As with my other blog, this blog has moved:

A Glimpse Into My Mind

which replaced this one

Christian Life and Work

which is where I went from this blog. Confused?

See you there (hopefully)!

God Bless You!

I mentioned yesterday that our minister had given me a book on Sunday. The book is Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren & Rob Lewin, and the subtitle is A Refreshing New Approach to Planting and Growing a Church.

I have skimmed parts of it, mostly because of the following quote on the front of the book: "No matter how hard the going gets, remember it's easier to plant a church than it is to resurrect a dying one". That is actually the title of lesson 38 on page 87. I will not quote any more of the book, but the part that really got me thinking was the last paragraph of that lesson (on page 88). I would go ahead and read it if you have a copy of the book.

God Bless You!

I know I have not been very good at making daily entries, but I wanted to say that there is a very real possibility that the entries will be even less frequent for the next few days as we get ready to pull up stakes and move to our new home on the weekend.

I did manage to put up the pictures from the work party last Saturday on The Empty Pew. Just click on the Work Party Photos link at the top right of the page. There were quite a few people there from at least three different churches and a lot was accomplished. I will be sure to put some more pictures up when the flooring has been put it so you can see the result of all the work.

Our minister has given me a book to read, knowing fully that it is very unlikely I will have a chance to start reading it before the move is over. The book did look very interesting and I am looking forward to when I will have some time to read it.

God Bless You!

Next Sunday will be the second in a series of 5 services based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. I thoroughly enjoyed the first service in the series so I am looking forward to next Sunday. While there are no new songs this week there are a couple of songs that might not be as familiar as the others that will be sung: Shine Jesus Shine was sung at least once as I have a record of singing that song during the June 4th singsong, and I Will Celebrate was done during the church service last year as I now remember practicing it with the choir - that probably means that I introduced it in the singsong as well. I had not yet started keeping track on the Pre-service singing site last year so I cannot be sure as the one place where I could check, my office laptop, is at the office.

God Bless You!

Am I the only one that finds it more than a little disheartening to see that the only bit of news about the General Council of the United Church that I see from the CBC is one about a potential boycott of bottled water?

God Bless You!

I have been doing a lot of web surfing lately, particularly in the area of web presence of churches. That is a direct result of a newsletter I receive weekly called WorshipIdeas; some of the topics of the newsletter are now being put on in the WorshipIdeas.com blog. He points to a few church web sites that I had a look at.

First thing that I realised is that I did not even have a link to the web site of my own church in the list of links! That was easily rectified. Then, after having looked at those other web sites, I went back and had a critical look at our web site. And this is where the title of this entry comes in as I did not think that our site fared very well compared to those others. It basically comes down to this: just being on the web is no longer enough, you now have to realise that your web site is probably the first impression we will make on many of the new generation of seekers. I do not know (okay I do not think) that our current site would appeal to those people. Yet another thing we will need to work on (my opinion).

I was glad to see that our Mission and Core values were easily reachable. It took me a while to figure out where the Vision was however. Apparently telling people that Summertime is slow is more important than telling them what we are about. I'm obviously biased since I spend a year's time in a committee to come up with the Vision, but I think it should be something that stands out when people visit the site.

Okay, enough criticizing for one day...

God Bless You!

PS: I have moved my blog to the beta version, and I understand that it has broken the comment system if those people wanting to comment have not also joined the beta system. Sorry about that!

Update: I have found a way around the comment problem. Just post your comments anonymously.

The discussion and decision that had been put off to give everyone a chance to familiarize themselves with the information (which I touched on in this entry) about make the change from the Official Board to a Unified Board model took place tonight. As everyone was familiar with the issues this time around, the discussion and decision was done fairly quickly. The one year trial of the Steering Committee starts with its introduction meeting on September 11 at 1830.

There is no update and/or new photos at The Empty Pew this week as work has slowed down due in part to the fact that our minister is allergic to paint fumes. There will be more updates coming as the flooring is scheduled to be installed around the end of the month and there is a work party scheduled for Saturday August 19th (0930 - 1300) to get the area ready.

God Bless You!

As I mentioned before, today was the beginning of the 5 week period where the theme will be based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. I really enjoyed the service today, and I am sure it was due to the fact that our minister was back. Of course, the fact that we sang some of my favourite Christian music did not hurt either: Cry of my Heart, Open the Eyes of my Heart, and Lord I Lift Your Name on High. Brooke, our music director, also let loose on a couple of those songs and it was great.

Our minister has given me some more new music to have look at - I had forgotten about it until I started writing this blog. Tsk, tsk, tsk. There really was no chance of me not remembering as I put the music with my laptop.

Oh right! For those of you reading my blog to find out when and where the next Official board meeting is, hopefully you are reading this before Monday August 14th at 7:15pm since that is when the meeting is in the new Family room at church.

God Bless You!

Now that our minister has come back from vacation, we are launching a new theme for the next 5 weeks based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. As the congregation has not yet heard the song, I will have the privilege to introduce it to them at the beginning of the service on Sunday. I have begun practicing the song as I did not know it before our minister brought it up. It is not a difficult song to play, but the lyrics are giving me a little trouble so far as they go quite quickly. Nothing that another couple of days of rehearsal cannot fix. This is also an opportunity to start building the calluses on my fingers again as I have not touched my guitar since the last singsong at the beginning of July. Needless to say (and yet I will), my fingers are quite sore right now.

This will have to be a short entry as I have to get up early in the morning.

God Bless You!

Okay, so maybe not just yet. But the fact that our minister is returning from vacation on the 9th is spurring me to start thinking once again about how to make the church experience one that appeals to the young at heart and still is comfortable with those who are used to a more traditional service. That was one thing that Brooke and I did touch on during our lunch meeting; his (and I hope I am remembering this right) conflict in how to play the music at the church. He is used to tailor what and how he plays based on the audience present and since the majority of the congregation is of his parents age or older he tends towards playing the hymns in a manner that would appeal for that age group. Not that I had an answer for him at the time...

But I keep coming back to the idea of a song set. Over the last few weeks I have come to notice how much harder it is for me to get into a good spiritual space when I keep getting up and down - we sing one song, then sit down for a (maybe short) prayer, then up again for one more song, then sitting for a reading... You get the idea. This is to me kind of like stop and go traffic; you just get going and you have to stop. Now I will agree that it is probably a little harder for me to "get into the groove" since I have to run the slides as well, but I still think that the above applies regardless.

God Bless You!

Since today is Monday, I had my lunch meeting with Brooke, our music director. I really enjoyed the time we spent together; by the time we decided to call it a day 2.5 hours had gone by just like that! The only bad thing (well good if we get to do this again) is that we did not make it all the way through the hymn book.

Since I do not remember if I did say it or not: "Thanks for lunch, Brooke!"

God Bless You!

And this time I am putting the new pictures up in a timely fashion, more or less... For those who are interested, the new pictures are under the Still More Photos link at The Empty Pew. A lot of progress is being made, but the smell of paint is still very prevalent in the downstairs area.

This Sunday's reflection was delivered by Roy. I love the man, but there is something in his speech delivery which makes it very hard for me to stay focused on what he is talking about. I think it is safe to say that I only got about half of what he was saying which is unfortunate.

God Bless You!

I must say that I have not given much thought to the church this week; and I am only thinking about it now as I wonder whom is going to do the PowerPoint for this Sunday. Note that I did not say faith; while I may not be able to say that my faith is front and centre in my thoughts it is never far below the surface.

I forgot to mention earlier that for the singing of "Blessed be Your Name" last Sunday our music director enlisted the help of one of the youth of the congregation on guitar. I immediately had 2 thoughts when I saw it happening:
1) What a clever way to slowly get the congregation to work up to a Praise band; and
2) I have been replaced... Which of course what a really stupid thought to have.

I guess I better put some of my thoughts about the location of the audiovisual equipment down on paper (or in a document) so that I can pass those thoughts along to others at church. It would be pretty hard for them to make decisions based on the facts if they do not have all of them.

God Bless You!

I was sent a link to this May You Be Blessed movie and I think you should go have a look if you have not done so already.

Not a whole lot to say tonight, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have finally updated The Empty Pew with the pictures what were shown to the congregation last Sunday. I hope I have remembered the commentary correctly. Since there is no chance for me to remember all of the names of the people in the pictures, I have decided to not put any names down (Also means that I do not put any more information on the web that is necessary).

I am meeting with our music director (as Brooke says, don't check out his web page you won't like it) this Monday to let him know which hymns are familiar to the congregation and what their tempo is. Which of course means that now I get to worry whether the tempo I like is the tempo the congregation likes. I have this vague memory that I like things a little faster than what the congregation likes. Oh well, at least he will have an idea.

God Bless You!