On my way to Tenn. for NewThing Lead Pastor Gathering

I'm sitting at my gate waiting to board a flight to Knoxville, TN to join the other lead pastors of NewThing Affiliate churches across the US. If you've been reading my blog over the last year you've likely heard me speak of this fine group of church planters who are sold out to multiplying churches. They are creating church planting networks in hopes of seeing a movement sweep across the nation and world of churches planting churches. These are the same folks who put on the largest church planting conference in the country called Exponential. Check out the link. We have five of us going this coming April so far with hopes of seeing a few more attend.
I'm really looking forward to reconnecting with these guys tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday. There's a lot I can glean from their experience.
On Tuesday I have two guys from Encounter joining me for an intro to NewThing time for those who haven't heard much about them. I'll tell you more about that later.

A Multi-Cultural Christmas Party

How fun to see almost half of the people at this years party were not at last years. And then ad to that, there were eight Indians, two Syrians (I guess Ammar is technically American now), one China born guest and one Canadian:-)
Like I said two entries ago, the Grace Church basement was an ideal location for our party last year and this year was no exception.

Here is a link to view an album of pics. from last night.

My Boy Turns 13 Today!

I just came from having lunch with my son Zach. I asked his teacher if I could have him be a little late and he was more than happy to let him miss the whole class period. We went to Max & Erma's right near our house and his school. It has been a restaurant he and I have eaten at on two other special occasions.
God has truly blessed Melissa & I by giving us Zach.

The Annual Encounter Christmas Party

Who-hoo! Tonight is gonna be fun!
We're having it in our mother church's very nice basement. It has three sections: a game area, a cafe w/ tables & chairs and a stage & seating area. We will end up using all of it. People are bringing desserts or appetizers and the church budget is paying for the cups, plates, hot and cold drinks, etc. We'll leave a bunch of time at the beginning for people to arrive and connect and then we have Luke & Beth Fields giving a testimony about how the Lord has worked in their lives this past year. After that there is a very fun large group game my wife Melissa has helped put together. My hope is that people can relax and enjoy each others company, laugh a lot, and be encouraged to trust in God more.
I'll be sure to post some party pics. tonight or tomorrow.

The beginning of a new month

With today being December 1st I thought it'd be good to challenge you to try something: consider reading through the book of Proverbs on each of the 31 days (there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs). At Encounter we just finished a six week series called, "Making Life Work", where each week we looked at how the Proverbs can teach us how to make the wise choice. Knowledge is a good thing I told our people, but "wisdom is knowledge applied". Give reading a Proverb a day a try. I've been doing it off and on for years. There's plenty of very practical principles you can apply to your life.