Some mornings, events conspire against you to bring you to God.

Every morning, at 4:45am I walk my dog.  I actually appreciate this time because it gives me a chance to pray and talk with God.  Usually it’s a one-way thanks and praise session and I wonder sometimes that I don’t have a chance to listen to what he has to say.  But maybe he is enjoying what I have to say.

Anyways, today, I was rushed so I didn’t do a full walk with the dog.  Late night with my lady, enjoying some tickets that were given to us to the Vancouver Theatresports League.  I determined to listent to a little Praise 106.5 and pray while driving.  (Useful tip: if you pray while driving, DON’T close your eyes!)

Well, on the local Christian radio station in between songs they start saying, “Well, It’s Hallowe’en today, but it’s Reformation Day to me because today is the anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg chapel and starting the Reformation.  Today we’re going to be talking about alternatives to Hallowe’en - Harvest Festivals, or whatever terms you use.”

I listened to this, and I started trying to pray.  I would get to “O God” and then my mind would get twisted back to Hallowe’en, and the fact that this Sunday night is our first “Bring a Friend” night.  Then God starts pointing things out to me.

“Hey, you’ve never really reached out to your neighbourhood here.”

“But God, I live so far away from church!  Nobody around here will want to come that far.”

“How do you know?  You do.”

“Well yeah, but…”

“Why don’t you hand out Awana invitation cards to all the kids tonight when they come to your door?”

“I guess I could, but they won’t come.  The cards will just get thrown away.”

“How do you know that?  Why don’t you try it?”

“But God…”

“Look.  Last year you had more than 200 kids come to your door.  At least a few of them, their parents may be looking for something more wholesome to send their kids to for an activity.  You don’t know.  This is the one night a year when you can walk up to people’s doors and knock and ask them for stuff and people don’t think you’re crazy.  It’s one night a year that children take candy (and anything else) from strangers.  Why are you wasting it?  You want to hear from me, here I am talking to you.  Now get to it.”

So I get to work and I mention this to a Christian friend of mine at work.  I tell him that it seems like a colossal waste that Christians withdraw from our culture on Hallowe’en because of its roots as a pagan holiday.  He agrees.  He says, “You should give them some candy for coming too!”  I was like, “Well, we were going to for the bring a friend kids anyway, but you’re right!  I should stick an Avery label on each card saying, more candy for new kids who attend!”

So now I have a plan of action for tonight.  And this weekend.  200 invitations, directly distributed only to families with kids in the ages we serve.  How easy is this?  And to think, Christians don’t like Hallowe’en.  I wonder how many of them consider the lengths the early church went to, to “take over” pagan holidays?  I mean, look at Christmas, Easter.  They are both in origin pagan holidays, co-opted by the early Christians.  I am not saying we need to do the same for Hallowe’en, but there are elements of Hallowe’en that provide fantastic openings for us as Christians who wish to share our faith.  Why not take advantage of them, instead of shaking our collective fingers at secular society, “tsk, tsk”ing the whole time about witches and dead things?

What an amazing week.

Things are happening for our little clan, behind the scenes right now.  I can’t talk too much about it because much is still up in the air, but expect to hear about some significant steps coming in the next little while.  This dream of church planting is solidifying.  Even recently, it’s been a hazy object on the horizon, hard to distinguish through haze and geography between here and there.  Sometimes we have even asked ourselves if that objective in the distance wasn’t a mirage.

But it’s looking a whole lot more real.

And it’s getting realer.

Heh.  New word.

I encountered this article in a 2000 issue of a Church Planting newsletter produced by Outreach Canada.  Definitely food for thought.

What did you do last summer? At first you may think what Alan Braun did last summer can’t be reproduced. But perhaps it can…

Large Volunteer Core Recruited

Alan is pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Penticton, BC. Last spring he invited volunteers from associated churches in the USA to come help, and they did—all 250 of them. An administrator was hired for three months to coordinate this volunteer team. What did the volunteers do?

Following orientation and training, the volunteers surveyed five nearby communities, informing residents that a new church was to be planted and offering a “Vision Video,” where the vision of the new church was shared. In addition, the door-to-door volunteers invited children to a community Vacation Bible School (VBS). Finally, the volunteers staffed seven distinct VBSs and made numerous follow-up home visits.

Results: Five New Churches and a Saturday Evening Service! What happened? 140 children attended a VBS in West Bank where volunteer follow-up calls gathered a new church, which is now meeting with its own full-time pastor. A new congregation is also meeting in a hotel in Osoyoos and three new plants are underway in Penticton.

In addition to these results, a new Saturday night service was started in the mother church. Over the course of the summer mission, 121 persons indicated professions of faith in Christ and are now being discipled.

How Does a Local Church Come to Take Responsibility For Planting?

Abundant Life Christian Fellowship’s vision was to plant a daughter church each year.  When its denomination, the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptist Churches, set the “God-sized” goal of planting 1,000 churches by 2010, ALCF went back to prayer. It concluded that, because of its size and strength compared to other churches in the denomination, they would be responsible for 100 of the envisioned 1,000 church plants. This commitment led, in turn, to the goal of planting five of these 100
churches during the summer of 2000.

What Can We Learn?

Missionary supervisor, Jim Graham, offering support to the project, suggests several potential lessons for all:
1. Concentrated sowing will produce a harvest.

2. Volunteer missions can be the key to reaching large numbers of people.

3. Church planting movements can happen in Canada.

Perhaps we should add a fourth: When denominations set church planting goals beyond their ability to control the outcome, God recognizes dependence and responds.

Who’s Alan?

Pastor Alan Braun arrived to pastor his first church, then with ten people, in 1989. The church now draws 400. He says he has gathered a governing board to look for results. Would he do anything differently?

“Yes,” says Braun, “I would communicate earlier in the process with the ministerial where we intend to plant.” Braun’s reflection on the shrinking influence of the church in Canadian life is: “We’ve been in retreat long enough—let’s get moving.”

I had some very nice feedback by two men I respect after I preached yesterday.  It was constructive and I appreciated it a lot.

But the most important feedback I had was from my wife.  She said, “In my eyes, you became a pastor today.”

Nothing else matters.  If she believes in me and God is with me, I can do anything.

Today I preached my second ever sermon.  It was entitled, “Faith That Saved A King” and it focused on the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.  It is actually part of a series of messages focusing on the book of Daniel.  I got to do this one while Philip was away in Mississauga, participating in the 10th anniversary of Grace Brethren Canada (and Grace Community Church).

The second time was definitely the best.  I made some goofs in the first one and managed to straighten them up in the second time through.  I enjoyed giving the message because I feel like it accomplished two objectives - first it stayed on target, driving home the theme “God is King”, and relied primarily on the text of Daniel.  But second, I was able to draw out a message about missional living.  I talked a lot about what faith is, how it is built, and what effect it can have on the people around you when it is lived publicly, “in the open”.  It was a message seeded by my own tendency to keep my faith to myself, and also in dealing with some of my Christian co-workers, who felt the same.  I wanted to encourage people to live openly as Christians, so that God may be glorified even amongst those who do not know him.  I really feel strongly that you can’t argue someone into faith in God, but when God works in your life and people find out about it, they are faced with a choice - either try to explain away Gods’ work as coincidence, or reckon with the God that loves them, that they have ignored, shunned, or hated.  It is a choice that you cannot set up for them.  It must come to them.  And it comes when you live out your faith in front of them.

If you would like to give the message a listen please feel free.  I have made it available as a podcast below.  Please feel free to offer constructive criticism in the comments - I am still very much aware I have lots to learn in terms of presenting a message.

Here’s a link to the sermon, in mp3 format.  It’s 40 minutes long, so the dl is about 46 megs.

Oh look! A post from me! It has been a while folks. I’m very sorry. My life has been… wait for it….. busy. As a mother of 4 kids, an instructor and Masters student my time gets eaten up rather quick. While I was working on my Summer course I was thinking about how I wanted to get back to reading my Bible and finish my plan of getting through the Bible front to back in a year. Thoughts of getting back to reading my Bible always came when I was procrastinating on my course work and since I paid tuition for my course and I felt guilty about not doing my assigned readings, the course work would win and Bible reading would wait.

I am now onto my Fall course (3 more courses after this one and I will complete my Masters degree) and I realized that December is coming and I again am faced with course readings versus Bible readings. I reached a deadline for an assignment and found myself feeling behind and stressed. I wasn’t behind in my readings but I felt out of control… and I like being in control or at least feeling like things are being controlled for me. After my assignment was in I made the decision that I was going to make time for working on reading through the Bible in a year.

I had left my readings last time somewhere in Ezekiel but decided to pull my bookmark out and start at the beginning of the book. I didn’t see the point in starting where I had left off and then read everything out of context because I didn’t remember what happened before. I have since chewed through Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea and Joel. Amos is next on my hit list.

I have read all of the New Testament many times in the past so once I get through the minor prophets I can say that I have read through the entire Bible. If I can get through the minor prophets and the New Testament before January 1st I can say I’ve read the Bible in a year. I don’t want to rush myself as I want to be able to learn as I go along but I hope that God will help me reach this goal. It is doable and as long as I continue with the habit that I’ve had this past week or so of reading every night, I should be able to accomplish it.

And as a side note, I find that now I have more time since I have been taking time to read my Bible. How does that work? I think I am less wasteful with my time now although there is still plenty of room for improvement.

I’ve been watching the blog of the Wilks Family, in Medicine Hat planting Pathway Church, for probably close on to 6 months now.  It has been a fascinating journey with ups and downs, and it’s been a privelege to be an eavesdropper on a church coming into being from nothing.

When I started reading them, they were just a lone family, trying to network and integrate into the community.  I read about god contacts, which evaporated it seemed.  I read about mission teams coming up from the USA to help them raise awareness and give into the community, and prayer walk.  I read about momentum, and discouragement.  But now, it looks like they have finally broken through something and are moving toward launch.  A worship team is forming, a location for the church is becoming clear, and more and more people in Medicine Hat are jumping on board.

Check them out and celebrate with them.  Lift them up in prayer that God blesses their ministry and brings many into the Kingdom through them.

Mondays are definitely becoming a debriefing day for me.  It gives me a chance to reflect on all that went on Sunday - and the way we do church up here, a LOT happens on Sundays.

The discipleship class I teach is proceeding really fast.  I feel like anytime I have less than 4 people in the class, the material moves so quickly.  Of course, it helps when the people in the class are both highly in agreement and/or highly experienced in this environment.  I am letting them talk but the talk goes off subject so quickly, and feels unproductive.  Do I keep trying to hit the brakes and threaten derailment?  Or do I let us go at the pace that’s comfortable, and possibly get done early?

Another thought that occurred to me is that we parallel my class with a class for people who need a better understanding of their own faith.  Both lead to membership, but I don’t see where the material I cover gets treatment in a Gospel of John study.  I am wondering if perhaps it might make sense to run a mini version of my class after the Discovery class wraps, to make sure they are understanding how we are organized and why.  It might ease transition to membership for people new to their faith.

Last night was exciting on a number of levels.  It did not go as planned at all, from a human perspective, but God was doing some neat things.

First, we were trying to launch a new pre-preschool evening chidren’s program.  That made quite a few parents happy.  However, I had to get my nursery people rejigged to keep that working.  I had a leader lined up but they needed some help so I spent a large amount of time making sure everything was going smoothly and babies were happy.

This took me out of the picture for the opening ceremonies, but I am glad my directors stepped up and got it done.  We handed out handbooks and vests/shirts to the kids - I think they were thrilled.  Then, I was supposed to to a large group message.  I had everything ready: some props, the message printed out.  Then I realized I couldn’t put down the baby boy I was carrying around.  So, thanks God for preparing me to hand this one off!  I had Shane, the T&T Director, step up and run with the ball.  He did great.

Cheryl was there last night, helping with an autistic boy, and she wound up in the Sparks room where Ken (our new Sparks Director) was a little lost.  By the time I came up, she had everything under control and moving while Ken got up to speed.

The new handbooks and vests got all the kids worked up and they really took their efforts to another level, now that they could see more of what they were working for.

We were short some people, but it all got done.  I found myself pretty much circulating around complimenting people on how well they were doing.    Now that’s the kind of job I can handle!

All in all, a very successful day.  No question in my mind a day that would have completely hit the fan without God covering bases I didn’t even know needed covering.  Yay God!

I went to work and sat at my desk for nine hours today, in an effort to make up for how badly sales have gone this month.

I made seven dollars.

Was it worth it?  I asked myself as I drove home, was the fact that I was at work an expression of a lack of faith that God would provide?

Then I remembered that I had a ten minute conversation with my co-worker, a lapsed Catholic, about what it means to follow Christ.  We talked about the question, “Isn’t it enough that I am a nice guy, I mind my own business, and I don’t do anything to hurt anyone else?”

That’s why I was there today.  Not to make money, because God will provide in his own way.  But because someone needed to hear about God today.

The good news: another major shipment of Awana gear arrived yesterday.  It’s been tough trying to ad hoc things while we wait for all the delayed materials to arrive.  Still, in some ways it’s just in time as we had a recognition ceremony at the end of the last club meeting, giving prizes to kids who finished their introductory booklets.  Now this week we will be able to give them their jersey/vest and their handbooks.  And they are nice.  I am quite impressed.

The bad news is there is a big children’s ministry conference going on today put on by Awana, but open to anyone who is in children’s ministry.  I had hoped to have as many people as possible go, but I learned this week that it takes repeated communication to ensure that people remember upcoming events.  When we were first launching the clubs I talked about how great these seminars would be and recommended that we get everyone coming, but for some reason it slipped under everyone’s radar and by the time I came out to confirm attendance, nobody had any idea what I was talking about.  Lesson learned - communication must be regular and complete.

It turns out that even I could not make the training today though.  As much as I wanted to go, I can’t as I am now at work, dealing with a financial pinch.  The general consensus is that our faith is being tested a bit, to see how much we really trust God to take care of us.  Given the realities of our situation, I am certain that without God I would be an emotional mess, but he has been sustaining me, no question.  At the same time, I am seriously exploring other employment options, so pray with us that God would either sustain us through these slow months at my current job or provide a new job for me.

In either case, that’s one more thing to heap on the plate.  Whew.