Okay, so what was going on in our basement yesterday, you have been wondering. Well, we were doing some reorganizing of our offices (thanks Joe) to make room for the change I announced during this morning’s service.

As a commitment to the development of a remarkable children’s program, we are taking one of our key staff members, Charlotte Engel and changing her areas of responsibility.

Having functioned for more than seven years with outstanding volunteers in our kids’ ministry and Charlotte as our full-time Administrative/Executive Pastor, we are making some changes to upgrade what we do for children. So she will be passing on some of her workload to an administrative assistant and focusing on making our Sunday morning kids’ stuff the best on the Island.

I guess she will be our Administrative/Executive/Children’s Pastor!

If anyone can pull this off, Charlotte can. She’s going to be using an outstanding program – KIDMO and from the Sunday after Labor Day, the UA in Patchogue will be the place for children to be.

The Softball season starts tonight and our church team will set about maintaining their great record from last season – regular season runners up and play-off champions.

When we first started visiting Long Island, long before we came to live here, I was fascinated by this Saturday evening ritual. Apart from the fact that the game was totally new to me, it was riveting to watch the rivals on the field.

You learn a heck of a lot about people by watching them compete, so I’ll be there observing tonight – and root, root, rooting for the home team!

When you get to the stage in your life that the kids left home long ago and most of your four bedrooms are unused space apart from the occasional visitor, a lot of people make the decision to downsize. That’s a logical move – just have the space you need, without heating, cleaning and maintaining a bunch of rooms that really serve no useful purpose at all.

However, that wouldn’t really make sense for us … our house does serve a dual purpose. Above ground it’s the Blackmore home – below ground it’s the International Headquarters of Grace Ministries Inc. (that sounds a bit fancier than our church offices, doesn’t it?).

And as I type this morning I can hear the sounds of expansion going on outside my door. We’re adding another work station to our offices as part of fulfilling one of our major commitments for 2006.

What is it? I’ll tell you tomorrow in service and for those of you who live in other countries or far from the beauty of Long Island, I’ll excuse you for not being in church and fill in the details for you tomorrow night.

Whatever way you look at it, there’s no room for downsizing here.

Had lunch with an old friend today, Bill Clemens who pastors Christian City Church in Greenlawn – www.christiancitychurch.net

Since we both share a love for Indian food, it was natural to hook up at the newish Indian buffet in Selden, though it’s not the smartest eating plan for someone working at dropping his final 30 pounds!

I haven’t hung out with Bill for at least two years and I was glad to hear from him when he called last week. Sometimes life gets so full that we just don’t make time to enjoy things like eating good food and being with friends. Shame on us. We parted this afternoon determined to rearrange our priorities a little better in the future.

Bill has just ended a very lengthy battle with the Town of Huntington over his church’s plans to build on land they bought there. After years of hearings, court cases, etc., the Town finally bought the land from them and they were able to buy a great facility that came on the market not far from where they had been worshiping. It wasn’t the way they had planned things, but God knew best and the outcome has been remarkable.

It reminded me to be patient with our own building battles, because God has the masterplan. I’m up for him surprising me like he did Bill.

To get the good of what I want to say this morning, you really need to have read yesterday’s blog entry first. So if you are willing to admit in public that you failed to read through Thursday’s ramblings, why not take a moment right now? – and be certain, God will forgive you for your oversight!

Okay, so you got the point about useless people who are not willing to plug in and get their hands dirty? They just want what they consider to be a top spot and anything less just isn’t going to happen.

Today I want to salute a small group of guys who are the opposite of that nauseating nonsense. They pitch in, they get their hands dirty, they do essential stuff that very few people see happening and they do it week after week without complaining because they are glad to contribute to what we’re all about.

My Supercool Persons Of The Week are our set-up guys. These are the men who are at the movie theater every Sunday morning at 7.00am – and that means arriving in the dark in winter – and pull everything from storage, placing it where it needs to be for the various activities around the building throughout the morning.

They drag, carry, lift an amazing amount of stuff. Sound systems, lights, coffee machines, tables, chairs, nursery equipment, banners, signs, plants, stage props. It’s 90 minutes of hard work.

Few are around to see it all happen, but if these guys didn’t step up to the plate there would be no programs at all.

They’re not looking for the limelight or working for applause. They’re all capable, smart people who have responsible jobs and good brains. But on a Sunday morning they’re willing to take off their coats, roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done.

They’re the backbone of Grace Church and Supercool People.

I stole this from the Blog of a friend of mine – guess people are the same the world over!!!

We’ve got this kid in our church that is an extremely talented musician. (I say kid but he’s in his early twenties which probably says a lot more about my age than his.) Anyway, he’s amazingly talented and he has a heart to do great things for the Kingdom. Unfortunately, he’s not too interested in doing anything less than great and that’s the problem.

Although he’s exceedingly talented and wants to be used by God, he’s seems to always be expressing what he won’t do. He won’t do this and he won’t do that. At the same time, he gets frustrated because he’s not being used by God. It’s almost comical.

The truth is that if this “kid” would plug in and get his hands dirty and do what is needed, there is no end to what God would do through him both here and beyond but since everything else is less than what he envisions himself doing, he’s virtually useless to our church and, I fear, to God.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Talent is vastly over-rated. I will take a less talented person with a great heart all day long over an extremely talented person with a bad attitude. Talents come and go but great hearts are hard to find.

On a side note, whenever I hear about this guy and his list of things he won’t do, I wonder what I’m telling God I won’t do.

Father, give me a heart that says “yes” to you no matter what.

Having spent most of my life going to bed at midnight or after, I’m still adjusting to the new regime that leaves me tired enough right now – before 9.30pm – that I’m ready for bed and sleep. I never stay awake to watch the Tonight Show nowadays, which is probably not a bad thing!

Tomorrow will be an earlier than usual start as I have a meeting in Syosset at 7.00am. What idiot scheduled a meeting that early when it will take 45 minutes to get there? Good question – well, it wasn’t this idiot!

There’s a pastors’ breakfast where a bunch of people are going to talk about the Willow Creek Association’s August leaders’ conference. They reckon on having 70,000 leaders sit in on the conference, most of them at satellite relays and a few actually sitting in Illinois and watching Bill Hybels in the flesh.

I won’t even be around for the conference – vacation calls!

But I want to meet up with these guys tomorrow. I enjoy hanging out with pastors. I’m meeting with three different guys one on one this week, went to my regular monthly get-together with Patchogue pastors on Tuesday and will use the travel time to get to Syosset and back to hang out with my friend Anthony Pelella from Medford Assembly of God.

Pastoring is a special call and I’ve done it for longer than most, so if I can be an encourager for any of the colleagues God has placed around me, I want to do just that. I’ve always had a lot of support in ministry and it feels like this is the time for me to give back.

That’s cool!

Here are three albums I’m currently listening to – there’s some great stuff on them … you can buy the new Passion CD and Hillsong United as a combo on Amazon.com and get free shipping. But while you’re spending your hard-earned cash, you may as well throw in Tree 63 too.

The song Party is track three on Everything Glorious. I hope our band can get into that – it’s wild!

You don’t have to take God’s word for it or mine either for that matter. Here’s the official verdict from the noted theologian LL Cool J in Sunday’s Newsday -

If it wasn’t for my faith in God, and me paying tithes and using that and applying that in my life, none of the things people see happening for me would be happening. If you look at the trajectory of my career, since I started tithing I’ve done much better.

Guess I ate too much Indian food on Saturday night – and leftovers of it after church Sunday. Didn’t get to the gym yesterday afternoon either as I took Jonathan into Manhattan instead. Put all that on top of a week with too many deviations off course and that all conspired to a weight gain of 2.8lbs at my Weightwatchers meeting this morning. Not a good thing.

Now, if you’re sick of hearing about my weight, health, or whatever, feel free to check back in tomorrow and skip the rest of this. Sorry if it gets boring, but next time you succeed in a major effort, you try keeping quiet!

Anyway, here’s the point.

Since I passed the 100lbs weight loss goal five weeks ago, I haven’t lost a whole lot more. With around 30lbs still to go, the major milestone I passed has proved to be a major hindrance. It’s difficult to shake myself out of the satisfaction of shedding so much and get my head around the fact that there’s still more to be done to finish the job.

Here’s the preacher making a connection …

In decades of pastoring I’ve met a lot of church people who have those same kind of problems with developing themselves and reaching their full potential for God. The majority come so far, are happy with what has occurred in their lives and never rise above mediocre.

It’s true of churches too. But Grace’s epitaph will not be that we came a long way and then stood still. We’re going to finish the job, which means constantly pressing forward.

Our future is leaner and meaner!