It was good to hear that our New Years Eve service went so well this evening, while I was at another Grace Church several hundred miles away in Carmel, Indiana.

Now you might well ask what I am doing in chilly Indiana instead of taking my place among the revelling crowd in Times Square and the answer is quite simple. I have a number of very good friends scattered around the globe, most of whom I do not get to see anywhere near often enough.

Doug and Fiona McIntyre have been part of our lives for over 20 years now, but our schedules have made it impossible for us to get together for over a year now. They moved to Carmel, just outside of Indianapolis earlier this year and after several abortive attempts at synchronizing our calendars, a few months ago we decided to get together for New Years.

It is a great thing to have such a strong team at the real Grace Church, that things don’t miss a beat if I’m not there and it is an important thing to treasure meaningful relationships and to maintain special friendships.

Throw into the mix the fact that Doug has a whole suite at the Colts’ game tomorrow and you have the ingredients for a good weekend!

So from distant Indy, Gill and I send our love and wishes for a blessed 2006 to all who venture onto the pages of this blog and especially to our church family.

360 days ago our pastoral team sat around a table and made some plans for the year ahead. There are now less than 40 hours of 2005 remaining – that time went by quickly and looking back, it has been an excellent year for Grace Church.

There are people who are part of our church family today who did not really know Jesus at all this time last year and we have been able to make some contribution to the lives of many different people who live near and far.

So instead of our normal Friday Supercool Person Of The Week spot, today I am reflecting on the year that is almost over and think this would be a good time to salute our Supercool Persons Of The Year.

So who are they? Who are the people who have earned the right to be the very first winners of this prestigious annual award on this blog?

Let me say this first, I don’t have a job – I have a life. Building up people and developing church is my life. It’s what I think about from first thing in the morning until last thing at night. I read all I can, talk with other pastors, moderate an internet forum for thousands of pastors, all with one goal in mind – I want Grace Church to fulfil the purposes for which God raised it up. We need to be as effective as we can possibly be in leading men and women to Christ. On a personal note, the bottom line is this, I love my life. I thank God for the privilege of doing what I am doing. But I could never do this alone.

My Supercool People Of The Year are all those who are a part of Grace Church. Please notice that I’m making a distinction here that many will have heard from me before. I’m not referring to everyone who comes to our services, though I’m thankful for the opportunity to be a part of all of their lives too. I’m talking about those who are a part of Grace Church.

I mean all the individuals who function in some way to make it possible for us to do what we can do. Those who have come in, embraced our mission and asked Where can I fit in? I am grateful for those who, in the words of the New Testament, are doers and not just hearers.

The list could go on for ever, but it extends from the guys who pick up food for our Grace Care Food Pantry to the people who run the sound board on Sundays, from those that open their homes for small groups to those who help in our Smallstars nursery during services. And it goes off in dozens of other directions too.

We have more than 400 volunteer slots filled at Grace and it is those 400+ who have been the key to a good year during which the kingdom of God has been built and the purpose of our church has continued to be realized – To seek and save the lost, inspiring them to become fully functioning followers of Jesus.

They are my Supercool People Of The Year!

There was quite a bit of coverage in the media over the past two weeks about how churches were programming for Christmas and New Year. Never slow to try to put down Christians or their churches, they attempted to make an issue of the fact that so many of us have opted to have services on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and not on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Hypocrites! Most of them really couldn’t care if every church in the country was closed 365 days a year and 366 in leap years. In fact some would be positively jubilant.

Here’s why we planned our schedule this way – and we made our decision on January 4th of this year while Christmas and New Years were still fresh in our minds …

1. We felt it would be better to go for one major event on Christmas Eve and one on New Year’s Eve than spread the congregation out over the Eve and the day of those two holidays. One major service is better than two small ones!

2. Since it’s not about us, we felt that Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve would present outstanding opportunities to draw in the unchurched, who would probably not come on Christmas morning or New Year’s Day.

3. Many of our church members do not enjoy the luxury of arriving just as service starts and leaving immediately once it is over – they are there far earlier and stay much later. We did not feel it was right to ask dozens of workers who make our services happen to be away from their families from 6.30am on Christmas Day or on New Year’s Day. We gave them a holiday!

4. It is important for the church to be culturally relevant. In our culture people spend Christmas Day with their families and New Year’s Day sleeping. So we figured we needed to get real and evaluate what would be the best time to draw the maximum amount of people to worship. We were right on for Christmas Eve and feel we will be for New Year’s Eve too.

Thankfully we have come to see it is not all about what day we worship or at what time, it is about the fact that we value corporate worship and do all we can to participate in it.

Let the media say what it will – and they will – but this Christmas and New Year we will have shared God’s love with far more people than we would have with regular timed services! And I think God is okay with that even if MSNBC isn’t!

Okay, I’ve dropped – that was all the shopping I could take for one day!
Don’t get anxious, I wasn’t out with Gill looking around the post-Christmas bargains – we decided several years ago that her and I together rushing from Marshalls to T.J.Max to Target and every other store between Lake Grove and Coram, was a recipe for disaster.

Today my son took me shopping. I think it was the designer in him that caused him to have a seizure at the very sight of my wardrobe. So he decided to personally guide me into the 21st century and also to find me some new clothes that actually fit.

I must admit that it’s a novelty to be able to walk around a store and make choices. For years it has been a case of simply asking, Do you have anything in 3X? and then accepting whatever – if anything – was in stock.

It was good to spend some time with Jonathan and also to get his input – in several stores we saw clothes that he himself had designed.

But enough is enough. I can only take so much shopping, so this had better keep me going for quite some time! I wonder if anyone will notice the Extreme Makeover – Rog Edition!!!

So that was Christmas! It was glorious chaos at the Blackmore residence, with all our family here, including a five year old, four year old and an eighteen months old gorgeous little girl who can have whatever she wants from her grandfather any time!

Here’s the incredible bit. I went to Weightwatchers this morning, as is my Monday morning norm, and discovered that I had gained an amazing 11.8 pounds over the past two weeks. (I missed last Monday as Gill and I were in manhattan for our anniversary)

Isn’t that amazing? I’m not alarmed as today I’m back on track, but that’s just a cookie here, a brownie there and all-I-could-eat both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I promised myself that slight aberration – let’s be real, I’m not going to starve over Christmas – as it was the only major deviation from my diet plan this year. I was good on my birthday, July 4th, Thanksgiving and whatever other tempting occasions fell in between those, but I let myself go for Christmas. Hey, it isn’t as if I don’t like good food anymore, I have just made some choices.

One of those is that since I enjoy life, I want to live it to the full, free from the burden of excess weight or obesity-related disease.

So, it’s back to 28 points a day today and I’m happy with that.

It’s easy to have a major setback, but it’s getting back on track again that matters.

We’re one of the most non-traditional churches that I know in Suffolk County. If someone is pushing the envelope more than us, let me know and I’ll work on tweaking something to keep us ahead of the game.

But I think we started a new tradition this evening – an early Christmas Eve service. What a great crowd – what a great service!

Frank Summers did a good job of creating Narnia and Lesaya and her team made sure that everyone came into service with hot chocolate. The music was outstanding – how about Peter Majeed on the sax tonight???

Here’s what I’m still stoked about – no chance of me sleeping for hours folks, I’m wired – a ton of our folks couldn’t make it because of family gatherings, etc, but there were still more people in service than we get on an average Sunday morning. That means we had a ton of guests. That means old Rog is happy, coz as we all know, this is not about us – it’s about reaching new people and seeing them come into a relationship with Jesus. Great night.

After service Gill and I took some friends out for dinner. They’ve all started to attend Grace Church through our Saturday afternoon outreach and they live in rooming houses and sober houses around Patchogue. It was fun to have dinner with them. They were good company and they certainly enjoyed eating in a restaurant for a change. Great night – whoops I said that already.

I’m stoked – said that already too. Time to go wrap some gifts – this is an outstanding Christmas already!

I don’t plan to be here blogging tomorrow, so have a wonderful blog-free Christmas. Stay off your computer and give your day to real people!!!

Just counting the hours to our Christmas Eve service and waiting to see how it all comes together. I love doing things that are different, as some of you may have noticed! – I don’t know if it’s an ADD kind of thing or just the way I’m wired, but doing the same old month after month would drive me nuts.

So I’m excited that this afternoon we can do our first real Christmas Eve outreach service in the past seven years. We did do one a few years ago, but had it right in the middle of the evening, which was right in the middle of most people’s family get-togethers, which meant most people didn’t come. I think 5.00 to 6.00 is going to work well and we are getting calls in the office asking for information, so I’m expecting a lot of guests.

They say that 30% of Americans cannot make a Sunday morning service because of their schedules, so once we get a place where we have more flexibility it would make sense to add a Saturday evening service to our program in an effort to reach that 30%. Meanwhile we’re going with Saturday this weekend and next and then next year we’ll go back to Sunday mornings!

Don’t know about Santa making his list and checking it twice, I’m doing that with mine this morning. Have food in the oven (I always cook Christmas dinner) already, then off to supermarket, have to pick up a new shirt too, make a few phone calls, do some more cooking and then head out to help set up theater for Narnia walk-through.

I love Christmas and it’s almost here!

I guess the TGIF thing is all about celebrating the weekend, but as someone who has been busy every Saturday and Sunday of his working life, the TGIF sigh has never been part of my routine.

One good thing about my Fridays is that I do know what to do with the blog – it’s Supercool Person of The Week time and America is waking up early today to see who will win this sought after honor on this Christmas weekend. So, the votes are in, the numbers are being tallied and the result of our nationwide ballot comes down to this …

Over the past seven days we have distributed Christmas gifts to more than 125 people, many of whom will receive few, if any, other presents this Christmas. They have gone to people we meet through our Grace Care mobile soup kitchen in rooming houses and sober houses in Patchogue, to young women in jail in Brentwood and to the folks from Ridge Adult home who worship with us regularly.

Each person received a gift bag with at least three items in it and a bag of Christmas candy. So once the sizes are in, who is the hero who goes off to the stores to look for almost 400 items of clothing? Who looks for 97 medium sweat shirts, 122 large, 46 extra large, etc., etc.?

Who does all this with a budget of $2,000 and comes up with gifts that are tremendously appreciated? Who organizes them all? Who approaches all this effort with real love, just longing to bring blessing to the Christmas of those who are forgotten by most?

Since I hate shopping to start with, who is our Christmas Hero as well as the Supercool Person of The Week?

It’s Marie Faulkner who once again this year put a smile on the faces of some very special people who are friends of Grace Church. She did a great job at a very busy time of year and she really has helped us make a difference in the lives of people who are very important.

And if she doesn’t see this herself, please don’t mention it to her as I’ll be in trouble for saying something publicly about all the work she has done!

The first phone call I got this morning was from out of state. The caller had a complaint – it’s Thursday morning and you’ve still got Tuesday’s blog up! It was suggested that I was messing up this individual’s morning routine because whenever he switches on his computer in the mornings one of the first things he does is to check my latest meanderings.

So for the benefit of my Texan son and anyone else who seriously needs to get a life, I’ll pause for a few moments in my efforts to finish Saturday night’s sermon and commit a few thoughts for the day to this blank page in cyberspace.

One of the things I said from Day One of Grace Church was that if you were looking for a full-service church that could offer you a program of some kind every day of the week, you really do need to look somewhere else. There’s no doubt in my mind that if we isolate ourselves from the society we are meant to be influencing, they’ll go to hell while we sit in our holy huddles.

That’s why I adopted the 1-1-1-1 plan. I think it was original, but who knows? – Maybe I heard it some place. We look for folks to come to one worship service, be part of one small group, be involved in one area of serving and undertake one missions trip a year.

That leaves tons of spare time (somewhere!) to get to know unchurched people, connect with them and help to draw them to start this Christian journey themselves.

Which brings me back to why I started blogging. Because we are not heavily programmed, we don’t see as much of each other as might have been the case in other church settings many of us have known. So my blog is a way to stay connected.

I can pass on breaking news, remind everyone of upcoming events and even have some fun and be ridiculous when there’s nothing serious to say.

Some days I just can’t get to it – but most days I do. So if I miss a few, please excuse me … and get off my back!!!

I discovered this morning that while getting into and around Manhattan has got insanely difficult because of the transit strike, if you’re in Manhattan already, the driving is the easiest it has been since the last time the Giants were in the Superbowl. The streets were uncannily quiet around mid-town, so getting home today was far more straightforward than I expected it to be.

Last night we went to see The Lion King. I found the tickets on the internet at a fairly good price and of course the old axim of you get what you pay for proved to be true once again. Our seats were up so far in the balcony section that I thought we could have been in Mile High Stadium.

But it’s a great show – our anniversary treat – and Gill loved it, so I did good. Having been a preacher since I was thirteen years old, there’s always this tendency for me to look at what is happening and see where it demonstrates some spiritual truth. I’m not saying I see God in everything, more like I’m always on the look-out for sermon illustrations.

There were dozens of them in this story. The lion cub goes away because of guilt, grows up far from home and does not become the king he was destined to be. He doesn’t feel he is fit or capable, until one day he is taken back home and challenged to rise up to be the champion of his people.

Now if you’re reading that and need it explained for you, you need to get a good church. Try Grace Church on Christmas Eve. If you need it explained and you are already part of Grace Church … Houston we have a problem!

Thank God he pulled us from a wasted life to fulfil our potential.