Jan 21-27

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!

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!