Tons of action at Shea today, with runs galore. The problem was the Pittsburgh Pirates (whoever they are) scored thirteen of them while the Mets only scraped out one. It wasn’t just that they didn’t score, they stunk, with errors and walks galore.
Pat enjoyed her first ever MLB game, but never having seen my team perform so badly – well, not this season anyway – I can only assume she brought some negative English influence with her!
If you’re looking for me tomorrow, I won’t be in my office, I’ll be in glorious Queens making my first visit of the season to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets’ afternoon game against the Pirates.
In case you’re wondering if I have nothing better to do mid-week, let me assure you there’s a load of stuff I could be focusing on, but instead I’m choosing to take my sister to her first MLB game ever.
In my earlier years of pastoring I wasn’t the best at balancing ministry commitments with family responsibilities – church always won in those days and family was often neglected. I missed my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, some 600 miles away from where we lived, as I didn’t want to be away from church on a Sunday.
Twenty four hours after major surgery, I once left Gill alone in hospital for a weekend while I went away to fulfil a preaching commitment.
In those days I thought I was indispensible. Now I know better and I am aware of the fact the earth won’t stop rotating, nor will Church At The Movies fall apart if I take a few hours to enjoy the rare experience of hanging out with my sister – and rooting for my favorite team of course!
I spent an hour or so this morning with the small group of pastors from the Patchogue/Medford area that I get together with on a monthly basis for coffee, fellowship and prayer. They’re a great bunch of guys. We’re all very different and so are our congregations, but this area needs all kinds of churches for all kinds of people.
While we were praying, one of our clan – no names, but he’s the Baptist – had me in stitches as he talked to God. His prayer went something like this …
“Lord, sometimes we get very frustrated because after we’ve worked hard to get everyone on board with the vision, we discover that the only one who’s not with the program is you.”
I’m not sure if you’re meant to, but I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
I’ve been there so often, thinking I was totally clear what God wanted me to do and then when the moment arrives, realizing that isn’t it at all. That’s why I tend to use phrases like “I think” or “I feel” far more often than the presumptuous assertion “God told me”.
It has also been important for me to appreciate that while I might enjoy consistency, God’s path for us is full of twists and changes. That keeps us trusting him and aware of the fact that he is the one who is mapping our course, which I guess is a very good thing.
As I mentioned yesterday, we’ve registered to join a growing number of churches worldwide in a first-of-a-kind venture during the month of June.
Over 500 congregations – and growing – are going to focus on the same teaching series that month, entitled One Prayer, with each week’s message built around the one thing that the preacher would ask God for his church and the church in America if given just a single request.
On Sunday June 8th I’m going to speak on Make Us Radical and for the next three weeks some of the most outstanding pastors in our country will be preaching for us and sharing how they would complete the sentence – “Make Us _______”. We’ll be hearing from them by video and you’ll get the chance to listen to some of the guys whose ministries I appreciate most and who are doing outstanding things for God in their thriving churches.
This has never been done before nationally, nor of course by us locally.
It’s going to be exciting and I’m looking forward to it.
+ Sunday’s just about over – just got in from shopping with Gill and my sister, so that’s enough for one day. Bought patio furniture – from Kohls of course!!!
+ The Mets won today – clinched the series against the Braves, but they still look pretty mediocre.
+ Was glad to be back at church today, though I must admit I was annoyed that the building was cold and as one of my grandsons says “that’s not good”.
+ The services went well. First service is thin, thin, but it does achieve the purpose of freeing up space in the second service.
+ Frank is definitely banned from teaching. He was excellent today and they sold out of CDs pretty quickly at the end of service. He did a great job with Breaking Free From Resentment and that leaves me to deal with the concluding part of this series next week – Breaking Free From Fear.
+ It was good to chat with some of the DR missions team members this morning. Seems they had quite the shock in customs as they were going into the country, as the authorities started to open cases and ask awkward questions. The story of how it all worked out is one we’ll hear from them in a couple of weeks when they share during a Sunday service, but it was a real God moment, which was just as well as they may well have been carrying approaching $1m retail value of designer eye glasses frames between them as well as medical supplies.
+ A couple in our church went to Sam’s Club last night and found they were clearing out flat screen TVs to make room for new stock. They got a 56″ model for $200. That’s insane. I figure God loves them more than he loves me.
+ A new-ish lady asked me how you become a member of our church as she’s been with us four weeks and loves it. I told her it’s easy, guided her to Volunteer Central and suggested she finds a place to get involved. If you’re sharing the load, you’re part of the church. That must frustrate the heck out of people who are used to churches where you have to do three months of classes, fill out forms and sit through interviews before you can officially join. I prefer to keep it simple – and it seems to work.
+ Someone thanked me today for developing the kind of church that gives them opportunities to go on missions. Is she kidding? It’s me who is the privileged one, having so many great people who want to go and serve in other countries.
+ I love our church.
+ I missed being in our church last Sunday, so can’t wait to get back into the thick of things this week. Our Prison Break series is hitting some heavy stuff and people are really getting free of incredible baggage.
+ My sister is here for a couple of weeks and it’s great to have her around. She has never seen a baseball game, so if you’re reading this and can get me good seats at the Mets game next Wednesday afternoon, let me know. There are some lousy ones available for purchase and worst case scenario we’ll go with those.
+ I’m really feeling the benefit of our break. I think I was a bit fried leading up to it.
+ Doing a wedding this evening – interesting set-up that seems to be increasing. This couple found me on the internet and asked if I’d oblige, so I met them a couple of times and agreed to do the ceremony. Turns out they have been married four years, have a child and have now saved enough for a wedding at Westbury Manor. Interesting!
+ Our missions team returns from the DR tomorrow. Word is they have had a very full schedule. I’m looking forward to getting some first-hand news, so I’m planning to meet them at JFK. Great people – using their vacation time and laying out their own money to work with Dominicans and Haitian immigrants living in dire poverty.
+ Missions is one thing we do pretty good and I’m glad about that.
+ Had a phone conversation today with a great guy from Saddleback Church in CA. He’s heading up their missions program that will teach Purpose Driven Church principles to pastors in India and wants to know if I could help train some of these guys whenever I’m in India. Sounds like a plan!
+ Talking of India, Basil and Cathy D’Souza will be with us in a couple of weeks. Wait till you hear what’s been going on over there. Some of it is scary with a big S.
+ Checking around the internet, I found the mp3 of John Bishop teaching at the Multi-Site Church Conference in Seattle last week and listened to it on my iPod at the gym this morning. The guy’s a raving lunatic – which of course means I loved all he had to say!
+ Sunday I want to share what’s going to happening over the next couple of months – it’s going to be quite a ride.
+ So that’s it! I’m back, fired up, so I guess some of you had better hold your breath!
Since I was in Florida at the time, I didn’t get to attend the Multi-Site Church conference in Seattle that I really wanted to go to. Instead I asked my friend Gary Lamb to bring me back a set of CDs or DVDs of all the teaching.
However his travel plans went out the window when his plane backed into something in Atlanta and he ended up in Vegas for the week instead of Washington State for two days – go figure!
So the closest I’ve got yet to conference feedback is that another church planter I know, Travis Johnson, posted his own conference notes on his blog. Thanks Travis!
The guy I really wanted to hear was John Bishop from Living Hope Church in Vancouver, WA – and beyond – a multi-site church, with many of its campuses in movie theaters. Here’s a bit of what he apparently said -
THE CHURCH HAS TO BE COMITTED TO:
1. Risking everything
2. Reaching everywhere
3. Releasing everyone
That might not seem like much to you, but it’s enough to keep me praying and planning for months to come!
Had a good breakfast this morning (oatmeal) with Ed Faulkner and John Leone, getting some feedback on the four part Financial Freedom class they recently finished teaching for us.
Sounds like it went down very well and certainly met a real need. We’re planning for them to offer the class again in the fall and I really do appreciate the commitment of two guys who are up to their necks in work with their own thriving businesses, but are ready to make time to sow into the lives of others.
Meanwhile here’s some sound financial advice from the budgeting wizards at Saturday Night Live -
Flying out of an airport that’s fifteen minutes from our house beats the heck out of having to drive to JFK or Laguardia, so I love Southwest – of course they’re often cheaper too. I also like the fact that their flight attendants treat you like human beings and have obviously been pre-screened to ensure they have a sense of humor.
Of course their open seating arrangement is somewhat of a pain in the rear end, even though they have readjusted it recently so that you board in order of checking in (there’s a number on your boarding pass). I really didn’t mind missing out on the Florida sunshine briefly yesterday morning so that I could be online in the hotel at precisely 10.15, the earliest you could check in for today’s flight. It was maybe fifteen seconds after the quarter hour by the time I entered the details and clicked the appropriate button, so it was not surprising that 33 passengers had got there before me.
Anyway, the flight itself was okay this morning, but what ticked me off was that after going through all the performance at the hotel, when we got to Tampa Airport before 8.30 today, we still had to wait almost 30 minutes to work our way through lines that would make Disney look good, in order to check our luggage.
It didn’t help my blood pressure that one case was 3lb over the limit and so I had to open it, remove some books and put them into another suitcase.
The best was yet to come – the security line. This was insanity on steroids, hundreds of people on line working their way to just three working x-ray machines. God forbid they should have opened more lines. The security staff who were either standing doing nothing or sharing private jokes would have actually had to do something if action was taken to move passengers through faster.
It took 40 minutes to get through security.
Seventy minutes from arriving to getting to the gate makes Tampa International Airport and my friends at Southwest the worst combination I have encountered over several years, assorted airlines and inept airports around the world.
Forget Iberian in Madrid; Indian Airlines in Agra; Aeroflot in Moscow; Finnair in Helsinki; El Al in Tel Aviv or even Laker Airways in Ibiza.
Southwest stink in Tampa.
But I love them here on the Island, so I’ll definitely fly them again!!!
For more than forty years of my life, I subscribed to the notion that Americans were loud, with a tendency to be obnoxious. Some of that may have come from my post-war upbringing which was peppered with comments of US servicemen being overpaid, oversexed and over here, but most of it was purely my own observation of visitors from the other side of the Atlantic.
I am coming to the end of a couple of days in one of the more popular resorts for vacationing Brits and it has been a good, restful break which was only interrupted a couple of times by extremely loud and incredibly obnoxious English tourists. However, they are all around here in their favorite soccer team’s shirts, drinking too much beer and acting as if they’re the only people that matter on the face of the planet.
So, I wish to formally apologize to the American people, because nowadays I see through different eyes and when it comes down to it, the people you don’t want to be near in sunny Florida are the sunburned drunks from London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham or any other major city that’s part of the British Isles.
Guess I just burned my bridges!!!
Hope the INS will let me stay in America!!!