January is very busy.  Multitasking is something else, but just to make it more interesting, God keeps tossing us an extra ball to juggle.

Riding the backburner is an outreach project at the end of the month – but it needs some loving, so I need to make some space to promote that.

Our community exercise, our “Carnival of Games” is fast approaching.  Next week will be all about prep for that.  We need to make a list of all the “booths” we are making and get status updates on where each of those are at.  At least the location is taken care of.

I wrote my licensure exam last Friday – that was intense!  8 hours, with only an unmarked Bible as reference.  I left a couple blank, but I can make up for those during the oral examination next month.  The district reviews my answers then orally quizzes me on the areas they want to see more strength in.  I’ll need prayer for that!

Another cold virus  has landed, and we’re working hard to not let that immobilize us.

Travelling to the Southwest District Focus Retreat will be an interesting opportunity.  We will hopefully have new business cards for our church plant and prayer cards to begin to raise awareness in the churches of Callifornia and area about what we are hoping to do in Medicine Hat.  We are praying that a church or two will see us as a mission they want to support.

I am teaching a course on church history and also another round on the Gospel of John with a couple of new believers.  These will be important challenges as I get to exercise my education in one area and gain more mastery over leading people through the Gospel.

We are also working on a regular opportunity to preach – perhaps at a senior’s home or even perhaps at the YVR chapel!  That would be an interesting venue.

Cheryl has picked up another course at Athabasca University to finish her Master’s in Nursing.  Only two more to go after this one!

Please continue to pray for us.  We would not be able to manage all these things without your support.  Thanks!

Wow, it has been far too long since I updated this blog!  I am embarrassed, because it is meant to be an almost daily journal of our journey to the unthinkable: to plant a church for Jesus in Medicine Hat.  It is hard for people to read along when we aren’t writing!

So here is an update: I plead excuses because (if you have been keeping up on Twitter or Facebook) you know that last weekend I had a bit of a double-whammy: I graduated from ACTS Seminaries with a Master of Arts in Christian Studies, and the following Sunday I preached my third sermon ever at Community of Hope.

The graduation ceremony went very smoothly.  Having 6 Seminaries working together is great while you are going there because the interplay between denominations and the collegial environment despite distinctive approaches to theology, life and practice makes for a very rich experience.    However, graduation ceremonies are a bit of a bear because legally, conferment of your degree only happens when the representative of said body says the “magic words” so we had to listen to the legalese from each Seminary AND from Trinity Western Univeristy who simultaneously grants the degrees to all graduands.

I was surprisingly calm all things considered.  If this had been the only thing I had to worry about that weekend, then I might have been more nervous.  But as it was with Sunday looming in my mind this seemed to be a cakewalk.

Thursday night my parents rolled into town (one day early), and we had dinner at the restaurant attached to their hotel.  I had Friday off, and Grandma and Grandpa Edwards pulled up around noon, so we had them over that afternoon, and had a big Chinese Food feast that night with them and my aunt and uncle: my Dad’s twin brother at our place.  That was a good party.

Saturday I had to head to the venue for the graduation by 10am, and we were out there until 3pm.  It was good to be finally finished, and I did get to touch base with the two professors that I wanted to speak to the most: Bruce Guenther, the History professor who I was Teacher Assistant for on my first go-round, and also Kent Anderson, professor of Homiletics, who was my faculty advisor at Northwest Baptist College in 1997, and advised me because I had taken a lot of college (at different colleges) that I would actually be eligible for Seminary.  If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have graduated today.  Of course, he did not recall that at all.. but then again at that time I was just another college student 23 year old, and strangely, I have never gotten around to taking any of his classes.

Saturday night we had a bigger family dinner at the restaurant again, with all the kids there and with my Uncle Paul, Aunt Sonya and two of their three teenage girls, as well as Dad’s bother and his wife, and Grandma and Grandpa.  It was a lot of fun, and I received some gifts for graduating which were a surprise , and very welcome.

Sunday I was to preach.  Pastor Philip had taken half the church to Goldendale, WA for the Northwest District Grace Brethren Conference, but the other half – some 50 people, were still coming.  I spoke about the “Calling of God” (go ahead and listen here), and actually came in fairly short – only 25 minutes was my message.  I feel like I started off a little scattered but settled down ad feel like I did pretty well – especially since this was my first time preaching in front of family – my parents and my grandparents stayed to watch me.

So obviously, such a weekend took some time to come down from.  That’s my excuse for not writing anything in this space for a couple of weeks.  What are we up to now?  Well, I am going to start picking away at either a rewrite of the “Attitude of Hope” membership class, or an entirely new version that will become the beginnings of a vision and mission framework for our church in Alberta.  I am going to be teaching our Discovery class for 7 weeks starting in May, to introduce some people to the truth about Jesus in preparation for membership.  We also have our “Great Canadian Adventure” coming up in mid-June, and Philip says he wants me to take a hand in organizing that, then begin to prepare and plan for the 2010 version which will take place in Medicine Hat.   We don’t have anythign big planned for this summer because the Twins could be arriving anywhere between the beginning of July and mid-August.  The Dr. told Cheryl he would be making sure that things wrap up by the 38th week, with the earliest we could deliver (unless something is amiss) being the 32nd week.  That pretty much devours the summer.

Stay tuned!

So, yeah, Mark Driscoll.

As I was watching a couple of his newer sermons, what I really enjoyed and admired is there are elements of theology that are very important for people to grasp, like how salvation works, that he has so systematized that he can just work it into his message at will.   I am thinking that if I hope to develop my preaching/teaching style, I need to get a lot better grasp on things than I currently have.  I fly by the seat of my pants, when I start talking theology generally.  I grasp and concepts and verses as they float into my head, but that doesn’t communicate well.  I need to lock some concepts down into concise packages, that are accessible as the situation arises.  I have already done this with some subjects I know well.  For example, I can talk this way about just about any era of church history, denominations, and cults.  That is a result of most of my training being in those areas.  However, despite having taken a number of theology courses, I have never systematized my theology to the point of ready access.  That is definitely something I need to work on.

The cool side effect of having done this is that I don’t see as much sermon preparation being necessary.  I watched him speak and he had a page, maybe two, of notes.  He almost never referred to them.  I don’t think he has a photographic memory.  I think he just notes down the stuff he wants to talk about specific to the message, and then just shorthands different places where he has “prepackaged” material already in his head.  This allows him to do less sermon prep but still have a full message.  The rest is just practicing pacing and awareness of time and organization.  Skills that can be learned.

Of note: no curse-words or vulgar language was used in either of his sermons I watched.

Also note: no expression of agreement or disagreement with his theology.  I was primarily watching to learn style.

I had some very nice feedback by two men I respect after I preached yesterday.  It was constructive and I appreciated it a lot.

But the most important feedback I had was from my wife.  She said, “In my eyes, you became a pastor today.”

Nothing else matters.  If she believes in me and God is with me, I can do anything.