From Friday until Sunday afternoon, myself and one of my leaders in Awana attended the Commander College 101 seminars, near Chillwack.

Abstract: If you’re an Awana Commander, I highly recommend it.  Great teaching, great application, great networking.  Downside: Information overload.

The event was held at Camp Stillwood, a really nice retreat/camp destination in the Columbia Valley, up behind Cultus Lake.  I’ve been there several times before for Men’s retreats with Cedar Grove Baptist Church, but this one was slightly longer, so more enjoyable.

The main speaker was Dr. Greg Carlson, who has been involved with Awana for decades along with his wife, Donna.  He wrote the book that Awana promotes, “Rock-Solid Teacher“.  The local Awana missionaries, Harvey and Lil Fehr also spoke.  All four of them, along with one of the local Awana commanders, Karen Quan, were quite good - engaging and passionate about their subject matter.

The material covered was very in-depth, about the philsophy of children’s ministry, the importance of presenting the gospel to children, the importance of protecting the children from abuse, and many other subjects.  It certainly gave me a much better vision for children’s ministry.  I found myself renewed with enthusiasm for doing my job well and serving the children, their families, and the leaders I am leading.

I don’t have a lot to complain about.  However, I will raise a couple of beefs.  First, in their lesson on child protection, they used a short video, a series of monologues which were meant to express forcefully the ravages of an abuse situation - how it impacts the church, the family, the abused, and the community.  However, at its end, the video pinned the blame for not reaching the lost of the community on the failings of the club to keep an abuser from abusing.  This is an unfair framework.  To suggest that because the church is rocked by this trauma, they stopped evangelizing the community, so people died in their sin, never hearing the gospel, that this is the church’s or the Awana Commander’s fault?  That is way too much.  People die in their sin not because someone fails to tell them about the gospel, but because they have heard the gospel, and have no excuse for their ignorance of God.  If they didn’t hear it from that church, then it came to them in another form, and they rejected it.

Another issue I had was with the intensity of the weekend.  There were so many sessions, and there was little time to reflect and process what was learned.  On the plus side, I have never experienced a conference with such a vested interest in retention for the attendees.  They built into the program all kinds of opportunities to note down takeaways and direct application.  At the end of the process they even had us write letters to ourselves highlighting the most important things we don’t want to forget from the conference.  However, I would have relished more time for reflection on the content I was downloading, if for no other reason than to think through some of the issues I have in particular and how their information changes how I see them.  I mean, from breakfast through to bedtime on Saturday, we were going for 12 hours straight!  That is intense for a learning experience.

I have written a lot above about what I didn’t like, but read that last paragraph again.  This was a very good weekend and I got a lot more out of it than the last conference I attended.  I attribute that to the organization and effectiveness of the speakers.  And the Word of God was the beginning and the end of their subject.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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 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.

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.