The Journey to Outer Magnolia

Sunday Setlist 9-27

2009-09-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

We started off the morning with "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" (Doerksen) and segued into the chorus of "You're Worthy of my Praise" (Ruis). We had planned to introduce "I Will Boast" by Paul Baloche, but I didn't have full voice due to a sinus infection, so we punted at the last minute.

Some of the ladies on our worship team started their own team a couple years ago to lead worship at our Women's Retreat and they led an "unplugged" rest of the set up to the sermon with:

"When I Speak Your Name" (Clark, Kuehn)

"Breathe" (Barnett)

"Jesus, Lover of my Soul" (Hillsong)

"Peace" (was not familiar with this and don't know the author)

We closed out the service with the full version of "You're Worthy of my Praise".

Check out “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at: http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2009/09/27/sunday-setlists-62/

Sunday Setlist 9-20

2009-09-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those "fear & trepidation" Sundays because we installed a new DigiDesign Venue digital sound board last week (amazing what this thing can do) and it was our first Sunday to go live. We worked out most of those kinks at a rehearsal last Weds night, but there was still some concern about how it would all go. It actually turned out really well. We still have some things to work through, but there were no major issues that shut down or interrupted the service. Thank you Lord!

Choir opened with "Let the Worshippers Arise"

Segued into "Shout to the Lord"

-Welcome-

"Everlasting God" (L. Brewster arrangement - w/o the guitar shredding)

"Your Name" (Baloche)

"The River" (B. Doerksen) This was our prayer ministry time

-Offering-

"Great is Thy Faithfulness" (trad. arr.)

-Sermon-

Closed with "You are Holy (Prince of Peace)" (Imboden/Rhoten - MWS arr.)

Check out “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at:
http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2009/09/21/sunday-setlists-61

Sunday Setlist August 30th

2009-08-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

I was excited about today's worship service because we filled the electric guitar "hole" that has been there for several months (we've had a very talented supply guitarist pop in on occasion, but nothing steady). And it was a good thing because we kicked off the service with Lincoln Brewster's arrangement of "Everlasting God" and moved right into Paul Baloche's arrangement of "How Great Thou Art" and then launched into the chorus of "How Great is our God" to finish the set (actually ended back on "How Great Thou Art" acapella).
After a welcome time we sang "Revelation Song" which our people love (who doesn't?) and then moved into our prayer ministry time with Michael & Lisa Gungor's "Filled with Glory". Another favorite song for our people is Tony Guerrero's "How Great You Are" which took us into the sermon. We ended the service with Billy Foote's arrangement of "Sing to the King".
It was a good day in the house of the Lord!

Check out “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at:
http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2009/08/30/sunday-setlists-58/

Sunday Setlist 8-16

2009-08-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning was another great day of worship for our church.

Our choir opened with a great song called "Come & Worship" and really set the tone for worship. The we opened with an original tune I wrote over a year ago called "To Him Be the Glory" based on Eph. 3 (Now to Him who is able to do more abundantly than we ask or think...). It's a 6/8 tune in E and so we went straight into Tomlin's "Famous One" and followed up with the chorus of "Offering" by Baloche.

After a welcome time we continued with "Mighty to Save" and then segued into "Healer" for our prayer ministry time.

Our pastor has been preaching a series called "Loving God. Discovering Your Spiritual Pathways." and the sermon was on "Loving God through Caring for Others". All week I just kept thinking of an old Maranatha chorus called "Make me a Servant" by Kelly Willard, so we sang that unplugged (piano only) just before the sermon.

We closed the service with "Our God Saves" by Baloche.

It was a great morning of worship and I was pleased with how everything went.

Part of Sunday Setlists. Come share yours.

Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend! We left Thursday evening and drove to the in-laws in Burleson, TX. Slept in Friday morning and then decided to go see the 1:00pm showing of "Night at the Museum" #2. It was a good little flick. We ate a late lunch at a hamburger dive (very good homemade patty burgers) with "frings" (fries and rings) and then headed over to the Freestyle Skate Park in Kennedale and watched the boys skateboard and rollerblade. Tyler is getting really good on his skateboard and Austin took the dare and "dropped in" on some serious half pipes with his rollerblades! After a quick trip back to the in-laws to change sweaty clothes we went over to my Moms and hung out with her, then got some yumminess from the Marble Slab.

On Saturday we had a nice breakfast with the in-laws and then celebrated my father-in-law's birthday with a big late lunch and played some badminton in the backyard.

After driving home I had to run up to the church and take care of some last minute preparation for the Sunday service and then came back home to make a quick video for our summer mission trip.

Sunday morning turned out to be a great day. We had special guests "Shiloh" (a Phillips, Craig and Dean-sounding trio from the Dallas area), so we didn't have much to rehearse with the worship team, which made for a very relaxed "pre-service". Our Classic service sang quite a few congregational hymns, we prayed for families who had lost loved ones in the military as well as our active-duty servicemen and women. "Shiloh" then led in some great worship starting with "Favorite Song of All", an awesome rendition of the Nat'l Anthem, "Proud to be an American", and ended with "He Touched Me".
In the contemporary service we started off the service with Michael W. Smith's "A New Hallelujah", prayed for our military and then had our own prayer ministry time with Tommy Walker's "Break Through." Shiloh sang again, but changed the last couple songs to "Days of Elijah" and "I Bowed On my Knees and Cried Holy" with backup from our worship team. We ended the service with a song called "Glory" by Reuben Morgan from Hillsong.
We ate lunch with the guys from Shiloh and after seeing them off relaxed at home. Holly went to spend the night with a friend in Houston, so the boys and I headed off to our favorite boy eatery "Buffalo Wild Wings" and then came home and watched a movie.
So far Memorial Day Monday has been very quiet because the boys are still asleep and Holly isn't home yet!

Sunday Setlist May 17

2009-05-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

It was a good day in the Lord's House! Here's the setlist for this morning:

King of Glory (Bates)
Because of Your Love (Baloche)
Mighty to Save (Hillsong)

Choir special "Enough" (Tomlin)

The River (Doerksen)
Came to my Rescue (Hillsong)

My Faith Has Found a Resting Place (Billy Foote arr.)

Sunday Setlist

2009-05-11T20:21:00.001-07:00

After last Sunday off for a vacation, it was good to be back with the worship team and our worshipping church!
Here's the set list from our contemporary service:

Sweeter (Ratcliffe, Houghton)
To Him be the Glory (Ray)
Offering (Baloche)
Come, Now is the Time to Worship (Doerksen)
Filled with Glory (Gungor)
Amazing Grace (Chains) - (Newton, arr. Tomlin)
Friend of God (Houghton, Gungor)

We were missing electric guitar and had a fill-in bassist (my son!), but it sounded really good from my vantage point.

Lessons in Worship Ministry Leadership Part 1

2009-04-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

I've learned a few hard lessons about worship teams in my short time as a worship pastor and the last couple of weeks have brought those lessons back into focus.

Why did I ever think it was okay to allow just anyone who asked to join the worship team? I'll tell you why. Because I have been (still am to some degree) the consummate people-pleaser. In the past someone would come to me after a worship service and either ask how to get on the worship team, or ask if they could come to rehearsal and I, in order not to hurt their feelings would politely agree to let them come aboard. I even agreed on the spur of the moment one Sunday morning before the services to let someone "fill in" who then became a permanent fixture; no audition, no application, nothing. I didn't even know if they could sing. I assumed they could sing (and they could), and I assumed their character was consistent with a Christ-follower (which it was, for the most part).

I think another reason we think it's okay, is because we are desperate for band members and vocalists and we'll take the first person that says they play guitar or sang in all-state choir in high school for four years.

One scripture paraphrase from Proverbs says "Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways." Ouch. I learned and have changed my ways.

I have recently had two different people approach me about joining the worship team vocals. I no longer have difficulty saying "We have an application/audition process that you'll need to go through." It's really not that hard to say. And it gives you an out to say later "I don't think we're a good fit for your giftings." After doing a little research on the first "applicant", I discovered that they were living with someone who was not their spouse. To be honest, I find it difficult to believe that someone can claim to be a Christ-follower and hold to the belief that there's nothing wrong with living together out of wedlock (that's what they used to call it back in the day). But these are the days we're living in folks. An epidemic of biblically illiterate "believers".

Will it be difficult to tell this applicant the truth of the matter? That I have a calling and responsibility to protect the integrity of our platform with the tenacity of a bulldog? Yes, but I have learned that I would rather suffer for a moment, than regret my people-pleasing, moment-of-weakness decision for years.

The other applicant was invited to rehearsal by a current vocalist and when I talked with her about becoming a part of the team, I didn't hesitate to tell her that living "above reproach" was one of our core values for becoming a "platform personality." You're up there for the world to see and you have to ask yourself, "Is there anyone who might attend our service who, upon seeing me on the platform, could mutter under their breath 'What in the world are they doing up there? That's not right!'"

And she got that. I explained that it wasn't about anyone being "perfect", but rather living a life "so as to preclude any possibility of criticism." She agreed. And she has a beautiful voice to boot!

Six weeks into the new year

2009-02-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

Things have settled down considerably here at the beginning of '09 especially after the last couple of months of '08. Since I didn't blog much then, I'll give a brief summary.

On the homefront, the last few months of the year were filled with two boys practicing and playing football in addition to their school and church activities. Tyler was playing for a youth team in Magnolia and most of his games were in Magnolia. Austin was playing for a homeschool team that practiced in Conroe (45 min drive) 3 times a week and played ALL OVER the Houston area once a week.

On the church front, I committed our band to playing the Christmas music for our choir. Which meant we had to learn 9 songs in just about 6-7 weeks. I was also overseeing the planning for our Christmas outreach called "Miracle on 6th Street" (which included 8 scenes of the life of Christ, a hayride, food/drinks, the choir music and a children's play area). We also had a special month-long emphasis called the November Worship Experience. Which meant that I went from planning one church service to planning two services. We also changed from having 3 services (1 traditional and 2 contemporary) to having 2 services (1 traditional, 1 contemporary) and this caused some problems with our Sunday School classes. Some people who had been in a contemporary service and then a late Sunday School, now were forced to attend a traditional service. We had to do some rearranging of classes, but we got it done. All of these things converged to create the "perfect storm" for stress and I felt it. By the time our "Miracle on 6th Street" event was over the first weekend of December, I was DONE!
I took off 5 days and went to Ruidoso, NM with a couple of buddies to unwind. And then because of the way Christmas and New Years fell, the church office was closed for essentially two weeks. And I stayed at home and did NOTHING. It was glorious.

So, here we are with a new year and it has been pretty quiet, but things are about to heat up again for Easter. We just started our Spring Discipleship semester (in most places it would be the "Winter" semester, but I just can't bring myself to call it that) and we have 5 courses that our people can choose from:
The Truth Project, DivorceCare, Deep Thoughts, Catholic Connection and a Ladies Bible Study called "Lord, I Want to Know You".
This Sunday we have the African Children's Choir singing in both services. It should be exciting.

September 15 - 21

2008-09-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

Monday - Hung out with family and played "Spoons" and "Phase 10". No power until 5:00 p.m. Went into Magnolia to eat and then went to the church for air conditioning and electricity.

Tuesday - Church office wasn't open, so I worked from home and hung out with the family again.

Wednesday - No church services

Sunday - Services were back on

September 8 - 14

2008-09-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday - began to panick about Hurricane Ike. Drove in to MCA at lunch and took Holly's car to get gas because lines were already forming, stores running out of ice and water. Made hotel reservation in College Station for Friday night. Went home with the family and watched Hurricane coverage on the tube.

Friday - office closed to prepare for Ike. Spent the day with family watching hurricane coverage. Left about 8pm for College Station. Ate dinner, went to hotel and watched more coverage until 12:30am

Saturday - Holly and I both woke up about 6:30am (after a good sleep), looked outside (raining, wind blowing) and moved the boys from the hide-a-bed to our bed so we could watch more hurricane coverage. Started texting friends in Magnolia to see if they were okay. Neighbors sent us a pic of fallen tree in the front yard. Left at noon to go back home and survey the damage. No power, but we had water. Spent the night with windows open; very hot, dogs barking, frogs croaking and then a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Not much sleep.

Sunday -had very brief services at the church with about 100 people in attendance (no power in the church). Spent the afternoon at home with the family and then drove to Brenham to eat dinner and find gas, ice and internet service (found 2 of 3 - no ice). Spent the night again with windows open, but it wasn't as hot and a cool front blew in during the night.

September 1 - 7

2008-09-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

Monday - Labor Day, Holly picked up Austin from a Freshman sleepover, I took Tyler to meet friends and play, Holly took Austin to meet his ride to football practice, I picked up Tyler from friends, I picked up Austin from football practice. We never drove more than 10-15 away, but it seemed constant!

Tuesday - Worked on signs for FBC University (direction signs to show people where the classes are)

Wednesday - Breakfast with best buddy Dave at 7am, then with staff at 7:30. Staff meeting, lunch. It was the first night for our Men's Fraternity: Quest for Authentic Manhood. We only had 6 guys show up, but if they all stay the course, I really believe the material can affect real change.

Thursday -Worked on FBC University stuff most of the day. Holly and I left about 3:30pm for Austin's football game at Fort Bend Baptist Academy in Sugarland. They lost the game, but played well. We stopped and picked up Tyler from his football practice on our way home.

Friday - Worked all day and then went home and picked up Tyler and we went to the first varsity game at Magnolia West HS (started with just freshman 3 years ago and this was the first year that they have had a Varsity football team).

Saturday - I went to the first Coaches Outreach Bible study at 7:00 a.m. at the high school field house. The coaches were really excited after their first home game (which they won!), so it was a really good meeting. Rushed back home to be with Tyler while Holly took Austin to football practice. Tyler went with me to a funeral in Tomball and then we came straight back home so that we could meet Holly and Austin and head out to Montgomery for Tyler's football game. They won by 3 or 4 touchdowns.

After we got home I had to rush up to the church to rehearse with some of the worship team for a special song on Sunday morning. Didn't take long, so I got home with plenty of evening to spare.

Scott Wolfe came in from a wedding in Tyler at about 1:30am. I didn't really sleep until he was here.

Sunday -Incredibly long, but satisfying day at the church. Scott got up and went to church with me at 7am. We kicked off a new sermon series called "Heaven. You've Got Questions." with great music, a great spirit of worship and we baptized 17 students and children who were saved this summer through youth camp and VBS.

I had a lunch meeting with my Discipleship leaders and Scott gave them a word of encouragement about discipling. I decided to stay at the church because I had a worship team meeting at 4pm. Scott and I took a nap in my office.

Worship team meeting went off really well and I had great response from several of the team.

Then I started helping to make sure all the rooms were prepared for FBC University (Discipleship) courses that kicked off. We had 10 courses that our people could choose from:
DivorceCare, The Five Love Languages, The Truth Project, Crucial Conversations (having difficult conversations with family, friends, employees, employers), Family Issues: Anger, Conflict, Addiction, Deep Thoughts (deep topics of faith), Jesus on Money, Men's Fraternity: Winning at Work & Home, Sign Language for Worship and a Woman's Bible Study.

After an amazing day the family and I went out to eat at Wing Stop and then went home and crashed!

August 25-31

2008-09-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Monday -Don't remember what I did on my day off...

Tuesday -We didn't have the Coaches Outreach Bible Study because school started and they changed the school start time to 7:20am instead of 8:30. The coaches decided that they wanted to meet on Saturday mornings at 7am because they watch game film at 8am anyway. I went to the Diner anyway and had breakfast with the Men's prayer group that meets at the church at 6am.

Holly and the boys started school and had a GREAT first day. According to Holly "very peaceful and organized." Both of the boys had football practice in the evening. Holly was in Conroe with Austin and I was in Magnolia with Tyler. This is our life for a few months anyway.

Wednesday - Very unusual day: It started with breakfast at the Diner with the staff at 7:30am (some of them anyway). We then proceeded to our staff meeting at 8:30 including discussion of 3 chapters in the Hybel's book "Courageous Leadership". We finished up about 12:30 or 1pm and headed off to eat lunch together.

I was supposed to meet with a fairly new member who is starting a "Ranchers Class" that we hope grows into a Cowboy Church, so he just came to lunch with us. He and I continued our meeting back at the church looking at different rooms that he can meet in beginning September 7th. We finished our meeting about 3pm and then our Worship Ministry Associate (Choir Director) came in for an impromptu meeting. I had another meeting with two church members at 4pm to talk about Sunday School space issues. And then I went to hear one of our high school girls "audition" to sing special music one Sunday.

Then I just worked on some pressing matters while the boys were in their youth meeting. I scheduled another impromptu meeting with our technology guy at 8pm and that meeting went until about 9pm. Whew!

Thursday - After such a long day on Wednesday, I took a leisurely morning and did some work from home (also tried to catch up on all my 30 Day Spiritual Journey readings!). I rushed off at 11am to meet a church member/potential worship team member for lunch and had a great time.

Spent the afternoon working on Sunday services and a few other things, then Tyler and I headed off to football practice. Our friend Leigh (whose son is also playing football with Austin) took the boys to the Conroe practice and I met them in Magnolia afterwards to pick up Austin, then rushed back to pick up Tyler after his practice.

Friday -Had a full day just doing my duties for either Worship ministry or Adult Discipleship. Went home at 3pm to pick up Austin so he could go to the girl's volleyball games at the high school. He has 3 friends playing volleyball and he spent from about 4:30 to 8:30 watching games. He is truly into the whole youth group social thing. I went to make hospital visits after dropping him off and then did some work at the office until he was through "socializing."

Saturday -Because it was Labor Day weekend there were no football games or practice. Yee-haw! Around 3:30pm I took Austin and another friend to the movie theater to meet some of their freshman classmates. I went to a "Ropin' event" and videotaped the guy who is starting the Ranchers Class. We're going to use the footage to create a promo video for the class. Went back and picked up Austin and his buddy at the theater and then we went to the church for about 30 min. to do a couple things and then headed home.

I worked on a different promo video for the Ranchers class (without the ropin' footage) and finally finished it about 12:30am. It was pretty funny. I used the whole "You might be a redneck..." theme with statements like "If someone asks for your I.D. and you show them your belt buckle...you might want to the go to the Ranchers Class." (video below)

Sunday - Bro. Ed took a vacation day so our Exec. Pastor Milt Eichler preached the sermon. We always seem to have issues when Ed is gone and this was no exception. We had sound system issues right before the service, but got most of them ironed out. Then when we tried to show the Ranchers Class video, it locked up our computer. We finally got it to work, but not until the last service!

August 18-24

2008-09-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

Monday - Another day of "staycation". I woke up early and was going through all my "readings" for the 30-Day Spiritual Journey. The reading in the Richard Foster Book "Seeking the Kingdom" was on the "Discipline of Silence." He explains it as allowing the Lord to "fill you in the silence". It has become a much needed discipline in my time with the Lord.

Later we hung around the house, went to Tyler's football practice and then the Ray boys all went to a movie.

Tuesday - Holly had a meeting at the school and after it was over the boys and I picked her up and we went down to the Galleria area to pick up tickets for "Men at the Cross." We thought about going to the mall, but decided to head back home.

Wednesday - The last day of my "staycation" - didn't do much all day. Went to eat dinner with a couple in our church and played "Phase 10". The boys went to church, but left early so they could come play "Phase 10" with us.

Thursday - I hit the ground running at the office. There was a lot to do to get ready for the "Men at the Cross" event in Houston as well as prepare for our Sunday services. Also had a lot of detail stuff to get ready for our FBC University (Adult Discipleship) which begins September 7th.

Holly was told about a home school football team in Conroe that Austin could play on and they were desperate for more players. So she and Austin and another boy from MCA went to their first practice in Conroe. All of his equipment was provided by the team except cleats and we had to buy a size FOURTEEN cleat for this child!

Friday - Finalized details for the "Men at the Cross" event in Houston. We had about 40 men planning to go, 18 of those in the bus and staying overnight at a church in Houston. Made hospital visits after lunch and bought snacks for late night after the event.

Austin had his first football scrimmage (after only one practice!) way down in south Houston. Holly kept texting me to tell me how he was doing. Austin is on a junior varsity team and they were playing a VARSITY team. Austin played on defense and was going up against a kid who was about 300 lbs. and 6 foot plus. He said he would just bounce off of the guy when he would hit him. But the guy was nice and would help Austin up off the field!

Men started showing up at the church about 5pm and we were able to leave the church at 5:40. We arrived at the Toyota Center just a little before 7pm and got to our seats just as the opening speaker and conference organizer Joe White began his talk. He walked into the arena carrying a 12 foot "beam" on his shoulder and doing a "monologue" of the man who made the cross that Jesus died on. He huffed and puffed with that thing on his shoulder all the way to the stage, laid it down and began cutting into it with an axe to make a place for the cross member. It was a pretty dramatic monologue and one I've heard him do at least once at Promise Keepers. He extended an invitation and the floor filled up with men either making a first-time commitment or re-committing themselves to the Lord.

Max Lucado spoke in the next session and had an amazing message about David and how he succeeded in so many things, but really failed in the area of his family. He ended his life basically alone with at least one of his sons trying to kill him. We left the arena and drove over to Sharpstown Baptist Church where we unloaded and found places to put our air mattresses and bedrolls. It was a little rough sleeping, but I managed to get probably 4 hours of sleep before waking up.

Saturday - Saturday morning was filled a couple more speakers and an appeal for the men to commit to discipling a "Timothy" for six months until he's ready to disciple another "Timothy" and so on. It was a powerful ending to the event. We ate lunch on our way home and I tried to make it for the tail end of Tyler's football game, but they had just finished when I got there. They won their first game!

I went home and took a nap and then I had to go to the church at about 5pm to run sound for our Spanish Language church which was holding a revival. I finally left the church about 10pm.

Sunday -I'm always a little more nervous than usual when coming back to lead worship after having been gone the previous Sunday. But everything went well. There was a Parent's meeting for the youth, so we ate lunch there and then I just stayed at the church to prepare for Worship Team auditions that we were holding from 3:00 until almost 6:00. Made for a really long day, but it always feels good to know that I have Monday to recover from those days.

August 11-17

2008-09-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Monday - Today was Day 1 of a 30-Day Spiritual Journey that our staff is taking together. 5 Psalms and 1 Proverb a day, plus 1 chapter from Richard Foster's "Seeking the Kingdom" (short devotionals from some of his previous books like "Celebration of Discipline" and "Simplicity"), plus 3 chapters a week from Bill Hybel's "Courageous Leadership". Plus journaling in the midst of all that. Whew!

Kid's Choir Camp began at 8am and Austin was there to be a "helper". They chose a musical called "Rock Solid" which had an outdoor, summer camp/mountain climbing theme and they included a "stomp" element (beating on odd items like trash can lids, utensils, etc.) and Austin and his friend Noah were responsible for the "stomp brigade." I usually have a role in Kids Choir Camp (technical - sound/lights, etc.), but this year I was planning on taking vacation in the middle of the week, so I bowed out.

Tuesday - Today was Tyler's 12th birthday, but we had already celebrated on Sunday, so not much happened except his friend's the Cantus came over and then he later went over to their house and spent the night.

I had lunch with our "Lifeway" rep and that's always fun, because he pays for lunch and he shows me all the new Lifeway Discipleship resources.

Wednesday - Staff meeting - discussion of first three chapters of "Courageous Leadership" by Bill Hybels. Great book, great discussion, great staff!

Thursday - This was supposed to be my first day of vacation, but I just didn't have everything finished that needed to be finished, so I ended up working all day. Tyler had his first football scrimmage and made a few tackles!

Friday - First day of vacation, which was really a "staycation" because the boys had too much going on for us to leave town. Even though I was "off" I went up to the church three times (once to pick up Austin from Choir Camp, once to pick up my paycheck and later to attend the Kid's Choir performance). Didn't "disconnect" very well. The in-laws came while we were at the choir performance and made dinner for us!

Saturday - We were supposed to have football pictures for Tyler at noon, but it got rained out. So, we took the in-laws to one of our favorite hole-in-the-wall places to eat: Royer's Round Top Cafe (picture at top - in Round Top - 50 min away). It's an old cafe on the town square and they have great food and even better pies! We rushed out of there to get back home for football scrimmages and the opening ceremonies for the season at 5pm, but they also got rained out. Turned out to be a very leisurely Saturday.

Sunday - At home while FBCM went on without me. It was a weird feeling, but much needed. Went to College Station with the fam and ate lunch at On the Border, hung out at Barnes & Noble and Best Buy and then went back home to chill some more.

August 4 - 10

2008-08-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Monday - Friends Mason & Hudson were still with us for the day. Holly took all the kids swimming at our other friend's the Cantus. Austin went from swimming to "Shibby" which is the new freshmen introduction to the Sr. High Ministry. They were supposed to go tubing in San Marcos, but Tropical Storm Edouard was looming and they decided not to travel even though it was away from the storm.

Tuesday - Coaches Outreach was at 7am (picture up top). I left there and went over to my buddy Dave's shop to change the oil in Holly's car. The school's were closed because of Tropical Storm Edouard and the church office closes when the schools close, so I went home (even though it didn't look at all Tropical stormy!) When I got home I played Phase 10 with family. Never really saw much of the effects of the storm although Magnolia saw some strong winds, but no serious damage (a large tree fell over at the house where Austin was staying for Shibby).

Wednesday - staff meeting

Thursday - Attended Willow Creek Leadership Summit at Fellowship of the Woodlands with the staff. It was one of the best conferences I've attended. Bill Hybels is certainly used of the Lord, but is also a ministry genius.

Friday - Willow Creek Leadership Summit continued and was just as amazing as the first day. Dinner with staff and wives at Landry's Seafood! Tyler went to his FIRST youth group function (as an incoming 6th grader) called "Shibby" which is the new 6th graders introduction to the youth ministry. Overnight fun.

Saturday - Lazy day until 4:30pm and then Holly and I headed off to see the Pastor sing with his old choir (classmates and other alumni) at the Houston Baptist University Reunion concert. Favorite babysitter of the boys, Rebekah Fontenot took the boys to a movie.

Sunday - Pretty typical Sunday morning, but we celebrated Tyler's birthday at lunch. We had all signed a b-day card for him and when he read it he started crying and said "Thanks guys". It was very sweet.

July 28 - August 3

2008-08-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

Monday - Went to the doctor because my allergies had been crazy for several weeks (stopped up - nose dripping - stopped up, eyes watering, etc.) The Nurse-practioner gave me a shot of cortisone and some antibiotics. Austin spent the night at the Cantu's, then left there and went to see the new Batman movie for the second time with one of the summer youth interns. Then called to tell us he was spending the night with the intern and some others (didn't have extra clothes or toothbrush & deodorant, but he didn't care. Said he would "borrow" some).

Tuesday - I started work on our FBC University (discipleship) brochure. We will have NINE discipleship courses to offer this fall including a DivorceCare group, Five Love Languages, Family Issues (conflict and addictions), Jesus on Money, The Truth Project, Crucial Conversations, Sign Language for Worship, Deep Thoughts, and Men's Fraternity: Winning at Work and Home. After spending the whole day with the summer intern, Austin called us and said all the Jr. High guys were spending the night up at the church. Again, no clothes, no toiletries.

Wednesday - More work on the brochure for FBC Univ.

Thursday - Tyler had first full contact practice at football. He loved it!

Friday -

Saturday - Today was our annual "Back to School, INC" at the church. We gave out almost 1000 backpacks and pairs of shoes to children, gave immunizations to about 75 and haircuts to probably 50. Tyler and Austin's friends, Mason and Hudson came over for the weekend while their parents were in Kemah.

Sunday - Long day: Meet the Pastor's lunch, Rehearsal

July 21 - 27

2008-07-22T15:12:00.002-07:00

Monday - We (Gatlin Elms and I) had a lazy day in Austin because we couldn't check in for the Worship Leader's Conference until 4:30pm. We had a late breakfast at a place called "Cinnamon's Bakery" and ate cinnamon rolls that looked like this. Then we headed out to look for a guitar store and just happened upon an unassuming, out of the way, amazing place called Guitar Rez (short for resurrection - I assume they repair and "resurrect" guitars.). They had all kinds of acoustic and electric guitars and Gatlin and I really enjoyed just hanging out there.

We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a little while before heading out to check in at the conference. We were there at 4:30 and the opening session didn't start until 7pm so we had some time to kill. We looked around the vendor tent for awhile and then headed over to go through a life-size replica of the Tabernacle. It was really neat. They give you a little mp3 player with headphones that takes you through about a 45 minute tour of each part of the Tabernacle and you participate at several "stations" (burn wood at the altar of burnt offering, washed our hands at the Laver, lit an oil lamp at the Lampstand, took a stick of incense into the holy of holies). It was a neat experience. At 7pm the opening session began and we had an amazing time of worship with Matt Redman, Paul Baloche (probably my all time favorite) and others.

Tuesday - Day 2 of conference. We skipped the morning big group session and ate a late breakfast again (cinnamon rolls!) then headed on over to the conference to attend our first break-out session. I went to a session called "Rehearsing Your Team" with one of the music staff guys from Saddleback Church in California. Then we ate lunch and went to our second session of the day which was "Transitioning Worship" by one of my favorite songwriters/worship leaders Lincoln Brewster. It was about making worship style changes in your church (which we've already done, but it was good to hear his views on this).

We skipped the large group afternoon session and went back to the hotel where I thought I would nap, but spent my time checking emails and doing some work for church. We headed back up to Riverbend Church for the evening large group session to be led in worship again by some neat leaders (Leeland, Phillips, Craig & Dean).

Wednesday - Day 3 of the conference started with breakfast of champions - Cinnamon roll again! Then we went to another break-out session. I went to a songwriting class with Tommy Walker (another one of my favorite songwriters/worship leaders). There were probably 75-100 people in the class and after talking about songwriting (for worship) he led us in writing a song! He took ideas from people for the lyrics and melody and within about 20 minutes we had a verse and chorus of a pretty good song!

After lunch I went to another songwriting class with my friend Chris Tomlin. I can say I knew Chris when he was just a punk kid at Super Summer camp in the early 1990's. Now his songs are some of the most popular worship songs sung in churches around the world (How Great is Our God, We Fall Down, Holy is the Lord, Forever - he has 4 songs in the top 20 of CCLI songs sung around the world). I'm excited for him and it's amazing how the Lord is using a little guy from Grand Saline, TX to impact the world-wide church.

We ended the evening with worship by Don Moen (Give Thanks, I Just Want to Be Where You Are among many others), Kathryn Scott (a sweet little Irish girl who writes amazing songs), Gateway Church worship team (where my friend Ed Funderburk is on staff) and then Lincoln Brewster. The picture at the top is what our evenings looked like.

Thursday - Another late breakfast - Gatlin had another Cinnamon roll but I went for the Apple Kolache this time. Then we went to a break-out session called "Creating a Culture of Worship" by Buddy Owens (son of Jimmy and Carol Owens). It was probably the most practical and inspiring session I went to all week. After lunch we went to a session called "SongDiscovery Listening Panel" because Gatlin had submitted one of his own worship songs and they listened to it and critiqued it. They really liked the song. If his song is chosen it will go on a CD compilation of worship songs that goes out to 20,000 worship leaders. Really exciting for Gatlin!

After that session we left Austin and got home about 5:30. Austin was still at Jr. High camp so Tyler and I watched a funny Will Ferrell movie (Kicking & Screaming).

Friday - I did a little work at the office in the morning and then spent the rest of the day at home with the family. We went to the Woodlands Pavillion in the evening because Gatlin won a radio contest and got to open for the Foreigner/Bryan Adams concert. This is what he looked like on stage from where I was standing.

Saturday - was a lazy day for me. Holly got up and ran 5 miles with her friend and personal trainer Erin. She amazes me. The boys and I went over and met her at the Osteen's house (Erin is house-sitting while the Osteens are in Kenya for 2.5 months) Austin fished in their pond and caught this guy. It's a large-mouth bass that weighed 3.5 lbs. Austin says his heart pounds when he hooks these guys.

Sunday - Here is my twitter post from that day: It was a good day in the house of the Lord. Now there are just two of us in the house of Ray. One kid at camp, one at a friend's house.
Tyler left for his last Pre-Teen Camp and he was excited.

July 13 - 20

2008-07-22T15:12:00.001-07:00

Vacation Bible School started early Monday morning. We used the materials and theme from Group Publishing called "Power Lab" (kind of a science lab theme). We had over 300 children and adult volunteers for the first day. I was responsible for the songs that we did in the opening and closing session. We sang several songs each day with a video (they have hand motions that I didn't know very well), but then I led a couple songs with my guitar and that's always fun. You wouldn't think doing something that simple would require much, but I was always "whooped" everyday when VBS was over at 12:30.

Wednesday - Tyler had his first football practice and loved it (picture here). It's going to be a long season (games could last until November, sometimes December if they go into finals), but I think he's ready for it.

Saturday - It was a very relaxing morning, but then I had to go up to the church and setup the stage. We had to take everything off the stage for VBS and I was too tired to do it after VBS Friday. Somehow I managed to squeeze in a date with Holly after setting up!

Sunday - After church Sunday morning I was able to go home and FULLY relax. I cancelled worship team rehearsal because I needed to pack for the Worship Leader's Conference I was attending in Austin. I took Gatlin Elms with me who is a young songwriter and worship leader for our youth and others. He and I left about 6pm because I had to lead worship at Wilderness Ridge Camp. After leading worship we drove on in to Austin and checked into our hotel and then went and found a place to eat.

July 7 - 13

2008-07-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

Monday - Pretty lazy day. Took Austin and Tyler fishing at staff member Larry's house. Austin always catches something there (usually 1-2 lb. bass).

Tuesday & Wednesday - It was kind of a slow week and I don't remember what I did on these days.

Thursday - Holly went to do some work for school and somehow left with my car keys. She gets no cell phone reception while in that building so my calls to her went unanswered. So I worked from home! Technology is a wonderful thing.

Austin and I left about 6pm to drive to Wilderness Ridge Camp and lead worship (that's him with his "Djembe" and other percussion instruments at the top)

Friday - I spent the day in the office getting ready for the Sunday service and making hospital visits. Holly spent the night with her friend Erin in Houston so they could run at Memorial Park downtown.

Saturday - Holly was running downtown with Erin and Tyler had football try-outs at about 9am so the boys and I got up earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and headed into Magnolia. Tyler loved the try-outs and is excited about football.

Sunday -it was a fairly typical Sunday: long morning (starts at 6am, ends at 12:30pm), try to get in a nap before heading back up to church for worship team rehearsal at 4pm. Austin and I left at 6:00pm to head for Wilderness Ridge Camp again.

June 30 - July 6

2008-07-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

Monday - I had a lazy morning (day off and the rest of the family was in Burleson) until I got a phone call from a church member. My "favorite" words to hear on a Monday are "I know it's your day off, BUT..." There was a pretty good relational crisis and I told them I'd meet them at my office, but when I got in my car the battery was dead. So I asked them to come out to the house, hoping for a jump in exchange for my counseling services.

Tuesday - The dogs woke me up at 4am barking incessently, so I went outside to see what was going on. They were outside the gate and when I went outside the younger dog came over to me, but our older dog, Stacey wouldn't come even when I called her. She was just looking up at something, so I went over to her and found the object of their interest. They had chased a opossum up a fence post. I got the dogs back inside the yard so they would stop barking. When I went out the next morning the opossum was still there sitting atop the fence post...so I took a picture of him (at the top).

I headed on to Coaches study where we were in a study called Flawed: Imperfect People Chosen by God. We're studying people like Jacob (deceiver), Gideon (insecure, self-doubter), David (pre-meditated sinner), Solomon (unwise lover), Elijah (slow learner) and Jonah (prejudiced prophet). It's been really good!

Later in the morning we had a meeting with a guy from the BGCT church architect dept and talked with him about future building plans. At some point during the day my new laptop came in. I have needed a laptop for working at home or when I'm out of town and our Executive pastor bought me a really nice one. Our church network is set up so that I can access all of my (our) files no matter where I am. It's very handy!

Wednesday - Usual staff meeting in the morning and planning for the Sunday service.

Thursday - Because I was a "bachelor" for the week David & Hope Elms invited me to breakfast at the Diner. I would probably eat there everyday if I could afford it. Not necessarily because the food is outstanding, but just because it's handy and I enjoy the fellowship with people.

Holly and boys returned to the house while I was at the office so I was glad to see them when I got home.

Friday - Holly ran her first ever 5k run (3.1 miles) and so we got up really early and went in to downtown Houston to cheer her on (pictures here)
After a nap I took Austin fishing and then we all headed in to the Tomball Chick-Fil-A to see our friend Gatlin Elms perform a concert and then watched fireworks at dark.

Saturday - We had a pretty relaxing morning, but then I had to go to the church later in the afternoon to set up the stage after a wedding.

Sunday - We had our Patriotic service in the morning, I got a short nap and then it was off to rehearsal in the afternoon.

Austin, Tyler and I left about 6pm to go lead worship at Wilderness Ridge camp. It's a good hour and 45 minutes to the camp, but we got there to lead worship at 8pm. It's kinda weird driving that far to lead 4 songs and then leave, but the camp leaders think it adds something special and we enjoy it. We thought we would drop in at FBC Magnolia Sr. High camp over near Bryan so we headed that way about 8:30 or so. It took longer than I thought it was going to take and we got to Bryan about 9:50. I was pretty tired after a long day and it was probably another 30 min. to the camp from there, so we decided to get something sweet at Dairy Queen and head on home.

June 23-29

2008-06-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Monday - Holly and I got up fairly early and started talking about what we wanted to do. We decided to take a quick trip to Austin to swim in Barton Springs and go to the Capitol and Texas Museum. We packed up quick and headed out by about 11am. Got to the hotel about 1:30pm, unpacked and headed right back out to Barton Springs (for the uninitiated, Barton Springs is a natural spring swimming hole not too far from downtown and UT). We ate our picnic lunch at the park and then headed into the water. It was sooo cooold! I thought the heat would make it feel good, but first it wasn't extremely hot and second the water was so cold that it hurt (constant 72 degrees).

We played for about an hour and Holly decided she wanted to go get her running in, so we got our hands stamped so we could come back in, and headed over to the running/walking/biking trail nearby. She took off running and the boys and I just meandered along the river looking at fish and turtles and people jumping off a bridge. Eventually Holly turned around and we met up with her. By then she was ready to get back in that cold water. I thought I would be too, but it was still too cold! I sat out on the grass and took a little nap.

We headed back to the hotel, got dressed and headed for dinner at Fuddruckers. Yumm!

Tuesday - We got up and packed up and then ate breakfast at a place called Cinnamons Bakery. Oh yeah...I'll eat just about anything with cinnamon & sugar on it! I had a sticky, pecan bun and everyone else had the cinnamon roll.

Then we headed on over to the Texas museum and spent about 3-4 hours there before heading back home. Holly had a women's ministry meeting at Cindy Seay's home with other staff wives

Wednesday - We had our last "Fisher's of Men" meeting and had about 12 or so guys. Larry did a great job with the bible study each week and the guys had a good time fishin' and fellowshippin'. Pictures here.

Saturday - Tyler had a friend over to spend the night and after they got up we decided to go the Soaring Club of Houston. It's a glider field and it's only about 15 min. away. The boys and I have been several times and we like to watch the gliders get towed up into the air and then land back on the field after "soaring" for sometimes hours on a good day.

Then the boys and I went to the KSBJ Share-a-Song concert which was outdoors in a mall parking lot and, most importantly, free! We went to see Season 6 American Idol Chris Sligh who has recently released his first CD. We have really enjoyed the CD and were looking forward to seeing him. He did a great job and we enjoyed ourselves. Pictures of the boys and Chris here.

Sunday - Holly and the boys left to spend 5 days with family in Burleson so I was a church bachelor. I took an older couple out to lunch because they want to start a Divorce Care group in our church. I'm really excited about it because they have been leading groups like this for a number of years and are really experienced. I made it home in time to take a short nap and then headed back to the church for worship team rehearsal.

June 16-22

2008-06-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday - "Father's Day!" Holly fixed a big lunch and my favorite dessert. I don't know what it's called, but it has a layer of crushed Oreos, a layer of vanilla ice cream, a layer of chocolate yumminess (kinda thick hot fudgey stuff) and is topped with Cool Whip and then frozen. It didn't last long! Thinking about my dad today and his influence on me. I miss him, but know that he is where his heart was/is!

I had a good nap and then Austin and I went back to Wilderness Ridge to lead worship for the incoming campers - about 30 3rd-6th graders. Austin played the "djembe" (big bongo thing), tamborine and shaker while I led with my guitar. They loved it. And I love it that my boys are getting old enough to help me lead worship!

Monday - After getting home late Sunday night from Wilderness Ridge I slept in a little late. Holly decided to take the boys to the Children's Museum in Houston, so I stayed home and piddled around. The boys both went to different friend's houses to spend the night which meant Holly and I had an evening alone. What did we do? She worked on school stuff on her laptop and I piddled on the other computer.

Tuesday - Coaches bible study at 7am, but none of the coaches were able to come. We still had three of our "regulars" who have all been involved in coaching at some time or other, but now have different jobs. Tried to get back in the swing of office work, but it was hard after a week at camp! Holly brought Austin into town for an 8th grade boys Bible study and instead of going home and then having to go back and get Austin, I just stayed and worked at the office. Made for an even longer day, but he loves the bible study!

Wednesday - We didn't have staff meeting because most of the guys were on the mission trip. However Bro. Ed still took Larry and I to lunch! I worked on a new Worship Planning website that allows me to plan my services, assign volunteers (band, vocals, tech crew) and then it sends out emails to everyone involved in that service and gives them buttons to click that say "Accept", "Decline" and "View This Service". So they can let me know if they are going to be out of town so I can line up an alternate. They can also look at the website and see the order of worship with all the songs and charts for the band. They can also hear the song if I upload it. It's really neat and the worship team liked it too!

Went to "Fishers of Men" at Larry's house and enjoyed visiting with the guys and taking pictures of the fish they caught (pics here). Larry has done a great job with the bible study. Very encouraging.

Thursday - Spent most of the day "tweaking" the Worship Planning website. It took a lot of setup, but is worth the time spent.

Austin and I left about 6pm to go and lead worship at Wilderness Ridge for the closing night of the young campers. The camp director asked if I would come back some more. He offered to pay for my gas, so I will be going back July 6, 10, 13, 17, 20 & 24 (opening and closing of 3 other camp weeks). Whew! I'm tired already. I will definitely get to know the "trail" between home and Wilderness Ridge (all 116 miles of it!).

Friday - Spent the day wrapping up details for the Sunday service and tying up some other loose ends. Holly came by to get me about 4pm and we took the boys to stay with their friends Mason & Hudson (can't hear "Hudson" without thinking of "Upstairs, Downstairs") and "Aunt" Ashley. We took their parent's with us (Travis & Allison) and met up with other friends Paul and Jennifer at Churrascos downtown. Then we went to the Michael W Smith Worship concert at Lakewood church where he was video-taping for a new worship DVD. We got to sit on the third row and meet him after the concert. It was awesome! Can't believe I didn't get a picture with him! Went to Starbucks after with Travis and Allison. Lost track of time and didn't get home until almost 1am!

Saturday - Needless to say we slept in late and then we all went and had a late breakfast at the Magnolia Diner. Holly went back home and the boys and I went up to the church to practice for Sunday services (Austin was filling in on drums. Tyler played along on guitar for practice). We spent the rest of the evening at home relaxing.

Sunday - We had really good services and Austin did a great job playing drums. One of my "kids" from Jersey Village BC student ministry was in town with her husband and wanted to eat lunch with us, so they came out to the house for roast and potatoes. It was great visiting with her. She's one of my "trophies" (has kept the faith and continues to serve the Lord). I had to cut our visit short so I could get up to the church and prepare for rehearsal. Came home after and could barely keep my eyes open because I didn't get my Sunday nap!

WIlderness Ridge Camp June 8-13

2008-06-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

The boys and I spent Sunday afternoon through Friday evening at Wilderness Ridge Camp. It's a boys camp that has all the outdoorsy stuff (fishing, canoeing, riflery, archery, low and high ropes course). I was the Servant Leader for a group of 10 boys (including Austin and Tyler) and we had a great week even without A/C!

Instead of blogging about the whole week, I'll just let you see the pictures I took. www.twitpic.com/photos/sray61

By the way, the pictures are in reverse order and there are two pages worth. So if you want to see them in chronological order, go to the bottom of the page and click the "oldest" link and start about the middle of the page.

You can also read all of the updates that I sent to Twitter.com throughout the week at www.twitter.com/sray61

June 2 - June 8

2008-06-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Monday - Delivered soccer flyers to 6 elementary schools (my part as a parent of Fun, Fair, Positive Soccer). Went to church to check email. Got a call from the Pastor who was on call as hospital chaplain (but too far away) to visit a family at Tomball ER whose 4 year old son had drowned in a neighbor's pool. It was a first for me and not something I'd like to repeat.

Tuesday - Setup a new computer in our Sound/Video booth. Ate buffalo wings with buddy David.

Wednesday - We had our first ever "Fishers of Men" meeting at the home of our Assoc. Pastor of Outreach and Assimilation (Larry Edwards) who lives on a large pond. We'll meet each Weds in June. The men fished for 45 min, then we ate hot dogs and Bro. Larry is doing a bible study from passages of Jesus "by the sea." Pictures here.

Thursday - had a meeting with the president of 360hubs.com about church technology. It's some really exciting stuff! Had to rush away to pick up my family from Michigan at the airport. Picture here

Friday - made two hospital visits downtown. Austin helped me unload a trailer load of Easter set stuff in our storage unit. He is a hard worker and loves doing anything with his daddy! (The same can be said for Tyler actually). Then I worked on songs for Wilderness Ridge Camp.

Saturday - I had a leadership meeting at Wilderness Ridge camp at 3pm (1 hour 45 min drive). On the way home I happened upon a bad head-on collision outside Brenham at 10pm. I was the only car with a flashlight (no emergency vehicles yet) so I had to stop and render aid. One girl (20 years old) died on impact and a 55 year old woman (crossed over the median) died not long after the impact. I held my flashlight while the EMT worked on her. The second time in one week that I stared death in the face. Very sobering.

Sunday - great worship service with Jennifer Bacak (pastor's daughter) singing "Revelation Song". It was amazing. Rushed home after church with the boys to eat lunch and pack the car to leave for Wilderness Ridge. Arrived at Camp about 3pm and started greeting the boys who were in my cabin as they arrived. Here's a picture of the boys getting to know one another.

May 26-June 1

2008-06-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

Monday - Holly was gone, so it was a lazy morning. But then we got busy and cleaned up around the house!

Tuesday - I had the usual Coaches study at 7am, but then went back home to get the boys so that they could meet some friends to go see Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia new movie). Meanwhile Holly arrived at home from being with her sister and parents.

Wednesday - Holly and the boys left to do SAT testing at MCA and after they were gone I realized that Holly had my only set of car keys. She couldn't answer her phone because there is no reception inside the school, so I was stuck at home. But I was able to do some church work from my computer, so it was not a total loss.

Thursday - I went in to work and at lunch time I drove to Tomball for the Grand opening of a new Arbys. Holly and the boys had been doing testing again at MCA and we all went to lunch together with several families from MCA. Later that day the boys and I went to a concert to see our friends in the Robbie Seay Band (our pastor's son) & the Gatlin Elms Band in Tomball.

Friday - I had to move some Easter stage props and sets from one storage unit to another. I asked the boys and their friends the Cantus to help and they were great workers! Then I took them all to their makeup soccer game at 5pm.

Saturday - The boys and friends had their final soccer game at 10:30am and got their trophies. Then we (boys and Cantus) moved more storage stuff. I had to get the Cantus and the boys home so they could finish packing for their trip to Michigan. They met over at the Cantus at 3:00 pm and headed out for the airport. I became a bachelor for 5 days.

Sunday - Sunday was Graduate recognition in our services, and then Meet the Pastor's Lunch. I had a brief rest time at home before heading back up to Worship Team rehearsal. Later I went to Montgomery to see the Gatlin Elms Band at a Steak house called Shanahans. They did a good job and the people there really liked them. I hung out with my good buddy and father of Gatlin, David Elms.

May 19-25

2008-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Monday - After being at the conference Thurs-Sat, I got up feeling pressured to do some church work on my day off. Spent a couple hours sending out announcement information about a Singles Sunday School class that starts June 1st and a Men's Ministry opportunity on Wednesday nights in June.

Holly and Austin went into town to do some shopping and run errands and Tyler and I spent a couple of hours going through camping equipment to make sure we were ready for our trip to Lake Somerville.

Tuesday - At lunch time I went to MCA (school for Holly & boys). They had several drama sketches that were very impressive because the kids actually wrote the scripts; and all three (or four) of the sketches tied together to talk about life with/without Christ. Then they handed out awards. Tyler won the Drama Award (gets it from his mother) and Austin won the leadership award (don't know if I've mentioned, but Austin has been the Student Body president all year!) Austin had youth band practice at 7pm, so I didn't go home until about 9pm.

Wednesday - We had our usual Staff meeting and then ate Chinese for lunch. I worked on Sunday's service a bit among other things. Holly brought the boys up to the church around 5pm and because I didn't have any major responsibilities she and I went to dinner at Chili's. We haven't had much alone time lately, so it was a nice "mini-date." Then I went to the Student Service (called "6th Street") and I stood up in the balcony with Tyler and watched kids "texting" on their phones during the service. I couldn't believe how many of them had their phones out and so I found a laser pointer and started pointing it at them when they would pull their phones out. Most of them would hide it quickly and didn't know where the laser was coming from, but one kid absolutely didn't care and just kept texting away while our youth minister spoke.

Thursday - I worked on a few loose ends at the office in the morning and then MCA had their end of school party (talent show, slideshows) at lunch time . I went back to the office to tie up those loose ends and then headed home to pack up for our camping trip. We finally left for Lake Somerville about 7pm, arrived at 8:30pm.

Friday - We spent the day sailing, swimming, eating and enjoying our friends. Oh yeah...and getting sunburned.

Saturday - We started packing things up shortly after breakfast and left before lunch. Somerville is barely an hour away from home so that was nice to be home quickly. Holly went to stay with her sister because her parents were in Alaska and her grandmother needed some help. The boys and I went up to the church a little later to set our stage back up after a wedding. I'm glad we don't have many weddings because EVERYTHING has to come off of the stage. But the boys are a great help to me and we usually get paid by the wedding party, so the boys like that little extra cash flow!

Sunday - Our services went really well. We started with a Memorial Day video and later had a short emphasis on the Gideons ministry and showed a powerful video testimony of a Muslim man who came to Christ after being given a Gideon Bible in prison. You can see the video here. Oh yeah...Austin played drums for me in our worship services! He was amazing! I'm excited about both of our boys and the musical talent they are showing.

Austin went fishing with a friend's family after church, so Tyler and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie by ourselves. It was entertaining, but a little over the top. Because it was Memorial Day weekend there were no activities at the church, so we got to go home and relax after the movie.

May 12-18

2008-05-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Monday - Today was clean up day (insert Barney song "Clean up, clean up. Everybody everywhere. Clean up, clean up. Everybody do your share"). Holly had done some serious reorganizing the Saturday before and so we had a lot of "stuff" that had to go up in the attic.

Tuesday - Today I got the go ahead from the powers-that-be to order a new computer from HP for our sound booth. We do most of our video and media projection for our services from a computer and the one we have is "glitching" so I ordered a new high tech/high speed beast.

Wednesday - We had our usual staff meeting at 9am which lasted until about 11am and then we all went to lunch at Hart's Chicken Buffet in Tomball. After returning to the church I spent 45 min on the phone trying to change one little thing on the computer I ordered on Tuesday, but had to cancel the order and start over with a new order.

Left at 2pm to head to Fort Worth for belated Mother's Day activities. Arrived at Mom's about 6:30pm and we headed off to Dickey's BBQ. While there we heard the Emergency Broadcast thingy over the radio. Tornadoes were in the area. We drove to John & Marci's expecting to run into really bad weather, but didn't until the trip back to Mom's house later. I got on her computer and finished up my preparations for the Sunday service.

Thursday - Had breakfast with Mom at Mimi's Cafe (French toast stuffed with cream cheese and Orange Marmelade - wow!) and then headed over to Plano to visit with Meme. Had a great visit (thanks Meme!) and then headed about 15 min. north into Frisco to register for the Dynamic Church Conference. Met the rest of the staff at the tail end of their lunch at Cheesecake Factory and got to sample some sort of banana cheesecake and chocolate raspberry cheesecake.

The conference started at 1:00pm with a pretty boring keynote speech by the CEO of Fellowship One (church software and organizer of the conference). Then I followed that up with 2 hours of 2 sessions that were over my head, so I felt very frustrated by the first day of the conference. We had dinner in the conference center and then headed off to check-in to our rooms. We were all pretty tired and just hung out in our rooms for awhile. I was rooming with staff buddy Larry Edwards. He can't sleep on a bed because of back problems (sleeps in his recliner every night at home) and he had brought an air mattress and had it rigged up like a recliner in his part of the suite. There was a door between the "bedroom" and the "living room", so it was like having my own room. I slept pretty good although I must have had too much to drink because I had to make 3 trips to the bathroom during the night.

Friday - Another boring keynote speech at 9am, but the sessions in the morning and afternoon were much more practical and interesting for me on this day. It's amazing what is happening in world of technology...even for the church!

At the end of the conference we (staff) ate at Macaroni Grill and then the pastor and I went to the conference-sponsored concert with Lincoln Brewster who is one of my favorite worship leaders/songwriters. Got back to the hotel a little before 10pm and hung out in the room of Children's Minister and Executive Pastor Jesse & Milt. They were watching the AA Baseball Game (Frisco RoughRiders) out their 10th floor window with a fireworks show at the end.

Saturday - We all met for breakfast at 8am and were headed back home by 8:45. Larry rode with me and we got back to Magnolia by about 12:15pm which meant I made it in time for the boys' soccer game. They played a great game and scored about 8 or 9 goals against the other team. When we got home, I crashed in my recliner and took a little nap. Went up to the church a little later to tie up loose ends for the Sunday service.

Sunday - was a long day. After the services we went to eat lunch and then headed home. We left Austin at the church for youth band practice. I was 5 min. from home when he called me and said they couldn't practice because they didn't have an adult with them. So I got home,. changed clothes and headed back up to the church. Tyler went with me and we all just stayed up at the church until I had worship team rehearsal. After that Holly came up to the church and we headed out to the pastor's house for a New Member's fellowship. We didn't leave his house until about 9pm. Needless to say, I was pooped by the time we got home.

May 5-11

2008-05-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

Monday - It rained pretty much all day, but it was very nice to be inside with the family on my day off. I had to run to town to pick up a few things. Holly wants me to build some shelves so she has a place to put all her books, so that's my new project (Hope to work on it this weekend).

Tuesday - We started a new 4-week study at the Coaches Bible Study called "Collisions: My Expectations - God's Character". The first study was "Why Allow Temptation" and generated some good discussion.

After the study I went to the office to get a few things done before leaving town for a funeral. Our Assoc. Music Minister's dad had a heart attack and died late Saturday night near Beaumont. I left with Ed & Cindy (pastor) to drive over for the viewing Tuesday evening and then we stayed overnight for the funeral Wednesday morning. I had a good time visiting with Ed & Cindy, as always and we ate at the Texas Road House and all had really good steak.

Wednesday - After the funeral we got back to Magnolia about 3:30, but I had to drive straight home and pick up Austin to get him back to the church for youth worship team practice. I had to lead part of choir practice because our Assoc. Music minister was still with his mother after the funeral. I don't do very well leading choirs, but luckily we have a man in the choir who was a former choir director, so he took over for the majority of the rehearsal. Then Holly and I sat in on the youth service to watch Austin play drums. He is really getting good!

Thursday - I spent the day playing catch up since I was out of the office most of Tues-Weds. Worked on the service for Sunday, picked up some "congas" for our percussion guy and ordered a new video projector for our sanctuary. Went home and ate and watched "Jurassic Park II" with the boys.

Friday - finished up plans for the Mother's Day service on Sunday and made hospital visits. Tyler went to SplashTown (waterpark) with some friends all day. Austin stayed home and did school work while Holly worked on school!

Saturday - We had a soccer game at 9:00am. I had to fill in for the coach and our kids played a great game! Austin had stumped his toe on the driveway really bad and tried to play, but just couldn't, so we didn't have extra players...which meant there were no breaks for anyone. But they still won the game!

We spent the rest of the day building some shelves for our little office, repairing an outside faucet, and general reorganization of some "stuff" that's been cluttering the guest room.

Sunday - I had a rough morning...I had taken one of my "super allergy pills" the night before because I was miserable and it didn't wear off until late afternoon. Which meant that I was super drowsy all morning for church. They need a new warning on that medication bottle: "Do not attempt to lead worship while under the influence of this medication." I was so sleepy. There were a few times while leading a song that I closed my eyes and thought "I could go to sleep right here, right now." Holly said I was "glazed over" and "off the bubble." First thing she said to me after I sat down next to her in the service was "What is wrong with you?" We hurried home and I fixed a quick sandwich and crawled into bed for about 2 hours.

When I got up Holly and the boys were throwing the football outside, so I joined them. Then we played a little two-on-two and I think Tyler and I beat Austin and Holly. I had told Holly that we would go anywhere she wanted to go for dinner, so what was her choice? Domino's Pizza in the park at Magnolia. The boys gave her a Mother's Day card with a chicken on the front of it and when you opened it it played the "Chicken Song" and said "Because you rule the roost!" We had a good time playing in the park and then headed home as the sun was going down.

Mother's Day Tribute:

Mom, I love you and have wonderful memories of you. When Holly and the boys were throwing the football yesterday, I remembered playing baseball with you out in front of our house. I was fascinated that you were left-handed in most things, but played baseball right-handed! I thought that was quite a feat! I also remember BIG home-made french fries, deep friend French Toast with sugar on top, Beef Stroganoff and of course Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread.

I also remember making a garden and tending it one summer with you (yummy okra, tomatoes, green onions and yellow squash!). Of course I attribute my reading and writing skills to you reading to me (and teaching me to read) before I started school. And you were so fun! Remember when you let me drive the little VW Bug in England home from "The Gob"? Driving on the wrong side of the road, the wrong side of the car and probably too short too! What were you thinking? Probably the same thing when I let Austin drive out here in the country the other day!

Remember when we were in church one Sunday in England and they baptized those people and you could barely contain your laughter because of how the Pastor literally threw them down into knee deep water and caused a tidal wave that splashed out onto the church floor? And then you got teary-eyed because of the commitment those people were making. I don't think I would have made it through Public School in England if I hadn't had my mom to come home to those first weeks before I made friends. Those were pretty hard times on an impressionable Jr High boy, but you kept me grounded and loved!

I hope your Mother's Day was a good one even though I couldn't be there. You deserve it! Can't wait to celebrate with you in a few days! I LOVE YOU, MOM!

April 28 - May 4

2008-04-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

Monday - We had a very easy Monday morning after a very busy Sunday. I got up to drink coffee on the porch in the rocker and had to get a jacket because of the cool weather. I told Holly that I wanted the family to go do something fun and we started weighing our options for a day trip somewhere. A couple of museums and places in Houston were closed on Monday, so we decided to go to the Prison Museum in Huntsville. We took the scenic route up through the country (through Dobbin, Dacus, Blue Bonnet Hill and San Jacinto) and drove through some really nice National Forest land. We really do live in a beautiful area of Texas. We drove straight to the Prison Museum and spent about an hour looking around and reading about the Texas Department of Criminal Justice over it's short history. After a while Holly said "We need to go to church now that we've seen all this depravity." Of course they had "Old Sparky" the electric chair on display and that kind of disturbed Tyler...so much so that he slept in our room the next two nights.

Then we drove to the downtown square, ate at the Cafe Texan, walked around the square and ended up in King's Candies where we had ice cream and a chocolate malt. After looking through a couple of Antique stores we headed back to Magnolia where Holly took her car to meet a friend for dinner and the boys and I went fishing at our good friend and fellow-staffer Larry Edwards. Austin got some really good bites and caught 2 sardine-looking bass and one medium-sized bass, but not much else. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we stayed until dark.

Tuesday - We finished up the final lesson in Acts/Philippians at the Coaches Bible Study. This has been a neat study, because we would read what Paul was saying in Philippians one week and then look at various passages in Acts the next week to see if he lived out what he preached. I have never looked at those passages in that way and it was a new look at Paul and the scriptures for me. The coaches want to keep meeting through the end of May and so now I have to find a 4-5 week study to carry us through. We're supposed to take a break for the summer, but last year they wanted to keep meeting, so we'll see what this summer holds for us.

I had a dentist appointment at 10am to get one filling replaced and a cavity filled and I had been dreading it for several weeks. The last time I had to do this in the fall my dentist and good friend Jonathan Sanderson went to deaden my lower jaw and hit my "lingual nerve" (which was like being shocked) and both arms involuntarily shot up and knocked his hand out of my mouth. This time he recommended laughing gas and so I tried that for the first time in my life. I thought I would feel really loopy, but it just kind of relaxed me. I don't think I was getting the full effect because I couldn't breathe well through my nose (which is where the gas was flowing), so after he finished drilling I asked him to remove it. I was beginning to feel very claustrophobic with this "thing" on my nose, his hands in my mouth and the back of my throat filling up with water as he drilled. Try swallowing with your mouth open because you can't breathe well through your nose! I think I was traumatized because when I went to bed that night I kept replaying all of that. Shouldn't this stuff get easier the older we get?

I spent the rest of the day doing administrative stuff (check requests, credit card receipt reconciliations, etc.) until it was time to go to soccer practice with the boys. After practice we headed over to The Woodlands for a birthday dinner with The Elms family (Hope was the birthday girl and is the one who did the testimony video from the Oklahoma City Bombing that I talked about last week and her husband David is my good buddy who does the Coaches Bible Study with me). We ate at a family-style Italian restaurant called Bucca di Beppo and sat in the "Pope Room" which is a big round table that seats 18 and has pictures of a lot of Popes! We had a blast laughing and eating wonderful Italian food.

Wednesday - Had to be at the church at 8am to get ready for a 10am funeral. I had to run sound/video stuff and I wanted to make sure it was all working. A funeral is one thing where you don't need technical issues to rear their ugly head. Everything went smoothly. Fellow staffer Larry Edwards invited me to lunch with a friend of his at a Chinese restaurant (yummy General Tso's Chicken!). After returning to the church I took Tyler to his guitar lesson and had a technician look at Holly's laptop while he was "strummin'". His guitar teacher always talks about how good he is and how he needs to be in a band. I'm so grateful we found this guy. He not only knows how to teach guitar, he really loves the Lord and loves worship music.

After we returned to the church Holly took Tyler home and I went to the youth meeting which was held at the home of the boy who fell out of the tree a few weeks ago. He came home from rehab Weds morning and they decided to have the service at his house. He was really surprised when they wheeled him outside to see 150 students sitting on his lawn. He still has a long way to go (very little movement in fingers and toes). They sent him home because both arms are in casts and he can't really do any rehab work until the casts and neck brace are off. I think he'll go back to rehab in July to start some really hard work.

Thursday - After a long day and late night on Weds, I stayed home Thursday morning and did a little house cleaning. When I got to the office I worked on the Sunday service and a few other things and then had to hang around for a 6:30pm counseling appointment and then Deacon's Meeting after that.

Friday - I had a breakfast meeting with a fairly new church member who I would like to audition for the worship team. He has been on staff at a few churches as the music minister and then did some intinerant music ministry on his own. I haven't heard him sing, but others have told me he's very good. We had a really good time talking about life on church staff and life in general.

After breakfast I had to run over to one of the Elementary schools to be a judge for their talent show. It started at 8:30am and wasn't over until after 2pm. It was fun and I wished I could have video taped some of it and played the clips here for you. Especially one little 5 year old who sang "Twinkle, Twinkle" (or as he sang it "Tinkle, Tinkle wittle star) and another boy who apparently experienced absolute stage fright and just stood in front of the microphone speechless while his song track played over the speakers. But the kids in the audience sang it for him after they realized he wasn't going to sing.

I ran to one of the hospitals to make a visit later and then picked up some groceries and stuff and headed home. Holly had tacos waiting for dinner and then the boys and I went to see the new "Iron Man" movie.

Saturday - we had a soccer game at noon and then Tyler had a few friends over to play paintball for the afternoon. Austin went to Fiesta Texas in San Antonio with a friend and got home about 2:00 a.m. I didn't really go to sleep until he was in bed.

Sunday - Got up at 5:30 a.m. (after just a few hours sleep) because I had to meet a singing group from Houston Baptist Univ. at 6:30 for sound check. They did a great job in all three services and then I took them to lunch after the last service. Holly went to a "High Tea" in Navasota with a few of her friends. Had worship team rehearsal at 4:30pm and then hung around for our last class for "The Truth Project." That was one of the most well attended courses that we have had on Sunday evenings. I think we'll do it again in the fall.

April 21-28

2008-04-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening (4/20) - I went to a "CD Release" of a friend named John Sherrill. He is an intinerant worship leader that I met a long time ago when I was youth minister at Jersey Village Baptist and he was a young college kid. He and his wife gave birth to a baby boy last October who was born very premature and had less than a 1% chance of surviving. But he did and I saw him at the concert. Amazing. I went out to eat with another friend who plays in John's band and so I didn't get home until about midnight.

Monday - I slept in really late...Holly and the boys were still in Burleson, so there was no one to wake me up. I woke up thinking it was probably 8:00 or so, but boy was I wrong! It was 10:30! I piddled around on the computer for awhile, watched a little TV and then started cleaning the house so that my lovely wife would love me more when she came home...and she did!

Tuesday - We had the usual Coaches Bible Study at 7:00am. I really love those guys. At noon I invited one of the other staff guys (Larry Edwards - Pastor of Outreach and Assimilation) to a lunch in The Woodlands for something called "Men at the Cross". I blogged about this organization at another time, but their mission is that Christian men would "love another man to Christ, until that man is ready to love another man to Christ." They will be having a huge event in Houston in August (hoping for 15,000 men in the Toyota Center) and this lunch was held for the purpose of getting the word out and rallying the troops for this event in August. Joe White started the organization and is truly a motivational speaker. He started the Kanakuk Sports Camps in Missouri many years ago and has written books, spoken for Promise Keepers and many other things. He is also battling leukemia, but you would never know it to look at him.

Wednesday - Started with staff meeting at 9:00am and ended waiting for Austin to finish "youth stuff" at about 9:00pm.

Thursday - Not much went on that I can remember. I think I actually got home at about 5:30pm, we ate dinner and Holly and I sat on the porch enjoying this beautiful spring weather. I think we were shocked that it wasn't dark when we actually saw each other at home.

Friday - I worked on Sunday's service in the morning and then headed out to make hospital visits at noon. I was headed to a hospital about 35 minutes away, got within 5-10 min. and remembered that I had a lunch appointment with one of my worship team guys, so had to turn around and meet him in Tomball. After meeting with him I headed back to the hospital and made the visit. By the time I got back to Magnolia, it was almost 5:00pm. Holly and I were determined to have a date night, so we left at about 6:00 and went to one of our favorite "comfort food" restaurants. It's called The Heritage House and is about 20 min. from the house in Montgomery. We split a chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and corn, with homemade rolls and honey (hence, the "comfort food" comment).

Saturday - We had an early soccer game and then headed home to get ready for an 8th grade boys Sunday School class paintball party/sleepover at our house. Austin's class came over (only 3 other boys and the teacher) to play paintball all afternoon and then sleep outside in tents. I think they wore themselves out because when it came time for bed they opted for beds indoor rather than tents outside.

Sunday - What a day! It started at 6:30am getting ready for the services which were wonderful. After church we had a lunch for the single adults because we're trying to jump-start a ministry here. That's the one area where our church is lacking, but we have a new couple who really want to minister to that group, so we tried to get input/feedback on starting a Sunday School class and other activities. We had about 15 single adults there and it was a very good meeting. I hope we can get it going with that group. We tried before and it just never got off the ground.

By the time the lunch meeting was over it was almost 2:30pm and there was no point going home since I had worship team rehearsal at 4:00. So I just made myself comfortable in my office and prepared for rehearsal. I had to be part of "The Truth Project" class at 6:00pm (my job is to start/stop the DVD player because the class leader is technology-challenged). This is really an amazing study and although I have missed a few classes I think it is something we will have at least once a year. By the time class was over at 7:15pm I was ready to put on my PJ's and crawl in bed...after consuming a pizza and watching a little TV with the family.

April 8 - April 20

2008-04-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

We're playing catch-up again today, so I'm going back two weeks to the week of April 7th. On that Monday I put out an ad to sell our 1994 Chevy Caprice (more on that later). Holly and Austin and I went downtown on Tues (4/8) to see Andrew (the boy who fell out of the tree). We weren't able to see him, but we talked with his Dad and other family. He was still in pretty serious condition, but it didn't appear life-threatening. He went through surgery to repair two vertabrae in his neck, was put on a C-pap machine which helped him breathe (not as invasive as being intubated), and had surgery on both broken arms in that first week. They also got him to move both arms, but were not seeing much movement in his legs until the following week; and then it was only movement in both big toes.

Andrew was moved to a rehab place on Thurs 4/17 which was a pretty big deal and now begins the long road of occupational and physical therapy. No one has really said what the prognosis is for walking or not walking again. The church set up that website to update people and we had 15,000 hits to the site in just the first few days (that doesn't necessarily mean 15,000 people, but a BUNCH of people checking and re-checking the progress). If we, as church staff have learned anything through this, it is that people will use technology (our website) to not only get updates on situations like this, but they will leave messages for the family, which has been a huge comfort for them.

Weds, April 9th was a pretty typical day: Staff meeting in the morning, lunch with the staff guys and then I had to clear some of our stage to make room for choir risers because the school district conducted an Elementary Choir Contest on Thursday. I spent most of the day Thurs helping with that Choir Contest. It was fun and we had some amazing choirs come through and sing. It's nice to be able to use our facilities for the community. Holly had an open house at the school on Thurs evening, so the boys and I decided to have a boys night out. I had made arrangements to meet with a guy who wanted to look at the Chevy Caprice and so we took care of that first. This guy pulled up in a really nice, tricked-out, customized Buick LeSabre and looked over my car and decided he wanted to buy it, so we made plans to meet on Friday. When the boys and I were eating our buffalo wings later, I just really started to feel uneasy about this guy, but dismissed it. Even the boys thought they looked like "gangsters."

On Friday (4/11) I did my usual hospital visits and wrapped up details for the service on Sunday. Later in the afternoon I called the guy about meeting up to sell the car and he ended up having to work late and couldn't meet.

On Saturday we had to get up really early for the garage sale at Holly's school. We had to leave there at 10am for the first soccer game with the boys. They are on the same team AND they have three of their friends (2 brothers & a sister) on the team, so they pretty much rule the field. We had to go back to the garage sale after the game to help clean up and then headed home. We had a Men's Ministry Cookout at 3pm, so I had to clean up and head right back out for that, but Tyler went with me. We had invited this man who trains Labrador Retrievers and ties in illustrations of that with our obedience to the Lord. It was really neat and you can see this guy in action at kingdomdog.com.

After the cookout I called the guy about the car and his "boss" answered his phone and said that he was working on a car and couldn't talk, but could I bring the car down to his place of business in Houston. It was 6:30pm and I didn't feel good about going into Houston that late, so I told him we would try again on Monday (still feeling uneasy about this whole thing).

Sunday (4/13) was a good day. We baptized probably 10 people that morning and so our services were very exciting. One lady found out we were baptizing that day and told one of our staff guys that she had put it off long enough and wanted to be baptized. She didn't even have clothes to change into, but she wanted to do it anyway. She sat in the church service after being baptized in one of the dry baptismal robes. It was pretty moving.

Monday (4/14) I was determined to get this car sold (needed the $$ to pay the IRS on Tues!) so I called the guy and he was ready to pick it up, but was working and said his "brother" would pick it up. I asked if he had cash and he said yes. A little later another guy called me and said he would be picking up the car. I said "Are you Terry's brother?" and he said "No, I'm a friend." We set it up to meet at 4pm and I asked our Children's Minister Jesse (strong, muscular guy) to follow me to meet this guy and bring me back. We met at a gas station in a busy intersection in NW Houston. He was about 45 min. late, but finally pulled up in a black, tricked-out, customized Suburban with really dark tinted windows. He got out, we shook hands and he wanted to start my car up, so I gave him the keys. He started the engine, got out of my car, but left it running and he had a friend with him too who stood near my car while he and I conducted business at the back of Jesse's car. I was signing over the title and other stuff when he asked me to get in his car to count out the money. Well that totally freaked me out and I just didn't answer, but kept signing papers. Of course, my mind was racing: Was he going to bonk me over the head in his car? Was his friend going to drive away in my car without me getting paid? I was just praying that the Lord would protect me. He didn't press the issue of getting in his car, so I just handed him the title while he handed me the cash. I counted it, shook his hand and jumped in Jesse's car and said "Get outta here!" I didn't settle down for about an hour.

After Jesse dropped me off at my car, I saw a friend who I had told about my uneasiness with this whole transaction after the initial meeting with the guy. He then told me that he had heard on the news the day after I told him, that there were 2 guys in Houston who were robbing people of their cars in pretty much the same way I had told him.

On Weds (4/16) we had a pretty exciting day. At about 1:00pm Gatlin Elms (18 year old who has recorded a CD and has a band) called me and asked if Austin could play percussion for him at a concert at a church in Round Rock (near Austin). Needless to say Austin was very excited about this possibility. Austin has played drums with Gatlin a number of times on Weds nights for the youth group. Austin left with the band about 3pm and we had planned to follow them in our car, but didn't get to leave until almost 6pm. We actually arrived at the church in Round Rock before the guys did (had to pick up another guy in College Station and had some minor issues with their van). They played and did a great job and the kids at the church loved them. (the picture at the top is of Gatlin and the band. Austin is sitting behind Gatlin playing a drum) We all drove back together, but didn't get home until after 2:00am. Holly let the boys skip school on Thursday, so I stayed home with them while she went to school and I worked on a video that we showed in church on Sunday.

On Saturday Holly and the boys drove to Burleson to celebrate her grandmother's 90th birthday. I had a Deacon's & Widow's Banquet to attend Saturday afternoon, but had a quiet evening at home. We had a good day on Sunday and showed this video testimony of a lady who was headed into the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 at about 8:55am. She decided at the last minute not to go in and drove on to work. At 9:02am a bomb exploded decimating that building and killing 168 people. Hope found out later that her Mom had felt strongly drawn by the Lord to pray for her safety that very morning. It was a really moving video (you can see it here).

Sunday afternoon at worship team rehearsal I introduced a few worship songs I had written to our band (at their request). They really liked one song in particular and we worked on it for about 30 minutes and got really excited about playing it for the church very soon. I am planning to record a demo version of it and submit it to something called "Song Discovery" which sends out a CD of worship songs (written by worship leaders all over) every couple months. I'm excited to see if it might make it onto that CD someday. We'll see.

Playing catch-up!

2008-04-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Wow! The last month has been a blur. I stopped blogging because I worked for three Mondays (my normal day off - and my day to blog) leading up to our Easter musical. Not only did I work on my day off, but I calculated that I worked EVERY DAY from February 26 through the Easter musical on March 16th. Sometimes that was just a couple hours on those Saturdays, but I did not have a complete day off during that time period. It was exhausting, but the week before the musical turned out to be a very peaceful week. I had anticipated a lot of chaos and mayhem, but I was pleasantly surprised. Much of that had to do with the fact that the construction on the stage set was DONE by Tuesday the week of the musical. So I was left with just little details to work on and that made for a very enjoyable musical this year. It turned out that the musical went off very well and I heard several comments that it was the best Easter musical they have seen in our church. I think it had much to do with the fact that the music was live rather than "canned." There is something about a live music production, if it is done well, and I felt like our band really stepped up and met the challenge of this music. But we had also rehearsed at least a few songs each Sunday afternoon beginning in January and then we had rehearsal with the choir four nights straight before the actual performance.

The week after Palm Sunday (and the musical) was Spring Break for Holly and the boys and my mom came down that week and helped us spruce up our landscape by planting some new trees and creating a nice path to the front door. I took off that Monday and Tuesday after the musical, but as I just said we worked in the yard. When I returned to work on Wednesday I began working on the Easter service (which had already been planned out the week before). It turned out to be a great day as we had over 1500 attending one of four services (including our Spanish language service).

I worked the Monday after Easter because I took Friday off to go to Amarillo with the boys. It was very nice to be back in the office without a major event looming over me. I could think about some of the other aspects of the ministry and relax a little. Wednesday night the 26th was the last night of our Men's Fraternity study "The Quest for Authentic Manhood." We watched the last video and had a share time and the testimonies were awesome. This study really had a profound impact on more than a few of our men. Several of the men did not want to quit meeting so we made plans to meet again the following week to further discuss the impact of the study. Thursday the boys and I left at 5:30pm and drove to Ft. Worth to stay with Mom on our way to Amarillo. Gatlin Elms is a senior in our church and has recently released a CD of his own music. He grew up in Amarillo and had a concert/CD release on Friday March 28th in a church there. The boys and I arrived about 3pm and were able to help setup for the concert. It's been really fun for the boys to be in on the ground floor of what could potentially become an exciting career for Gatlin. We spent the night at the home of a very sweet lady somehow connected to the Elms and she fixed us a wonderful breakfast Saturday morning before we left. We traveled back with the whole crew (Gatlin & family with the band and a couple friends). After about 2 hours in the car, David Elms (Gatlin's father and my best buddy) came to ride with me and Austin went to ride in the van, which he loved because he was with "THE BAND." David and I talked and talked while Tyler watched movies. We got out of Amarillo by about 8:45ish and got home by 6:30pm. It was a long day.

Sunday (March 26) was a pretty special day. Bro. Ed started a sermon series on Revelation 1-3 entitled "Churches of Yesterday and Today". The worship team had been rehearsing a song called "Revelation Song" just for the occasion that is a very powerful song. Well it turned out to be very powerful for our church as well. We had one of those "presence of God" moments right after the song and our little Baptist church wasn't quite sure what to do with the moment. Our ladies had just completed a really awesome retreat, so they were already emotionally charged for the service and that song in particular. People are still talking about the song and Bro. Ed wants us to sing it every other week throughout the series.

Which finally brings us to the present...almost. I swapped days off again last week so that I could attend an airshow near Corpus Christi with the boys and some friends (pics here). So I worked a little on Monday last week and had pretty heavy days on Weds and Thurs (12 hour days). We left at 10:00ish Friday morning and got to Corpus about 2:30pm. We checked into our hotel and then headed for the beach. The kids saw a park that they wanted to play at, so we stopped there for about an hour while they played. The wind was blowing, it was overcast and sprinkling and I spent the time trying to get out of the wind and keep warm. After the kids tired of chasing each other around the playground we headed over to the beach where they spent almost an hour playing in the surf. We returned to the hotel, cleaned up and headed out for dinner. One of the friends that came had a headached and stomach ache, so I stayed in the room with him while the rest went out for dinner. They brought me back some yummy quesadillas and they watched tv in the other room while I stayed with the sleeping sick boy. We finally went to bed about 11pm, slept pretty good and got up about 8am to head out and eat breakfast. We got to the airshow in Kingsville about 10am and had a really good day watching the airshow and looking at old planes and Navy stuff. We left about 4pm and got home at almost 9pm. When we pulled up in the parking lot of the church two police officers were walking around the church building so we asked them what was going on and they told us someone had broken into the church and had damaged some stuff. We went inside and found that some kids had got in somehow and were joy riding on the golf carts that we keep inside. They hit almost every corner of the hallway that surrounds the sanctuary, doing damage to sheetrock and door jambs and completely knocked a water fountain off of the wall. They had apparently busted a pen and got ink all over one of the golf cart seats. Our maintenance guy had seen some kids earlier and recognized at least one of them, so they got his address and when the police went over to his house he still had ink all over his hands, so it was pretty much sealed up, but he confessed anyway. It turned out to be 3 kids (3rd, 5th and 8th graders). Needless to say I had to stay at the church for awhile to help clean up (with Holly and the boys) and we didn't get home until almost 11pm.

Sunday was a long day: Worship services until 12:30, Meet the Pastor Lunch until almost 2pm, back at the church for rehearsal at 4pm and Tyler and I drove downtown at 6:30 to see Gatlin Elms sing at a church there. We got back to the church at 10pm to pick up Austin (he rode the bus with the youth) and when we got there, there were two police cars in the parking lot and I thought "Good grief! What now!". It turns out that one of the youth had ridden back with someone else (not in the bus) and was there by himself, climbed up in a tree and then fell out head first on to a deck below the tree. A couple of parents were in the parking lot and saw it and were able to get the police there quickly, but he was unconcious for probably 15-20 min. They had to Life Flight him to a hospital downtown. Our youth minister called us at about 3am and told us that he had broken his neck (but had some movement) and arms and bruised a lung. As of this morning he was scheduled for spinal surgery and had possibly taken a turn for the worse. We're planning to go see him this afternoon because it's a family that we knew at Jersey Village (I had 3 out of 5 of their kids in my youth ministry and the mom, Sharon, was on staff with me there). You can follow his progress at our church website

February 11-17

2008-02-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

Monday about lunch time the boys and I drove to College Station to pick up some meds and ate at our favorite "guy" place: Buffalo Wild Wings! Austin probably put away 18 or so wings and then finished off about 4 of my boneless wings. He is a beast! Then we went to Best Buy and they played Guitar Hero for probably 45 min. while I wandered around. We had to get back to Magnolia so Austin could practice with the youth band that plays on Weds nights. He loves that and is doing a great job on drums. The guy who leads worship is a senior and just recently released a CD of songs that he has written, so Austin feels like a rock star when he plays with him.

Tuesday I started the day with the Coaches Bible study. I missed the week before, so it was good to be back with the "fellas". There were only a couple guys there the week before so David re-taught his lesson and I will pick it back up this week. David got a call from the guy who writes the Bible studies for Coaches Outreach and had a lot of questions about how we were doing things and wanted me to call him after we finished breakfast. So I called him when I got to my office and basically they had just discovered (after a year and a half of me leading the study) that a) they didn't have an application from me and b) they prefer that ministers NOT teach the bible studies. I didn't really know this until about a year into the study, but I stepped up because our youth minister couldn't find a layman to do it. In short the guy sent me an email saying "we think you should finish out the spring study and then we need to find a layman to take over (which would be David Elms, but he really doesn't want to do it by himself). For whatever reason it just really knocked the wind out of me and after taking care of my worship service for Sunday I went home about 3pm hoping to leave it behind...but it just came home with me. I guess my perception was that these guys felt like we had "hijacked" this coaches study and not only was a minister leading it, but we were not meeting in the field house like we should be (which was the choice of the coaches!). It was just a sad day for me because I already had a couple of church ministry issues on my mind that were stressful and then this thing just caught me off-guard. I really love this coaches study and didn't expect to find stress in that outlet.

Wednesday, I was still down in the dumps about it and asked the staff guys to pray about it at staff meeting. Of course they were all supportive and thought the decision was ridiculous. I'm grateful for our staff guys because I always feel like I can be transparent with them about things that are going on. I did find out that David Elms called the guy at Coaches Outreach back and explained the whole situation to them, how it all started, and pointed out that they had not even been to one of our meetings and had no idea how God was at work with this group of guys. The guy apologized and apparently backed down from requesting that I leave the group at the end of the study this spring. I went to lunch with the staff guys and when I got back to the office I just had no motivation for doing anything. Holly called and was on her way to take Tyler to guitar lessons, so I hopped in the car with her and she and I went to Starbucks while Tyler did his lesson. I'm usually at the church until 9pm on Weds nights, so it's nice to take a break in the middle of the long day. I led the Men's Fraternity group at 7pm, finished up about 8:30 and went to find Austin so we could go home.

Thursday I felt quite a bit better and was able to get back to work on some things for our Easter musical. I have to create music charts for our band to play this Easter music (they can't easily turn pages, so I create 1 or 2 page charts) and it just takes time to write the words and the chords above them for each of these songs. We had an appointment at 4:10pm for our family picture for the new church directory and so I met Holly and the boys for that and then I took the boys over to a friend's house and Holly and I left for our Valentines date! We went to Pappadeaux's for dinner and really indulged! We started off with Lump Crab and Hot Spinach au gratin which is served with garlic bread. It was delicious! Then I had Ponchatrain Panbroiled Filet which was a fish called Tilapia topped with crabmeat and shrimp in a brown-butter wine sauce with dirty rice. It was yummy. Holly had the Seafood Platter which is all fried - shrimp, oysters, catfish filet, stuffed shrimp and stuffed crab. We topped it off with cheesecake with strawberry sauce. I was stuffed, but we don't do that often and it was marvelous! Then we went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert and loved that as well. It was a really good date!

Friday I worked all morning on the music charts again, but got them all finished and put in notebooks for the band. Then I had lunch with one of our Sunday School teachers and had deal with the matter of him not attending our worship services. After lunch I made a hospital visit in Tomball and Holly was getting her hair done there, so we met at Starbucks for some refreshment and then she went with me to see one of our elderly ladies at a rehab center. Holly started teaching the older ladies class last October and absolutely loves them! This lady is in her class and she was really glad to see Holly. It was very sweet.

Later that evening David Elms invited us to dinner with his in-laws and one of the coaches and his wife from our study. We had a great dinner and a great time of fellowship. I was talking with David's father-in-law who has been on church staff in Amarillo for the last 30 years and mentioned that my grandfather was a pastor in Pampa and then Area Missionary for the Top-of-Texas and when I told him who it was, he said he knew of him and that Charles Ray had performed the wedding ceremony for his mom and dad in Llano, TX in the 1930's. I couldn't believe the connection! They are really neat people and I look forward to them being a part of the church here.

Saturday we picked up Tyler's friend Zach who was visiting from Midland and he spent the day and night with Tyler.

Sunday was the usual busy day with 2 worship services, a "Meet the Pastors Lunch" for visitors and "inquirers", worship team practice at 4pm and then our FBC University courses at 6pm. We had 20 people show for "The Truth Project"! That's going to be a great study. I got home about 7:30 or 8:00pm and crashed hard in my bed with the TV on!

February 4-10

2008-02-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Last week was mostly a "sick" week. I came down with bronchitis after the trip to the hill country (too much exposure to cedar, I guess). Monday I didn't feel too bad because I was able to clean out the RV and return it. After returning the RV the ibuprofen had worn off and I was beginning to ache again, so I stopped and bought some ibuprofen and ate lunch. By the time I got home I just wanted to get in bed. I didn't sleep well that night and was up around 3am. I got hungry around 4:30, so I ate breakfast and watched a movie. After Holly and the boys left for school I pretty much stayed on the couch or in bed all day (had to skip out on my coaches Bible Study, but I did go into town after lunch to pick up some antibiotics (I started with some leftover antibiotics Sunday, but knew I needed to continue to keep pneumonia at bay), but came right back home. The aches were what was bugging me the most. I fixed tacos for Holly and the boys, but was back on the couch pretty quick.

Wednesday I thought I was feeling better so I went in to the office for staff meeting. I ate lunch with the guys, but started feeling achey again after that. I took care of a couple of things for Men's Fraternity and then went home, headed straight for the ibuprofen, a hot bath and the couch. I didn't start feeling well again until about 8 or 9pm.

I didn't want to repeat my relapse Thursday, so I stayed home that morning and felt well enough by noon to go in and work for awhile. We had to take Austin up to the church at 7pm for the kickoff to Refuge Weekend (Disciple Now) and Holly and I worked the church directory pictorial table for a couple hours and then we all went home.

Early Friday morning I had to pray with a young girl before she had surgery on a broken finger and then I went and ate breakfast at one of my favorite places in Tomball called The Nook. I always feel like it's a special treat when I get to eat a big breakfast out. I went on in to the office and had a lot to do after being sick. Holly called about 1:30pm and wanted to come in town and eat lunch with me so that was a special treat again! I went home about 3:30 or so and then took Austin to his host home for Refuge about 6:30pm. Tyler had a friend over to spend the night and so Holly and I watched a movie together.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day. Tyler's friend invited him over to spend the night at his house, so Holly and I had most of the day to ourselves. About 7pm I went up to the church to finish some work and got to see Austin at the Refuge meeting. He was having a great weekend. I got home about 10pm.

Sunday morning went over pretty well, although I started out a bit nervous. Anytime I miss a Sunday for vacation or whatever the next Sunday always feels like starting over for me, so I'm a little nervous for whatever reason, but we had a great morning of worship. We had band rehearsal at 4pm (which meant I was up there at 3pm preparing) and we kicked off the new semester of FBC University (Discipleship) at 6pm. Here are the courses we offered:

The Truth Project

The Call to Follow Christ

Jesus on Money

The Five Love Languages

What Happens When Women Pray

We had about 60 people here for all of those, so I was pleased. I sat in on The Truth Project and although it was a long video (1 hour) I think it's going to be really good.

January 27-Feb 3

2008-02-04T17:06:00.001-08:00

Last week started at home helping the boys with the homeschool tasks. Holly had a "Girlfriends Unlimited" meeting at the church Monday morning and so I cracked the whip at home to keep the boys "on task" as Holly likes to say. Once they were finished with school work and I finished a few chores around the house we (the boys and I) left for a meeting at a Houston church for a new ministry called "Men at the Cross". It was begun by Joe White who started Kanakuk Sports Kamps many years ago. His vision is to see men discipling others in a multiplying way. One man would disciple a "Timothy" for six months; then that Timothy would find his own Timothy to disciple (while the first man finds another Timothy) and so on and so on. If this could truly happen, we could reach the entire population of the world in about 16 years (do the math - 1 x 1 x 2 x 16 years = 7 billion). This wasn't the first time to hear about multiplication discipleship, but it reminded me of the reason we're here!

Tuesday was a day to get everything lined up for my absence at church on Sunday. I had to get music copied and into notebooks for musicians and for our Assistant Worship Pastor who was leading worship in my absence. We ran through the entire set of songs Sunday afternoon (1/27) during rehearsal and I felt good about them handling everything while I was gone. Around lunch time I videotaped one our of part-time counselors talking about our LifeTouch Counseling Ministry. We try to show a video once a month of an individual testimony or a highlight video of one of the church's ministries.

Wednesday morning was staff meeting, which was shorter than usual because the pastor had a luncheon somewhere (which meant no free lunch for us!), but it was a good meeting because everyone was there this week - two of our guys were out the week before. Actually, now that I think about it I did get a free lunch. I went to a meeting with our youth minister and my buddy David Elms and his son Gatlin and they had Subway sandwiches! The meeting was about an area-wide event that they want to have for students and their parents in April. They didn't have a location yet and no budget to work with. It didn't appear to be very well organized, but such is the case when you have youth guys involved...I know, cuz I were one!

The rest of Wednesday afternoon was spent tying up loose ends for my absence on Sunday and getting ready for Men's Fraternity at 7pm.

I took Thursday and Friday off (as well as Sunday) to go camping with my family in the Hill Country (pictures here). Thursday morning the boys and I drove over to Spring to pick up a nineteen foot bumper pull trailer RV for our little excursion. While I signed papers and got schooled on our RV, the boys explored all the other RV's on the lot. We left the house about 5pm and drove about 2 hours to Bastrop State Park to spend our first night (I think it got down into the 30's, but we stayed warm inside). The next day we drove to Pedernales Falls State Park where we spent the next two nights. Everything was great - the park (no "city" sounds at night, like traffic or sirens), the weather (70's with lots of sunshine), the food (anything tastes good in the outdoors!) and all the outdoor activity. We even climbed to the "peak" of Enchanted Rock as a family. We had a leisurely breakfast Sunday morning and then packed up and headed home. It was a wonderful break before I put my nose to the grindstone for the Easter musical coming March 16th.

I haven't heard how Sunday went without me, but I'm confident everything was fine.

Jan 21-27

2008-01-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

My work week generally begins on Tuesday (or I guess you could say it begins on Sunday, but for this blog I'll start on Monday/Tuesday and end with Sunday when I recap the "week"). Mondays are a "crash" day for me (and my day off) because Sunday is often a 10-hour day and I can barely think about doing anything work-related on Monday.

So last Tuesday started with a Coaches Outreach Bible study at 7am in the Magnolia Diner. About a year and a half ago our youth minister asked me if I would be a part of the study with another man in our church and I thought it would be neat, so I said "yes." I have really enjoyed getting to know the guys and they seem to enjoy our study. There is an actual organization called "Coaches Outreach" and they provide the study materials. It's always a book study and so far we have been through I & II Kings, The Parables of Jesus, Isaiah and this semester we are studying Acts and Philippians. We have two high schools in Magnolia (Magnolia HS and Magnolia West HS) and both head coaches from those schools have been coming regularly. Magnolia West has had better attendance and the Magnolia HS head coach has been about the only one from his school coming for the last 6 months. He has felt that if we had it on his campus it would be better attended, so just last week another guy agreed to lead that study on Friday mornings in their field house. I gave the head coach 5 or 6 books to start with last Tuesday and he called me at about 2pm after a staff meeting and said "I need 10 more books!" So he was right and I'm really excited for them. We'll continue our study at the Diner with the "West" crew and hopefully I'll be able to visit the other group one Friday.

I don't remember much else of what I did on Tuesday except meet with one of our professional counselors (part-time) about a video highlight that we want to do of that ministry. I also try to plan the up-coming worship service and get that info to my secretary so she can make copies of music for the band and create the service on our presentation software.

Wednesday was staff meeting most of the morning. We are reading a book by Tony Campolo called "Speaking my Mind: The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians are Afraid to Face". We read a chapter each time and write a one-page response that we read and discuss in the meeting. So far we read/talked about the Evangelical response to homosexuality, the poor, science, and feminism. It's been really good because Campolo is pretty radical/liberal in a lot of his views. We have to respond to his views based on our understanding of scriptures. It really makes you think about what you believe and why you believe it.

Most Wednesdays after staff meeting the pastor treats us to lunch and last week we had really good Chinese food. The rest of Wednesday was spent writing a newsletter article and getting ready for the Men's Fraternity meeting at 6:30pm. Wednesdays are a long day (I typically don't get home until 9pm).

I don't remember a lot of what I did on Thursday, but I do remember that my buddy David Elms (who is the layman that is doing the Coaches Outreach bible study with me) and his wife took me to lunch. It was a nice treat. I don't have a lot of "brothers" here that I consider really close friends (like my long-time friend Rex), but David has become that to me. We have shared a lot over the last year and a half, usually over breakfast after the coaches study and I feel really privileged to have him as a friend.

Friday I tried to finish up some publicity stuff for our new FBC University courses (discipleship) that begins in a couple of weeks and tied up loose ends for the service on Sunday. That's also my hospital day and so I made 3 visits to elderly ladies who are in the hospital for various reasons. For the most part I enjoy those visits, particularly praying with people. Sometimes it's a little awkward - like the time I went to see a guy and he was asleep, but his young wife was breast feeding their baby - but I didn't realize what she was doing until about half way through the conversation and then I awkwardly excused myself.

Sunday morning started at 6am. I try to get to the office by 7am to help our associate who leads the traditional 8am service and to get my stuff together for worship team rehearsal at 8am. When I got there I realized that one of our older Sunday School classrooms was full of camera equipment from church directory portraits that started on Friday. I'm responsible for Adult Sunday School, so I started trying to figure out how we were going to handle the fallout from that little oversight. I was going to swap classes, but then found out that it had all been handled and I didn't need to worry about it.

Our worship team used to rehearse/warm-up/get sound check between the 8am and 9:30am services. It was just crazy because we usually had about 15 min to do that. Someone suggested meeting at 8am to run through all the songs and that has made the biggest difference in our performance. Now all we have to do between services is get a sound check.

The services went really well and there was a good response from the people to the worship. We sang "Rising", "Sweeter", "Sing to the King", "Meet with Me", "It is Well with my Soul" and "You are Holy (Prince of Peace)".

We had band/vocal rehearsal at 4pm and then a New Member's Fellowship at the pastor's house at 6pm. We got home around 8:30. It was another long Sunday!

It's a New Day!

2008-01-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

I feel like I hit the ground running again in the new year after a pretty crazy end of '07 (although I did have a relaxing Christmas break). I was sick the last few days of '07 and the first two days of '08, but going back into the office meant staring down the barrel of an Easter musical just 10 weeks away. I committed our worship band to playing the music for "Then & There: Settled + Done"; this year's Easter musical which will be performed by our church choir and directed by Kyle Fontenot (because I don't "do" choirs). So I have begun rehearsals with the band and the first song in the musical was a doozy and will take a lot of practice. We plan to bring in some brass to supplement our mostly rhythm instruments (piano, bass, drums, 3 guitars & keyboard). Most of the band can't turn pages in a book while playing, which means I have to create chord charts of all the songs no more than two pages long. I have about four out of eight songs completed.

The other elements under my direction will be drama, set design and construction and all the technical aspects (sound/lights/video) and publicity. Luckily we have wonderful people to whom I can delegate most, if not all of those projects.

-taking off the Worship Pastor hat and donning the Discipleship hat:

Our Men's Fraternity group began the second half of "The Quest for Authentic Manhood" on Weds, Jan 9th, but that is a fairly simple task: opening the meeting and starting the DVD. It has been a great study and many of the men have said it has been life-changing thus far. It's exciting to watch the men sitting in small groups after the video discussing what it really means to be a man according to scripture.

My next big task is publicizing/organizing the courses for the new semester of FBC University (our Sunday evening Discipleship program). Currently I have four courses that we're offering:

The Five Love Languages (video study on marriage)

The Call to Follow Christ (basic discipleship - prayer, abiding in christ, fellowship, witnessing, etc.)

A Financial Freedom class (actual study to be determined soon)

Teaching to Change Lives (a book study by Dr. Howard Hendricks for current & prospective bible teachers)

I would love to see Sunday nights full of people in a number of different courses, but it hasn't quite taken off like I had hoped. Most of these courses are 6-8 weeks long because I have determined that a 13-week course just doesn't work well here (yet). Even with the shorter 6 week courses the attendance still seems to dwindle by the end of the course. Not much "finishing well". But I trust that we're building a culture of discipleship and that may take time. I want our people to be hungry for the Word and I don't sense a lot of that...yet.

Our pastor begins a new eight-week series tomorrow on a character study of Joseph - The Man Who Dared to Dream. Should be good! Goodnight for now!