She is worth far more than rubies. (Proverbs 31:10)

Just this weekend I was reminded about how wonderfully gifted my wife is.  She is a counsellor, leader, organizer, coordinator, so many wonderful gifts that will be critical to our success as a pastoral couple.  At times I almost feel overshadowed at how effortless she makes these things seem.

This morning I was thanking God for her while walking the dog, and I thought about how God has gifted me as a leader as well.  We’re not the same.  And in some ways, I would have to say that she is much more charismatic - people give her leadership automatically - than I am.  While it would be easier to plant a church if I was that way too, instead of embroiling myself in sinful jealousy, I found my heart moving in a completely different direction.  I just found myself praying that I would offer no appeal that way.  That I would be invisible, that I would just be the kind of leader that points the way to Jesus.  If the church we begin is thought of as a house of God, and oh yeah, that guy Shane talks on Sundays, I would be satisfied.

So thanks, God, for my wife, and let me simply point the way to you.

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 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.

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.

Hospitality. What a big word that is. I’m not talking about the number of letters but rather all that it means at least for me. I have been thinking lately about how I need to open up my home a lot more to others but I find it overwhelming. I like people, however, I do like my privacy and my space. My home is where I go to recharge when I am not picking up after my kids and doing what seems to always need done; from the dishes to the laundry. At the moment I have three sick boys. I did have all four sick at one point but one got better.

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.

We were back in front of storefronts last night.  I was feeling spiritually, emotionally, and physically exhausted yesterday afternoon, and seriously considered staying home.   I didn’t get notified where we were going until I was already late which was kind of frustrating but that’s the vagaries of technology.  We set up in front of Save on Foods at 70th and Scott.  The whole evening we were looking across the parking lot at the massive Sikh Gurdwara.  It challenged me to show love to all, but especially to the many people coming in and out from India.

The numbers of people coming were much higher because a grocery store is much busier.  It was a different type of people than in front of the pet store with all these spoilt little toy dogs coming in and out.  We were also right in front of a liquor store so that was fun.  Robert was there with me and he is a machine when it comes to meeting and establishing conversations with people.  I was blown away with his gifts in that area.  He had several conversations with a couple of homeless guys and encouraged them to come out to our new street ministry starting tomorrow night.

We also had several other positive conversations.  Many more people were asking us why we were doing what we were doing.  It was great to bear witness to God’s love for everyone.  One guy promised to come this Sunday to our church.  Another lady said she was glad to know where we were so she could come and volunteer and help out.  I don’t know what that means, but if she comes to church that will be amazing.

At one point I wound up doing some runaround work, picking up more water to hand out and dropping off team members.  I was grateful for that opportunity to exercise more administrative and organizing muscles.  Despite my fatigue at the beginning of the evening, it was altogether important that I was there and working, for my own development.

On the weekend we had a meeting to shake down the way our small groups will look this fall.  As our church grows I don’t know how long this way of deciding groups will last.

With regards to my group, there are several things I feel we did wrong last year.  And there are several other things that I want to incorporate more effectively this year.

First, we never established a group covenant.  That will be high on my agenda list this fall.  Probably by early October at the latest I want to have us decide on one.

Second, with regards to getting to know everyone.  Last year, we took the first 8 weeks and had each person share their testimony in 10 minutes, one per week.  It was good, it got us deeper quickly, but as the year went on, things became shallower and shallower.  What I would like to do this year is have some probing testimony-related questions that we all share about, every week.  I am hoping that this will allow us to get to know each other but at the same time maintain that deeper focus throughout the year.

Thirdly, I wanted to lead a quick before meal devotional on our first meeting.  I was reading through James 3 this morning, and it occurred to me that James’ discussion of the tongue would be a good theme to start the year on - that as the mouth goes, the body often follows.  Godly talk will lead to Godly growth, but if we let our talk dwell on the base, we may not see the change we want to see this year in each others’ lives.  Maybe the quick before meal devotional will set a standard for the rest of our meetings.

Phil just reminded me to invest in our apprentice leaders at both the Awana level and the small group level this year.  Good advice.  We need to look at our schedule and set firm goals for those too.