Whole And Holy

I still have Sunday's teaching passage running through my head and heart, specifically Ephesians 1:4, where we get the message that God&...

Same Blog, Better Address

Hey loyal blog readers. This blog now has a new address: www.nextlevelchurchblog.org . We felt like this was slightly easier to remember t...

Christmas This Sunday

I know it's not exactly an original thought, but Christmas is my favorite time of the year! (BJ, my ten year old, agrees: "Dad, it&...

Command vs Control

Every Tuesday in our regular meeting, the NLC staff takes a look at a key leadership principle or two. It is one of my favorite times of the...

Website

Hey everyone, Just wanted to let you all know that we have updated the Next Level website. Click here to check it out: www.nextlevelchurch.o...

T-Minus on Next Level Ballantyne...

Lots of pastors say that Monday is the worst day for them. Understandably so. They are tired from the weekend, have put out a lot of energy...

The Results Are In

It's always weird not to be at NLC on Sunday, but I had a blast yesterday speaking over at Weddington Community Church, where my friend ...

High Stakes Living

The people that make up Next Level Church always blow me away. They continually humble me as well, and High Stakes Giving was no exception ...

The Best Team In The World

We just finished our all-staff meeting and I am reminded again of how glad and grateful I am to get to work with this amazing team. They wor...

High Stakes Campaign Results

...will be announced Sunday! (insert creative tension and drama here)..... I'll tell you this for now. The results exceeded my best case...

The Next Hill - Project 485

OK, I know it would be best - even more strategic - to leave my last post about High Stakes stories up at the top of the blog. After all, we...

High Stakes Snapshots

It's the guy who collects vintage guitars and says to Harrison "Can you help me sell this Les Paul on eBay? I think it is probably ...

Growing Pains

I have an extraordinarily bad memory. Actually, let me qualify that. I can remember all kinds of random trivia. I love to watch Jeopardy. F...

The Stakes Are High

We are in one of the most intense seasons we have ever had at Next Level Church...and there has been a lot of intensity in our two years of ...

Leaving an Explosive Legacy

Legacy can be a tricky thing. Take for instance Alfred Nobel. If you guessed he was famous for creating the Nobel Peace Prize you would be c...

Way To Go HD Venue Freaks!

Like I said, you guys always step up! Last week we asked you to commit to the HD Venue video worship for a month. Toasted bagels and all tha...

Do Numbers Matter?

It's an old question in church leadership circles: Do numbers matter? By "numbers", pastors generally mean worship attendance....

Le Venue

One of the best things about NLC people is that you ALWAYS step up. And we need you to step up now. Here's the deal: we are pretty much ...

Too Edgy?

He's a good guy. Really. "I don't go to your church regularly", he typed. "But I did come the last few weeks. I liked...

House of Blues

Blues is not the opposite of Praise music, it is its counterpart. Praise is an acknowledgement of the divine reality that God is, that He is...

More Balloons, Please...

The setting is rural Michigan, in an open field on a clear day. The two wanted to be married but were worried because they each carried heav...

Sex and Balloons

The response to the Sex God series has been pretty incredible. We've been going to some pretty deep places and probing some pretty serio...

A Masterpiece Covered in Mud

Say you're walking along the street one day and looking down you spot a Rembrandt painting in the mud. It's not just a little dirty...

Tonight!

A night of: -worship- -communion- -celebration- It is going to be a blast, a time to gather together and recognize what God has done for us ...

The Venue

The Venue is officially launched! We are through the very first week of our live video venue in the student center at NLC, and it feels grea...

Sex God This Weekend

This weekend we begin one of our most anticipated teaching series of the year, Sex-God - Exploring The Connections Between Sexuality and Spi...

Church Is Tag Team

Read a great blog post this morning from a very creative pastor in Washington, D.C. named Mark Batterson (their strategy to start churches i...

OK, I Was Wrong

...about last Sunday being the best Sunday of the year. Don't get me wrong - it was off the hook good. We talked about God's vision ...

Labor Day Weekend Picnic

Hey Crew, there is a picnic coming up on the Sunday, September 2nd. It takes the place of our normal Sunday services and starts at 10:30am. ...

The Best Sunday Of The Year

This Sunday is Vision Day at NLC, which we do twice a year. In January, Vision Day focuses on recommitting ourselves to our mission and core...

Vision Day

Vision (n) - the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be. We don't claim to be able to see into...

S.O.A.P. from Pastor Doug

The following is a S.O.A.P. from Pastor Doug Irvin: Title: "God’s Unexpected Provisions” S – “When David had passed a little beyond the...

SOAPing UP

Yesterday, Jared brought a killer message about SOAP, the method we are using at NLC for personal study of the Bible and for prayer. A coupl...

Detroit Student Mission Trip

A crew from the Britemoore gang showed up on the scene before to long. They were looking for Demetrius and everyone knew what it was about. ...

Change

As the great poet and philosopher of our day, Sheryl Crow, once said, " A change would do you good. " We here at Next Level couldn...

A time and a place

-when you get the news that you've been let go -when things are a mess at home -when you are awaiting test results from the hospital -wh...

Four Weeks Out

I am not teaching at NLC for the next four weeks, and I am so excited about that. Well, mostly excited. I know that after the first two week...

Talking to walls, imaginary friends, and God

I talk to myself. A lot. So much so, in fact, that I refuse to tell therapists about it for fear that they will begin to medicate me in ways...

The Sweet Spot

Occasionally a Sunday service is freakishly good. In a Sunday morning worship service this might mean that the music was really tight, that ...

Worship Service Theory 101

I think a big question people have about the way church is done that almost never gets answered is this: Is there something in the Bible tha...

Summer Camp '07

Summer Camp was a success. This I can say with certainty because in Wi-Fi, the student ministries of NLC, we have a highly scientific evalua...

Stuff Changes

My first ministry job was in 1988. I did not have an e-mail address or a cell phone. The church I was working for only had one computer, whi...

Living Life Together... Next Level Style

At Next Level Church we are pretty big on the concept that to be a Christ follower means a lot more than simply agreeing with a certain set ...

2 Services 4 the Summer

Hey, NLC volunteers...back at Easter we asked you to step up huge because we were running out of room...and you did. We needed to staff thre...

Zebras This Week

Before, I wrote about dancing zebras, the official animal mascot of Next Level Church. This week, we will have them in the house. Seriously....

Props to the Band

No exaggeration, I believe Next Level has one of the three best worship bands in Charlotte. Actually, I am convinced they are the best (no k...

Kids and God

I am thinking a lot about kids these days. Both because of my own - Justin and B.J. - but because these are kid-saturated days at Next Level...

Incredible Day

What can you say about a day that starts out with a gathering of church planters, a killer leader from California...and ends with Cuban ciga...

We're Out of Room!

Next Level is always about change, growth, and challenge! One thing we have learned in our year and a half as a church is that life at Next ...

What A Week!

Last week Dan and I spent an entire week away from NLC working for other churches. Now, I hate being away from here and you normally have to...

Thoughts from the ATL

We just got back from a conference at a cool church outside of Atlanta called Mountain Lake. We took fifteen NLCers, making us the largest g...

Dancing Zebras

If you are new to NLC, you may not have heard one of our signature phrases - dancing zebras. Here is what it means... At NLC, we are about c...

Talk Back Now

Jared is not only a killer student pastor but also a technically savvy cat. One of the cool things he has done recently is to set up the Nex...

PIZZA DIALOGUE

After reading the results of the recent Next Level survey, one of the clear desires of many of our people is to know more about the financia...
 

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