A few weeks ago I decided to make another change in my eating habits to enhance my chances of achieving my target of a 100lb weight loss by Christmas. Don’t worry – there’ll still be plenty of me left even at that!

I started eating breakfast!
Most of my bad eating habits start after dinner, not first thing in the morning. I have never been a big fan of breakfast, except for when I eat it in a diner with family or friends. When you think about it, if you don’t shave or eat to start the day you have at least six minutes extra in your schedule to do important things – like sleeping longer.

But I’ll eat breakfast Sunday and I hope you will too. We have ordered a ton of food for our special anniversary celebration and have rented extra chairs to make everyone comfortable. Here are a few handy hints for Sunday morning.

+ You don’t have to rush. We’ll be serving breakfast continuously from 9.30 to 10.30, so if you want to arrive at 10.29, that’s okay. Walk the dog, pick up the paper, cut the grass, email a friend and turn up at whatever time suits you best.

+ We really hope you’ll bring a friend / neighbor/ relative / someone you met at the supermarket checkout or even your mother-in-law.

+ Encourage your guests to complete a First Time Visitor card. They’ll be on every table. Then they need to take it to our Guest Services Table where they’ll get a coupon for a free gift next week.

+ Give them a tour of the theater and in particular of the one we use on Sundays where we’re showing a special 11-minute video all morning.

+ Introduce your guests to one of the pastors, or if you think that might put them off, introduce them to Dan Ricci instead.

+ Please don’t talk shop with the pastors on Sunday – they’re there to meet new folks. You can talk to them any time during the week about issues that are on your mind.

+ Be extra friendly to people who might be guests!

+ Let’s pray for a great morning and believe for a terrific future.

+ And because man does not live by bread alone, please be sure to leave your tithes in one of the offering baskets on the Guest Services table.

COOL PERSON OF THE WEEK
It’s Friday and today’s winner of our special award, who qualifies for a free breakfast on Sunday, is ……

Matteo Capita

Matteo is an outstanding guy who has been a blessing to us ever since he became part of Grace Church many, many years ago. He and his wife Carmella headed up our youth ministry for several years and they’re just the kind of folks you love to be around.
I missed Matteo from the list of last week’s cool people – our first Mississippi Relief Team. There was I in Scotland, sitting in front of a computer and racking my brain for the name of the eighth member of the team and concluding maybe there were only seven.
What can I say? Aging is a terrible thing!
But it means that Matteo has his own solo award this week. He deserves it!

Anyone want to see the Mets at Shea tonight?
We have four field level seats at third base – five rows back from the field – for tonight’s game against the Rockies.
Sadly we can’t use them to watch New York’s finest baseball team!!

But if you can – the first person to call the office and ask for them gets them.

It pays to keep checking in here. You never know what you might find!

We got home late Tuesday night from a great visit to Scotland. It was good to spend time with Gill’s sister-in-law who had surgery for bowel cancer a couple of months ago – please join us in praying for a complete recovery for Sue. Then we had a wedding, I did some preaching and I seemed to spend a lot of time counselling as we visited with old friends. It was a great break.

Now I’m catching up with some of the folks in the church, talking to attorneys about our building project, preparing for our seventh anniversary on Sunday and generally trying to get to the bottom of the pile of papers on my desk. The problem being that just as I see some sign of wood underneath it all, Charlotte comes through and drops down a load of other material I need to look through.

The highlight of today has been a phone call I just received from Danny Holland. A couple of months ago Danny was dying. His liver was hardly functioning, he had no energy and his stomach was distended. I had met Danny a few times – his brother and sister are part of our church family – but we didn’t see the man himself in church too often.

Desperate and concerned about the future, he came to service a number of weeks ago and before he left I asked if I could pray for him. As we bowed our heads in the foyer, I asked God to intervene speedily to save this man’s life.

Well, he got an unexpected transplant the very next day and he called this afternoon to say he is home. God has performed a miracle and he wants to testify one Sunday when he is allowed to go out in crowds again. You should have heard him – he is bubbling with gratitude to God.

Thank God for answered prayer and for a life saved!

Sometimes God acts real fast on our behalf. Mostly he seems to take his time. But he is never ever a single second late!

Nearing the end of the longest visit to Scotland we have made since we left here fourteen years ago, yesterday I conducted the wedding that triggered this trek back to our adopted homeland. Though neither Gill nor myself was born amid the beauty on the northern side of the wall built by the Romans to keep the Scots out of England, we spent fifteen years here, which includes most of the time our family was growing up. So Scotland became our family home.

The wedding involved a great deal of Scottish tradition, including the Celidh last night with the old celtic songs and dances that date back generations.

I found a comfortable vantage point in the hall from which I could watch the band, listen to their music and admire the skills of the dancers. Most of the men of course were looking fine in their kilts and regalia, but I felt more comfortable in a black suit than a tartan skirt!

I did dance once at the invitation of a young woman who had introduced herself to me earlier that day. “I’m Sarah-Elaine,” she said, “Don’t you remember me? You dedicated me when I was a baby.” A few more questions on my part established the fact that this had been 24 years ago and so perhaps I could be forgiven if my instant recognition faculty appeared somewhat dulled. Later in the day she informed me that her diaper had leaked while I was dedicating her and I completed the rest of the service with a significant wet mark on my suit. Thankfully I have even less recollection of that event than the culprit.

It was fun dancing with a young woman I had dedicated as a baby. I had also married her parents some time before that. Mind you, the dance was a little too energetic for my bulk – I am sure “Strip The Willow” was less demanding a few years ago!

Meeting Sarah-Elaine was like a lot of reunions that have taken place this past two weeks – they have reminded me that in different ways we all have the opportunity to make a difference in hundreds of people’s lives over the course of a few years.

If you haven’t done it yet, watch “Mr.Holland’s Opus” when you get chance. It’s message is the story of this Scottish break.

It’s Friday, so it’s Cool Person Of The Week time once again. There’s little question in my mind about who gets the award this time round. Our first two winners have been people linked with our Hurricane Response efforts and today we’re still looking in that direction.

This week’s cool person is once again more than one person. In fact it’s seven -

Frank Summers
Ray Balsamo
Mike Engel
John Mennona
Scott Fagerland
John Herpfer
Mark Thornton

These are the men who are making the long journey home today from Mississippi, exhausted, but fulfilled after working tirelessly to support some of the families whose homes were devastated by Katrina. They have lived in a tent and a shed, endured all kinds of difficulties, but performed a great service to people experiencing an overwhelming crisis. Dave Grimes, the pastor coordinating teams going to Pascagoula described our team as “heroic”.

We’re proud of them and are blessed to be identified with them. Don’t miss the whole story of their Mississippi ministry on Sunday morning.

Gill and I are still in Scotland, but got word today that last night (Tuesday) the Town Board slipped the proposed code change onto their agenda and passed it. This means that to build more than 15,000 square feet in a residential area now requires a variance. In our case that variance must be applied for to the Town Board itself.

While I am surprised and disappointed that this was passed, we will continue to follow what the new law stipulates and will now prepare an appeal for the Town Board. I expect them to reject it,as I am sure the sole purpose of this amendement is to stop our building. If this indeed happens, we will pursue the legal road of suing the Town to establish what our attorney advises is our first amendment right. His work would be pro bono and the Town will be compelled to pay his expenses when they are found to be denying us our constitutional right.

So where does this leave us?

+ It leaves us coming to the end of our seventh year with a good strong, vibrant church.

+ It leaves us with eight men serving others in Mississippi, 22 ready to go to the Dominican Republic in three weeks, 2 leaving for India in late October and six people going to South Africa on October 31st to encourage hurting children.

+ It leaves us on the edge of one of our most exciting Sundays ever, with 154 visitors expected on October 2nd.

+ It leaves us building up to our 40 Days of Community campaign that will draw us closer to one another and help us reach our communities.

In short, nothing has changed. God is still on the throne, we are still functioning very effectively as a church. This decision does not stop us, harm us or hurt us.

We will continue to pursue our building application. But remember one of the most effective churches in our country – Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church – grew to 10,000 people over 15 years without a building of their own. This may be taking longer than we expected, but God has it all in hand. Let’s build the church and the church building will come together in its time.

So here we are back in the northeast of Scotland for a few days, while we visit Gill’s sister-in-law who recently had surgery for colon cancer and I conduct a wedding for a not-so-young guy who was a part of the youth group when I pastored over here, what seems like a lifetime ago.

Yesterday we decided to visit a new church that had been planted here around two years ago and see how they are doing. I love church planters – we’re our own brand of weird, having turned our backs on what is safe and predictable in favor of venturing forward into the unknown.

You wouldn’t believe where this church is. First of all you have to realize we are talking about rural Scotland, where there are far more sheep than there are people and there are thousands of acres of fields with the occasional small community. We had lived in one of these villages, with a grand total of 1500 people living there, for fifteen years – you can imagine that the move to Long Island involved substantial culture shock! This new church rents an old Church of Scotland building several miles away from any of these small villages. It’s in the country, in the middle of nowhere.

Yet when we got there yesterday, there were about 80 people there and the place was buzzing with life. I think a lot of the activity has to do with the amount of caffeine they take in. They have coffee before service, after service and they even had a ten minute coffee break in the middle of the service. That’s enough to make the mildest mannered among us hyper by the time they go home.

And here’s what really struck me – everyone there was so young. There were two couples older than Gill and I, but most of the crowd were teens and twenties.

None of the books I have read on church planting suggests that if you start up in the middle of a field in the back end of beyond, you will draw a crowd of young people. I guess God overloooked the bit about location, location, location.

He does what he wants when he wants and with whoever he wants. Thankfully that includes in a movie theater in Patchogue too.

It’s Friday again somehow, so here’s the latest from Sunday’s View and also our Cool Person Of The Week -

THE VIEW

WHAT ON EARTH?

Welcome to Grace Church as we move into the fall and get geared up for our spiritual growth campaign – 40 Days of Community. We’re looking forward to going on a journey in company with hundreds of other churches all over the world and discovering answers to the question What on earth am I here for?

We’ll focus on different aspects of that in Sunday services and in 50 small groups all over the area and you need to start planning now to be a part of one of those groups.

The first stage in establishing our small group schedule is to have 50 host homes for them to meet in. The hosts will also need to be able to make reasonable coffee and switch on a VCR or DVD player. All the material is provided, prepared by a man who is often described nowadays as America’s Pastor, best-selling author Rick Warren.

So if you want to take a positive role in our 40 Days campaign, please be sure to visit the special table in the foyer today and let Ken and Lenore Swaner know they can count on you.

SEVEN YEARS LATER

Sunday October 2nd we will be celebrating the seventh anniversary of Grace Church with a special morning we are announcing with this invitation – Why not skip church and come out to breakfast instead?

Our plan for that day is to help all who are a part of our church invite a guest. There will be no service as such, this is purely an outreach event to make some new friends as we enter the next phase of our growth.

We’re going to be serving a full breakfast from 9.30 to 10.30 and will have the rest of the building set up as usual so that you can show your guests how and where we do everything on a regular Sunday morning.

Grace has never been about us – neither is our anniversary, it’s about reaching more people who still need Jesus.

Please be sure to pick up a copy of Roger’s anniversary message – Lessons I’ve Learned Along The Way – when you come with your friends that morning.

COOL PERSON OF THE WEEK
With our Hurricane Relief Fund getting off to such a good start last week, our Cool Person Of The Week is someone who has made a substantial effort to boost it. Carmen Balsamo organized a collection at her work to help us press forward with our efforts on behalf of those who are hurting following Hurricane Katrina. She raised $5,000, which puts our fund at over $15,000 within one week of getting it under way. Great job Carmen!

Please be sure to pray for Frank Summers and the team from Grace he is taking down to Mississippi tonight. They will be working in Pascagoula, helping people there salvage their homes. The team have to take in all their own food and will be living in tents while they work in a very unfriendly climate. It will be a tough week, so be sure to pray for them every time you think about them.

Frank is getting all set for the trip to Pascagoula with a Relief Team. There will be nine people going this time, but please keep in mind there will be a lot of further opportunities in the not-too-distant future.

As you know, our main missions thrusts have been to the Dominican Republic, South Africa and India. Over the past few weeks Charlotte has been suggesting we need another missions outlet that’s not a continent away. Well, here we are. Hurting people in our own country and we need to put some energy and resources into reminding them they are still special to God.

Our Sunday offering will help us as we begin operations on the Gulf Coast. Over $10,200 was given to open our Hurricane Relief Fund and that account will now stay open for further contributions.

When my mother visited our church in Scotland she would sit near the back and would often have her fingers pretty close to her ears while the worship team was in action. Truth is, she didn’t really like our style of church and wouldn’t have been there were it not for the fact that she was with us. But she was always happy that things were going well and the church was developing, even if it was not quite her thing.

My mother would not have approved of our plans for Grace’s seventh anniversary, but she’s not here now and if you promise not to tell her, I think I can get away it.

On October 4th 1998, 154 people crowded into the function room of The Inn At Medford for our very first service. Today I threw out the challenge to have the next group of 154 new people there with us when we celebrate our birthday on October 2nd.

To make it easier to get folks there for the first time, there will be no service that day. We’re just serving breakfast all morning from 9.30 to 10.30. This won’t be the normal continental spread with bagels juice and other healthy stuff, this will be cholesterol on a plate – eggs, sausage, bacon, home fries, french toast, etc. It’s all the things your cardiologist said you should cut down on and you really need to promise yourself you will – at 12.00 noon on the 2nd.

We want you to bring all the people you can. We’ll have the theater set up so you can show them how we do church there. We’ll even be showing an anniversary video. But it’s a low-key outreach morning that we believe will lead us into the next season of the church’s life with considerable momentum.

So start inviting guests and plan to celebrate with us. By the way, there will be a special sermon CD available for you on the day too.

It’s definitely not my mother’s church. She wouldn’t have understood it. She would have wondered why, but she would have loved to see it all happen!