Sixty years ago, June 26th 1950, the world awoke to the news of the start of the Korean War, a conflict between the north and the south that would continue for the next three years, with considerable U.S. involvement.

Later that same day an unexpected child would be born to a poor, hardworking family in the southwest of England. Roger James Blackmore entered this world in the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, the third son and fourth child of James Ernest Henry and Dulcie Kate Blackmore. The reason I was not expected is so complicated even I never fully understood it!

If my history serves me correctly, the Korean War was never officially ended and so technically it is still going on. Thankfully I am too.

Tonight I will go to bed and while I am sleeping will turn 60.

That’s old. However you look at it, or however you try to explain it, it’s old. I will not be middle-aged any more and there are only two categories that come after that, old and very old.

Life has been and still is good. I have been blessed with an outstanding family, scattered all around the world and I have spent my entire working life to date doing something I absolutely love doing. After 40 years of pastoring, I’m having a blast and looking forward to what’s still to come.

Long Island in 2010 is a totally different world from Exeter in the 50′s and 60′s, but I thrive on change and enjoy challenges.

That’s why getting old is not an issue for me. It’s another set of numbers, another part of the journey, another chapter in the adventure. Bring it on!

Photo: Myself with my sister Pat and my brother Chris.

It’s pretty well documented that during Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in the early 90′s, there was a sign on his desk that read It’s The Economy, Stupid. In a campaign that could have seen him chasing off on a hundred different issues, he wanted to make sure he kept focused on the single matter that concerned the electorate most – the economy.

Ministry can have you running a myriad different ways too. I sometimes think about journaling the widely diverse activities that fill my day.

As an aspiring young pastor in a British Bible College just after England last won the World Cup, I was looking forward to having a pulpit of my own, a place from which my gifts could shine.

Happily, once I started actually leading a church, it didn’t take me too long to come to the realization that pastoring is not all about what happens on Sundays. That’s a part of it, a large part of it, an exciting part of it, a very important part of it. But pastoring is all about people.

It’s the phone conversations, the email interactions, time spent at hospital bedsides, it’s eating meals and talking, drinking coffee and listening carefully.

The credibility that gives the right to be heard when teaching is built in thousands of  small ways, none of which occurs on a Sunday morning.

+ Sitting here with what I estimate to be my third coffee of the day, which is an indication of how busy Wednesday was – there’s generally time for way more caffeine during my waking hours.

+ Sat down in time to see the top of the 9th inning of the Mets game and another victory at Citi Field.

+ Even ate all my meals standing up today – not recommended, especially in WW circles.

+ Thrilled to hear Joe has made giant leaps forward in the past 24 hours, even taking a few steps.

+ Spent the afternoon at Mather with a family connected to our Mastic campus. The husband, Richie, is in a very bad way in ICU. Please say a prayer for the Garcia family.

+ Good pastoral team meeting this morning. Laughed a lot, but got a lot done. Glad to hear our New Orleans missions team has 21 people all booked.

+ Got most of Sunday’s teaching done. Was going to speak on 5 Things You Need To Know Before You Say I Do – decided to change it to 4 things as I’ll never fit five into the available time.

+ Gill is having a great time with the grandchildren in Texas. Looking forward to being with them next month.

+ England and USA both through to next round of World Cup. Neither team looks startling, so it remains to be seen how much further they can go.

+ Family arriving Friday for Charlotte’s wedding next week. Busier few days ahead. Bed beckons.

+ So this was Father’s Day, which may well have been set aside for the past 100 years as a day to honor fathers,  but for me personally it is more about celebrating the incredible joy of parenthood.

+ My children (pictured above a week or two ago) are an absolute delight. Charlotte had my heart from the moment I first saw her and I am thrilled that 30 some years later, I get to spend such a huge part of my time interacting with her as she works alongside me every day.

+ Jonathan is my friend, a man that I am proud of. Although he lives in Texas and we don’t see each other more than a few times every year, we talk on the phone virtually every day. He is a terrific person and I am blessed to call him my son.

+ Today has been a great day to reflect on how blessed I am. God has been very goood to me.

Among the  more outstanding people I have been privileged to pastor over the years are the Thompsons, Paul and Pat and the developmentally disabled adults whom they have made part of their family for longer than I have known them.

Joe King is part of that family and very much a part of our church family too. At first he appears quiet, a little withdrawn, but when he’s relaxed he has a wicked grin and quite the sense of humor. Joe generally wears the watch he was given by McDonalds a year or so ago to mark his 25 years of working for the company in its Medford store.

He is part of our Grace Care outreach team every Saturday afternoon  – as is the whole Thompson family – and he’s a key part of our KIDMO team on Sunday mornings.

It was distressing to our whole church family today to learn that Joe had been the victim of a vicious attack whilst on his way home from work yesterday and is now in the hospital with a fractured skull. The news has got steadily better throughout the day, but he has a long way to go to recover fully from this brutal episode.

Joe’s disability does not define him and it does not unduly restrict him either. He’s part of us, one of us and nothing proves that more than the outpouring of outrage, disappointment and compassion that has been experienced today.

I am proud to be part of a church that cares this much.

Let’s keep loving and keep praying. God will bring him through.

I know it won’t arrive in time for Father’s Day, but you have to get this book for yourself, your dad, or whoever. Outstanding book by fellow Brit, now exiled in the USA, Chris Spicer.

Did I say, it’s excellent? Get it, read it, you won’t regret it!

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=no+perfect+fathers+here&sprefix=no+perfect

Wow, that’s a long link!

At the end of one of our services last Sunday, I got a huge hug from a big guy who has been with us for a couple of months now. As he squeezed the life out of me he said something that made my day, This is a church for broken people.

It’s our goal to be just that, after all Jesus made it clear that it’s sick people who need a doctor and not the healthy, but to hear those words coming out of the mouth of someone we are priviliged to have helped confirmed to me that we are hitting our target.

We’re a unique church – as of course every church should be. That’s why it’s tough to describe Church At The Movies to those who have never visited one of our services. We’ere not charismatics, pentecostals, baptists or methodists. We’re not missional, contemporary, post-modern or post anything. We’re us.

My friend Deb Ingino – www.mywiredstyle.com – put it in a way I like. Deb told me a couple of years ago that we’re a Statue of Liberty church and I like that description -

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

I enjoyed a purposeful evening with the guys from Celebrate Recovery this evening. They may have been broken, but Jesus is healing them. I love working with people who admit they have issues, because you get the chance to watch countless miracles happen before your eyes.

+ Nineteen years ago today we arrived in the USA, were processed by the INS at JFK and entered the country to begin the next chapter of our lives right here on Long Island.

+ In 1991 I did not envisage that in 2010 I would be driving between two movie theaters on a Sunday morning to teach to congregations in each of them.

+ Had a blast teaching today on Thinking Big. I love sharing vision.

+ A leader’s main task is to receive, safeguard, convey and maintain vision.

+ Preached too long in Ronkonkoma. Thankfully the second time around I realized I needed to leave a few things out.

+ Matt and the band rocked at our Ronkonkoma campus. They did an outstanding job. Could have listened to them all morning.

+ Glad to see Taryn there with her guitar and hear her voice.

+ Finished out our Imagine series by talking about how God is great at multiplication and wants that for us as a church.

+ Next week we begin our Family Matters series. I’ll be teaching on Doting Fathers And Deadbeat Dads.

+ Waaay too many people recognized the Tribbles from the screenshot I used. Do we really have that many folks who remember 1967?

+ Melissa’s story brought our mission home to us. God changed her life, despite the wounds from a broken home and drug addicted parents.

+ John Bernor excelled at a power lifting competition yesterday. He is now ranked as one of the three strongest men in the world in his weight division. Later this week he’ll know whether he’s 1st, 2nd or 3rd. Any of them sounds good to me. Guess there won’t be any behavior problems in our youth groups!

+ Mets won 11-4 today. I watched that rather than the Germany/Australia World Cup soccer game. How Americanized am I?

+ Announced this morning that we are going to start in earnest to get involved in Haiti relief, starting with a missions team going down there in September. We’re going to be working with our good friends at www.islandimpact.net and look forward to ongoing ministry among the continuing devastation of this Caribbean nation.

+ Second major announcement today was the introduction of ACTS 29, Year of Service. Starting September this year, we are inviting young people to take a year out and come learn, serve and grow with us. The ACTS 29 program will offer study curriculum, hands on experience of church life and extended missions opportunities. The first participant is already on board and we are waiting to hear from others.

+ Tired now. Happy. Great day – and now to relax!

While Columbus sailed the ocean blue back in 1492, the Blackmore came to check out the new world many years later, courtesy of KLM. It was nineteen years ago this weekend that we left the UK after a lot of thinking, praying and heart-searching. It’s a huge thing to move from the country of your birth, heritage and history.

It was a good move – as is every step we take in response to God’s direction.

Almost 20 years later, the seemingly impossible has happened and I am pretty much Americanized – a U.S. citizen by choice, as I like to boast to my friends who were born here and had no say in the matter.

Today has been unusual in that I have been missing the old country. There are two factors that are responsible for the surge of nostalgia for all things British.

The first is without question the opening celebration and games of the world cup in South Africa. Friends from the UK have been blogging about it, tweeting about it and discussing it in FB updates, but there is no buzz about it at all over here. Sure, they’re trying to hype up the USA/England game tomorrow, but the fact remains that the average American would have no idea what game was being played if you talked about the world cup taking place. And let’s face it, the few people who might recognize the term would call the game by the wrong name – soccer instead of football.

I miss the buzz that came around every four years and lasted for a whole month. I was sixteen years old the last time English fans had anything to celebrate – their world cup victory back in 1966. Those were the days – Bobby Moore, Nobby Stiles, Bobby Charlton and the rest of the immortals. But though England done nothing significant in four decades, the competition itself captures the imagination.

I’m missing that today.

The second thing making me homesick for Britain is that their toilets are so maintenance free. I’ve been trying to find the time all day to put new guts into the cistern in one of our toilets. It’s amazing how often I have to be making adjustments in one bathroom or another. I never had to do that in any of the houses we lived in whether in Englad or Scotland. I love reliable, user-friendly, maintenance-free toilets. I guess the Brits have perfected them

So today, Friday June 11th, I miss the old country.

But I still love the new one!

Watching the Mets game as Day Two of this four days study break comes to an end. Internet connection is sporadic here, so I’m updating my blog while I can.

It has been a beautiful day here in Montauk and after sleeping late and taking a morning run, I was able to spend five hours at the beach reading. Yesterday I got two thirds of the way through Bill Hybel’s book Holy Discontent, but I didn’t continue with it and probably won’t. Not one of his better works – I’d rate Courageous Leadership and Rediscovering Church as his classics.

Gill and I both read the latter when we were out here in the early summer of 1998. Hybel’s dissatisfaction with inward looking churches resembling private clubs, to which he would have been embarassed to invite his unchurched friends, set him on the road to planting Willow Creek Community Church. Being able to identify with his feelings and catch some of his passion set us on the way to launching Grace Church (now Church At The Movies) in the fall of ’98.

This morning I grabbed Jim Putman’s book Church Is A Team Sport and it gave me a very unsettled day as I read and re-read the story of starting his church around the same time as we did and the principles that led to phenomenal growth.

The Biblical truths he focuses on shed some very helpful light on something that has concerned me for some time now.

While we do a reasonable job of helping people come to faith – 64 baptized in six months, at a time when it is estimated 50% of churches in the USA didn’t see a single conversion last year – we could do better at developing converts into disciples.

Plenty in these pages to think about and to discuss with our pastoral team.

It’s meant to rain tomorrow, which means continuing with this fascinating tome indoors instead of at the beach, but I’m still looking forward to it.