*DING! DING!* Round 2!

So last night at the Elders meeting I was asked to preach again. This will be my second time in the pulpit since joining the CBC family. Unlike last time though I won't have to preach for two services in a row because I'm preaching on New Years Day! We will only have one service at 11am so everybody will get to sleep in after the late night. Last time I had an idea of what I wanted to preach on before I was asked to preach and also had about two months to prepare. This time I have just a month and no clue what to preach on. being the first Sunday of the year lends itself to some pretty stock ideas but... I'm not a stock ideas kind of guy. A friend of mine and I were just talking about how his grandfather, Pastor Ed, uses a very visual aproach in his preaching, engaging your imagination by helping you build pictures in your mind. I love that approach and still remember vividly the imagery he presented. I would love to put that technique to work.
Having this much time in advance also allows me the opportunity to request that our "Young Adult Worship Team" plays the worship set and some of the teens can get involved in the service as well. Please pray with me that God would deliver His message!

Uncle Paulie's Storytime

Every year our church celebrates Thanksgiving Eve together. This year included story time with "Uncle Paulie." Paul is the husband of our Music Director and one of the sweetest guys God has ever blessed mankind with. My two boys enjoyed Uncle Pualie's story about the Pilgrims and the Indians celebrating God's goodness and provision after their first harvest. My two boys are on the left seated with our Music Director DL. As you could imagine after about five minutes of sitting quietly listening to the story this group of beautiful children turned into a hive of angry bees! It was a great time, a very memorable moment in the life of our church.

The new me...

Perhaps you are wondering if the new me ever posts in his blog... Things are excitingly different in the murky mist. Our ministry is growing, in spirit and in numbers. Last year was a year of challenge and growth for me. It was my first year as a full time Youth Pastor, a job I didn't deserve but I am glad that God is my Human Resource Manager. I spent the majority of my year working with, on average, six students on a weekly basis. Looking back over my records I actually met over eighty Jr/Sr High students. Anyway six was my average. I am glad to say that the average number of students I work with on a weekly basis is three to four times that many with more coming all the time! I believe that God was using my experience last year to build a solid foundation and core for the ministry here and now that the skeleton is established He alone is putting meat on those bones. I can't explain the growth apart from God's moving. He has been adding to His Church weekly. Students are coming to faith in Christ, students are growing in their relationship with Him and with each other. There is even rumor of our facility being expanded to accommodate the growth we are experiencing! All of this change has forced me so far from what I considered comfortable. If all of these students showed up at youth group all at once at this time last year I would have passed out, woken up then slipped into a coma! So the new me is doing well. Wile I am encouraged by this growth, I am not letting this apparent success define me. The Lord is blessing and I am encouraged by that but that does not mean I am a success and if it all fizzled today and I got fired it would not make me a failure. I am here because God called me here to do a work that He prepared in advance for me to do. When that task is complete, if He has another task for me, I will continue to follow Him to my next appointment. That is the only way I can live another day in the dream.