"All words are symbols that represent unspeakable realities. Which is also why words are magical." (Donald Miller tweet)

Monday, October 02, 2017

about my church

Yesterday at the church I get to pastor - it's here if you're wondering - I lost count of the number of encouraging comments and feedback that came my way. And woke up to more this morning. All ages, all backgrounds. Some who have been here since nearly the beginning (Norma!) and some who were with us, literally for the first time.

From 6:40 AM, when I said the day's third "Good morning!" to a band member (the first two morning greetings were whispered quietly to Jeff and Andie, of course, who weren't quite awake), until 6 PM when we locked up and headed home, it was a GOOD DAY.

Next week is Key #4 of "What If Jesus Was A Quebecer?!" If you haven't been part of it, the REAL question is: how does our faith interact with our culture? We're using Cracking the Quebec Code as a bouncing-off point, helping us to look at the culture we're in, and then figuring out from Scripture how we might respond to or interact with that as followers of Jesus.

We've ordered in ... and sold out of ...
multiple copies of this book three times.

Truthfully - this is one of the most thought-provoking series I've ever done (for me, and apparently for many of you too). Yesterday's had a lot of silent moments.

For me too.

But the silent moments are often the important moments, the honest moments, the thoughtful moments.

They're also the uncomfortable moments.
I know.

But ... I'm grateful for those silent moments. They matter.

And ... I'm grateful for the depth of commitment and celebration that result from those moments.

When we imagine ... imagine ... if Québecers said, "When the going gets tough ... Evangel shows up! Followers of Jesus show up!" And we erupt in cheers at that thought.

When 105 of you respond immediately to say, "I'll be there! I'll help!" at our Community Thanksgiving Dinner, a week from today.

*shrug*
"It's what we do, Pastor."

On Thanksgiving Monday!!!!

I'm grateful for worship leaders, singers, band members, in-the-media-booth-ers, who went above-and-beyond yesterday to not only practice and lead two full morning services, but then ate a quick lunch, and came BACK to practice, and then lead an amazing all-worship night.

And all the other staff and volunteers
who ALSO made it all happen.
I saw you.
I'm thankful for you.

I'm grateful - just completely delighted - that a couple of other churches heard that we were having an all-worship night, and simply came to join us, without us even knowing. How great is that?!

We made some new friends.

And I was grateful to come home and take a moment with The Boy (aka Spike), to pray together, thanking God for the day.

It was a short prayer.
I happened to be holding Andie's food while we prayed,
which led to her whisper-whining while we prayed,
which made us start laughing.

Have a fantastic week, mes amis.