I say family because I really feel that is the best analogy for what it’s like.  Some relatives you never knew you had, you love them just the same and look forward to learning about how God is working in their lives.  Other relatives may live far away and you long for every chance to reconnect with them.  Others live nearby and perhaps just the busyness of life keeps you from spending more time together.  It was family reunion time in Cincinatti, and it was a blessing!

In retrospect it appears that there was two major themes to this conference.  One was reaching out to Ethnic America.  We took in four workshops yesterday.  It is admirable this focus, because immigration in the USA and Canada is occurring at such a ferocious pace that the Church needs to step into this opportunity to reach out to the World at our doorstep.  When most immigration occurred from “Christian” nations, the churches filled as immigrants arrived.  But now, most immigration to North America is from nations who have no interest in church, but do wish, like we all do, to feel welcomed, to learn what it means to be citizens.  There is nobody who argues that the best opportunity for people to make life-changing decisions is at times when they are dealing with major crises – moving across the face of the earth is a crisis.  I can’t wait to see the fruit of these seminars being borne, and certainly it helped us look harder at the opportunities that are there in Medicine Hat.

The other big emphasis was wrestling with some big issues about the direction of the Fellowship and what family really means in this context.  That wrestling will go on, and we are excited to be a part of the voices that are calling the family to a common sense of purpose and a recognition of the reality of family.  It is easy to think of church as a non-profit business, and membership in the Fellowship as a marketing alliance, to be benefited from until it is inconvenient then discarded for another alliance.  I think that God is pretty clear in his Word that Christians are family, and the Church is one family.  This applies to the relationship between churches as well.  I think we need to guard against wordly business perpectives that merely ask “what’s in it for me?”  I am reminded of a great American who said about 50 years ago, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  I think that for those many people who are questioning the cost of investment in events like  National Conference, regional focus retreats, or even ministerium, need to turn that around, and ask themselves, “What am I contributing?”  The fellowship is the greater when each voice chooses to participate in the conversation, chooses to contribute their gifts to the whole.  The reward for this act is, as Jeff Bogue so eloquently demonstrated, is to become part of the sledgehammer, breaking the gates of hell!

For myself, I can’t imagine being involved in a fellowship where I wasn’t contributing to something larger.  I think back on everything about my walk with Christ and it’s always been about that.  When He became Lord of my life, He was ushering me into His Kingdom, and giving me a place in a grand plan that began before time: some have pictured it in Joel’s Army terms.  Some have pictured it as guerilla warfare in the Kingdom of This World.  It could even be pictured in terms like the smuggling of people out of slavery and into freedom (with a nod to the Underground Railroad Museum here in Cincinatti).  But I became a part of that.  As I have grown in Christ, there has never been a question that I need to give everything I have to offer to this enterprise.  To give to the larger means I am seeing something done that I could never do on my own.  I am not satisfied with acting on my own strength, because I know it is meager.  I lend my strength to my local church, and the church as a whole sees souls won to Christ – many more than I could ever win on my own.  My church lends its strength to other larger enterprises, and we see even more souls won to Christ and Jesus’ name lifted up in our nation.  When my fellowship acts as one, we will do things that can’t even be imagined.  But stepping back, not giving my all, thinking I can act in my own interests and further the Kingdom more?  I just don’t see how that makes sense.

What I am thinking about is carrying this conference, and this renewed recognition of family back to our local area.  We need more family in the Fellowship – we also need more family in the Northwest District.  We need all hands on deck to give the gifts they have to the larger whole and see God use us in ways beyond understanding.  I want to work harder than ever at connecting those I know in, and sharing my excitement and love for this family.  It is a wonder and a privelege that God brought us into this Fellowship.  I can’t wait to see what comes next.

One thing I have come to realize that the more seriously you take your life in ministry the more prayer is needed.  And not just that you need more people praying for you, but you have more things to pray about.  Reliance on God grows, or it needs to grow with every step of spiritual maturity you take.  This is because with every step you take in spiritual maturity, the weight of responsibility grows and the greater will be the accounting for what you have done, or not done.  I think of Jesus’ story about the stewards, and the ones who were faithful were given more, but the ones who were not as faithful, even what they had was taken from them (Luke 19:11-27).

We have been working on developing a more consistent time to pray together, Cheryl and I.  It seems there is always something that gets in the way.  This morning, it was our 2 year old, Dannan, with the runs, tramping it all over the house.  We did manage to get through a bit of prayer time, but that sure was cause to be interrupted!

Then, once I got to work, I just felt the weight of that reality land on me.  We need protection from distractions to be consistent coming to God in prayer.  I need to be praying about praying!  How strange is that?  I determined to take time this morning and get on my knees.  My flesh was telling me I was wasting precious office time that I could use for my class I am teaching or a myriad of other things, but God is trustworthy and he wants more of me.   I prayed for my wife, and our unity; I prayed for my kids; I prayed for the core team we are trusting God for (that is beginning to form, by the way!  Keep praying!); I prayed for diligence in what I need to do; to be a better father; to be a better husband; it went on and on and in some cases seemed circular.  But it was healthy.

Then, today being Wednesday, Pastor Philip, Jason and I headed over to Cedar Grove for the Surrey Pastor’s Network prayer meeting.  The worship time was very special, I think in large part because when you spend good amounts of time in prayer, God can’t help but bring you onto his wavelength, as it were.  And when you are in alignment with God, worship becomes a truly awe-inspiring experience.  I just became overwhelmed with His majesty, to the point that as worship was ending, all I could do was repent of my own sinfulness, echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah,

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

I was just made aware of how much of what pained me was my own doing in one way or another.  I knew it but I didn’t… own it if you know what I mean.  And as we entered into prayer for each other, I found myself praying for things that I had forgotten in the morning, which nonetheless desperately needed prayer.

I cannot complain.  It has been good for my soul.  But I just thought I would share about another phase of God working on the project called Oliver Shane Edwards.

Christmas was very nice.  Seeing all the family, and no short tempers has been great.  We’re heading over to Spruce Grove today (my sister moved there last summer) for some toboganning.  In two days we will take the kids for their first visit to Medicine Hat.  Then, it’s off to the Listers in Lethbridge to continue feeding that great new friendship!  It is a blast to spend time with solid Christians who believe in service to the King, who have 6 kids too and homeschool!

That and we’ll see if they can beat Cheryl at Carcassone.

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!

Last Saturday we got a call that my grandfather had two strokes in quick succession and was now in intensive care at the University of Alberta Hospital.  We quickly made the decision to travel to Edmonton in our minivan, risking wintery conditions in the mountains and spending money we don’t really have to be with my family and my grandfather in a time of crisis.

He’s an 84 year old World War II veteran, and proudly independent.  I knew he would take this hard.  But I also had some concern because while I know he grew up Catholic, and I know his second wife was a devout 7th Day Adventist, I don’t know if he ever truly made faith in Christ his own.  I also knew that I wanted to see him again, if these were his final hours.  I haven’t seen him since he moved to Alberta 2 years ago after Grace died.

God truly opened a number of doors for us to enable this trip, from providing financially for the expenses, to providing help to cover for us in our many responsibilites, to providing friends to take care of our two cats.  He cleared our path in front of us – we didn’t meet with any storms on the Coquihalla, and made it all the way to Revelstoke the first day, and even found a pet-friendly room for us all to bunk down in.

By Monday we were in the Hospital, and he was all hooked up to tubes and things.  He was unable to speak, the stroke having damaged the speech areas of his brain.

We spent a couple of days with Cheryl’s family in Red Deer, and then brought the boys the rest of the way to Fort Saskatchewan, to see my parents and brother and sister.  Friday I went back to the Hospital and saw Grandpa again.  He had improved again, but was groggy initially, and in considerable pain in his abdomen.  I prayed with my mother and him, and then we left him to sleep for a bit.  When we returned an hour or so later, he was much more alert than he had been and the pain was gone.  He wanted to go for a ride in the wheelchair, and we were excited to see him demonstrate his strength and mobility.  His coordination seemed very good in both hands, despite his still not being able to talk.

God definitely wanted to use us on this trip.  In Red Deer, we had a long talk with Cheryl’s grandmother and mother about churches and about why we do the things we do.  We had a great talk about honesty and transparency and community.  I think thay are typical in that most Canadians view church as something to do on Sunday, a quaint custom from a more superstitious time.  If they still even believe in God as a concept, they have never truly understood the kind of life that Jesus calls his followers to – a whole life of love and fellowship and support.

Then with my family, my grandfather, though he was limited in what he could understand, I believe he did get what I wanted to say to him, to just invite him to talk with Jesus as he recovered.  To remind him he doesn’t need to speak to speak with God and begin or renew that relationship once more.  At my parents’ house, we had several opportunities to talk with Steve, my sister’s husband, who claims a staunch atheism.  His inquisitiveness was enjoyable and revealed a desire to understand more about the faith we have.  I was very excited at the non-confrontational conversation and to learn that he had recently tried reading the Bible (to little success – he made the same mistake I did, starting in Genesis!)  I wish we lived closer so we could spend more time helping him to understand the message of the Bible and of the Word.  But it is a beginning.

Of course, I would be lax to not praise God once more for his watch over our travels home which we pushed through in one day – 14 hours of driving.  Strangely the cold weather followed us all the way to the coast – blowing snow and sub-freezing temperatures looked bizarre and prairie-like was we pulled in our driveway here on the coast.  It’s supposed to stay this cold for at least a week too!

Already I am realizing, this is exactly what happened to my Dad.  I’ve hread his reasons for leaving church before, to do with hypocrites and serious sin by leaders in the church.  But I think when it comes down to it, if it was really about hypocrites, why didn’t he ever try another church, give anyone else a chance?  Because it simply wasn’t important to him.  He didn’t see why church was essential.

This book may be more useful than I thought.  Download the eBook version for free here.

Already we’ve been opening up our home on Friday nights to our community group (aka small group/care group) but we could do more, right? I look at my schedule for this Fall and I know I am very busy teaching students and marking their papers, my studies, kids schooling, Awana team meetings, community group meetings, leadership meetings and church events. Somewhere in there I have to fit in mentoring, couple meetings with community group members and connecting with Awana leaders plus time with my family and God. How does one make it work?

Shane keeps bringing up having people over and instantly I think of all the preparation I have to do to have someone over for dinner and more preparation if they have kids (especially if they are young and will want to put our kids’ smaller toys in their mouths). A negative attitude creeps in as I list off all the ways having people over is going to impact me. Honestly, I start to panic.

When I get stressed I slow down. It feels like I never get ahead and so I feel like I shouldn’t even bother trying which is of course a bad attitude to have. But how can I change that? How do I make myself want to have people over and on short notice? If we are going to plant a church my home will have to be pretty open to company. I’ll have to make it visitor ready at all times. It isn’t a disaster it’s just lived in. I have a certain standards regarding how I want my home to look like when I have people over but it is difficult to maintain that standard when I have 4 little boys to take care of. I really need to work through this so I guess I will have to create a game plan as an attempt to eliminate some of the excuses I make for not wanting people over.

My “Simple” Game Plan:
1. Keep the kitchen clean at all times.
2. Entrance way must always be clean.
3. Living room always neat and tidy.

Three rules for myself. I’m not taking on all the rooms of my house, just the ones most frequently visited by company so I have one less panic attack when Shane tells me he invited someone to our house after church and they’ll be here in an hour.

• Today’s our 10th Anniversary!  Happy anniversary to my wife, who has staggered my imagination by her dedication to me and our life together for ten whole years.  Thank you for everything you have done and ever will do – I love you.
• Good news on the graduating essay front.  My faculty advisor (who also happens to be the program director, so I didn’t really have anyone to complain to) has finally started returning my emails.  I have been granted an extension on my project.  Now, to get it done!
• Check out Rodney Olsen’s thought-provoking piece on Christians who ignore their families.  I think some of the commenters thought he was talking about their spouse and children, but I think he was talking about extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, grandchildren.  It’s easy to keep connected with them when they share your faith, but harder when they don’t.  Where’s the balance? 

  The irony is this exact issue is staring me in the face on Labour Day weekend.  Which to choose: sticking around and helping three church families move, or travelling up to Vernon to visit my grandparents, who aren’t getting any younger, and whom I haven’t seen in a year?

• We’ve got the big Awana Basic Training coming up this weekend.  I need to rustle up my leaders and make sure as many as possible are going.  I think phone calls are in order tonight.  Pray for our leaders that they would make this a priority.
• I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to more effectively share my faith.  I’ll let you know how they work out.
• Hey God, could use some blessing at work.  Anytime now.  Thanks in advance!