This made me laugh today -

I sent two things by UPS on Wednesday, one to India and the other to Jackonsville, Florida. Both were delivered today, but the Indian package beat the Florida one by a full six hours!

And this brought a tear to my eye -

I sincerely thank you for being faithful to who and what God wants you to be. You make a difference in this world and the one after this one. I just want to be part of it too.
Part of an email I got this morning from someone in our church, commenting on our commitment to those God is sending to us.

Needless to say, both made me happy!

We have missions teams going off all over the place right now. I just got back from JFK where we dropped off sixteen people whose flight to the Dominican Republic takes off any second. They’ll be linking up with our missionaries down there and helping them for a week, with whatever they need doing.

I do know the guys will be finishing up the medical clinic our team started work on down there ten months ago. It stood there half done for a while as there was word of government help to complete the project, but that never materialised, so it’s going to be a busy time for our team as I understand that an official opening has been planned for Thursday with the Mayor doing the honors and a TV crew all booked to be there.

We have some great people – I may have said that before, but it’s all true. At this moment we have four folks down in South Africa scoping out a whole new project in a huge poverty-stricken township that has asked us for some help.

Then next month we have a team returning to Banda Aceh, Indonesia where there is still widespread devastation following the Tsunami on December 26th 2004.

I watched the DR team filing into the airport this morning and realized that virtually every one of them will leave a real gap tomorrow. They’re folks who are totally involved on Sundays. These are not your stereotypical missions team members who do nothing at home all year and think they can get on a plane and save the world. These are people who are walking the walk. They’re travelling however many thousand miles to continue doing what they do all the time, loving God, loving people and serving our world.

Last night Gill and I got to spend a couple of hours with a great young couple (hey everyone’s young to me!) who are new to our church and most definitely new to our style of church. Seems they love it – their kids do too – and are doing their best to reel in family and friends.

We chatted a bit about the likelihood of moving locations and late last night, Noe sent me this Bridget Willard quote -

Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building. Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let’s not go to Church, let’s be the Church.

That says it all. This may all be new to them, but they have certainly got the point!

Some time last year my wife came back from a trip to one of her favorite stores and proudly presented me with a brand new pair of designer slippers that she had just bought for pennies in a sale.

That was all good and well, but I hadn’t asked for new slippers, didn’t want new slippers and was more than comfortable with the slightly stained and battered pair already on my feet that only had just over 30,000 miles on the clock.

Why was she doing this to me?

What to do?

Liar that I am, I smiled, thanked her profusely, complimented her on her shopping skills and tried them on. To my dismay they were a perfect fit and all I could do was watch broken-heartedly as my dear old moccasin-style friends were dispatched to the garbage, never to be seen again. It was an unceremonious end to two dear friends.

But many months later, I love my new slippers. They are comfortable, look half-decent and are a little sturdier for times when I wear them in the yard or even on a quick trip to the store for some milk.

Turns out to have been a very good switch even though I didn’t like it at the time.

And the point of the story is?????? …..

We got word today that the developers who have been fighting for a zoning change to erect housing on our movie theater site finally got what they were after. They will be closing on Patchogue UA and the acreage around it some time in the next few months and the theater itself will then be closing.

Looks like it will soon be time to leave the comfortable old theater and move into something newer. We don’t have any details yet as to when this will all happen, but it will probably be this summer.

So we will be Church At The Movies at a different movie theater some time soon. There are two theaters within six miles of where we worship now and both would be available, so we’re starting to look into the options that are open to us.

A newer, cleaner and brighter facility will enhance all we are doing, even though at the moment I still love the old place we’ve had for almost four years.

But then, the good is always the enemy of the best!

Okay, I checked out the old guy on the phone this afternoon and he is definitely insane – my kind of insane that is, which I personally would maintain is normal, though I know most would differ!

After 20 years of leading a church that is now well established, he’s thinking of blowing it all, packing up his Bible and laptop and moving to another part of the state to start from scratch. And he’s 54 years old!

I love it.

What the heck! Life’s too short to let it be boring.

I encouraged him to keep praying about going for it and offered what little input and support I can offer along the way.

So all that got me thinking about what the advantages and disadvantages of age are when it comes to church planting …

ADVANTAGES
1. Experience – hopefully you’ve learned a few things along the way from both the positive and negative segments of the journey thus far.

2. Security – you’re not trying to prove anything to yourself or anybody by the time you get to my stage in life.

3. Urgency – you don’t have decades ahead of you, you’re staring at the last lap and want to give it all you’ve got. This one has to count.

4. Freedom – there are not so many other people to think about, like children who need the support and care of a father. They flew the coop a long time ago.

5. Credibility – if you live long enough people think you know what you’re talking about, even though in reality you’re flying by the seat of your pants.

DISADVANTAGES
1. Irrelevance – you may well become disconnected with the world in which most of those you are trying to reach are living, since you yourself are headed into the golden years. The cure? Hang out with as many young church planting hotheads as you can and make sure your own leadership team contains people from younger generations.

2. Conservatism – breaking free and staying free from a lifetime of how you used to do church can present its own challenges. You can’t go by the book, you have to be willing to burn it, to question all you have ever done and thought and see whether it has a place in today’s church.

3. Weariness – as you get older you tend to slow down. Nothing wrong with that, so long as others can help carry the momentum. BTW it’s even more important to take care of yourself physically as the years go by. Ask me! – I’m just breaking out of a lifetime of abusing my body by making it carry around far too much weight.

4. Possesiveness – you won’t be around for ever. In fact you won’t be there for that long, so it’s essential for older church planters to be looking for the person who will take the lead when they need to step back.

5. Unreality – you’re not Superman and neither am I. None of us is the exception to the rule, though we would like to think we were, so we won’t go on for ever. Have an exit strategy. When I was younger I saw so many old pastors hanging on way after their best before date that I decided that at age 65 I will step back from a lead pastor role. Plan to get out the way before you kill the thing you’ve brought to life!

With those things in mind – don’t you young puppies count the old guys out!

I had a great time at the Church Planters’ Conference I attended in Georgia last month, but I must admit – and can do it freely several weeks down the road – that I really felt antequated hanging out with all those potential world shapers, most of whom were not even born when I started pastoring.

Today I got an email from a 54 year old pastor saying that after 32 years in ministry he was giving some serious thought to planting a new church and he wanted to run a few things by me as he had learned that I had started our church a little later in life than most get into this.

I wrote back to him Don’t do it! Are you insane?

Then I quickly explained that I was just kidding – or was I?

Here’s the deal -

If you can live with yourself doing something else, you should do that.

If you’re looking for something easy, go drive a truck.

If you think a new church will be less problematical than an established one, get your brain checked.

If you want to plant because you know a lot of guys are having a blast doing it, check the facts. More plants die in the first twelve months than succeed.

If you need a guaranteed income, pension plan and benefits, get a job at the bank.

But even if you’re over 50, if you can’t get it out of your head, if your heart keeps coming back to reaching people who need Jesus, if you’re willing to jump off the edge of a cliff with no parachute, then hang on – you’re in for the ride of your life and it could be the best choice you ever made!

I filled out a job application yesterday for the first time in forty years, but it didn’t cause me any anxiety as I was told it’s just a formality anyway as I’ve got the post.

Now I won’t be giving up my day job or detracting from it at all, but for 90 minutes on my day off, instead of sitting in a Weightwatchers class, I’m going to be leading one. I figure I’m there anyway, so I may as well accept their invitation and teach the group.

After I’ve done some training, I’m going to slot into their schedule somewhere on a Monday and I’m thrilled at the prospect. It’s not that I can just help others reach their goals, it’s more that I’ll have the opportunity to interact regularly with 20-30 people most of whom don’t know Jesus yet.

Pastors tend to spend most of their time with Christians – and I have no complaint about that. But the nature of what we do means we have to make special efforts if we are to get alongside good people who are not yet believers. And this looks like a golden opportunity.

I don’t intend to preach in my group, heck they’d fire me, but I do hope to show and share the love of Jesus.

This is my vegging day – I call Mondays my weekend, so if you are visiting here in the hopes of finding something profound, you will be sadly disappointed! In fact if you ever look for anything mind-blowing here you will probably end up feeling totally let down.

So what does an antequated pastor do on his day off. Bet you can hardly wait to discover the truth!!!

Went to gym at 7.00am. Ran 5.5 miles on the treadmill and then did 1.5 miles on the elyptical.

Went to Weighwatchers and found I had dropped 3.2 pounds, which means I have got off the insane excess I had put on over Christmas and during our trip to India. Well on my way towards my goal now – only 2.2 pounds to go.

Took a DVD and some goodies over to Charlotte’s house where our grandson, Jace, had been throwing up and running a 103 fever.

Drove Gill over to Smithtown for a doctor’s appointment and while she was there visited a few stores looking for Webkinz for the grandkids. Then went to Starbucks, sat and read the first couple of chapters of Rob Bell’s new book, Sex God – looks like a very good read.

On the way back we stopped by Trader Joe’s and picked up some healthy-looking items you don’t get in most supermarkets.

Now dinner’s cooking.

Isn’t that fascinating?

Congratulations if you read all the way to the end!

Hey, a day off isn’t meant to be that exciting, is it?