Looks like I still have to figure out how to insert graphics here!

I just tried and failed to upload our Celebration Sunday logo, as I wanted to share my excitement about this coming weekend.

 We have a Celebration Sunday every three months, offering baptism to those ready to testify to their faith in Jesus and celebrating communion together too. I heard from Lesaya that some great stories came out of the baptism class, so I’m looking forward to seeing these good people get baptized.

 We’re going for the jackpot Sunday morning and having a wedding as part of our service too. It’s going to be a great day. I love it when we baptize people because it shows we’re doing what Jesus said we should be doing – Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We’re not a social club for self-righteous people, we’re a bunch of interesting characters who have come to know God to some degree and want to see as many people as possible come into a relationship with him too.

A lot of effort goes into Church At The Movies and Sunday will remind us it’s all worthwhile.

This weekend we party!

Hey, thanks for visiting me at our new location, courtesy of Matt Adams of factor 1 studios – www.factor1studios.com – who has put together a whole new look for our church website and my blog too.

Thanks also to Jonathan Blackmore for his work on graphics and Charlotte Engel for pulling everything together.

This is our fifth year of worshiping in a movie theater, so we’ve revamped our space on the internet to really take ownership of the theater theme. As I’ve commented before, there are pastors all around the country breaking their backs to find a domain name that incorporates the fact that they are theater churches, but thankfully we got the straightforward, obvious one ahead of all the crowd – churchatthemovies.com.

We didn’t start out this way by any means, but this is who we have become as we have continued the journey – and God only knows where we’ll be another five years down the road!

But whatever the future holds, you can be sure I’ll comment on every twist and turn right here – so welcome to my new address and new-look blog. 

Okay, so I’m still a relative novice when it comes to U.S. politics, so what I have to say about it all may do little more than make public my total ignorance. Then again that never stopped me commenting on any subject before, so here goes …

There are 300 million people in this nation – and that’s only counting the legal ones – so couldn’t we come up with a better choice for leader of the free world than Clinton, Obama, McCain or Romney?

From all I’m reading it’s just about down to these four now, despite Huckabee’s smile, so when I come to voting on this issue later in the year, I wish they’d add another choice, like None Of The Above!

Okay, so I’ve decided to look for help to get this thing the way I want it. While our website designer continues to fine tune the overall look for us, I’ve sent all the “how WordPress works” info on to my son, Jonathan and he’s going to check out the actual layout for me.

At my age projects like this could raise my blood pressure to a dangerously high level, so I appreciate the help of someone who spent untold hours on Christmas Day putting together some Lego version of a Star Wars spaceship (for his son that is!) - he clearly likes solving problems!

I often tell people that when it comes to church life the only thing that is here to stay is change.

Seems it’s the same in 21st century communications too. Yesterday evening I navigated setting up a Facebook page – having been advised this is an essential to life nowadays. I haven’t quite worked out what the point of all that is yet, but was content that I think I succeeded in throwing some material up there.

This evening the designer of our new website has flagged me to let me know it’s time to transfer my blog to the new-look page he has set up for me and to use a whole new program – WordPress – rather than Blogger.

So now I’m learning WordPress and I’m, hoping these words end up where they’re meant to be. I haven’t even worked out how to put a picture up here, so please bear with me.

Sometimes I feel I was just plain born too early – other times I know it’s absolutely true.

Anyway, welcome to the same old guy, churning out the same old nonsense, albeit in a different looking location.

This has been a good day – well so far anyway!

It was the day that I committed to doing something I am not too good at – I answered all my emails.

For many years now I have worked with a very simple administrative routine. I have a big in-tray on my desk and that’s where I toss items that need my attention, constantly adding to the pile. When all those papers are so top heavy they are at risk of falling on the floor, I go through them and toss out around 75% of them because they are no longer relevant.

Which all goes to show why I’m the visionary and Charlotte is the admin pastor!

I approach emails slightly differently. If something requires a one or two sentence response, I reply immediately, but other than that I leave it in my incoming mail folder, which today had 57 emails sitting in it for periods ranging from days to months.

So I’ve been working my little fingers to the bone, dispensing information, maintaining relationships and generally being a very helpful and sociable person.

The current count is 16, all of which are there for reference rather than awaiting a reply. I could switch them over to my Saved Mail-In folder but the chances are they’d be lost there for ever and a day.

So if you got an email from me today – congratulations.

And if you’re still waiting, I guess I was too enthusiastic with the delete key!!!

Sorry!

Since I weigh in at Weight Watchers on Monday mornings, I normally push myself that little bit more at the gym so that I sweat off a few more ounces before standing on the scale. That was a big mistake today.

My right knee has been giving me some minor pain for the past five or six days, but thinking it was pretty much okay now, I ran 7.5 miles this morning and then did another 2 miles on the elyptical. When I was done I could hardly walk and that’s the way it has been ever since. Ibuprofen seems to be helping, but the best solution may be to avoid the gym for a day or so.

Guess the old bones are fighting back!

Today we publicly announced what most folks have seen coming for quite a while now, that from Easter Sunday onwards we are going to two services on Sunday mornings. I watched a number of people awkwardly looking around for seats this morning and while there were spots all over the place, to all intents and purposes we are full.

Church growth gurus used to say that you are full at 80% of capacity, but nowadays that has been pulled back to 66% for two reasons – firstly that people like their own space more nowadays and secondly most Americans need more space as they’re bigger than they used to be.

I like the idea of two services for a lot of reasons -

1. If my preaching sucks in first service I can fine tune it for the second.

2. We give people options as to which time slot best suits their lifestyle.

3. We create a lot more space for a lot more people and since I don’t expect the trend of the past few months to slow down, we’re going to need those seats.

4. It presents a load of fresh opportunities for folks to plug into serving as we’ll need to double up volunteers in a whole bunch of areas.

5. It stretches us, which is always a healthy thing. Personally I enjoy the challenge of change – probably something to do with the ADD that’s part of my DNA – some don’t. It’ll be interesting to watch them sweat, try to convince them they can do it and celebrate with them when they discover they really can!

Fun times ahead!!!

I was on a tricky topic this morning as I taught the next part of our Getting In Shape Series – Getting in Shape Physically. The difficult part was motivating people without laying a guilt trip on them and I think I succeeded to a great degree.

I’m no health nut or fitness fanatic, in fact inside me there’s still a 332lb guy wanting to make a comeback. I’m just someone who has decided that I want to enjoy this life to the full and that in order to do so, I’d better eat more smartly than I have done thus far and exercise a little more than walking to the garage and back.

As I mentioned today, the trouble is that as Christians there are a load of things we don’t do socially and so that tends to limit our options. So a ton of stuff we do centers around food, whether it’s small groups, covered dish meals or men’s breakfasts. Now food is all around us, so the key is learning to eat wisely and in moderation, or as I heard someone put it a while ago, we have to find out how to peacefully co-exists with food.

So that was church today.

Great crowd – our cafe was cleaned out by the time service started, which means we need to up all the goodies for next week. Lot of new faces again, which leaves me sinking in a sea of folks I don’t know. Maybe I should content myself with not knowing everyone’s name, but I’m not at that point yet!

It’s amazing what damage one self-righteous bigoted idiot can do to the work of God in this country. I’m not talking about any old unbalanced Bible thumper sitting in the pew, I’m particularly focused on the insane, iuncompassionate statements emanating from the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, Shirley Phelps.

It seems this upright, obnoxious servant of God has declared that she will picket any and all memorial services for actor Heath Ledger who was found dead in his Manhattan apartment earlier this week. She even plans to protest anything done to honor Ledger at next month’s Academy Awards ceremony, because of his portrayal of a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

Thanks Rev. Bigot, I’m sure you’re doing what Jesus would do. He wouldn’t be trying to console a grieving family or lamenting the passing of such a young man either, he would have been right in there ranting and raving about the judgement of God with caring statements like yours -

“And then the other place I’m going to picket him is when they prop him up to worship his dead, rotting carcass further at the Oscars. I’ll be right outside by the red carpet.”

It’s a pity that this one off-the-wall lunatic who really should be institutionalized is instead being quoted in the media, because for millions of Americans she will fuel their disdain for Christians and their conviction that churches are gathering places for hypocritical religious zealots.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the church in America has a very real image problem and the only way around it is for every real follower of Jesus to deliberately and unconditionallylove people the way he did.

However at this moment – as you may have gathered – I’m having a tough time loving a certain pastor from Kansas!