Wow, it has been far too long since I updated this blog! I am embarrassed, because it is meant to be an almost daily journal of our journey to the unthinkable: to plant a church for Jesus in Medicine Hat. It is hard for people to read along when we aren’t writing!
So here is an update: I plead excuses because (if you have been keeping up on Twitter or Facebook) you know that last weekend I had a bit of a double-whammy: I graduated from ACTS Seminaries with a Master of Arts in Christian Studies, and the following Sunday I preached my third sermon ever at Community of Hope.
The graduation ceremony went very smoothly. Having 6 Seminaries working together is great while you are going there because the interplay between denominations and the collegial environment despite distinctive approaches to theology, life and practice makes for a very rich experience. However, graduation ceremonies are a bit of a bear because legally, conferment of your degree only happens when the representative of said body says the “magic words” so we had to listen to the legalese from each Seminary AND from Trinity Western Univeristy who simultaneously grants the degrees to all graduands.
I was surprisingly calm all things considered. If this had been the only thing I had to worry about that weekend, then I might have been more nervous. But as it was with Sunday looming in my mind this seemed to be a cakewalk.
Thursday night my parents rolled into town (one day early), and we had dinner at the restaurant attached to their hotel. I had Friday off, and Grandma and Grandpa Edwards pulled up around noon, so we had them over that afternoon, and had a big Chinese Food feast that night with them and my aunt and uncle: my Dad’s twin brother at our place. That was a good party.
Saturday I had to head to the venue for the graduation by 10am, and we were out there until 3pm. It was good to be finally finished, and I did get to touch base with the two professors that I wanted to speak to the most: Bruce Guenther, the History professor who I was Teacher Assistant for on my first go-round, and also Kent Anderson, professor of Homiletics, who was my faculty advisor at Northwest Baptist College in 1997, and advised me because I had taken a lot of college (at different colleges) that I would actually be eligible for Seminary. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have graduated today. Of course, he did not recall that at all.. but then again at that time I was just another college student 23 year old, and strangely, I have never gotten around to taking any of his classes.
Saturday night we had a bigger family dinner at the restaurant again, with all the kids there and with my Uncle Paul, Aunt Sonya and two of their three teenage girls, as well as Dad’s bother and his wife, and Grandma and Grandpa. It was a lot of fun, and I received some gifts for graduating which were a surprise , and very welcome.
Sunday I was to preach. Pastor Philip had taken half the church to Goldendale, WA for the Northwest District Grace Brethren Conference, but the other half – some 50 people, were still coming. I spoke about the “Calling of God” (go ahead and listen here), and actually came in fairly short – only 25 minutes was my message. I feel like I started off a little scattered but settled down ad feel like I did pretty well – especially since this was my first time preaching in front of family – my parents and my grandparents stayed to watch me.
So obviously, such a weekend took some time to come down from. That’s my excuse for not writing anything in this space for a couple of weeks. What are we up to now? Well, I am going to start picking away at either a rewrite of the “Attitude of Hope” membership class, or an entirely new version that will become the beginnings of a vision and mission framework for our church in Alberta. I am going to be teaching our Discovery class for 7 weeks starting in May, to introduce some people to the truth about Jesus in preparation for membership. We also have our “Great Canadian Adventure” coming up in mid-June, and Philip says he wants me to take a hand in organizing that, then begin to prepare and plan for the 2010 version which will take place in Medicine Hat. We don’t have anythign big planned for this summer because the Twins could be arriving anywhere between the beginning of July and mid-August. The Dr. told Cheryl he would be making sure that things wrap up by the 38th week, with the earliest we could deliver (unless something is amiss) being the 32nd week. That pretty much devours the summer.
Stay tuned!
Tags: ACTS, District Conference, family, grace brethren, graduation, preaching, seminary
