Next Wednesday Night

As most of you know I have been trying to determine what to do with Wednesday night when I am gone for General Council meetings. Our speaker will be Matt Lee from Steelville, MO.

Here is the story. At District council I was asked to introduce the Sunday School teacher of the year at the annual Christian Education breakfast. Matt was the winner and so I met him and we had breakfast. We also found that we had a lot of mutual friends like his pastor Jerry Beers. We met up again on Monday and I asked him about things and he indicated that he had completed the license classes for becoming an Assembly of God minister. It took two years. He said he was looking for opportunities to minister and that the sectional presbyter was beginning to place him in positions filling in for pastors and as an interim pastor at some churches.

Matt is his church Sunday a.m. worship leader, the Royal Ranger Outpost Commander and teaches an adult Sunday School class. He currently owns and operates Lee Masonry, a contracting business out of Steelville. I love to see faith in action. Matt is a guy who is considering the transition from business owner to Pastor. That kind of move takes faith and prayer. Pray for Matt and for next weeks service with him. Let's also commit to pray with and for Matt regarding God's plan for ministry! His story is really exciting.

Wednesday at Camp

Pastor fooling around with the other pastors after staff meeting at 8:30 a.m.

Counselor from West County Assembly of God who has his boys in the same dorm room with our boys and Pastor John.

Here is a video of Michael getting blobbed at boys swim time. He had a lot of fun. Pastor John blobbed him as you can see at the end of the video. This year we also have some leaders who are giving rides on jet bikes. BTW, this kind of stuff is why I like to work water front all week.

Today the kids (boys) became tired and it really showed in their attitudes and actions. But, we still had a god time of prayer at the end of the service and that was a good experience for some of them.

Pray that the Lord will bless us with spiritual formation in the boy today, tonight and tomorrow. Friday we drive home after a brief chapel service in the morning.

Tuesday at camp

The boys waiting for church to start.

Some of our girls before lunch.

Pastor Jerry Beers with his coy boy hat and Presbyter of our section, Pastor Danny Kemp.

We had a great first day. Four of the boys made decisions for Christ. I was very excited. All the boys have been involved in the prayer time following the preaching. This week's evangelist does some great magic tricks and is a very good ventriloquist.

The boy got second place for clean dorms. Very proud of them. Also, all our kids won free boot shaped cups for selling so much candy for camp (Western theme this year). They grant them free drinks and ice cream all week at the snack shop.

All this to say, that our kids are really starting to show the signs of being winners! I want our kids at First Assembly of God to be the best at everything and anything good that can be done in our town or state. By doing things like this our kids get a sense of accomplishment that is invaluable! It builds confidence. Keep your kids in church! Don't miss Sundays to sleep in or sleep over with friends. Don't miss Wednesdays because you think you are too busy.

If we stick together and work together, we can raise a generation of Pentecostal kids in the Washington, Missouri area who are winners in life and school with the blessing of God on their lives.

This is Why...

This is why we check for head lice before taking kids to kids camp. This little bugger was left over from last week and really grew over the weekend. No, just kidding. My wife found this beetle when we arrived at camp. All is well.

90 Day Challenge

Stephanie took the 90 day Bible reading challenge. She is on track to read the entire Bible in 90 days! End date is September 3rd. Any suggestions on ways to celebrate? This will be worth celebrating!

Monkey See Monkey Do

If you want your kids to read the Word of God and live for Jesus the number one element is example. This is Lib with here baby dedication Bible and mom at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday night.

Why a Thermos?

I have been thinking about changing the header of the blog for a while and can't bring myself to do it.

I am a coffee drinker. I think that coffee is a great tool for hanging out with friends. You could say, "I really like you and want to converse with you," (sounds like Dr. Spock, no emotion) or you can say, "Hey, lets get a cup of coffee." That way you are offering a gift and something to do.

But, what kind of coffee drinker am I? I like good coffee. I visit MannWell's Coffee Shop on Main St. in Washington and Panera Bread occasionally. MannWell's uses Kaldi's coffee and it tastes really great. I love the old building and downtown location. Knowing the people who work there is like knowing your barber. It is more than a business relationship. Though I like good coffee, I am actually a, carry your steel thermos to work, kind of coffee drinker. BTW, the header is a picture I took of my metal coffee thermos.

Here is the detail. If you are a bottled water drinker, or if you have to have an expensive cup of joe every day, then you are just high maintenance. Sorry to break it to ya'. I, However, am low maintenance. Just ask my wife.

I have heard all these statistics like, if you save the $3 you spend each a.m. on a latte and put it in a savings account you will have half a million dollars or something. Well, that may be true. The real motivator for me being a thermos kind of guy is that I do save money. I make a killer latte. Again, ask my wife or anyone at church who has had one. It is my spiritual gift to make them for volunteers in our church. Thus, I can brew my own coffee and make my own specialty coffees and save a ton that can go to missions or our building program.

The other thing about the steel thermos is that it has so many memories (mostly hunting and traveling). I remember a cold morning outside when the top froze shut. I poured coffee from the cup onto the thermos to open it and the inside was still perfectly hot! Or, sharing coffee with with my brother after I shot a deer. Before we could finish our drinks, he shot one too! Another round of coffee was then in order. Those moments were almost magical.

Lastly, the steel thermos keeps coffee hot for 24 hours. By the time my coffee is cold, it is time to brew another pot! Really, if I put 8 cups or more in my thermos, it will stay hot 24 hours. Opposed to the paper cups that keep coffee nice and cold all day! Our last visit to a bookstore in a mall that served coffee was so funny. The college girl behind the counter handed us two paper cups and my wife had the gaul (political incorrectness) to ask, "Don't you have a Styrofoam cup? This won't keep anything hot." The girl's responded like my wife was a baby killer, "You should never use Styrofoam, it is bad for the environment." Then I looked at all the plastic items in their cooler and on their shelves and thought, "What the heck! All this stuff is going to end up in the center of the Pacific Ocean killing all the fish." My steel thermos cost one pound of iron ore, a touch of carbon, and about 1.5 ounces of hard plastic 20 years ago. It is like I am recycling and saving trees every day I use it.

So, since I already have a junky car and still can't afford The Junky Car Club, I am an official member of the steel thermos coffee club. It is a special breed of ultra conservative, low maintenance, do it yourself, blue collar types who happen to be educated enough and brave enough to break with the new forms of convention and carry a steel thermos that is likely going on two decades of use.

Vision Casting

While we were out with the 50+ group I took advantage of showing them a new church building that was built by a congregation not much larger than ours and a whole lot younger than ours. The church is only about 10 years old.

One of the things that Pastor Barry did right at St. Charles River Church, was to build a big foyer with a coffee shop in it. Here are some pictures. The vision the Lord has given me for a building includes a large foyer and coffee shop. Ministry happens in relationships. The other part of the vision is plenty of altar space in the worship area. Every sermon needs to be followed by a passionate prayer response. Our church needs much growth in these two areas. When we build we will make room for these priorities among other things like missions, youth and children's ministries.

Lunch at TOSF

If you are in downtown STL, I think it is always worth stopping at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Always good food.

50+ Day Trip #2

Here are a few pictures from our day trip to the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis.

Purple Fingers

When I was a kid in grade school you could always detect the school secretary. She was the staff member with purple fingers from the mimeograph machine. Technology has changed drastically in the last 25 years.

I just spent the last hour trying to get the fax line on our new copier to work in tandem with the DSL connection that is also on that same phone line. Yesterday I spent an hour with the phone company regarding some line problems we have been having with our system. I also spent about thirty minutes trying to confirm a donation over the Internet that required a user name and password that we did not keep in our records from the last time we used it over a year ago.

I recently heard a young pastor in our area say, "I just want to Pastor like old Brother Smith, the pastor I grew up with." I thought to myself. Dude, that is impossible! Brother Smith did not have a cell phone.

Today Pastor's have greater expectations placed upon them than ever before because everyone assumes they are more accessible. Answering cell phone calls, e-mail, voice mail, FAX transmissions, and the regular mail gets a bit busy for a Pastor. Old Brother Smith was never expected to keep up on a web site and efficiently post his pod cast each week either.

The bottom line is that a solo pastor can't even do all these things by himself. You have to have people helping you. Often volunteers can be used, but they need a specific skill set. We have found that getting I.T. volunteers may place a big load on a volunteer who is already helping in several traditional ministry settings like teacher or Elder. Now they too may be overloaded with the weight of technology the church is expected to keep up with.

They key is making sure that you keep your priorities right. Here are some suggestions.
One, make prayer and personal devotion time the first thing in your day.
Two, set aside the first hour or two of ever day for study time. I actually make my cell phone remind me every day for these first two scheduled items.
Three, keep track of how much time you spend on technology and make sure that you get enough face time with people who need ministry. Face time is not face-book time or e-mail time.
Four, if you are really in trouble with time management you need to start keeping a written description of your working hours. Find out how many hours you actually work in a week. Most pastor's don't keep a time sheet, but for self examination it is good to do so occasionally. Then you can actually tell people how many hours each week you really work. It may save your family in some cases. In other cases it may really convict you as a pastor who gets very little work done for the church.
Five, only do what you can do well. If you don't have time to do some ministry item well, then you need to put that on a list of future/visionary things to add later. Do what you can, and do it well.

There is a way to overcome. God is faithful and by his leading we can be creative and effective. But, if you want to pastor your church like old Brother Smith, be ready for purple fingers.

The Remnant #2

Sunday I continued in our series, "The Remnant." This week I spoke about the Recabites in Jeremiah 35. If you look carefully in the Scriptures you can follow the Recabite family for almost 500 years!

You can read about Recab in 2 Samuel 4. Then you can read about Jonadab, Recab's descendant who made his children keep three vows in 2 Kings 10. Jonadab was a zealous fighter with King Jehu who abolished Baal worship and destroyed the family of wicked King Ahab and his wicked queen Jezabel. To keep his descendants from the wicked materialism, greed, jealousy, and party scene in Israel he made them keep three promises: to live in tents, never grow crops, and drink no wine. Two hundred and fifty four years later in Jeremiah's day they still kept the command of Jonadab.

The principals we glean are these:
First, the remnant must be counter-cultural.
Second, the remnant does not hide from the community.
Third, the remnant withstands the test of time.
Fourth, the remnant is protected by God.

Sorry it was a long sermon, but this is a story that is seldom if ever preached. The context of it spans over 500 years of Bible history. Its implications are profound and worthy of a little extra thought.

Flour, Not Salt!

Yesterday I was joking around about the boil order in Washington. I mentioned the passage of Scripture that reads, "There is death in the pot." Then I asked what was added to the pot to make it edible again and we all answered salt. The correct answer is flour. I guess God wanted them to have stew, not soup. Or, maybe he wanted them to have gravy.



My bad. Need to keep up on my Bible trivia.

Weekend Rewind

Sunday we started a series titled, "The Remnant." We are going to look at the Biblical principal of The Remnant for several weeks. The concept is that God will not allow the knowledge of himself to be erased from humanity. Nietzsche said, "God is dead." Societal evolution says that religion is a set of evolved ideas, this assumes that those ideas could go extinct! Some atheists think that we can de-evolve the concept of God, even going so far as to insinuate that there is some biological defect in the brain that causes people to have a perceived need for god and perceive religious experiences. What if those assumptions are wrong? What if God is real and we are misinformed? What if science is examining evidence trough the wrong set of presuppositions?


The Biblical principal of the remnant reassures us that the truth of God, the truth about God, will never disappear from the earth. There are dead religions. We know from history these were once practiced and now are only elements of past cultures. The promise of the Scripture is that God will not allow that to happen to the truth about him. At least once in history the truth of God hung by the single thread of one human heart. God not only saved Noah's family in the ark, God saved the truth about himself in the heart and mind of the man in the boat.


The principal of God preserving a remnant for himself is needed today! Biblical Christianity is demeaned by many as the myths of the uneducated and brainwashed. In the future the truths of Christianity will become more and more counter cultural. In the face of the attacks on your faith you need to remember that God is going to preserve a remnant for himself. God will preserve the remnant and he will enable them to pass his truth on to the next generation.


The question is not, "Will the Church survive?" The question is will you work with God and be the remnant? If you do not, God will use someone who will.

My Bible Reading

Today I finished reading Leviticus. This is my 17th time through the book. This time I took note of all the rules for remaining ceremonially clean. To stay clean a person has to avoid an awful lot of stuff.

Here is the bottom line. if I had to be conscience of that many particular things throughout my day and interaction with people I would have to think about God all the time! The trouble starts when we fall into the trap of thinking about the law without thinking about the law giver!

It was a real wake-up cal to me. I need to be more conscience of God and his word to me throughout my day. I should be more conscience of temptation and take even small temptations to be rude, lazy, unsympathetic, unmerciful, or thankless more seriously.

Finally, can you imagine having laws in place in your society that are enforced by your priest or pastor? No king in Leviticus. No elected officials, just priests and an occasional prophet to keep us accountable in our eating and drinking, honesty, household cleanliness, and sexual life. In Christ we do have liberty! The law of the Spirit of life set us free from the law of sin and death. Let's not use our freedom to be careless with our relationship with God.

My thought goes 4th

Have a great 4th.

Failing to exercise our freedom to worship is the result of our worshiping things, institutions, and frivolities of our culture.

What is worship? It is trusting some entity. Sadly we trust politics, science, the free market economy today more than we trust God. Today's mantra is, "Call your congressman." But we will not pick up litter, love our neighbor, teach our children restraint. Today's hope is that future technology will cure our troubles. The prescription for economic improvement is to let the market fix itself. These are idolatry.

Worship is spending you time on anything of value to you. Sadly we spend more time on our possessions, and meaningless things than we do on God. Yesterday an 11 year old boy was talking to me about how sad he was the Michael Jackson died. Another adult interjected into the conversation that Jackson went to court for child molestation. The boy became livid and would not even believe that Jackson had ever gone to court for such a thing. He is ignorant of the facts. But, the real trouble in my eyes was the worship of popular culture figures. Such faith was placed in Jackson, that in this boy's eyes, he could do no wrong. Who have you thought more about this week, Jesus or Jackson?

Failing to exercise results in losing what should have been exercised. After celebrating your freedom today, exercise it tomorrow and take your family to church.

Family Day

This Sunday is family day at church. No nurseries, no Jungle Jam, and no Kids Church. Just like church was back in the 1800's (except that we are going to do all kinds of fun and crazy things for the kids in the service).

We have three purposes. One, to give some workers a break. Two, to help everyone see the value of every kids ministry helper. Three, to make time for families to pray together at the end of the service.

I know that this plan has some serious risks. However, if we all dive in together this can be one of the most meaningful services of the entire year!

God Provides

This week has been a crazy week for me. Many, many interruptions and unexpected things. In all of that, I have been aware of God's provision in small ways. Our car broke down out of town on Monday, but God is faithful and the best part was the sense of peace I had dealing with the trouble. Tuesday we finally found the tile we have been looking for in our bathroom addition. We found a great deal too.

Here is what I learned this week. If I stay calm and stay prayerful in stressful times I am far more capable of thinking clearly and thanking completely. I can think clearly to solve problems. I can thank completely by noticing God's help in little things.

Timing

Sunday was our fourth Sunday in the series of messages, "We Are Family." The message had a simple title, "God Heals Family Pain." We looked at the experience of Jacob returning to his brother Esau. We often forget that the reason that Jacob left home was to escape from his brother who was thinking of killing him. That estrangement from his family brought about the travels which give us so many rich stories from the life of Jacob found in the book of Genesis.

Jacob wanted the promises of God for his life. God preferred Jacob to Esau because of Jacob's willingness to struggle for God's blessings. Esau on the other hand treated the blessings and promises of God very casually. Though Jacob's means were not perfect, his passion for God's blessing made him the heir of God's blessings.

To gain those blessings he had to face the family pain he had run away from for so long. Some of the pain was put upon him by external forces. From an early age he was labeled by his parents as trouble (his name means supplanter). He was also the victim of an emotionally divided home, his father favored Esau and his mother favored him. However, some of his pain was his own fault. He had lied to his father to get the blessing intended for Esau. He was a victim in some ways, but he was also the cause of some of his own pain. Regardless of the source, he had to face his past to get the blessings promised to him in the future. He had to return home.

Here are the steps to healing from Jacob's story in Genesis 32.
#1 The first step toward hope and healing in family pain is to face the truth.
Stop sweeping your past under the rug. If it is ruling your decisions and your chance for optimism and faith then you must face your past pain.
#2 The second step toward hope and healing in family pain is to get alone with God.
When you are alone with God you can be transparent with God, and there will be no distraction from others.
#3 The third step toward hope and healing in family pain is to wrestle with God in prayer.
How do I wrestle in prayer? Be honest with God. Let God be honest with you. Meditate or consider God's vantage point on your situation. Go so far as to consider God's love for your enemies.
#4 The fourth step toward hope and healing in family pain is to take God’s new identity for you.
When you wrestle with God think about the tags that marked your life (alcoholic, abused, victim, trouble maker, slow, second best, or any other painful tag you carry). Then, when you have accepted Christ and his forgiveness ask God what his new name is for you. You will face family pain with a new confidence when you have your new tag from God.

What made Sunday great was that there were several people who needed that message that day. I always want messages to be timeless, full of truth that is good for anyone, anywhere. But, the real trick to Spirit anointed preaching is that messages are timely, the right truth at just the right time. I thank God for helping our church to be both.

Fair Parade Float

Forthe last few years we have been entering a float inthe fair parade. The event is the weekend of July 31st this year. That is the weekend after kids camp and the weekend before we leave for General Council. So, I need a ton of help.

If you would be willing to guide a few friends in the building of the float in my absence please let me know. I can help, but will be out of town the week before and week after the parade. I really need a volunteer to head this up in 2009. If you are up to the task please let me know!