Christmas wrappings

I guess we can officially call our Christmas over now that the kids had a chance to spend all of their Christmas money.  We spent most of ours too in a trip to Grand Forks yesterday.  The kids went together to get a PS2 (that's Playstation2 for those grandparents out there who are now saying, "What's a Playstation?").  The kids each got their own games for it and they got to play some today.  It is a lot of fun.  (Yes, Amelia and I got some games we like as well.)
We took the money that was given so generously by some of our church members and other folks in town who just gave to us and purchased a snow thrower.  We have a couple of neighbors who have been so giving of their time and energy who have come over and done our driveway on a several occaisions now.  The last time was right after we had received this money and we decided it would be great if we could get our own.  Now maybe we can return the favor sometime.  I am almost looking forward to another snowstorm.  : )

Christmas Time is Here

It was never really in doubt that we would have snow on the ground on Christmas day, but now the forecast shows that we will probably have some flurries falling today and tomorrow, so it will be a white Christmas on that count as well. I for one am thrilled. The kids are having fun playing around the house with the toys from the stockings that they were allowed to open today. This Christmas has been more emotional for me for some reason. It is not our first Christmas spent away from our families back in Arkansas, but it is different somehow. It isn't even a bad thing really. I think I am just overwhelmed with how much God has blessed us. This house that the church provides to us is bigger than we have to have. The kids each get their own room and we have a bedroom to spare. There is space for me to have an "office" at home and for the kids to do their homeschool work. Someday I may actually finish getting the basement area turned into a game/rec area. There is much that God is doing in our lives and ministry. I am blessed with a great family here in our church. God is good. Here is a family photo from yesterday when we got home from church. Merry Christmas to all.

Doing things I never thought I would do

I don't know if it is the past year's experience of going back to college to finish my degree online or the other changes in life that have moved me from a youth pastor to a senior pastor, but for some reason I find that I like to write more now than I ever did.  It could be that with all of the extra studying I feel like I have more to say.  Whatever the reason, hopefully the stuff that is written is worth reading.  I am going to start writing the More Than Bread devotionals on a full-time basis, so I have included a link to the group on the sidebar here.  

Playing in the Snow

Sometimes any excuse to act like a kid will do.  But the chance to play in a foot of snow is one of the best.

This is Amelia with the kids

 

This is Jeff in case you were wondering


This is one of the snow angels that the kids made.
After my recent studies in college classes, I found myself
wondering if they actually look like this at all.

Snow is here

Well, we have had a couple of small snow falls.  Today marks our first snow storm.  At least the first "real" snow storm.  There are advisories and a bunch of snow.  I just measured the snow in the backyard at 11".  We have drifts next to the house that are around 23" and I haven't bothered to measure the snow bank that we have created next to the driveway from shoveling and the snowblower that our neighbor used to help me clear the thing on Sunday, just two days ago.
Here are a few pictures of the back yard area.

This is a before shot




This is the after shot, or the so far shot I suppose



This last one is from the garage looking out.

Parental lessons

I learned a couple of things this weekend as a parent.  One of those was the depth of emotion that you can feel simply because one of your children is hurting.  We finally lost the last goldfish in our house.  A nearly six year run came to an end Sunday morning when my wife found Dorothy floating motionless in the tank.  Jonathan had been very upset by hear near death experience a couple of months ago, so we weren't looking forward to breaking the news that she had really passed.  He took it quite well overall, but watching him cry over the goldfish that I never particularly wanted to have in the first place, brought more emotion to me than I had expected.  The second lesson from the weekend comes as a corollary to the first.  It is amazing the things we will do as parents for our kids that we would not do for ourselves.  I was reminded of the trouble I went through during our most recent move to make sure that this fish got into the hotel room so it didn't freeze overnight in the van.  And here I was Sunday afternoon, in the store here in town looking for a tin box big enough to put this fish in (there was no way this fish would flush) and then trying to find a shovel to dig the hole.  I had to ask the store clerk and then wait while they got a shovel out of the back, where they had packed them for the winter.  Then, when I took that shovel to the backyard, I quickly found out why the shovels weren't on the shelf.  The ground was so hard (frozen) that I spent a half hour to get a hole about an inch deep.  Definitely not big enough or deep enough for this box.  So we convinced our son to place the fish in our backyard shed to await burial in the spring.  I later had a brainstorm that resulted in pouring hot water into the starter hole to soften the ground, which actually worked, and we were able to bury the fish after all.  What does this have to do with ministry?  Nothing really, except that when I think of what I am willing to do for my own kids, I think with awe on what our Heavenly Father is willing to do for us.

What do we know really?

Recently, God has placed some questions in my path to give me a fresh challenge and perspective to my beliefs and faith.  Some of the questions and issues are ones that I have faced and considered before, but some are new to me.  The chief thing that I have gained from this internal debate is the realization once again that God is much bigger than we can comprehend.  I know it sounds like a duh statement on its face, but there are so many things that we can not and will not know for certain here on earth.  The good news is that God has given us His Word and revealed the things that we really need to know to us.  There is an overwhelming desire amongst humanity to complicate the simple.  What we need to learn to do is appreciate the simple things that God has given us and work our way forward from there.  

How we do church

I ran into a fascinating article a couple of weeks ago about Willow Creek and their admission that the old way that they measured success in church had been inaccurate.  What they found was that having lots of programming to attract lots of people didn't necessarily equate to those people being growing, maturing Christians.  In the article, Bill Hybels is quoted as saying the following:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

This got me to thinking about my own ministry here.  God has moved me into a small church in a small town.  Recently I was reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called No Little People in which he reminds us all that with God there are no little people and no little places.  When I saw this article about Willow Creek I thought about the times in my life that had resulted in the greatest growth in my relationship with Christ.  Two things stuck out.  One was the times that I was committed to these same spiritual practices.  Two was that those times were often highlighted by a mentoring or discipleship type of relationship with other believers.  The encouraging word here is that those can be done in any church, anywhere; even without a budget for it.  Pray for me as I ponder and work on implementation of these ideas in the life of our church.

New Setting, New Ministry

We now find ourselves in North Dakota.  I have taken a step in a new direction in ministry from the role of a youth pastor to the role of a senior pastor.  It is not one I foresaw ever occurring, but it has been obvious that God has changed my calling and gifting over the last few months to a year to this direction.  We are excited for our new role here and the family is settling in very well here.  I will plan to post more often during this time as I am focused solely on ministry and do not have to work another job right now.  Please be praying for us in this time of change.  

Back to Posting

Hey everybody.  Sorry for the long lag in posting.  I started back to school at Liberty online and somewhere in there Blogger changed their formatting and Amelia couldn't post here either.  She posted some additional entries at a new blog. You can view it by clicking on the link on the word blog.  I will try and do a better job of keeping up things here.  We are heading to Arkansas in a couple of weeks for a short trip.  It has been over a year since we have been back and we are looking forward to the chance to see family and our church family there who have supported us in this ministry.  I will get more written later.