I know this will come as a bitter disappointment to many, but I think we may have to replace Frank Summers soon. According to the latest statistics I have, the video we have on Google of him teaching on Reclaiming Your Sexuality is set to pass the 1,000 hits mark before this evening is out. That is almost double the hits on all four sermons I have up there – combined.

The man has to go – I can’t deal with the competition!!!

If you’re one of the apparent few who didn’t watch it yet, it’s here -

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1225215825630314751&pr=goog-sl

- but humor me and just visit one of mine too. You don’t even have to watch it, just go there and then click back to Frank!!! Joking apart, he did a superb job that morning.

Our friend Becky Tait was with us one Sunday last month, on a fleeting visit during a Manhattan break from her studies at Grays School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland. She’s pretty lethal with a camera and so obliged by taking a bunch of photos for me.

I figured these two portray one of the things we do best at our church!

Here’s the link to Lesaya’s teaching from last Sunday, March 9th

Dare To Live…Church at the movies, Lesaya Kelly

And here’s a link to our two services promo on Google. If you’re sending the link to friends this would be better than the yahoo link I posted last night as when they go to Google they’ll see some of our teaching videos there too.

Easter at our House…LOL, come share 3/23/2008

Here’s the video we used to announce our change to two services. Send this to friends to invite them to join us for Easter -

Easter at our house…LOL, Share with us 3/23/2008

I don’t think it’s illegal to have as good a time in church as I did this morning, but maybe it should be As I drove the few hundred yards down Portion Road to the Diner for lunch, I couldn’t believe how blessed I am to be able to do what I do.

What a great morning! Try fitting more into 75 minutes and I bet you won’t be able to. The band did a great job, then we had a wedding, a baby dedication, a video and I taught, before we prayed for the missions team that will be taking off from JFK in less than an hour on their way to South Africa.

I taught on Caleb today, the 85 year old man who jumped in before they could start casting lots to apportion the last bits of the Promised Land – Joshua chapter 14 – and demanded the bit he wanted. The crazy old guy didn’t go for a pool and the miles of beaches over by Tel Aviv, instead he asked for the hill region where tribes of giants still lived so he could have another fight and drive them out.

I love it the way the KJV translates this – Give me this mountain!

Those words are very applicable to our church situation, where we’ve filled our new movie theater, but are not ready to settle down. So next Sunday we’ll mix it all up again, start doing two services and see some more personal giants being brought down as people’s lives are changed by Jesus.

I’m not ready for a condo in Florida either!

Let’s go do the stuff here God intends us to do. Let’s push the limits. Let’s extend ourselves. Let’s attempt the impossible. Let’s go for things never seen before in this underchurched part of our country.

Thanks for contributing your story Caleb, you’re an inspiration – 85 and still going strong!

This afternoon I planned to go spend some time with one of our guys who appeared to be very near to going to meet the Lord after eighteen months of battling cancer, but this morning I got a call to say God called him home during the night.

That call came as I was waiting for a couple to arrive at our house so that I could marry them in our living room. It reminded me of the diversity of what can come across a pastor’s path in the course of just a few minutes.

Two families living a day they will never forget and it was my privilege to spend some time with both of them. Please pray for Bob Engel’s family tonight and also ask God to bless Serafin and Cathy as they start a new chapter in their lives.

I’ve had the heart of Sunday’s teaching bouncing around in my heart and my head for several weeks now, but today I set my thoughts in some kind of order and am virtually ready to go, setting the course for the next stage of our church’s journey.

This Sunday will be the last day of one service as we start doubling up from Easter onwards. I like multiple services – they make you feel like you’ve done a decent day’s work! We did two for almost three and a half years while we were in the Crystal Swan catering hall from ’99 to ’02 and it was weird when we moved to the high school and just did a single service. The good news is that since our services are shorter nowadays than they were then, the morning will be around 90 minutes shorter from starting set-up to finishing breakdown than they were then.

Change is never totally comfortable, so I guess that means we have to be the most adaptable church on this Island. Change is the only thing you can be sure of with us, but I think that’s the way it’s meant to be. I’ve been in tons of places where if the 60′s ever come back, they’re all ready for them – we call them churches but they’re really museums.

Living things change and they grow, which all underlines that ours is one alive congregation.

So Sunday starts the countdown to the next phase of our big adventure – it’s been one heck of a ride!

+ Had an interesting pastoral team meeting today. Exchanging notes on who we have all been assisting and/or counseling, there are a lot of people going through serious stuff right now.

+ Lesaya’s getting ready to leave for South Africa on Sunday afternoon on a short-term missions trip with a group of people from our church. I’m always happy when I see that folks have caught the vision for missions.

+ Got a call from Gary Lamb today reminding me he is going to the Unleashed conference at Perry Noble’s church tomorrow and I’m not! I’d love to have been there, but I don’t live as close to South Carolina as Gary does.

+ Tony Balsamo showed me the property Integrity Christian Fellowship closed on yesterday in Middle Island. Hope they don’t have the battle we’ve had – chances are they won’t because we’ll have fought it and won it for them and other churches.

+ People occasionally ask where we’re at with the building thing. Fact is the Town Board has not yet done what they committed to do as the first order of business in January. To tell the truth it’s not foremost in my mind right now.

+ We’ve got a great new series in place starting the Sunday after Easter, but I still won’t be saying anything about it yet.

+ Since we put the videos of last year’s Desperate Sex Lives series on the internet just last week, they have had well over 1,000 hits – Wow!

+ Registered today for the conference Rick Warren is hosting at Saddleback in May. Basil and Cathy D’Souza from Mumbai, India will be traveling over there with Gill and I. Thankfully registration for all four of us was free as I help moderate Saddleback’s internet forum for pastors.

+ Sunday morning will be one of those miracles of putting a pint into a quart bottle. We have a wedding, a baby dedication, prayer for our missions team and a special video in addition to the other components of a regular service. All this and we still have to end by 11.15. Guess the preacher will have to be short, but it’s me again this week so don’t hold your breath.

As a talk show host, I gather she does a pretty good job, though I must admit I’ve never watched one of her shows in its entirety. As a humanitarian, she has gained a better than average reputation for using some of her multi-millions to help those that are struggling.

When she gets into politics, I wish she’d just stick to what she knows.

But when she starts posing as a spiritual adviser, this lady is up the wall. And if don’t believe me, you’d better believe Chuck Norris or he’ll come to your house and deal with you. Here’s what he has to say about Oprah’s latest adventure into the “spiritual” realm -

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57827

They’re getting their heads around some new software in our offices, which should help us substantially by keeping loads of information in one place. I gather there’s one slight glitch, in that this developed-for-churches-program only recognises two types of households – single people and married people. There is no category for people living together – I think cohabiting is the official phrase.

We’ve had people join us who were run out of other churches because they were living together outside of wedlock. I am glad they came. Not that I agree with their lifestyle, because I don’t and nor does the Bible, but because everyone is welcome in our church. As their relationship with God grows, they take care of other matters, but we don’t demand that folks get their act together before we let them in the door.

I love it when a couple comes to me and says they realize they need to get married. In a few weeks from now I will have conducted four marriage ceremonies in ten weeks for previously cohabiting couples. I’m glad we didn’t run them off, but rather allowed them the time to grow enough in their faith to do the right thing!