I had lunch with two new guys at Waco churches. We met at Uncle Dan's for some bar-b-q. It's a good place. We have used them a few times for catering and Dan showed up with the food. Anyway, I ate with Rick Julian of Highland Baptist Church and David Cozart of Meadowbrook Baptist Church. Both seem to be really good men. Rick moved here from South Carolina 3 months ago. David was in Waco at Truett before he went to Frisco for church planting. He has since come back to Waco. He was actually a member at Highland during seminary and a few months after Frisco before going to Meadowbrook.

 

Both men are working with small groups in their churches. We are going to be calling ours home groups at Park Lake, but they are the same concept. I enjoyed eating with them and talking with them about small groups. They both "walked into" the small groups at their churches. We have yet to jump into homegroups.

I'm not exactly sure how this is going to come out. I am not finished completely thinking through this whole thing. But here it goes.

 

Right now I am the only full-time minister on staff at the church. With a handfull of interim music, youth, and pastor people since our pastor resigned I have had time to think about being the only minister to a group of people, a local church. There are a likable lot. At times they have suprised me with there ability and depth of insight and spirit. We have our faults and at times even our ugly flaws. But together we make up a church.

 

It is easy to slip into dividing the people into piles of useable and unuseable. Especially when they are not only acting like fallen people, but are also making your life a little more difficult than normal. But, you love'em, guide'em when they'll let you, and Biblically confront them when you have to. Nowhere in scripture do you see Jesus being anything but redemptive with his disciples. Even when Jesus roughly rebuked Peter when he refused to accept Jesus' coming death it was to identify Satan's way of thinking, not Peter's worth as a disciple.

 

I find myself again at a point of choosing how to deal with a member who's performance is in question. As his minister I will be redemptive. Whatever others may be expecting of me, my God given responsibility is to him, not to others. His job performance is not my concern. His growth as a disciple is.

 

I care deeply for the people of the church. I am in awe that God would ask someone like me to be responsible for them and their growth as disciples.

 

 

We changed our hosts for the church's site Monday night. It has been kind of an ordeal. Maybe it is just that this is the first time I have tried to move an entire site to another host. We use PhpWebsite for our church's site. It s free and it's functionality works for us. Over time I have learned how to customize the layout for the church. The ability to "log in" was a big plus. Originally the hope was church leaders could log in and update their events etc. So for Denise and I are the only ones that log in and add calendar items and content. Anyway, back to moving the site. We decided to move from our host (in Canada) to a new host (NetworkSoultions in Virginia). Main reason for the move was consistency of service. We were getting serious lags at times with email and the website. It is still in process, but I noticed now some of the images in my blog are back to working. Yeh, I use the church's host to store some of my blog images. I am hoping I can transfer it all over instead of having to recreate everything.

Our Transition Team here at Park Lake is about to meet to finalize our report to the church for the banquet next Sunday. We have four very good recommendations for the church. I think they will be challenging to in that they will cause us to travel in different paths as we go through our "cycles." Some of them seem common sense, but they are more involved than most realize.

 

So, here we are standing on the edge of changes. The first part is almost over and the rest is yet to come. We must communicate clearly not only the report, but the journey that led us there. In some small way the church as a whole must have a picture and understanding of how the journey went and what we saw along the way. And they have to "own" it.  Only then can we effectively implement together the recomendations.

 

I'd better go open doors and turn on lights.

 

[EDIT: Fixed spelling of title - 200-11-14]

Hey, have you heard? This past Sunday Park Lake asked Dr. David Hardage to serve as our interim pastor and he accepted.  David is the Director of Missions for our Waco Regional Baptist Network. He came to Waco from First Baptist Sulphur Springs, Texas about 3 years ago. He is a great preacher and we are looking forward to having him. He and his wife, Kathleen, live in Hewitt.

Come by Park Lake if you want to hear some good preaching.

Just got back from the WRBN's Pastors' Conference. Today Dr. Kenneth Hall (his blog) , President & CEO of Buckner International, was our speaker. Bryan Watt and another of Chris Wommack's interns provided music.

 

Dr. Hall spoke on How Do We Do It Without It Being About Us. He had two main points. I think there was supposed to be three, but I only got two. First, our service must be for Christ rather than for the doing of good deeds.  He spoke about our motivation for doing good things. Second, find Christ-like service that really makes a difference. As ministers we do many things, but not all truely make a lasting difference. Things he mentioned making a real difference included loving children, encouraging others who are already serving, building accountability, and improving conditions for people in a permanent way.

 

Food was good too. I saw the usual characters and met David Cozart, the new Minister of Education at Meadowbrook Baptist Church in Robinson. Welcome to the area, David.

Where is my coat? It got cold here. We (Beth Ann and I) have been busy and I have neglected the blog.

 

Beth Ann has had report cards, PTA, and numerous other things going on at school. I, too, have had numerous meetings and events at the church. We have our budget for 2008 adopted, committees for 2008 elected, and our Transition Team is putting together a report to the church. We will give that report at the Thanksgiving Banquet on the 18th. It is nice to have all those things done before the holidays get here. We will begin to implement recomendations to the church after the new year.

 

We have moved on to working in the living room. I'll post pictures of the dinning room as soon as we get the living room furniture out of it.