Monday Morning Thoughts

I swallowed some dog poop this weekend.  Sunday afternoon I felt like doing something fun and so I picked up my weed eater and headed over to the Church.  Halfway through giving the south slope a shave I hit a hidden dog turd (I hope it was dog) and soft pieces hit my glasses, face, clothes, and my mouth.  Lesson learned... don't grin from ear to ear when weed whacking.

Sunday night was much better.  We had a bunch of my family over for a backyard fire filled with hot dogs, hot potato salad, spinach salad, chips, homemade sun tea, hot tea, and homemade ice cream.  The food was great; the company even better.  It is so much fun when your kids get to the age where they just play with one another and have a blast doing it.

Going back to Saturday, we had Charlie's birthday party.  We went to Willow View Farms in Abbotsford and had a great time.  Lots of good food (see photo above) and family.  Charlie got a ton of toys.  At this point our plan is to let him have a new one each month to eek them out over his next year.

Going farther back to Friday, I got to meet Charla Pereau (founder of Foundation for His Ministry).  She is an awesome lady with huge faith.  I found her inspiring.  Their ministry in Mexico is mind blowing.  I picked up her book and look forward to reading it in the near future.  I also plan on praying and planning to see how our Church can partner with this work.

Moving back to Sunday morning, I was really blessed.  I opened the gate to the parking lot and noticed that a weeding angel had visited again and weeded the front beds!  I found the weeding angel later that morning and she told me that her and her son had a great time doing it.  I love it when families work together!

Karin did a great job leading us in worship.  You've probably noticed, but two Sunday's a month we're going more acoustic in style.  This comes from a place in my thoughts that believes Church should be simple.  Simple is sustainable, reproducible, and clear.  Simple doesn't mean half-hearted or dumbed down.  Simple means focused and effective.  If we have it in our Church culture that to do Church you need $70,000 worth of sound equipment and 40 people to play instruments then we've thought wrong.  I've been in Sri Lanka where they Foursquare Church has planted over 1,000 churches in the last two decades and most of them lead their music with a tambourine.  Painful?  Slightly.  Effective & Reproducible? Yes.

We won't be jumping straight to a tambourine, but I don't want us to head to a place where the stuff of Church detracts from the purposes of Church.  We come to worship Jesus, not hear a good band.  We will pray.  We will hear from God's Word.  We will have opportunity to be with another and make new relational connections.

In other news, last night I gave up reading "The Pastor" by Eugene Peterson.  I got halfway through and then got bored of it.  There some good parts in it, but just too much story/fluff.

I hope you had a good weekend and have an even better week.  We are a people that operate with urgency, diligence, and grace!