What A Week!

Sorry I haven’t been blogging this past week.  I was in the south Chicago suburbs on a mission trip.  What a Week!  We had the opportunity to minister in several different ways.  Our construction team totally renovated a hispanic church in Joliet.  Our VBS team facilitated two schools, one in Joliet and the other in Tinley Park.  Our new start team did pre-planting work in the towns of Peotone, Monee, and Mokena.  Our support team spent the week feeding the group, and everyone came together in the evenings to lead times of worship in Tinley Park, Bourbonnais, and Carlinville.  It’s amazing what can happen when we get out of our comfort zones and rely on God.  I’m in the process of catching up on the sleep I missed and will be blogging reguarly this week.  What’s God been doing in your lives lately?

My Children’s Cooking Experiment

Last night we had a couple over for dinner.  It was a great time, I got to fire up the grill, (always fun), and we all ate more than we should have.  After dinner we were sitting in the living room laughing and sharing stories when all of a sudden I smelled something burning.  I first thought that we had neglected to turn the oven off and that was where the smell was coming from.  Then my daughter yelled up the stairs “there’s a fire”!  I have never moved so quickly in my life.  My kids had put a bath towel in the downstairs microwave and it had caught on fire.  Everyone was safe and nothing was damaged, but I was reminded of the preciousness of life in that moment.  I will always be thankful for the protection of our Heavenly Father.  I know I can’t protect my children from every danger in their life even though I want to.  We had a great talk with our kids about safety and how good they were for letting us know what had happened.  ( I can’t imagine what would have happened if they had tried to hide what they were doing ).  It reminded me of a time when I was a child and put a rolled up piece of paper into a space heater.  It caught on fire, singed my eyebrows and eyelashes and smoked to high heaven.  Obviously my kids get their destructive side from me, I can’t get that upset with them.  Besides, on the bright side, my kids obviously like “hot” food!

Friends, Fellowship, and Food

Yesterday after our morning services we had the pleasure of entertaining the Adult 3 sunday school department for lunch.  We provided burgers, brats, dogs, and drinks.  Everyone else brought side dishes and desserts.  We had over 40 people in our home and we had a blast!  It’s amazing what can happen when you sit down to a meal with someone else.  It seems like barriers break down and people feel free to be themselves.  That department is made up mainly of empty nesters, so it was great to experience some of the stories and life experiences that they shared.  Everything from comedy to tragedy, they were able to point to Christ as the constant in their life.  I thank God that we have the opportunity to truly be the “body” of Christ.  Not just going through life alone, but loving, learning from, and living out our lives with those that He has brought us into contact with.

Bruised Egos & Broken Bones

Our church softball team began league play this past friday night with a respectable 1-1 record.  We lost the first game of our double-header but rallied to win the second.  While I still enjoyed playing the field, (I didn’t make any errors, with a few quick stops at third base), but batting was a different story alltogether.  I just don’t have the “pop” I used to have.  I know it’s the combination of age and extra weight that are slowing me down…but I still don’t like it!  Grounding out to short is not nearly as ego inflating as putting one over the center fielders head, oh well.  To make matters worse, I broke my big toe running to first, (ok, maybe it was more like jogging), so that’s been a royal pain.  But you know what?  I’ll still be out there this weekend.  Not because I’m a good ballplayer or even because I’m needed.  I just have this child like fascination with playing ball with a bunch of other guys who never got the competition bug out of their system.  We may never make an ESPN highlight reel, but man will we have fun.

Favorite Teams: Faithful Past or Local Convenience?

I am truly blessed.  I have a wonderful congregation that I have the privilege to pastor. I have a beautiful home in which to live in.  I have the greatest kids in the entire world.  But most of all, I have a wife who loves sports almost as much as me.  No really, I’m not kidding, last night she actually jumped off the couch and screamed “I can’t wait for football season to get here”.  Now there are some sports that she loves more than others.  She is a HUGE NFL fan, she loves Major League Baseball, likes college basketball and NHL hockey, and deals with the NBA.  So last night we entered into a very important discussion in our home.  What teams will our kids grow up rooting for?  During her formative years Rachel lived in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Therefore she loves the Bengals and the Reds.  During my childhood I lived in Kansas City, MO.  So I obviously grew up rooting for the Chiefs and the Royals.  For the past few years both of our football teams have been very competitive, either making or just missing the playoffs each year.  Because of that competitiveness they have been featured on several national telecasts, so we have been able to watch our teams often.  Our baseball teams have been a different story entirely.  My beloved Royals are the perennial cellar team of the MLB, this year the Reds have taken that position from them.  Because of their poor play neither team gets many nationally televised games.  While we were living in Southern Illinois we began following the St. Louis Cardinals.  I had always had a great respect for the team and the great fans of St. Louis so rooting for them was a very natural thing to do.  Here’s our dilemma…we’re an hour away from St. Louis, do we encourage our children to root for the local team that they will have the ability to follow more easily or do we remain faithful to our past?  Let us know your thoughts…we’d love the help!

Here We Go!

This marks my first official post while pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Carlinville.  I have been absent from the page for the last month or so while trying to get settled in but now it’s time to start things up again.  I’m going to do my best to update the blog at least every other day so check in often to see what’s going on!