In the “Jesus Bloggers” segment on the Drew Marshall Show, they raised the point about how the economic crisis, recession, what-have-you, will lead to the demise of the mega-church.  Darryl Dash, Bill Kinnon and Michael Spencer were all on, weighing in.

I don’t know about that opinion, for a number of economic reasons.  Yes, I expect to see especially amongst the more nominal Christians (who often flock to these mega-churches to get lost and avoid accountablity) a drop-off in tithing as times get tough.  However, people do look to the church for answers when they are facing hardship.  I have read various economists say that clergy are one of the most recession-proof occupations.

But what they followed with was a question as to why we are even building new church buildings.  The question was asked, “There are so many, why do we need them?”  Their answer was “consumer mentality”.  I think that’s too simplistic.

Yes, some churches are building “bigger, better” for consumer reasons, but I wonder if these bloggers and Drew really realize how much of a move against Christianity is already beginning to occur in our society.  On the ground, I am hearing more and more stories about church planters having a hard time finding space to meet.  City zoning laws prohibiting church buildings.  School boards refusing to rent to church groups, or reserving the right to pre-empt your regular meetings whenever they want for sports tournaments, etc.  Theatre operators declining to rent to faith groups, or not allowing this or that to make things so difficult as to become untenable as a location.  In my little corner of the world I know of two new churches who have faced these exact realities as they seek to find space to meet.

What is the answer?  Are house churches the answer?  Aren’t there things that churches need to do as large groups?  Are there not reasons to have large venues as churches?  I think just suggesting that “we have enough church buildings” does not recognize that we have bigger issues that are starting to ride up on new church development.

It’s a good thing that I have some good friends who are causing me to think about things.  If they weren’t around I wonder how much would simply flow past me without realizing how fast time marches on.

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday, and he started talking about what next year would look like at Community of Hope.  We look forward to passing the leadership of Awana on to somebody else (we’re already moving him in that direction - he’s already been taking huge stides along that path).  But the question was asked for us, what next?

Well, I told him I hope to take Freedom Session next fall, an intensive class to help people struggle with and overcome past issues in a Biblical framework.  Both Community of Hope and my previous church, Cedar Grove run this program, and I have had a lot of contact with both the people who run it and people who have taken it.  It is very good at what it does, helping people to recognize what hurts they have caused or experienced in the past, and how they affect their lives today, and act to resolve them.  I realized in my many interactions with people involved, that while I function pretty well, like most other people I have some hurts that definitely affect how I relate to people.  I wouldn’t mind dealing with those.

But, that’s not all by a long shot.  The vision that Cheryl and I have is to begin the process of planting a church in Alberta in the fall of 2010.  That is not far away at all!  Working back from a fall 2010 departure, that means we need to make a final decision about a destination city/town probably by the beginning of summer 2010, and before that we need to be building our team if there will be one.  It would probably make sense if we are going to have a team that our small group in the fall of 2009 be made up of those who are interested in planting with us.  We will need that fall and winter and spring to make decisions and pray and vision together what that new church will look like.

Fall 2009 seems so far away, but a quick check of the calendar is only 9 months!

On the bright side, if all these dates come too fast they are always subject to revision.  And on the brighter side, with every passing week, I do feel we are being prepared more and more for the task ahead.  There is still so much to do, but I still think we can get there.

I am a perfectionist. I guess you could classify me as Type A. I like to plan everything out and implement everything according to my plan. Don’t get me wrong, I can be flexible but I prefer not to have to be. If things go according to plan then I don’t have to be flexible because I would have already planned for everything that could happen.

As I blogged before, I have been working on reading through the Bible in a year. It seems that as I start reading, something comes up to distract me and keep me from my “plan”. Historically, I would give up if things drifted too far from my plan and would try again another time but every time I’ve had distruptions with my self created reading plan, I get right back to it and haven’t let it deter me. I am working on my nursing research course which has taken a fair amount of time from my life. I have a couple of projects due, one of which mysteriously disappeared and I had to start from scratch on with a due date of this weekend. The second project was also due this weekend but I needed to get the other one done first as it was a group project and I wouldn’t be the only one with consequences for my portion disappearing. My professor kindly gave me an extension on the second project which I am extremely grateful for. Needless to say, I am really feeling the time pressure right now and I neglected my Bible reading all week long. But…. (there’s always a but)….

I am pleased to say that as of this morning, I have completed all of the Old Testament. I can now say that I have read the entire Bible. I have read the New Testament in the past so now I have read both but my goal is to read both in a year. I chew through the New Testament because I know the stories so I anticipate that as long as I keep pushing forward and not get discouraged by time or forgetting to read for a few days that I will actually finish according to plan and a lot of flexibility.

Man, it just seemed like nothing went right yesterday.

I thought I was on top of things in the moment I got up.  Lots of time.  Daylight Savings and all.  I head downstairs at about 6:30am, take care of a few things, and “Waaah!”  Baby is awake (he usually sleeps in until 8am or so).

Spend the next half hour cleaning him up, changing his outfit, apply cream for the nasty rash he has right now, and attempting to feed him.  Then the other boys all get up.  I still manage to get out the door to take the dog for a walk, with 25 minutes to spare and the baby stapped to my back (Mommy was into her bathroom prep time).  I get back, and lo and behold, the boys are not ready.  Rush rush, cram them all in the van, get to church with about 1 minute to spare.

(First prayer skipped - breakfast)

Church goes fine actually.   Everything that happened at church was smooth.  My Discover Hope class went well, good discussion (with only one or two brain cramps).  The sermon was fun - Adam had the unenviable task of explaining Daniel chapter 7.

We leave church and the kids are hungry, but Cheryl wants to take them shopping.  Not my favourite activity, but shopping must be done from time to time.  We hit the Talize for some slightly used pants for the boys, then Wal-Mart for some nice shirts for them.  I figure we can do a cheap lunch at McD’s as I wasn’t hungry.  I tried to use McD’s as an incentive for behaviour, but Aydan is defiant, or forgetful, and by the time we get done with shopping, he has lost his drink, his fries and his sandwich.  When we sit down to eat and he realizes that nothing is for him, I finally see him react.  He gets it.  He goes very quiet and sad.  After a few minutes, I decide that he’s been remorseful, so I share my fries and drink with him.

(skipped prayer at lunch, too)

By the time shopping is over, I am getting edgy and I don’t know why.  What my subconcious knew that my concious didn’t was that we had a ton of stuff planned for Awana, but hadn’t prepared at all.  The list went on and on - November Newsletter, coffee and milk, cups, treats, all needed to be prepared in addition to the normal setup routine.   We had no indication as to how many children to expect to our “bring a friend” night.

By the time we got home, I was focused on the newsletter, but at the same time there was much else to do.  Housecleaning, making supper, picking games (because I was covering for our games director who was away) were all burdening me.  I managed to churn it out then I realized I would have to leave early to get it printed at the church office.  Then I get a call from one of our leaders, who couldn’t make it.  That’s two down.

I attempt to get out the door early but I wind up loading the gear for my wife as well.  We feed the boys pizza pockets, and I head out the door after some less than pleasant words with Cheryl, over codifying the points we give out for Awana clubbers as an incentive.  I was thinking it should be an easy task to delegate, but she felt totally unprepared to come up with anything.  We were both wrong, which is what happens 90% of the time we butt heads.

I get to the club and start setting up on time miraculously - I am there at 5:30.  I fix tape in the gym, then I notice that nobody is here but Shane.  5:45, still nobody.  Not even my wife.  Ed and his family show.  That’s good.  Mitchell is around - I guess he always was but I didn’t see him.  Adam and Susie show up.  It’s 5:52 when I finally see most of my leaders, and my wife pulls up with the gear.

Prayer before starting Awana skipped.  We should have loaded the kids into their seats in the sanctuary ten minutes ago.

I survey the land - we have two cubbies (normally our largest club).  Our T&T’ers, who I expected to bring the most friends - not a single new clubber.  No new parents at all.  Wow.

At the flag ceremony I don’t even bring up the lack of friends, and hence, no bonus rewards for clubbers.  But I am still way off my game.  I start the Awana song before we even do O Canada.  The kids call me on it.  I give a lecture on rewards and get some Awana bucks into the hands of the T&T Director. The Sparks director rolls in about 3/4 of the way through the flag ceremony.  Though I feel on the edge of snapping, I decide to err on the side of grace, since the guy had a migraine all day, despite all the lateness shown by pretty much everybody around me.  I can’t really be that upset - though I am on time this week, I have been tardy myself a fair amount and haven’t set a good example.

Relieved, I slink out to the foyer, where I start working up a points structure so we can actually figure out which team is winning.  By the time that is done, I have about 20 minutes to pick games.  I start flipping through the book, looking for games without beanbags as ours went missing about 3 weeks ago and haven’t turned up.  Every single game involves either food or beanbags!  Gah!  I finally find 3 games and with all of 3 minutes to spare, I head into the gym.

Short staffed, short patience, short wits.  Short of peace, short of fruit.  But the victory was I got through the day in one piece, and learned once again the importance of prayer.

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.

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.

I need to figure out what this word means.  How does one not give away the farm when one knows stuff that the person you’re talking to probably could use it, but you’re not sure if it is your place to say?

I’ve faced two different situations in the last 4 days where I have been asking myself, should I just shut up, or should I be forthright and say what I know?

I’m not very good at this yet.  Circumspection.  Need to figure it out.  Circumspection without sneakiness.

Wow.  Now that ministry is more than just something casual for us, we are really starting to feel it on Mondays.

When I say “we” I really mean “me”.  Because Cheryl had extenuating circumstances - namely 36 hours of nausaea and vomiting.  Then again, covering all the parental bases for her while she’s been sick may explain my exhaustion.

I can’t really call it exhaustion though.  Actually I feel relatively well rested.  I’ve been making a point of getting 9 hours a night on Friday and Saturday nights, which has been wonderful to get me energized for the week.  For some reason weeknights I rarely manage more than 7 hours which does catch up.

But man, was the weekend busy!  Saturday I was cleaning all morning, then afternoon spent trying to get a start on my paper (again) but sidetracked with a long phone call with Mom.  Saturday night was the annual hockey pool draft, which was a good time.

Sunday it was get the kids ready for church, rush over to the church offices for some tables and chairs for the membership class I kicked off that morning, panic about whether or not the booklets had been printed out, then rush over to the church, check in the kids, set up my table, teach the class, tear it down, attend the 10am service, meet a brand new Awana leader (thank you, God!), take the kids grocery shopping (you try shopping Safeway without a cart, with a 7, 5 and 4 year old in tow!), pack the groceries away, prepare a spaghetti sauce (my finest in years), then sit down and try to churn out the October newsletter for Awana (which I failed).

Pant pant.

THEN…

I had to pack the van full of Awana gear, talk my wife into driving the kids to club (even though she could barely sit up), take off to pick up one of our leaders, get to the church, walk the new leader through a little handbooky thing we have prepared to help onboard new leaders, introduce her to the team, and then all the ordinary duties of clubs, complicated by a number of concerned parents that their child should be moved up a level because of their maturity/peer group.

Then of course packing up ASAP, rounding up my kids, and getting home before a truly obscene hour.

Looking back on the weekend now, I am impressed with all that I did do, and can’t be that displeased that there were several things that didn’t get done.  Still, things aren’t slowing down.  While there is no Awana this weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving), I need to prepare a message for the large group time next weekend, and Phil has asked me to prepare a sermon on Daniel and the Lion’s Den for the 26th.

So much for my plan to finish a draft of my grad essay this month.

Well, maybe I can do it.

I’m going to try.

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.