It came as a surprise to me yesterday to find out that there was an Official Board meeting tonight. Not that the meeting was unscheduled, I just had not put it in my calendar so I had no idea it was coming up. Fortunately, our minister had put it in her calendar and sent an email to remind everyone. A lot of material was covered once again, and the meeting lasted for almost 3 hours and it probably would have lasted for longer than that if the Chair had not kept a tight reign on the meeting and brought us back on topic.

Love Your City officially kicks off in 3 days 10 hours, and I might actually be somewhat ready. There is still the small item of actually buying the water bottles that we will be distributing, and cutting the kindness cards, and getting rubber bands to put the cards on the bottles, and..... Okay, so somewhat might be a little optimistic. But things will come together.

That being said, I better get a good night's sleep as there is much to be done in the next few days.

God Bless You!

I do not remember if I mentioned it before, but since our church had sponsored an applicant to ministry and that applicant was being commissioned at the BC Conference, the church decided that they would go to the BC Conference service instead of holding a service at the church. This was the first time I had ever gone to any kind of event at a conference for the church so it was very interesting for me.

One thing for sure, the music in the new hymn book that the United Church is publishing early next year "Move Voices" has some really great songs in it. The music that we sang at the service was almost exclusively from "More Voices" and I really liked the songs. As a matter of fact, the songs that were used are in the sampler that was distributed, so I might actually use some of them at the church.

There were 10 ministers ordained/commissioned, which brought the question to mind of how many ministers retired and are we keeping up the numbers.

God Bless You!

I guess I should mention once again, since I have not done so in quite a while, that I use "Love Your City" as a kind of shorthand for "Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal" which is actually what the event is called. In any case, today was sign making day since one of the things we thought could be improved upon from last year was use signs so that people would know what was going on. So I spent about 3 hours on Saturday first getting the "plasticboard" and then going to the church to get the signs made. I was a little disappointed with the low turnout - I would say there were maybe 8 of us there at peak time - but there was a lot of energy there. The signs are mostly made - I still have to doctor up the ones for the "communication centre", but I was lucky enough to have one of the ladies volunteer to work on the water signs and she did a much better job than I had planned on doing.

It feels kind of weird to not have to prepare a song list and a slide presentation for tomorrow. Not that I am complaining. I did entertain the thought of coming up with songs based on the theme of the Conference, but it was a very fleeting thought.

God Bless You!

"Now I've never felt the presence,
But I know You're always near,
And I've never heard the calling,
But somehow You've led me right here"
-- Chris Rice, Smell the Color 9

It feels to me like I have not posted in ages. As I mentioned in my other blog, I have not felt like doing much of anything this week. I guess it is a good thing that there is no pre-service singing this week so I do not have to feel guilty about not having done anything about selecting songs. I do feel guilty however about not having sent any song selections for the Friday night rally for Love Your City (LYC). Now that I think about it, I should go do that right now. Be right back.

(20 minutes later) Okay, I do not have to feel so guilty now, even though I used the same songs I suggested last year since I still think they are suitable. You can see them here. It was either that or not sending any - I opted to resend the same ones.

I have received and paid for the LYC shirts as well as the kindness cards. I was going to hand out some of the shirts tonight at choir practice, but it was cancelled. Apparently Brooke had a bad day at the school where he is a teacher; hopefully nothing serious. It did give me an unexpected night at home for which I am grateful.

I need to go and buy some "plasticboard" to make the signs we will be using to make the people aware of what is going on for the LYC events. I guess I am doing this Saturday morning sometime before 10am since that is when the sign making is taking place. I am thinking 4 2'x3' boards with the LYC heart on the upper left corner and the words "Free Bottled Water" should be enough. Wow, I actually have a plan before the event. I should really write this down (wait, I just did).

God Bless You!

Over the last couple of days, I have been gathering up all the printed worship music I have around the house to put in a central location: a new binder. I did not spend a lot of time going over the music I was putting in the binder, but long enough to see that there is a lot of great music I have not used in a while. I should really spend some time playing all of those songs just for the joy of it.

One of the reasons why I have been cleaning up my printed music is that most of it used to be on the piano bench; that used to make it pretty much impossible to sit down and play the piano. After hearing Brooke play, I am feeling the urge to start playing the piano once again. Interestingly, the last time I really felt the urge to play was when one of our previous Music Directors, the late Don Buchan, used to make the piano really sing. I remember asking Don once if he knew how many people were moved to play the piano after hearing him play. I don't recall his answer, probably because he did not answer.

Our minister lent me a music book she bought last week for me to look at. The book came with a CD, but not the kind you would think. The CD does not contain music, but rather a PDF file with the lyrics and also a PowerPoint file with pre-made slides of all the lyrics. The CD is city on a hill's "songs of worship and praise". The only song I know off hand is "God of Wonders" so I will have to track down recordings of the other songs to hear what they sound like.

God Bless You!

It would appear I am in the middle of a break period. I have not done much of anything about any of the church related stuff this week. I did update my lists for Love Your City a couple of days ago, but even that is not finished yet. And I have yet to look at songs for this Sunday's pre-service singing. It is almost like a lethargy blanket has draped itself over me.

So as to not feel like I am doing nothing, I did put in my note page the Bible readings for this Sunday - so when I get around to reading them I will not have to search for the passages.

There is one hymn in the service that will not be familiar to the congregation "This is the Spirit's Entry Now" [VU451] and I would usually run over the hymn before the service, so I guess I could do that. (Can't you just sense the enthusiasm there? Me neither).

Oh well, tomorrow is another day and it's bound to be better.

God Bless You!

"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease." - Job 14:7

The Annual Meeting of BC Conference is being held this year only two blocks from our church. Churches had been asked to provide pictures of the churches for a presentation that will be made during the Annual Meeting. Some of the ladies of the church had the pictures, but no means to get them to the person making the presentation. This is where I came in as we have a scanner at home. I volunteered to scan the pictures and send them on. Well I did not look at the notes that were given to me too closely, so it turned out that when I did scan the pictures I was already after the "before date". I sent the pictures anyway, and fortunately for me it sounds like they will be used. Somebody is certainly looking after me.

I just realized that this Sunday will be the last chance to let people know anything pertinent about Love Your City as there will be no May 28th service at the church as we are all going to the Annual Meeting Sunday service to support a (ex?)member of the church being commissioned. No pressure...

God Bless You!

Since I did not post yesterday, I should mention that I once again really enjoyed the service. I particularly enjoyed the reading of Acts 4:1-35 that our minister did. I had read that passage the day before when I was getting ready for the pre-service singing, but it certainly came alive when our minister read it. The choir did a gospel song for its anthem and it was well received. As I was singing I looked at the congregation and although some people were really into it and clapping along it looked like others were in shock. I know I certainly enjoyed singing it.

I will say that I seem to get more out of singing than I get out of listening people speak. And that seems to me because I really have to focus on what I am singing whereas my mind sometimes wanders when I am just listening. Although I hate to admit it, when our minister was leading in us in prayer before the service, my mind kept being drawn to the music in the sanctuary.

I might as well just assume that I will have to prepare the presentation for the service. It is now three weeks in a row that I did not receive the presentation from the youth who had volunteered to prepare it and this time I heard nothing from her - in previous weeks she sent an email or IM saying she would not be able to get it ready. I gave her until Sunday morning to get it to me (and I sent her a message Saturday night letting her know that if she had sent it I had not received it) and then got the presentation ready. So from now on I will just work on it from the time I receive the material, that will be one less thing for me to worry about.

We passed some clipboards around so that people could let us know what it was they were willing to do for Love Your City which is coming up in less than three weeks. I forgot to bring the sheets home with me, but from the glance I took there did not seem to be any new names. I will have to go get those sheets to confirm that. I should also make sure that those people that got shirts last year that signed up for this year still have their shirts as they can be re-used.

God Bless You!

My choices for this Sunday's pre-service singing are mostly based on the suggestions of the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. I have used that website before, but mostly when the church was following the lectionary. Now I usually go there only when I have trouble finding suitable songs elsewhere. I will just look for when they used the Bible passage being used and then see which hymns are suggested for that reading. This is how I came up with the songs this week:

"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" VU326
"Grace Alone" TFWS2162
"Majesty" UMH176

I also need to look up some information on Love Your City so I can answer any questions that could be asked tomorrow. But right after I prepare the slides for the pre-service singing.

God Bless You!

I presented the Vision, Mission and Core Values statements (the Statements) and everyone that expressed an opinion were positive about it. I did not see any indications that anyone had any reservations about the Statements. One of the choir members mentioned that she had already heard about it at the UCW meeting, so all the groups in the church are being approached as is the plan. As I mentioned Tuesday, it is gratifying to see that all the work we have put into getting the Statements is being so well received. As I told the choir, it took us quite a while to find the right words to describe what our church is and can become.

I think that all of the soul searching we did over the last year in the discernment committee has made everyone's faith stronger. Something that stuck with me from reading Max Lucado's A Love Worth Giving is the statement "I wanted a larger church, but God wants a stronger church". I think that what we have been doing is creating a stronger church.

God Bless You!

I had been asked a couple of weeks ago if I could come and lead worship for the prayer meeting. Although I had never done it - worship is defined differently in the mainline churches - I agreed to do it. For those of you from mainline churches reading this, worship in this context is where a leader helps those present get into the spirit of prayer through music (I sure hope I got this right - because that's what I tried to do).

Although I had selected 5 songs (I almost said prepared, but really I chose those 5 songs at the last minute - I knew the theme was Unity so I had a couple of songs running in my mind and a couple more made themselves visible when I skimmed my hymn book) but I ended up only doing 4 of them. For some reason, I decided to shorten my singing because there were only 4 people there (including me). I know, it does not make sense to me either now.

In any case, here are the songs I selected: (the first one is the one I decided to skip)

"Open the Eyes of my Heart" Paul Baloche
"A New commandment" Bruce Harding
"Drawn Together by His Love" Bill Cates
"We Are One In Christ Jesus" Anonymous [TFWS2229]
"They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" Peter Scholtes [TFWS2223]

After the singing, we had a time of prayer - and I actually said something! I don't usually feel comfortable saying anything (you can ask our minister what happened when she asked me to lead the prayer at the Official board - I refused [my mind just panicked - lead? me?]), but I think that I if can ease into it I have a better chance of actually doing it. Which is a big improvement over the past where there was no way I was going to say anything.

They were kind enough to offer to let me go before the Prayer Walk, and since I had been out late the previous two nights I accepted gratefully since it gave me an evening at home with the whole family.

God Bless You!

I did not write anything yesterday because I really did not want to think about how much I had not gotten done of the things I had told myself I should do before the Discernment meeting that was held earlier tonight. I did review the comments I had written about the last meeting so that I would recall why I had made those changes. I am very happy to say that we were able to improve the two core value statements that we had been having trouble with. When the final version of both statements were read I had goosebumps! I just know that they are the right statements for the Core Values. Now that those two statements have been agreed upon, we can say that the Vision, Mission and Core Values statements have been finalized! It is now time to move on to discerning the Biblical story that best articulates God's vision for our future.

Once I have a little more time, I will include a link to our new Vision, Mission, and Core Values statements.

God Bless You!

On my way home today after having spend a couple of hours at church pruning, digging and planting, a thought struck me: a lot of what we were doing on the grounds of the church are very similar to what we want to be doing in the community.

The ground around the church was extremely hard, the hedges were overgrown; some things had not been tended in quite a while (at least to my eye). And so it is with the community; we have a lot of people in the community at large who have never been exposed to religion/faith and we have not gone into the community to spread the message of Jesus Christ.

Which is why I chose "Spirit of the Living God" as the first hymn for the pre-service singing. The other two hymns are based on the Psalm 34 reading used in the service. Which would make the order of songs as follows:

"Spirit of the Living God" VU376
"Cry of my Heart" TFWS2165
"Lord I Lift Your Name on High" TFWS2088

Now to go and make the slides.

God Bless You!

It has been quite a while since I was a teenager, so my memories of it are pretty hazy. I do think that it is the time where people start realizing that they cannot do everything. The reason I bring that up is that I received, from our young adult volunteer, an email this evening letting me know that she has a swim-a-thon this weekend and would not be able to work on the powerpoint presentation for this Sunday. The fact that I understand why this took place does not make it any less aggravating; at least I found out on Friday instead of Saturday night.

Well I better go sleep on it.

God Bless You!

One thing I had hoped to run by other members of the Discernment committee at the canceled meeting yesterday was my thoughts on how many kindness cards should be ordered. If you recall, I had reasoned that we should probably get 600 bottles of water to hand out, hence 600 kindness cards. Since there was no meeting, and the orders had to be in on Wednesday I arbitrarily decided on ordering the 600 cards. If we decide to order fewer bottles of water we can always find other uses for the extra cards.

The choir decided to do "As We Gather at Your Table" [VU457] as our choir anthem. I must say that it sounds very good in 4 part harmony. For this song I get to sing tenor and Brooke will sing bass; well at least that is how we practiced it at choir practice. When we first came to the song in the practice, we pretty much all went "Are we having communion?" (VU457 is a communion hymn). But after singing it, I think that with words like "bringing peace where there is strife" it is a good song to sing on Battle of the Atlantic Sunday .

God Bless You!

The Discernment committee meeting was postponed as some people could not make the meeting and also it was only five days away from the next meeting (they are usually 14 days apart). The next meeting will be on May 8th and since we were also sent the agenda for the next meeting we can be as prepared as we want to be for that meeting. I think the first goal that came to mind when I skimmed the agenda is that I really need to look up those Bible passages to see which ones best tell the world our vision. That is one thing I keep meaning to do but never get around to it.

God Bless You!

You would think that by now I would have figured out a routine to be better prepared for the Discernment committee meetings. Just before pretty much every meeting I always feel that I have not done enough to get ready for the meeting. And I think it is more apparent this time around as it has been longer (3+ weeks) since the last meeting instead of the usual 2 weeks. I cannot help but think that it will take me longer to get back into the right frame of mind at the meeting.

Well, as I explained in my other blog, I have a big day tomorrow so I better get to bed.

God Bless You!