Later this morning, we’re heading to Dallas, or some little place just north of it that I’ve never heard of, to have a second Christmas. In many ways, this will be the real one for me as all our family will be there. We’re going to have a few days together, see the New Year in and then set off for home on Friday morning.

It’s family time, so though I will doubtless take a few moments now and again to update Facebook, I won’t be using chunks of time to write here.

Have a great last week of 2009 – see you next year!

+ Yep, you’re right, I took a week off blogging and surprisiingly both of my regular readers noticed.

+ Highlight of that week has to be the celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary last Sunday, which I marked by shoveling snow for 4.5 hours to clear the drive. Thankfully we did manage an overnight getaway on Monday, courtesy of our kids.

+ Crazy, loud, tiring Christmas with all three grandchildren here – loved it.

+ Just watched the end of the Giants game – no comment.

+ Jets v Colts just started. I hear some Jets fans seriously think they could win this game. Call me, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in  buying.

+ Anyway, back in the realm of things that really matter we had our snow-delayed Christmas celebration at Church At The Movies today.  Great morning.

+ Cafe volunteers did an amazing job of serving a full hot breakfast to such a huge crowd.

+ We celebrated as a complete church family, with both campuses coming together in Ronkonkoma. The place was packed. With the continuing growth we anticipate throughout the winter months, this was probably the first and last time  Regal Cinemas could accommodate us all. There were 12 empty usable seats in Theater 5 this morning.

+ Loved the Christmas decor.

+ We officially welcomed John Bernor to our pastoral team this morning. He brings a lot to the table. I discovered a couple of days ago that in 2007 he was ranked #1 power lifter in the world in his weight division. That impressed me.

+ A number of regulars weren’t around today and while we missed them, I don’t know where we’d have put them.

+ The whole Blackmore clan, well our part of it, will be converging on Dallas tomorrow evening to celebrate Christmas together on Wednesday. They have Christmas later than us in Texas! Back on Friday.

+ John Bernor is preaching next Sunday. Looking forward to that.

+ Visited my friend Bob in hospital this afternoon and was thrilled to see him so improved. It has been a long haul, but he has definitely turned a corner. Also stopped up at Stonybrook to see John- please pray for him as he is really not doing well.

+ Church is ending the year very strong – exciting days ahead. Great people, great passion, great commitment.

+ Since our service was going to be a bit shorter than usual, I prepared for 20 minutes of teaching, but there was only time for 6 or 7. May post a bit of what I left unsaid up here later.

+ It was an amazing experience to see both campuses worshiping together today. God is good.

I got an incredible phone call yesterday afternoon, right in the middle of our Saturday outreach as we were delivering hot meals and Christmas gifts to homeless guys while freezing our tails off in a snowstorm.

As part of today’s service (which was postponed because of the 24″ of white stuff that fell) we were going to officially welcome John Bernor as the newest addition to our pastoral team. John is a great guy with a proven track record in student ministry and that will be his focus with us.

He works for Long Island Youth For Christ on a part-time basis and is partly supported by them. We have no room in our budget to pay John a salary and while he has been willing to come to us for no money at all, we invited our folks to prepare for a special Shaping The Future offering this morning to support John financially for the next twelve months.

Back to the phone call from a friend of mine who pastors a great church in this area that has a lot of financial challenges as they look to the future. He told me his leaders have had a meeting and decided to give us $25,000 to pay our new staff member during 2010. He told me they love what we’re doing, want to see us open more campuses and continue to kick butt, so they want to help us move forward.

In almost forty years of ministry this is an absolute first. It’s an amazing thing for that church to sow into ours in such a huge way.

I’m shocked, I’m humbled, I’m excited.

It suggests to me that God has some huge plans for our student ministry.

So what about the offering? I’m encouraging everyone who has earmarked money for our Shaping The Future offering to give what they have decided to give. First because it’s still right for us to do our part and second because we need to be able to fund the projects John wants to get underway to reach young people.

So bring that with your regular offering next Sunday, and be amazed with me at God’s provision.

It has been an amazing shift from sweating in Florida on Wednesday to freezing my tail off this afternoon serving hot meals to homeless guys in Patchogue and giving them Christmas gift bags too. What a varied country this is and there’s even more variety to come.

Seems the heaviest bit of this storm is yet to come our way, with high winds, 1 to 2 inches of precipitation an hour and up to 18 inches of the stuff to shovel once it’s all over some time tomorrow morning.

That leaves me with a quiet evening,  the chance to sleep late and no church services on the Sunday before Christmas.

That stinks, but it’s okay. I’ll have a quiet day with Gill for our 40th wedding anniversary.

Anyway, we’ve postponed all that was planned fore tomorrow until the Sunday after Christmas, which will be a great morning with both our campuses coming together.

Something quite amazing happened today. I’ll tell you about that during the week. Quite amazing!

Looks like there will be some interesting weather right across the north east this weekend, with snow starting for us tomorrow afternoon and continuing into Sunday morning. I am currently hearing 12 or more inches.

That’s not too encouraging in light of our special Christmas service planned for Sunday, with both campuses joining together for a Christmas breakfast and worship service at Regal Cinemas, Ronkonkoma.

At some point tomorrow I will have to make the call on whether to press forward or postpone everything until the following week. The safety of everyone concerned is the bottom line of course and if there is a foot of fresh snow at the scheduled service time, with white stuff still falling, it will be a no brainer.

Thousands of churches in this part of the countyry will be in the same boat, but it’s all okay because God isn’t going to fall off his throne if we have to postpone or cancel things that were planned and I’m not going to have a hissy fit either.

It’s all good. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I can’t change it, so I’ll trust God and weather the weather whatever the weather whether I like it or not.

+ Had no offers on my Mustang from the listings on Ebay and Craigs List, so I’m keeping it.

+ Cold, wet day. Flying to Florida tomorrow afternoon where the high is forecast to be 80. May not be back before Memorial Day.

+ Sitting watching the Giants game. Not looking too good for them at this stage.

+ My Colts are 13-0.

+ Good morning at both campuses. I was in Ronkonkoma till the service started and then headed over to Mastic, as Lesaya was teaching today.

+ Mastic theater was freezing. There’s no question that national chains take better care of their facilities.

+ Great atmosphere around trhe place in both locations. Relaxed, warm, family. Loved it.

+ Lesaya did a top notch job teaching on the Joy Of Christmas in our series Don’t Let The Grinch Steal Christmas.

+ Next Sunday we are having  a Christmas breakfast and service for the whole church, bringing both campuses together for the first time. It will be a great morning and a very full house. We probably won’t be able to do this by next December because of the limitations of space.

+ Did I say it was a cold, wet day?

+ Did I say I’m going to Florida tomorrow?

+ Visited Bob in hospital this afternoon. There is a degree of improvement, but he has a long way to go. Let’s keep praying.

+ Worked in Charlotte’s basement. She had a flood the other day and the carpet all needed to come up.

+ Long, full day. Tired now.

+ Football.

It’s almost sunset and the temperature struggled to a high 0f 29 so far today. Though by no means a meteorologist, I somehow doubt if the mercury will rise any further.

All of which makes it an even more pleasant thought that we will be heading to Florida on Monday afternoon. I already checked and it will be well into the 70’s the two days we are there, which works very well for me.

It’s not exactly a vacation, nor is it another conference with the same bevy of speakers who seem to do the circuit nowadays. We’re going for one simple reason – to see old friends.

We often spend Thanksgiving with the Fitzgeralds, but that hasn’t worked out for the past two years. The outcome is that we have not spent time with these very good friends for way too long.

It was during our One Month To Live series that it struck me that I needed to pay a little more attention to the people closest to me.

So though I have a million things to do, I’m taking a couple of days out next week just to be with great folks that I care about.

Isn’t that part of Christmas anyway?

It’s two weeks to Christmas Eve, it’s freezing outside and I’m sitting here home alone for a while. Of course that statement would probably be challenged by the young wheaten terrier sitting on the floor in front of me if he was able to read this, but I haven’t taught him that skill yet. I think keeping pets dumb has its advantages.

So the key ladies in my life – wife and daughter – are at the church’s ladies’ Christmas Party and since I got back early from  my monthly Accessory Apartments Review Board meeting at Town Hall, I decided to watch a bit of Hannity.

I generally catch a bit of Fox & Friends at the gym in the mornings, but I can only take their evening programming in small doses. It’s not that I disagree with the content – au contraire, it’s refreshing to hear news commentary from people who are not madly in love with the President or beholding to him for some reason or other.

My problem with their Prime Time programmes is that everyone seems to shout. O’Reilly doesn’t come up for air, good old Sean speaks at way too many decibels and Greta Van Whatever has a combative style too.

When I was a lot younger I used to shout a lot when I preached. I thought that was what I was meant to do. Unfortunately it took me some time to discover that you can make a point without raising your blood pressure or your voice, but I eventually mastered it to some degree.

I don’t need to be shouted at when I’m relaxing in my own den. Inform me. Educate me. Motivate me. Entertain me, but for any sake vary your approach. You don’t need  to be combative all the time.

Okay, we’ve got the lights up and shining brightly inside and outside the house, the stockings are hanging over the fireplace and the two reindeer we bought at Chester-le-Street market in December 1971 have taken pride of place in the middle of the mantelpiece. I guess it’s Christmas.

When Pope Julius I decreed that the birth of Jesus should be celebrated on December 25th back in A.D.353, I am sure he had no idea whatever of what he had triggered, but I’m equally sure there’s a statue to him somewhere in Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters.

The celebration of Christmas has developed considerably during my own lifetime. We’ve come a long way from the hand-made paper chains that hung around our modest home in Cambridge Street, Exeter when I was a child back in the 50’s. There was always a tree and there were a few lights, but that was it. Outside lights were few and far between in the UK even when we moved to the US almost 20 years ago, but I understand that has been changing recently too.

So there are more lights nowadays, more tinsel, more lawn ornaments and even inflatable Homer Simpsons, but what really matters to me is what doesn’t alter – Christmas is a celebration of Jesus and a celebration fo family too.

We’ll celebrate Jesus at two very special services. Sunday December 20th we will have both our campuses joining together for Christmas Breakfast & Worship at Regal Cinemas, Ronkonkoma. Then on Christmas Eve we all head east for a combined service at Island Cinemas, Mastic. I am really looking forward to those two days.

Then we’ll celebrate family, albeit a few days late, in Auburn, Texas for a few days during the week after Christmas itself.

A lot to look forward too amidst the shining lights around me.

Spent a good evening at the movies with some guys from church. We went to Regal Cinemas in Ronkonkoma (not a bad place, but it’s busier Sunday mornings) to see The Blind Side.

Gill and I went to see it about 10 days ago, but it was well worth watching again and I’m sure it won’t be the last time. It’s a heartwarming true story about a Christian couple who take in a homeless boy who eventually gets a football scholarship and coincidentally is probably palying riight now on Monday Night Football as he was eventually drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.

I’m no great connoisseur of movies. I found Lord Of The Rings long and boring and haven’t picked an Oscar winner in decades – apart from Slumdog Millionaire last year. But this is a terrific tale.

Must-see viewing. Well worth taking a trip to your local movie theater for it.