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!

I’m trying to focus more on getting that big paper done now, which is distracting me from too much blog-related.  However, I promise I will get back to y’all soon.  In the meantime, watch for new twitters.  I’ve been coming across a few amusing/interesting things and just throwing them up there.

I will make one more excuse: with a federal election in Canada coming up on October 14 and the presiddential election in the USA on November 4, there’s lots of political fodder that drags my attention away too.  But I am sure many of you are experiencing the same thing.

Heh.  I read on an economics blog speculation on how the USA would completely collapse if all the hardworking, independent, responsible, conservative people suddenly vanished.  While I don’t pretend to think that all Christians are that way, I think a larger percentage of them are, at least if they are truly following the Bible.  I half wondered as I read it, is this the reason end-times prophecy doesn’t talk about America?  Because when we’re raptured, there aren’t enough people like this left to support the social systems and the nation becomes a non-factor politically?

Some quick bullets for ya.

• 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!

It occurred to me the first post I did on how we got here, I didn’t really get into much detail about how we leaped from a short term missions trip to Rwanda to where we are right now.  The real impetus came in the fall of 2006.

We heard there was a church planting couple hanging out with our church.  At the time we were attending Cedar Grove Baptist Church, a church of 1200-1400 people in North Surrey.  It’s easy to get lost in a big church like that, but I saw them around once or twice in the halls and at general meetings and such.  It seemed like every time I looked at the guy, Phil, he was looking at me and grinning.  I was thinking, “Who’s this guy grinning at me?” I finally decided that God, or something, wanted me to talk to him.

One sunny day in August, I caught up to him at the bike racks (seriously!)  I was just curious at that stage about what their plan was to plant a church.  I had no idea how one goes about planting a church at that stage.  He invited me out to their core team small group.  At that time, it consisted of themselves and two other couples.

I went home and asked Cheryl if she’d like to come.  She was fine with me going, but “I am NOT interested in planting a church!” (more…)

In addition to the huge workload I have this summer just for the church, I have this paper to write.  I am completing a graduation essay to attain my Master’s of Arts in Christian Studies from ACTS Seminaries at Trinity Western University.  My chosen area of study is church planting in resort communities.  I am actually at a bit of a disadvantage because my program does actually have a church planting specialty, but because I have a whole pile of credit from when I was pursuing a church history master’s, I didn’t have room to take those courses from the Seminary.  However, I don’t know how many people who take that course area actually involved in the leadership of a brand new church plant either, so maybe that balances it out.

Anyway, I have a ton of reading to do to research this paper.  I am probably reading slower than I should.  Normally when I write a paper, I find resources and skim them until I hit upon the areas that I need to include for my paper’s subject.  Instead, I am actually reading the whole book as I know that ultimately, it will serve me better as we think about planting our own church one day.

So, currently I am chewing through the 360 page Ed Stetzer tome, “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age”.  Although the resort community seems to be a microcosm or an ultradense monoculture of postmodernism, there is no question that the overall societal trend is towards this philosophy or worldview.  It is good stuff.  I am just looking at the “generation” question right now and he made a very good point – with postmodern cultures it is almost irrelevant to speak of ages as having anything to do with their worldview anymore.  A postmodern could be of any age and they will have more in common in that case than with anyone just close in age to them.  Limiting oneself to a “generation” will not serve the cause of Christ when it comes to these people.

I’d write more but a) I have to actually work on the paper, and b) I have to ride my bike over to get the van out of the shop.  Bye for now.