Boundless has a good discussion about the predicament of singles in churches today.  We have some singles in our church and I have definitely had, at different times, opportunity to speak into their lives.  When I read this quote from a single guy having trouble with the reaction of his church to his situation, I started looking at it from the other side.

One single man, quoted in Julia Duin’s Quitting Church, talked about his experience of telling his small group that he wanted to get married,

I was rebuked by the elders because, according to them, the Bible says it is better to be single to serve God better. They, obviously, were married, and I didn’t understand, if they felt so strongly about being single, why they themselves weren’t single. When I would ask for prayer, I would get a lecture about being content, and was told I needed to stop focusing on self and serve God better.

From his perspective, he felt rebuked, or given pat answers.  Things like, “be content” and “focus on God” are hard for people to hear who have tugs on their heart, or have their biological clocks ticking loudly in their ears.  Yet, from my perspective, as a guy who had that tug on his heart pretty early (I started seriously looking for a wife at about 22), I have been there.  At the same time, I am now on the other side.  I have given that advice and had it rebuffed.  One gentleman got downright angry because what he heard from me and others was (again not actually what we said, but it was what he heard) to stop wanting a wife, and focus on God.

The thing is, I say such things not to be dismissive, but because that is exactly what had to happen for me to be blessed by a wife.  I recall vividly where my heart was at in the year before I met my wife.  I was dealing with a breakup, and was trying to figure out how to do things differently to avoid such events in the future.  However, it was not until I finally quieted my heart and made a decision, overriding my emotions, that I would strive to be content with God and build my relationship with him, that God opened up a door to meet my wife.  In fact, it wasn’t two weeks after I had a conversation with God, telling him how happy I was that it was just him and me right then, that I met her.  There was something that God wanted my heart ready for I guess.  That was my experience, which is why I dispense that advice.  Not as a put-off, but in hopes that God prepares them the way He prepared me.

So singles, give us all a break, eh?  We actually do mean well.  And sometimes advice isn’t what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.  Itching ears and all that.

I should say one last thing though.  I am not advising people who desire marriage to stop looking.  I believe there is a posture both physically, mentally, and spiritually that a person can be in, still looking for marriage, while being content in your heart with regards to pursuing God.  I think that is the place I was in.  I was still making efforts to meet people and expand my social circle.  I was still intent that any relationship I pursued with a woman could, potentially be one culminating in marriage.  But somehow it wasn’t at the forefront, and I was no longer letting it dictate everything.  There’s a difference there somewhere.  Maybe someone smarter than I can discern it.

Sundays have really changed for me.

What was once a day of mostly rest, with a little church time mixed in has become a day of work.  It begins at 6:30ish when I wake up.  That part is good - unlike most people, 6:30am represents sleeping in for 2 whole hours, as compared to my work week.

Then it’s shower, putter around, read my Bible for a bit, take the dog for a prayer walk, and get home before the boys wake up (though usually they are already awake by the time I get back).

Note, I no longer go on the computer in the morning.  That’s how busy my life has become.  Geez.

Once the boys are up, it’s food wrangling, cleaning, clothes wrangling and getting them out ther door for 8am.  As long as we get out the door before 8:10 we will be on time for the first service.

8:30 is the service “for members”.  Not really, but it’s designed to give the people who serve during the main service an opportunity to still fellowship and worship.  However, during this time we also run a couple of classes for new prospective members.  One is for people who are already followers of Christ who are thinking of joining us, and one is for people who are still discovering their faith.  I teach the former class.  My wife is also in one of our discipleship classes during this time.

10am is the main worship time, and generally we attend that one.  From 9:45am when my class wraps I am pretty much continually running around, attempting to touch base with my Awana leaders, friends, community group members, and also (perhaps more importantly), new visitors.

Once the service ends, we get tto go home for a few hours.  However, last Sunday we had our Discover Hope Luncheon, which gave an opportunity for new people coming to church to learn more about our church and how we work.  I didn’t get home until 3:30pm, and we had to head out the door again for Awana at 5pm.    During that 90 minute interlude, I was fetching supper, printing out song lyrics for the Awana song (which I forgot to bring before I left), and doing a little cleanup (of our bathroom - it’s amazing how non-public spaces get neglected by the tyrrany of the urgent!).

Of course, Awana is interesting.  I find I do most of my commander work in the initial 30 minutes, coordinating the storage of early children in the nursery, making sure we have all our leaders there, helping the kids register, welcoming new parents, and making sure kids get seated with their leaders in the sanctuary for worship time.  Then so far I have been coordinating and leading the flag ceremony, and seeing the kids off to their clubs.  After that, I do a little running around, making sure the nursery is running smoothly, checking up with leaders if they come out of the rooms, chatting with the odd parent who lingers through the program, and then breathing a bit.  Then, once club wraps up, I am the one who makes sure the parents know to pick up their kids and makes sure we have everything put away.  And, if any of my leaders need a lift home, I drive them.

I am not complaining, but if there is going to be a day of rest for me, it is going to have to be on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday.  This isn’t going to change if I get into full-time ministry.

I’m trying to focus more on getting that big paper done now, which is distracting me from too much blog-related.  However, I promise I will get back to y’all soon.  In the meantime, watch for new twitters.  I’ve been coming across a few amusing/interesting things and just throwing them up there.

I will make one more excuse: with a federal election in Canada coming up on October 14 and the presiddential election in the USA on November 4, there’s lots of political fodder that drags my attention away too.  But I am sure many of you are experiencing the same thing.

Heh.  I read on an economics blog speculation on how the USA would completely collapse if all the hardworking, independent, responsible, conservative people suddenly vanished.  While I don’t pretend to think that all Christians are that way, I think a larger percentage of them are, at least if they are truly following the Bible.  I half wondered as I read it, is this the reason end-times prophecy doesn’t talk about America?  Because when we’re raptured, there aren’t enough people like this left to support the social systems and the nation becomes a non-factor politically?

This weekend might have easily been considered overwhelming.

We had so much on the go.  Friday night was our first small group meeting of the fall, which went smoothly, but it was interesting forging a new dynamic for the season with much more concrete goals and planning.  We’re much more comfortable in doing what is being asked of us as small group leaders, and it feels good to have answers to questions that come from experience.

The fact that my laptop is slowly dying has been eating me alive for a week.  It was very distracting and my incessant attempts to rejig our finances to accommodate the purchase of a new laptop was driving my wife insane.

Then on Saturday I had to go to work, which quickly got exciting (and not in a good way) when we had to deal with a crisis.  I left work for a couple of hours to do what I could, and spent quite a bit of time in prayer over it.  It was good that this happened, in a way, because it completely got my focus off my own materialism (thinly disguised by a need to access my Awana documents and finish the paper I have been ignoring.)  Anyway, with all that going on, we had to hustle to find a babysitter and get out of the house that evening, but everything turned out marvellously in the end, and Cheryl and I had a very valuable pastoral experience.

Saturday night, after we got home, my wife whispered something very exciting in my ear.  No, I am not going there.  It was her agreement to allow me to get a laptop on Sunday.

So on Sunday, church was a run-run-run networking and troubleshooting experience, wrapped up around a very nice time of worship to the God we serve.  Two of our Awana leaders were cancelling out that evening, so we had to scramble to replace them.  We also shifted another of our leaders into a director-role, and freed up Cheryl to cover another place that needed doing.  That afternoon, I did a bottle depot run, picked up a bunch of flannelgraph pieces, shopped for cloth in a tent in some guy’s backyard, stapled it to a board, shopped for the laptop (including an intense half hour negotiation with the manager featuring all 4 of our kids, which did net us a 2 year service agreement worth $140 for free), prepared a council time talk, and picked up two of my leaders with 5 minutes to spare before Awana.

Praise God, my friend from work that I invited out to Freedom Session showed up!  That was exciting to see.  My talk in council time involved a lot of shouting and teaching, along with me throwing myself on the floor at least 3 times to illustrate 1 Cor 15:3-4.  Finally, I wrapped up the night with fetching sandwiches for my secretaries.

On top of all this, I had the joy of hearing from my wife’s lips the long awaited agreement on the need for us to have a shared devotional and prayer time together.  That to me was a huge blessing.  But really, when it comes down to it, nothing this weekend would have gone right without God’s hand working behind the scenes.  I can’t count all the moments where we could have done whatever we wanted, but if God had not been at work, this whole weekend would have burned to the ground.  It’s so much fun to see him come through!

And I have a new toy laptop.  Giggle.

I just tried googling this, and didn’t find a thing that was relevant.

My Pastor and mentor, Philip, suggested this to me a few weeks ago as a possibility when we begin to move forward with our dream of planting a church in Alberta.  He was suggesting that going bivocational would allow us to be more financially secure as we set down roots in the new community.

It certainly fits with my skill set - I am currently in a sales position for a company that makes real estate software for agents.  From the first week on the job, I was convinced that it would be easy to make money in real estate if a person simply used the tools we sell - that’s probably why I sell it well - I actually believe in the product.  But it had me thinking for a few years now that I could do well in that industry.  In addition, I already have some training in geography and mapping in Alberta, when I was in Forestry.  So I get that lingo.

The job has it downsides.  It is an on-call, 24/7 type job which can get very hectic if you get a lot of business.  But it is scalable and ultimately you set your own hours.

A couple other downsides are it would cost me money to get my license, and starting up as a realtor in a town you haven’t lived in it would seem to me to be a little tricky - local knowledge is an advantage in that job.

The upside is the chance to be out in the community all the time, getting to know the neighbourhoods, the issues, the things that make the community tick every single day, and earn money while I am at it.

It seems like such a good idea, I am wondering why nobody ever thought of it before.  But, it does pose more questions.  When is the right time to start chasing that license?  Would it be smart to get into real estate right now, or soon, and give myself a couple of years to learn the trade?  Or would it be better to plan to get the license just before or after the move?  Where am I going to come up with the money for the training?  Where am I going to find the time?

I just realized it’s been almost a week between posts. Sorry about that. We’d been doing great, posting almost every weekday and the odd weekend. The last week of days has been super intensive. Cheryl had her first day of teaching at TWU, and she had to spend two more evenings doing some supervisory stuff for another Nursing class. On top of that, we had dinner with our new pastoral couple (who are wonderful by the way. It feels like we have a lot in common). So by the time Friday rolled around, we could see our Awana launch date looming on the horizon.

Frustratingly, we never did get our next shipment from Awana last week, so we were really short of equipment and stuff. However, our club directors did a bang-up job of organizing what they needed to do, and despite my laptop’s wireless adapter packing it in, we managed to fill in the gaps.

First week attendance (including nursery) - 33. It’s a good beginning. All of the leaders showed up (though a few were a little late and kept us on edge). God totally bailed out our nursery, which would have been overwhelmed for sure had we not had Ed’s daughter, Candace, show up out of the blue. As I drove them home afterwards, I asked her, “How does it feel to know you are an answer to prayer?”

I can definitely see that we have a lot of room for growth. It will get easier as we get the kids into a routine as far as checking in and moving around goes. We’re also all learning to manage our space. I really had no idea how much slack to give when kids came to the gym for games time. However, again my directors bailed me out because they had taught their leaders well, how to do the five count and it worked.

Ed Stetzer recommends this book for those looking to do mroe mentoring and coaching.  I certainly have a couple of uses for such a book, and I do feel I have some deficiency in my skill as a mentor.  If anyone who reads this feels like passing on an early Christmas gift, this would be a great one!

No, not mine.

But another blogger friend, she put up a post considering whether it’s a bit too harsh to say divorce is wrong, or sin.  She has noticed that a lot of people take very harsh views of divorce, and wonders if things aren’t quite as black and white.

They never are.

However, I don’t think divorce is as grey as she does.  I replied with a discussion about the real problem when we consider “exceptional” divorce circumstances.  I’ll summarize for you here.

We all know that God hates divorce.  Why?   (more…)

This is going to sound completely self-centred, but given what I know about myself, and my own struggles with confidence, last night’s one-year anniversary at Community of Hope was incredibly special and meaningful to me for a number of reasons.  Let me tell you about it.

• We had our Awana leadership walkthrough before the Vision meeting.  I had almost the entire staff out there, including the new team members who have been signing up to work with us!  So I took everyone on a guided tour through all the spaces, and then let the teams look at them and discuss setups and how they can move forward.  Just being in such a leadership position was something that I never could envision myself doing, but there I was.
• I was approached by someone completely unexpected to wash my feet.  A young man, Colin, who play electric guitar on worship team, approached me.  As far as I knew the extent of our relationship was the church and the fact that I tried to recruit him into Awana leadership, but he turned me down.  When we got to work, he told me that he deeply admired me because of my attitude at church.  He said whenever he came to church in a miserable mood, he would see me circulating, or doing something, or talking to someone with a big grin on my face.  That, or he’d hear me laugh somewhere - I’ve got a pretty loud laugh.  It was enough to break him out of whatever funk he’d be in, and say to himself, “If he can do it, so can I.”  But he didn’t stop with just me.  After we finished, Pastor Phil had kind of an open time for people to “out” men who had affected them or served them, and Colin stood up and told everyone what he just told me!  I was quite taken by the honour he showed me, as it seemed to unexpected and genuine.
• Once that time of kind of “public outings” we called it was finished, a man who recently joined our church, Ed, approached me privately.  I have seen such a willingness to stretch himself in the service of God in him, as he has joined Awana as a leader.  He’s needed rides to get to various events for Awana, and I have picked him up more times than not.  He just told me to my face how much he appreciated that about me, and how glad he is that he is coming to our church.  Then he gave me a hug.
• Later, after the dinner, Pastor Phil asked people to come up and share how they had changed.  Of course, I had to spoil things and come up and take a quick pot-shot at him (heh, “I learned, if Phil can plant a church, ANYONE can plant a church!”  laughter ensued…) but what really caused me excitement was watching my wife stand up and say some really important things to everyone about God’s work in our church.  She is so good in front of people!  Incredible even.  What a gift God has given me for a partner in life and ministry!
• Finally, during our table communion time, I found myself waiting for someone else to pray over the elements and distribute them.  Nobody was doing it so I finally stepped in.  But then, once we were done, Sue from the table behind us tapped on my shoulder and said, “Nobody at our table knows how to pray over the bread and grape juice!”  She wanted me to pray for them.  I went over there and prayed with them, and felt strongly at that moment how much of a leader I have become here at Community of Hope.

Without even realizing it, God has been positioning me.  He’s brought me to where I am, almost unrecognized, to show me a picture of what I could be and will be if I only let him lead me there.  I am really blown away by how far he has brought me.  I never thought for a second last night was what was in store for me - I was just looking forward to the food (I LOOOVE potlucks!)

Phil said in his opening devotional that he had planned to do some commissioning of leaders last night.  Things went a little longer than he wanted, so he never got to it, but this morning, I defnitely feel like God did some commissioning regardless of how much we had time for.  Last night made me intensely aware that God is doing something with me, and he is doing it a whole lot faster and in ways that I may not even be noticing.

Then again, this isn’t the first time he’s done this to me.  You’d think I’d start to expect it after a while.

While out at iGo, the speaker, Mark Cahill, challenged us like I had never been challenged before about personal evangelism. I was definitely affected by his speaking, though some of the people I was with weren’t as enthusiastic. At first blush, it felt like he was proposing the “Way of the Master” type challenge evangelism. And to a certain extent, I believe he was. He does believe that it is important to explain what sin is when shearing the gospel now. That term, correctly defined, is no longer part of our cultural vernacular. Relativism, once a concept of physics, has now been applied so thoroughly to everything that the concept of sin is distant at best from people’s minds.

Now, I don’t subscribe to “confrontational” evangelism as illustrated in most “Way of the Master” type videos. And even many of Mark’s examples could be characterized this way. But I believe that it is possible to start spiritual conversations and have them lead to a presentation of the gospel. I believe this even though I have not practiced it.

But I want to and I plan to.

I finished reading Cahill’s “One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven”, and I am more convinced than ever that this is something I have to do. And this is something that all Christians should be capable of, no matter their own personality or limitations. Because everyone does communicate differently, and everyone has their own story. It is a willingness to be used by God that must characterize us as Christians. Even if we think “I’m not a talker” or something else, maybe you will wind up talking to someone else who is “not a talker”. It doesn’t matter.

What I came away with is a conviction that even if I have relationships that will not bear the strain of me walking up to them with a “let me tell you about my saviour” type conversation, what I need to do is make clear to those around me that I want them to ask me, that I welcome their questions about my faith, and that I am there for them whenever they have a spiritual question. Maybe in the simple act of communicating this it will open up a door. Who knows? But I want to be ready, in season and out of season.