The KidStuf rehearsal has been cancelled for tonight. We will be having our final dress rehearsal on Saturday at 9:00 a.m. Make sure you are ready to go and have your parts memorized as we only have a couple of practices.
Just got a call from Winston at Lifebuilders. They are canceling the meeting tonight. He said if you have already started or finished your food and still want to donate it, the Missouri Hotel will gladly take your food. Just give us a call at church and we will give you directions or take it. Thanks for your willingness to help with this ministry!!
It has been a blast reading all of the comments from the Regeneration Devotional Blog. It is really cool to realize that we are all looking at the same passage and God is speaking to each and every one of us in our own ways. It is really great to see how God uses many different verses to speak to each of us differently. I pray that the Lord will really grow me as a follower this 21 days. I wrote in my journal that I really need the Lord’s help to be disciplined to keep us for the 21 days. I want that 21 days to create a habit of a daily walk with Christ through his Word. I know it is going to pay great dividends when I sacrifice to spend time in the Bible.
Here is what I wrote in a comment of day one. I also wrote this encouragement to all of us:
Great comments and insight on this first day of the CHALLENGE!! Let?s keep it up . . . and lurkers (you know who you are), register, log in and CONTRIBUTE!! Join the 21 Day Challenge journey!
We have been talking about how to really begin to grow in your relationship with Christ in our series BE. Today, we talked about how important Bible reading and journaling is to the spiritual maturity of every believer. I challenged each of
us to read the Bible for 21 days–enough tim e to create a new habit. The Gospel of John has, you guessed it, 21 chapters; so we are going to read through the Gospel of John for this challenge. We are going to begin a series based on the Gospel of John following the BE series, so it should be really cool to see how God is going to speak to our church family before we journey together in the series.
I think there is going to be a ton of power as our whole family studies John together. There is really going to be a real sense of community–especially if you want to comment on our Regeneration Devotional Blog. We had a great response last year this time with our online devotional tied into Regeneration. We are going to continue that Regeneration Devo Blog with this 21 Day Challenge. Head on over there, grab a Bible and a journal, and make sure and comment on what God is saying to you.
I have had a PowerMac G4 tower for almost 5 years without a problem. It is still 
plugging away for me, but it sure isn’t very portable! There are times, like this week, when I have to do work from home and have to lug around the computer to so I can be around the family. But there is a new sheriff in town boys. (See comment from Brad Daily!) This brand spanking new Macbook Pro is going to (hopefully) last me another 5 years–but this time with a lot of portability!
I bought my first Mac in 1992 from my Sunday School teacher, who was a 
professional graphic artist. It was a Macintosh SE with a humongous internal hard drive of 40 MB!! I actually took out an installment loan for $1400 from Empire Bank and made monthly payments for a couple of years. It helped me write many a paper in both college at SMS and SWBTS. I loved that little thing and used it in ministry all the way until we moved back from Texas in 1998.
I got a PC in 1996 when we were living in Tulsa when my Mac hard drive (all 40 MB) crashed one late Sunday night while writing a paper for seminary. Of course the procrastination didn’t help as the paper was due the next day. Needless to say, the paper was a week late and we had an unexpected expense the next week. But once you go Mac, you never go back. Honestly the pricing was the major issue in not purchasing a Mac in seminary. My pastor at the time was a huge Mac guy, so the church I was serving in had several Macs in use and my SE (with new external hard drive–a whopping 100 MB variety) was my work computer.
I had a laptop at Hopedale when I was youth pastor, but it eventually died after we launched Finley Crossings. I had a lady walk up to me in the library a couple of weeks after that and gave me a check to go buy a new computer to do “whatever we needed it to do.” At the time, we really wanted to be able to do video and graphic design, so the Mac was the choice. The laptop version that would do what the desktop would do was way too expensive, so I gave up portability for power. It really is awesome to get the portability and flexibility back.
There have been a few folks who have decided to do the Regeneration ’07 devotionals again and are making comments as well.? You might want to journey on over there to check it out.
We are also going to be kicking it off again with new posts to coincide with our series that is coming up on Spiritual Development.? (I was going to kick off the series yesterday, but was down with the stomach flu.)? Seems everyone is getting back on the mend and we will jump in next Sunday and journey together toward a deeper relationship with the Savior.
I had the privilege to march my freshman year in the Bruin Pride Band at then Southwest Missouri State University.? It was quite an experience that I will always cherish!? I didn’t get to go on any “big” trips (I don’t think Tulsa or St. Louis counts in that category!)? I missed two huge trips by one year–a trip to London the year before I was at SMS, followed by a trip to the Tournament of Roses after I had hung up the old trombone to “get a real job” as a bank teller and then youth minister.
Got an opportunity to see them play in the Tournament of Roses Parade this morning.? They represented Missouri and their university well!? They also had the opportunity to play at the Crystal Cathedral last Sunday during the services.? Here is an article in the News-Leader with many side links to other articles.? Way to go Pride!!
Jenny and I got the honor and opportunity to marry a couple in our church in St. Louis over the weekend (pictures to come . . . hopefully!) We decided to get some well needed R&R while the grandparents (thanks Tom & Gwen and Bill & Betty!!!) were watching our little angels, so we stayed an extra night and day in St. Louis.
We went to eat at a restaurant on Friday night that shall remain nameless (on the Landing.) We were pumped that we were able to get in well under the 30 minute wait. Unfortunately we were seated in between a table of 15 or so people and another table of almost 30 (no joke). We left our little “angels” at home and got the opportunity to hang out with some other peoples little angels! Bummer!
Everything was going well as we enjoyed our soup and bread when another table was pointing and talking about us! I’m pretty used to that, but usually it is followed by mocking and laughing! Not very often is Jenny publicly ridiculed like this. Finally, Jenny said, “what is the deal?” Read more