Lake Hills Community Church began with a God-given desire of meeting people right where they are with the good news that Jesus brought to us all. Our phrase, “Casual Atmosphere, Serious Faith,” describes the experience of being at Lake Hills – whether enjoying our Café-style setting or visiting with good friendly people who enjoy the Lake and who like meeting together to share in their spiritual journeys.

Our worship services – whether in adult worship, or in KidZone for children – are designed to provide a creative and compelling message of God’s truths.

We try present the message of Jesus Christ in a way that speaks to where we are in today’s culture and will give you a way to live out those truths everyday of the week. Whenever you attend, we think you’ll find Lake Hills relaxed and refreshing, and a place where you will be reminded that you matter to God.

Along with the regular weekly gathering on Sunday mornings at 10:00, there are free heaping plates of fresh fruits, muffins and sweet rolls, and other delightful foods and refreshments, accompanied by juice and good, rich Gevalia brand coffee.

We have terrific volunteers who love to slice and dice fruit, make cakes or muffins, and set out a variety of other cheerful goodies. And, oh, did we mention? We serve good, freshly brewed java, too!

People typically start to show up after 9:30 a.m. to get most of their brunch out of the way before the singing starts. And if you want to get up anytime during the service to grab another bite of food or refill your coffee during the singing or message, please do – that’s perfectly normal here.

The morning is relaxed and the cafe bar is open throughout our time together. While we are quite casual and relaxed, we are real and sincere when it comes to Jesus and who He is. We simply seek to make the environment as warm and inviting as possible, as we seek to connect with God and with each other.  So you’re now invited; come check it out.  After all, we created all this for you!

And remember, a great church is worth the drive…

Jesus was the master at addressing guilt, shame, feelings of being abandoned and lack of meaning or purpose in life.  We invite you to join us as we learn what impact His final words can make on guiding our lives in some possibly revolutionizing ways.

April 7 – The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven (Part 1)   mp3 | ppt
April 14 –  The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven (Part 2)
April 14 – When God Seems Far Away
April 21 – Unfinished Business
April 28 – Guilty As Charged: The Surprise Verdict

Strangely, the “everyday-ness” of life pushes this to the back of our minds, preventing us to allow ourselves to ask the really big questions of life:

I wonder if there really is a God?

What about life after death?

Who sets the rules for that?

Am I living as meaningfully as I can?

We invite you to join us this Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013 as we discuss one of life’s biggest questions through the lens of the best promise God ever made to mankind!

My wife and I went to the gym yesterday.  I love January at the gym.  There are always new faces, eager and resolute to lose their added holiday poundage in order to mold their physiques into replicas of this or that Greek god or goddess.  Typically, by the beginning of February the gym is back to normal, and the wanna-be-gods have returned to the comforts of their personal Mt. Olympus.

I realized a few years ago that I already have the body of a mythological god – Buddha.  But I digress.  Think with me a few moments about choices and priorities.  After all, that’s why we come back to the top of this cycle every year with new resolutions to make adjustments to the choices we’ve made in the past.

I remember when I was a kid there was a game show called, “Truth or Consequences.”  Each contestant tried to answer a question correctly in order to avoid experiencing some consequence.  I believe that to be the essence of good decision making – try to embrace God’s good truth in order to avoid some very bad consequences!

I want you to consider one thing in each personal “truth or consequence” you face this year:  What is best, versus, what is good?

Jesus addresses this common theme in a unique and surprising fashion in Luke 10:38-42…

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.  She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.  She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

So rather than gathering a fresh head of steam, and rather than trying to harness your limited available willpower and charging great gangbusters ahead this year to accomplish some good and trying to get everyone else on board with you, I want to encourage you to do something counter-intuitive.  Do something our modern culture has such a hard time with.  Choose first to find the best place (with the Lord, at His feet), listen to the best voice (Jesus and His Spirit speaking through His word), and resist getting entangled in life busy-ness and distractions.  Often the best choice is not to attend to the most pressing need you feel, but to connect with Jesus.

We all tend to do this a little better when times are bad.  But remember, it is often when life is good that we make some not-so-good choices.  Taking some time first to be with Jesus and hear Him just may help you avoid some unnecessary consequences.

On Truth or Consequences, host Bob Barker signed off every show with this phrase, “Hoping all your consequences are happy ones.”  So do I.  May you experience God’s best in 2013.

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(NOTE:  This is our New Year’s message for Sunday, January 6, 2013.  You may find the mp3 of the message available on our Messages page posted a few days after the 6th.)

You are invited to attend our Christmas celebration and Candlelight Service on Sunday, Dec.23.  Our annual candlelight service includes familiar Christmas carols and a Christmas story as the warmth of candlelight fills the air.  Advent readings, special snacks and creative multimedia add panache and poignancy as we share this special time together.

Be sure to bring your family, friends and neighbors and join us for this enjoyable celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Still, the true message of Christmas is simple and uncomplicated. Jesus, God with us… Christ within us – the hope of glory. The utter simplicity of Christianity often gets so lost in our fast-paced, high-tech world. This Holiday season let’s rediscover the hope and joy of Christmas in its simplicity. We invite you to join us or listen in this holiday season as we seek to “uncomplicate” the holidays.

December 02: Uncomplicating Christmas
December 09: A Random Christmas
December 16: God With Us
December 23: Christmas at Lake Hills

The overview information we provided you was very brief. If you would like further help discovering your gifts, follow any of the links below:

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1. Spiritual Gifts Test Download – this is a pdf file you can download, print and complete by hand.

2. Online Spiritual Gifts Test - Excellent with their follow-up information in your email!  Wait a moment for the intro page to fade out; click on “Free Spiritual Gifts Analysis for Individual Users”

3. Why Are Your Spiritual Gifts in a Drawer? – good article and variety of resource links

4. Intro to Spiritual Gifts – very brief overview of basic spiritual gifts (mp3, 30 min.)

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Note: Please remember that your spiritual gifts are only one aspect of how God has shaped you. People are often taught only this one part. I’ve seen people make some pretty disheartening mistakes. We want you to be “fully equipped” through your own personal prayer, our teaching series, community groups to share and listen to others, and follow-up with someone to help guide you in your assessments.

We ask ourselves, “What is my part?” “What is my role in this drama of life?” We find the answer when we come to the point where we believe that God has given us a unique combination of personality, interests, spiritual gifts and skills that we can use for Him.

There are many factors that make us who we are. Not only the variables, but the strength, size or amount of each of the variables makes a tremendous difference in the outcome of who we are. Change one element and the end result would be skewed. Here are some of the many components that make us who we are:

Personal makeup
Genes, personality, temperament, chemistry, intelligence, birth order, physical abilities/limitations, aptitudes, and our spiritual gifts that God gives us

Environment
Parentage, siblings, relatives, social status, neighborhood, school, clubs, church, civic groups, sports, meaningful or tragic events in your life

Belief System
Attitudes, beliefs, motivations, yearnings, ambitions, presuppositions and perceptions

There are many more components and many variations of each of them. All of these factors are important to who you are. When you take the variables, put them in different amounts and intensities, you can end up with an endless list of combinations. These combinations result in our giftedness.

So as you can see, these surveys are by no stretch of the imagination an exact science. They are intended as basic guides to head us in the right general direction. One cannot know the extent of God’s handiwork within without substantive prayer and time with the One who designed and created you, who knows you better than you know yourself.

What is a local church? I hear groans. Another discussion of what church is, or should be, or isn’t. This horse has been ridden, died, and was made into dog food and glue. Hand me the remote!

Let’s refocus the question. What is Lake Hills Community Church? What were our hopes when we first walked through the door? Nice people? Peppy music? Tasty snacks? I think those are all available at the Elks Club down at the end of our strip mall row.

Obviously we are looking for more that. But the real issue is not what we were, or are, looking for. It is the reality that this is God’s idea. His children are meant to live in community. We are meant to live and function and grow together. Like a body. No, not like a body. We are a body. The body of Christ in a local expression.

So. Together. What does that mean?

Right now, we are together in the sense that we are in a common container, if you will. We are like a bunch of marbles in a bag. We attend services and give money and help out where we can and generally really enjoy being together. But if the bag should rip, what will happen? We will hit the hard ground and bounce off in a hundred different directions.

Looking at believers in New Testament times and through the early Christian era, we see groups that more resemble a block of marble. Marble is an igneous rock, diverse minerals and elements melted together in the fire. Early believers relied on one another in ways we can only imagine in our day and age.

And yet there were many problems and conflicts among them. They were far from perfect. There was division, heresy, competition … in short, humanity. How do we explain this, if they were, as I have suggested, a block of marble?

The explanation is this: God is a sculptor.

We think the block of marble is the goal. We polish the block, really make it shine. We defend it, we seek to keep it from being altered or defaced. But truth be told, the landscape is littered with many a polished block of marble. We call them memorials. Or mausoleums. Or tombstones.

God sees something inside that block. Someone. Taking hammer and chisel in hand, the Sculptor begins working away. A chip flies here, a chunk falls there. The block is not as pretty as it once appeared. But it stays together. It can do nothing else. And eventually, the One inside the block begins to emerge, with a beauty that none could have imagined.

It is Jesus within that block. But He will only be made visible as God chips away at everything that isn’t Jesus. As the chips begin to fly, we will sometimes hurt or feel the loss of something we once thought indispensable. But it is God’s design that we will bear that pain and feel that loss together, bearing one another’s burdens. And as the image of Jesus becomes clearer we will rejoice together as well.

More than marbles. More than marble. A marvel!

Ron Smith owns a computer consulting business in Camdenton, MO, and is a member at Lake Hills Community Church. Contact: imnidjit@gmail.com or Twitter @imnidjit

We love and serve God by loving and serving others, and it’s in the joy of selfless service where we discover the unique purpose for which he has created each of us. But we may still need to explore and discover how God has “shaped” us and is still shaping us for the kind of life He has planned for us.

I have been a serious Christian for well over thirty years. One would think that in that amount of time I would have pretty much learned all there is to learn about who God has made me to be. It may surprise you to know that I am still surprised when I learn something new that I didn’t know I have a knack for, or some task that is unexpectedly energizing for me. The thing is, we are all like that. There are latent undiscovered gifts, abilities, desires, etc. within us that are still waiting to be unearthed.

Beginning October 21, 2012, we will begin a church-wide exploration of this concept we call our S.H.A.P.E. It is an acrostic representing our:

S – spiritual gifts
H – heart
A – abilities
P – personality
E – experiences

Each of us is uniquely designed — or “shaped” — by God to do certain things in certain ways. If you don’t understand your S.H.A.P.E. you may end up doing things that God never designed you to do.

When your gifts don’t match the roles you play in life, you feel like a square peg in a round hole. This is frustrating, both to you and to others. It is also an enormous waste of your talent, time, and energy. I believe that God intended that the bulk of the work and service we offer God and others is meant to energize, or “feed” us. (see John 4:32-34)

Napoleon once pointed to a map of China and said, “There lies a sleeping giant. If it ever wakes up, it will be unstoppable.”

I believe our church is like many, many others. We have people shaped by God to do uniquely wonderful things who may feel they are at a spiritual standstill. If we can awaken and unleash the massive talent, creativity, and energy to be found right among us — if we can somehow discover and engage what God has placed within us to bring joy and fulfillment — I believe the kingdom of God in our circles of influence will explode with growth.

At Lake Hills we’re moving into an new place where we’ve never been. We are seeking to lay down our individual ideas and visions of what a church is “supposed to be like,” in order to discover what God is creating right in our own midst. We are expecting to see His handiwork forming us into a masterpiece mosaic, unique from any other church, arising from discovering how he is shaping us not only as individuals, but as a group!

You’re invited to join us on an exciting journey of exploring and discovering our spiritual gifts, the heart God has given us, our abilities and skills, our colorful personalities (!), and seeing how our life experiences can be used of God to help others.