With Charlotte in the DR, as you can see there were only three of us for our pastoral team meeting today.

We had a great time – well I did anyway. I love the creativity that there is among our leaders and how ideas develop as we plan ahead. I love the fact that I never hear the words, We haven’t done it that way before.

There’s a ton of exciting stuff we have in the pipeline now for the fall and in some ways I can hardly wait for summer to be over. But though June, July and August are traditionally quiet with folks coming and going, we decided to be proactive about summer and incorporate three exciting series –

If I Die Before I Wake

Get Off The Bench

plus a worship series throughout the month of August that is yet to be named (hey we don’t plan that far out!)

I don’t know which of those I’m looking forward to most, but the sports theme to Get Off The Bench, culminating with a tailgate party in the parking lot, certainly has my attention.

I love doing what I do – it was a great morning and I’m still pumped!

When Basil D’Souza was with us recently, he asked us to pray that they have a good monsoon season in India this year as the nation is so dependant upon the annual rains, but a light monsoon had been predicted.

The monsoon generally starts around the middle of June.

Here’s some news for those who have been praying – the monsoon has started early this year, with the rainfall beginning early this week. Before the end of May!

Here’s the bad news. I’m going there next week with Chris Kelly and we stand to get soaked every single day!!!

It seems God answered prayer.

I seldom eat McDonalds, but on several occasions in the 90’s after spending some time in Moscows, it was good to leave the local fare and enjoy the familiar flavor of the fat from the Golden Arches.

There’s nothing like a taste of home when you’re a long way from its comforts. I guess it’s the same for our missions team working hard in the heat of the DR right now. Content but tired, hopefully they were suitably refreshed by spending this evening at a Pizza Hut several miles from where they are based.

Rumor has it they put away more pizza than anyone could imagine. But the check was under $100 (just!), so I guess they showed some restraint.

Just got back from the second part of the school trip – picking Jace up. Didn’t do well. This morning they told me that you meet students at the back door, so I found a back door and waited there. When no kids whatever emerged and it was ten minutes after dismissal, I realized there was a problem.

Back in the school office where a relieved young man was waiting to see his grandfather, I then discovered that the back door is a couple of hundred feet along from the main entrance, facing south like the main door.

When I went to school, if the front door faced south, the back door would have faced north. But what do I know? In my day kids did what they were told, we wrote with pencils, took no snacks with us and had never seen a computer.

On the way home with my young charge I had a telephone conversation with a friend from another state who was telling me about another pastor trying desperately to bring his church into the 1990’s.

My experience and that phone call remind me of two dangers for churches. They’re looking for people in the wrong places and at best they’re a decade behind.

Day late – dollar short.

We’re babysitting this week, though our oldest grandson is far from a baby nowadays. He will in fact be six next week – on 6.6.6. no less!!! His dad leaves for work early in he morning, so with his mother in the DR with our missions team, he sleeps over here and therefore I got to take him to school this morning.

He’s in Kindergarten, no big deal. But walking into that building this morning, I realized why I prefer doing church in a movie theater to using a school.

Schools freak me out. I’ll be 56 years old in a couple of weeks, but when I went into the ofice this morning to let them know that I’d be picking Jace up and he wouldn’t be on the bus this afternoon, I was intimidated.

It was like a flashback to half a century ago, though to be honest I was never sent to the office to see the principal until I was in Junior High.

Schools do not hold good memories for me. I wonder if I am in the right place. Am I following the correct protocol? Is the Principlan going to come looking for me?

Give me a popcorn scented movie theater any day. I’m not intimidated there!

… A LITTLE RAIN MUST FALL!
I know it’s a holiday weekend and there’s the unmistakable aroma of a million burgers being burned at family barbecues all around the neighborhood, but what gall to close my gym at 2.00pm so that the staff could go eat charred beef.

I arrived just in time to have them lock the doors in my face and was left with a tough choice. It was the Mets game or exercise – and my favorite baseball team lost. (Not the game of course, they crushed the Marlins). Walking on the road is a bit more punishing on the legs than using a treadmill with basic shock absorbers, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

It was a great day for it – sunshine, clear skies and 80.

So though I had to sacrifice watching the ball game, I managed a basic workout – and it’s still a great day.

Priorities – that’s the word!

Okay, the header is not absolutely all-inclusive. There are those days when my preaching is average, the music is average and some small-minded child of God wants to be sure to unload their most recent pet peeve on me before they leave the premises.

Today has not been one of those days. The sun is shining – it’s around 80 – and let’s face it, that makes a good backdrop to any day. Service went really well today. I’m loving this SHINE series with our focus on missions and the video of our work in South Africa was a great focus on a life-changing project we are privileged to be a part of.

Nancy excelled leading the worship. She called it right lingering with the last song – we could have stayed there all morning! And I’ll say it myself for the sake of those who emailed me about being hard on myself last Sunday, the preacher even hit the mark. No, I didn’t manage to speak shorter!

Using the idea of inhaling and exhaling to illustrate the fact that we all take in from different sources and give out to others, was not original. I inhaled it from Erwin McManus’ great book Chasing Daylight.

After service I talked missions trips with a bunch of people and left happy that there is so much buzz around the place – even on a day when the crowd was painfully thin because of the holiday weekend.

From the theater to the diner – outstanding lunch. Three courses including drinks for $7.95. Portions were so big we shared one and took the other to go!

Now I’m sitting watching the start of the Mets game and will shortly leave for the gym to watch the rest of it while strolling on a treadmill. Is this a great country or what?

Did tell you, I love Sundays?

There’s a lot of truth to the statement made by the aging apostle John when he said, I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in love. It’s a good job it’s true I guess, because after all it is a part of the Bible!

Motivational speaker, writer John Maxwell is someone I hear preachers quote almost as often as the Bible. He makes the point, There is no success without a successor.

John (the Biblical one that is, not Maxwell) was encouraged in his old age as he saw the generations coming after him embracing the same values that had turned his own life around. I guess it meant he had been succesful.

The same thing works for me too.

I believe that we are called to mission – saved to reach others with the good news. So it was good to see Jonathan join a team from our church in Scotland as a teenager and set off to evangelize remote communities in the highlands one summer. It was thrilling to see Charlotte leaving for her first missions trip to Spain at the age of 15.

And the pattern continues. Tomorrow Charlotte will lead our missions team to the DR, the first of two she will take this year. At the same time, I am preparing to leave for India on the evening of June 4th and Gill is getting her South Africa missions team organized for October. Jonathan plans to join me in India again as soon as his work schedule permits, probably next year.

There really is no greater joy – though it will be very cool to see the grandchildren starting to serve others through missions too.

It’s totally appropriate that as we move towards the third weekend of our missions series, SHINE, we’ll be missing a bunch of people this coming Sunday.

Early Saturday morning – and I do mean early – a group of twelve short-term missionaries from our church will head for the Dominican Republic to hook up with our Island Impact ministry down there. The guys (eight of them) will assist in a construction project, renovating an old clinic in a very poor neighborhood so that our missionaries can use it to treat patients.

The ladies will be working with Kelli Nelson actually conducting clinics in a number of different communities.

I’m so glad we’re not just talking about missions, we’re actually doing the job. Before the end of the year we also anticipate having teams in Banda Aceh (Indonesia), India, South Africa, Mississippi, DR (a further two teams) and Oklahoma (more of that on Sunday morning).

The book of Acts quotes a statement made by Jesus which is not actually recorded in the Gospels – It is more blessed to give than to receive. But it was certainly the way he lived and the way he encouraged us to live too.

Some talk the talk – others walk the walk. Those who walk the walk don’t talk, they’re far too busy walking!

Okay, so now I have my webcam hooked up to Skype and can have video conversations for free with anyone anywhere in the world. So far I’ve only connected with someone as far away as Iowa, but let’s face it, that’s another country and culture altogether.

It’s official – I have now entered The Twilight Zone!