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!