as the years go by.  If you join us on this ten-week journey, I guarantee you’re going to find hope, direction, and support.

This weekend @ The Gathering we will bring to a close our summer series, “12 Steps Up: How Messy People Mature,” with Step #12 in AA.  This is where we begin to help free up other people.

Every day I meet people who are frustrated with their lot in life.  They feel as though they haven’t gotten the job, the career, or the breaks that others do.  And oftentimes, that can be true.  But there is a truth you can’t ignore.  Only you can control the choices you make given the life and opportunities you’ve been presented.

This weekend we’ll be talking about how to take our lives and make a mark for God and for good; how to live a life of irresistible influence.

Maybe you have a spouse that drives you nuts, children who are disobedient, people at work who don’t pay you your due respect.  How do you change that?  You can cry for your rights, you can boycott, you can quit, pout, or go home and sit in the corner.  Or, you can live a life of irresistible influence.

We’ll talk about that this weekend @ The Gathering, and introduce our brand new series starting August 15^th, entitled “Accept No Mediocre Marriage: The 10 Things They Forgot to Tell You Before You Said, ‘I do’.” Join us at 9:00 and 10:30 AM Sunday at the Thoroughbred 20 Theaters in Cool Springs.

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’re going to be talking about how to relate to God.  How do you get close to God? We’re going to be asking four questions that will help you take an inventory of your own life.  If God is a distant, abstract idea; something that conjures up bad memories of the past, why and how do you get over it?

This will be a great day to bring someone who is struggling in their faith and wants to know how to get unstuck.  If there is a God , if He loves us, if He has a will for our lives, if He’s ready and willing to be involved in our lives, to take care of us, love us and support us, and provide all our needs, I want to know about it.  And I want to know how to make the connection.

So join us tomorrow @ The Gathering at 9:00 and 10:30 for Step # 11 in our summer series,12 Steps Up, for a talk entitled, Hook Up.  How do you get close, stay close, and have an intimate relationship with God?

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’ll continue our summer series, “12 Steps Up: How Messy People Mature” with Step #10 Listen Up.

How many times in one day do I hear people say, “I’m busy, I’m in a hurry, I’m worn out, I’m tired, I need a vacation”?  More than a few, I can tell you.  And this busy sickness of hurried syndrome is a big deal because it’s robbing us of our ability to listen to our lives.

You are the creation of a creative, generous, fun, wildly unpredictable God. You have a body, a mind, a soul and we are created to work together in harmony even under the greatest human stress.  Part of your creation is the ability to listen to your life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

This weekend at The Gathering we’ll be talking about how to listen to your life. I’ll give you a little quiz to see whether or not you’re going so fast that you’re ignoring the warning signs of danger ahead.  It would be a great time to grab a friend and bring them to either the 9:00 or 10:30 AM service and let them experience what we mean when we say The Gathering specializes in God simple, not church complicated.

At The Gathering you’ll be accepted, embraced, loved and celebrated for who you are, not where you’ve been.  If you’re looking for a place where you feel like people understand what you’re going through, what you’ve gone through, and even where you want to go The Gathering is a great place to start on your journey back to God.