A New Year with New Opportunities

It's a new year full of new opportunities! Over the Christmas break, Jenn, Amy, Ed and I went to an awesome Irish pub up at Oprey Mills to help us bring in 2008! The Guinness was fabulous!

My church, Trinity, is embarking on 3 services this year. 2 blended at 8am and 9:15am and 1 contemporary service at 10:45am. God's house will be rockin' and we'll be worshipping using songs that you can take with you for the week ahead.

As one wise person has told me,

"Music is the language that everyone knows."

Another trip and another tire...

Ok, so I don't know if this is a sign, but the fam and i are on the way to visit family for the holidays when we get a nail in one of our tires. Good thing we were near the Corvette Hall of Fame because we found a tire place that could patch it right quick!

Vacation has been great. Caught up with good friends. Visited my home church and reminded myself why I am the pastor I am today.

If you have this on RSS feed, be sure to visit my blog to see the latest books I've burned through. And yes, I did finally finish the Harry Potter series. Totally didn't end the way I thought it would.

Oh yeah, the best part of the vacation was watching Ohio State beat Michigan. Go Buckeyes!

Cya on the flip side...

Hug your musician

Bizarre event last week. Our organist played at both our Sunday morning church services. Then, 4 hours later I get a call from the hospital that she had died! She suffered a heart attack and there was nothing the paramedics nor hospital could do. Here's the hand of God in all of this: on that same day, she shared her testimony of faith in front of the congregation. One of the points she shared was that she knew that God wanted her to tell everyone that Jesus loves them. That was her mission. She said that God wouldn't take her until she told everyone that Jesus loves them. And then, 4 hours after she said that, God took her home!

Yesterday, we celebrated All Saint's Sunday and God certainly worked through our organist to show us the kind of faith we all are given.

Amazing

CampRestore

Came down Tuesday to camp restore in New Orleans. The devestation is immense. And the home that aren't even gutted. There's piles of garbage in one yard and in another yard, there's a picture of hope as the grass is cut and the mold is ripped out from the insides and drywall is screwed in. It's truly amazing to see the swath of devastation and the glimpses of new builds happening.

Right now, my team is working on putting up sheetrock for a duplex. We're having fun but we're also humbled and amazed by the immense work that it will take to get houses to look like habitable dwellings.

Wow.

Whoops

Ok, sorry folks. I haven't updated my blog in a long long time. I'm away at a conference in Atlanta, GA and the link is below. Check it out! It's cool. And, I'm in the Guinness Book of World Records (we had to blow bubbles and throw frisbees all at the same time). Of course, I'm learning tons more than coordinating a wand full of soap and a little plastic disk. Great speakers and awesome, rockin music! They even played I Saw the Light which is a song we play at church a time or two.

http://www.catalystconference.com/

Great places to eat too. Last night, my wife and I went to a sushi bar called Blue Fin. They prepared the sushi right in front of you and when you eat it, it just melts in your mouth. Yummo.

More later...