rel

Today was an incredible day!

• We had baptism today. I had the privilege of baptizing 4 people–three teenagers and one adult!
• I think we made up today for the cold temps that Jay Hardwick had last week when he baptized at Awaken Columbia.
• Apparently the baptistry heater stuck on. By the time I got to the church this morning, our folks had already emptied the entire ice maker into the pool to cool it down. When that didn’t work, they drained a bunch of it out and ran cold water back in.
• It was still about 95 degrees when I got into the water. We should have ordered up a bushel of soft shell crabs. We couldda had dinner on the grounds!
• We also had a ton of visitors today. Many of them were there with folks who were being baptized.
• My message today was on Philippians 4:1-9. (This is one of the Lectionary passages for today, and I had settled on it long before all the financial upheavel of the last week.)
• We are living in incredibly turbulent times. Pick any day’s newspaper or tune in to any news broadcast to see this demonstrated perfectly.
• In turbulent times, we must remember that the core of Christianity is a faith that is based on fact, not on feelings.
• Over 90% of the things we worry about will never happen.
• Physicians tell us that over 100 diseases are directly caused by worrying.
• In order to face the times in which we live, we must stand firm by standing together.
• The Bible is not Polyanna about the fact that we will have difficult times in life.
• But the Bible also tells us that we must pray in every situation–and always with thanksgiving.
• When we pray, God’s peace is unleashed and it comes to establish a perimeter line around us to guard our hearts and minds.
• It’s also been an incredible month for our Angel Food ministry.
• We are closing in on 650 total Angel Food boxes ordered for October.
• I’m meeting on Tuesday with the pastors from the Norfolk and Newport News AFM Host Sites to work out the logistics for the shipment.
• Next Sunday is our church’s 89th anniversary. I still believe that our greatest days are still ahead of us!
• Gary Lamb quotes Perry Noble who said that most churches are one major change away from doubling in size. Wow! I’m pondering on what that may mean for us.
• Tomorrow is a school holiday for our kids, so we packed up after church and headed down to the Outer Banks for a quick get-away.
• On the way down we actually filled up with gas for under $3/gallon. Hallelujah!
• The weather here is wonderful. When we arrived, it was about 72 degrees.
• Before we went to dinner, I got to sit on the balcony and watch the sun set over the Albemarle Sound.
• We’re had a great gourmet dinner tonite (yes, Pizza Hut!), and for dessert we had this incredible chocolate laden bread with chocolate dipping sauce. Wow!
• We’re looking forward to a lazy day playing on the beach tomorrow!

The onset of Fall puts me in a reflective mood. Maybe it’s the shorter days or the cooler weather, but I find myself looking back and pondering on the things that really matter. So, for the three of you who read my blog regularly, you’ll find this post is more personally reflective than usual.

Just over 4 years ago I got paroled from being a youth minister and became a pastor, and in March, I realized that it was 30 years ago that I preached my first sermon.  Also, this past week a close friend got me to thinking when he asked me some questions as he is trying to sort some things out about ministry where he is.  So looking back, here are some of the things I’m learning (and yes, I know–I am using present tense).  My brain has been like a pinball machine all week, so they are in no particular order (other than, obviously, #1).

1. Preach Jesus, plain and simple. After 30 years of preaching, I’ve decided that it doesn’t much matter if you preach topically, expositionally, or from the Lectionary. The bottom line is that we preach Jesus. Plain. Simple. Jesus.

2. Be in it for the long haul.  This is not a stepping stone to somewhere else.  God calls us to a Person (Himself), not to a place. He may put is in a place because He needs to either (1) do something through us or (2) do something inside us while we are there.  Shows like CSI have ripped us off with seeminly instant DNA analysis. Analyzing the DNA of a church takes time. Change takes time.  Studies of “turn around churches” show that traction comes in years 4 through 7 of a pastor’s tenure.

3. Get a mentor/Be a mentor. You need at least one person outside your church who you can sit down with face to face and let them speak into your life. You need them as a sounding board. And be a mentor. There’s always someone who is coming along behind you that you can encourage and bring along. And there is always someone ahead of you (chronologically and culturally) who needs reverse-mentoring.

4. Celebrate lots of little victories. If you can measure it, you can celebrate it.  Celebrate life, not death. Celebrate increase, not decline. Celebrate Spirit, not flesh. Celebrate early. Celebrate often.

5. Leverage the power of partnerships. If you are in a small church, chances are you aren’t going to be Six Flags over Jesus. You can’t do it all, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Partner with other ministries/organizations/churches whose DNA is similar to yours and leverage the partnership. Think Kingdom, not church.

6. Know your community intimately.    Study all the data you can get your hands on. Read the history. Look for trends. Look for causal relationships. And walk around. Ask questions. Then listen to the answers. Don’t just ask churched folks, either.  If you don’t know them you cannot love them. And if you do not love them, you cannot lead them.

7. Go external. The Good Samaritan was out and about, looking around, and he saw the man beside the road. He then got off his donkey and did something about it. We gotta get off our….donkeys and get outside the church building and into the real world and serve people in need, and meet needs that really exist (not just the ones we think exist and we project on them!). Most churches are one square block of fantasy (Yipee! It’s 1957 all over again!) surrounded by reality. Service does not mean “serve us.”  It’s time for us to stop being roller coaster operators in a Christian amusement park trying to make spiritually obese Christians fatter, dumber, and happier while the rest of the world goes to hell.  C.T. Studd was right when he said, “Some want to live within the sound of a chapel bell, but I want to run a rescue shop a yard from the gate of Hell!”

8. Be Word-saturated. The Catholic Church up the street has more Scripture read aloud in their average Mass on any given day than most Protestant churches hear on Sunday mornings in a month.  Most of the folks in our pews are like dry sponges.  And if a sponge is dry for long enough it will dry rots. Then if you squeeze it, it disintegrates. But if you re-hydrate it, it can regain its suppleness and usefulness.  So it is with Christians. Most of us are parched. We are dried out, and we need to be re-hydrated by the “washing of the water of the Word.” Or else when crisis strikes and pressure comes we will disintegrate.  Be a Word-saturated church!

9. Learn how to identify where God is working and lead your people to do the same. Most pastors and the vast majority of pew sitters church members don’t have a clue how to identify where God is working. Immerse yourself in Scripture and take note of how God acted in history. Then when you watch the nightly news you can trace His hand at work in the world. Learn to identify the things that only God can do. When you find it, then do whatever it takes short of sin to align yourself (personally and organizationally) with it.  I’ll let you in on a secret: this isn’t something you learn in seminary!

10. Be discerning. Pick your battles wisely. Not every battle is worth fighting, and not every hill is worth dying on. Not every need you see is the call from God to meet it, and not every opportunity that comes your way is the call from God to change direction to pursue it.  A very wise seminary professor of mine once said, “When you get out and into your churches,  everybody will try to crucify you. Choose your crosses carefully, and don’t get crucified on a Popsicle stick!”

These aren’t everything. But they are what’s at the top of my list right now.

God continues to do awesome things in Cradock!

• More folks showed up this week for Bible study…this is a good thing!
• It was great to see several folk back today after a while away
• Excitement continues to build about Angel Food Ministries
• We have over 300 boxes ordered, and there’s still the rest of this week to place orders
• The message today was from Philippians 3:4b-16
  
• Paul tells us about his One Consuming Passion
• Any time we trust in our past accomplishments as the basis for our faith, we shrink Jesus into a pocket-sized Savior, and we reduce His finished work on the Cross in our behalf
• Any time we depend on anything we do for our standing before God, then what we’re doing is we’re telling Him that what Jesus did wasn’t enough, and we have to make up the difference
• Our one consuming passion must be to know Christ and that has to be the one consuming passion of our church
• Today we had three people who came saying that they want to follow Christ in baptism and formalize their connection with our church
• I’m excited about baptism next Sunday! We aren’t baptizing 600 people (like this guy), or baptizing outside in the swimming pool in 50 degree weather (like this guy), but we’re pretty pumped up about baptizing 6!
• On Tuesday I’m taking 5 of our folks down to Elizabeth City for the Externally Focused Church Seminar
  
• On Wednesday, we continue our OnePrayer series. This week we’ll be hearing from Dino Rizzo at Healing Place Church.
• It’s been so cool introducing some great men of God to our congregation via video. It’s also a blessing to be able to sit under their teaching and receive from them.
• I’m anxious for the big brown truck to arrive this week….there’s a pre-release copy of a book that I’m very excited about that’s making it’s way from the publisher.
• This past week I had several exciting conversations about leadership training and mentoring opportunities, and I’m hoping to flesh some of these out further in the coming few days.
• Pray for me this week as I am navigating through a major transition in my ministry as a military chaplain.
• I’m working on a couple of posts which I hope to have up later this week. They’ve been percolating for a while now…and it’s time to serve them up while they’re hot.
• It’s nearly bedtime, so I’m outta here!

When God starts to move, He moves quickly. Today was no exception!

• Just before worship I went back out to the car to get something I had forgotten, and I heard kids laughing
• Down the street came a line of kids that stretched for a whole block….all headed to our church!
• ‘Tis, who’s running a local teen center, came to our service last Sunday after we connected with him at the Community Day. He told me later that it was the first time in 12 years he had been in a church for anything other than a funeral.
• He told me he was going to bring a bunch of kids from the community with him this week. He wasn’t kidding.
• We had 43 kids in Children’s Church today. Wow!
• Everybody was freaking out–wanting to print more bulletins, etc. We didn’t. And everything was ok.
• Wednesday night we had a similar moment when we had about a dozen kids from the community show up. We gotta cook up more hot dogs this week. A lot more!
• My message today talked about Real Challenges for Religious People
• My two texts were Exodus 17:1-7, and Matthew 21:23-32
• The two greatest challenges we face are:

1. Our inability to recognize God’s activity in our midst
2. Our refusal to acknowledge the activity of God

• At the core of Israel’s grumbling about the lack of water was their uncertainty that, after God had brought them out of slavery, led them through the Red Sea, drowned Pharaoh’s armies, led them by the pillar of fire by day and pillar of cloud by night, and providing manna and quail, He could not provide them water to drink.  The still weren’t convinced that God would take care of them.
• Notice what God did not lead them do:

1. He did not lead them to appoint a committee to study sources of water
2. He didn’t direct them to an oasis
3. He didn’t have them drill a well
4. He didn’t have them go to a river or back to the Red Sea

• God led them to a rock.
• God was going to act in their behalf in such a way that there could be no doubt that it was God who had done it.
• In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders weren’t any better. The prostitutes and tax collectors “got it” but the religious leaders still refused to acknowledge that the Kingdom was coming.
• We live in a God-filled world–if we know how to identify it.
• The biggest challenge for religious people is that we will ignore it.
• By the time we got home today, I was exhausted. After lunch I took a nice two hour nap.
• But when I woke up, my middle toe on my right foot was hurting. I can’t decide if it’s just out of place, or if I’ve somehow managed to get a stress fracture…..time will tell. In the mean time, it’s uncomfortable!
• For dinner I decided to cook up some of our Angel Food box…..I chopped up the cabbage and fried it with some onions. Then I fried up the bratwurst.  Man, it was good!
• Got a full and exciting week ahead!  If God’s done all this today, I wonder what He has in store for tomorrow?

You know it’s early when you are up and have finished your first cup of coffee before the newspaper arrives.  That was the story this morning. It’s D-Day.  Distribution Day for Angel Food.

Rising long before dawn, I went to the church to meet up with two of our members who were going to accompany me to the distribution center to pick up this month’s Angel Food orders.  We were on the road to Sandston by about 5:15 a.m.  Getting started was sluggish, but after a stop at WaWa for coffee and breakfast, we got moving and we got there in plenty of time.

The operation at New Bridge Baptist’s distribution center is amazing!  Their parking lot was lined with skids of boxes in rows, one row for each church picking up an order. We had a fairly small order for our first month–70 boxes–so we were near the front of the parking lot.  Once quantities were verified, we woke Matt up (again), started loading everything into the van, and soon we were on our way back to Portsmouth

I was a little apprehensive as we pulled back into the neighborhood: would we have enough volunteers from the church to unload and set up the distribution line.  One glance up the side street and I was blown away at the cars I saw parked there. Our church had turned out in force–one more time.

We unloaded the boxes and set up the distribution  line. Then we waited.  I had set the schedule to allow more time between unloading and the time that folks came to pick up their orders. But because of the awesome help of a herd of volunteers, we got it all done in about half the time I had allotted.

When folks started arriving to pick up their orders, all I could do was walk around and smile. As I met the folks who came in and began to hear their stories and their gratitude for a program like AngelFood, I was so overwhelmed!  I think I am the luckiest pastor in the world and get to lead the greatest church in the world!  I am so proud of Cradock Baptist Church!

Orders continue to pour in for October. As of this post, we are at 180 boxes ordered, and we know there will be more next week at the first of the month.

I was also able to connect today with folks from the Smyrna Ministries host site in Norfolk and the host site in at Mercy & Truth Ministries in Newport News. We are planning to get together soon to coordinate transportation for next month’s distribution.

And oh….by the way… I had a call yesterday that a local trucking company is donating a truck for us to use next month to pick up our orders.  God just keeps on showing up!