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!
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