Just rolled into town last night from a week in Florida. A great trip, but it wore me down on the way home. Got a stuffy head/runny nose yesterday morning and it gave me a heavy head and drowsy feeling all the way home. And I’m the only one able to drive the bus…lucky me!

I’ll post an update of the trip and all the greatness it was in a few hours, hopefully. I’ve got family coming to the house in a matter of minutes so I need to go.

Going to be away from the keyboard for most of the week. Going to the BigStuf camps down in Panama City Beach. Please pray for the students we’re taking. Pray that all of use will have a powerful encounter with Jesus.

I know I’ve mentioned our early worship service a few times. It’s really been going well. The students who are leading worship with the Praise Team are really enjoying the time they put into it for practice and the Sunday mornings as well. And the attendance has been growing as well. The past three Sundays we’ve had 87, 76, and 85. The 76 was on Fourth of July weekend too. And I know it’s not all about numbers, but the increase in the people coming is telling us something.

I think this is the fourth summer in a row that we’ve had an early morning worship service. It’s been for summers only though. When school starts back and everything else seems to get back in the flow, then we’ve always reverted back to just one main (traditional) service. The previous three summers we’ve probably averaged in the mid 30’s in attendance. I think that most of those coming came out of matter of convenience. The service was basically a scaled down version of the normal eleven o’clock service, still in the sanctuary with not a lot of changes. The people could come to church, then Sunday School (if they chose), and then go to the golf course, to lunch, the river/lake, or wherever else and beat the crowds.

Sure, some of the people coming to early worship this summer may be coming for those reasons, but something else has to account for the increases in attendance. We’re meeting in a different building, in a smaller room, with different music, with no traditional readings (well, the Bible is pretty traditional, and we still read it every time!), no creeds, no affirmations, no organ music, no hymnals. We have the praise team made up mostly of teens, and a less formal setting that we’re hoping is inviting to those who attend.

I sense an opposition coming when August gets here. There are going to be some people within our church who want it to go back to the way it was before. Only one service. They are missing seeing some of the people who are going to the early contemporary service. I don’t think that is a valid reason to stop the other service, but I can see part of the point there…I don’t want to see a church membership split along the lines of the two services.

But what do you do. When you’ve got that many people attending and really seeming to like it…why stop it? Even our pastor said this morning (and he’s said it before), “People seem to smile a little more in this service!” And this morning we had 109. There really wasn’t room for everyone, but we packed them in. We’re meeting in a small lounge that is about out of space. We can move into the gym, use partitions to block off some space, and have to fight the acoustics there…but I think that is our next move. You don’t want people not coming because of the cramped quarters.

Maybe it’s sad that I get excited about something as petty as that…but I am!

This story I heard about first on Jay Leno last night is, well, just plain laughable. For one, what self respecting lady would strip down to her running shoes to let men shoot at her with a paint gun, and two, what kinda lame-o men would pay $10K to shoot at them?

This morning I went to the early service again. It’s still going well. I’m not sure how many we had today, but it’s still doing better than any other time we’ve ever had early morning worship in the summers. How is it different now? Well, the most striking difference is that it’s a totally different style. We use a praise and worship team made up of teenagers instead of someone playing a piano. And we’re in the lounge of the Gym Building instead of in the sanctuary. So new style, new environment, new music, newness all around…but the same God. That’s cool. I’ll talk more about all of that later.

But this morning, I was sitting up front towards the left like I always do running the computer with MediaShout. I operate all the video and what not for the music, scripture, and anything else. I happen to enjoy it. My wife usually sits close by but by the time she got there she had to sit a little further back. But she brought my daughter today. (She’s usually in the nursery). After singing, announcements, singing, greeting, and singing I feel something at my right elbow. I turn and see it’s my daughter. “I want to sit in your lap.” Man, isn’t it great to be loved and wanted. So I grabbed her up and she sat there for a few minutes during the offering and all.

When it was done, I was to go read scripture and then offer the Morning Prayer. I got up and tried to point her back towards her mom. But she wanted to stay with me. I again tried to be a little more insistant, “Go sit with Mom” in hushed tones. I was standing now and she was reaching up for me. I picked her up and handed her to someone on the front row who was reaching for her, and could tell that wasn’t going to work at all. She was getting that look in her face that said, “Dangit, this isn’t what I want and I’m about to let everyone know that this isn’t what I want.” So that lady tried to hand her to someone else who was reaching for her, but me, being her all knowing dad, knew that the only way she was going to calm down was for me or my wife to get her.

She starts to cry a bit and reach for me, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeeee……….”, and thankfully my wife made it around to get her and take her outside to calm her down. I couldn’t take her because I was about to be in front of the whole service to read from Ephesians and then pray. I can’t do that with a kid in my arms, right? Right?

I got to thinking about it during the sermon. I wish I’d have kept her in my arms, read the scripture, and then prayed. I was caught up in being formal about it (at a supposed contemporary service). “I can’t have a kid in my arms while reading/praying! That’s not…well..that’s not how it’s supposed to be done.” But why would that be wrong? Is it wrong to share scripture or offer prayers to Jesus while holding a child? Heck, even Jesus Himself said that we have to welcome the little kids when Peter and his boys were trying to keep them back. So now I almost feel guilty for upsetting her.

I know that there are church services, but I’m afraid that we sometimes focus too much on the ceremony of it instead of the meat of it. What are we all about? Why be pretentious? I remember reading in Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire that it would be very uncomfortable if I were to visit a friends house for dinner, and my friend handed me a “script” or “order of fellowship” and told me, “Blake, at 6:00 we’re going to go out by the patio for some lemonade and chat about our lawns and how we never can seem to get it looking just like we want them to. Then at 6:15 I’ll light the charcole for the grill. While the coals are getting ready, we’ll talk about how our favorite football teams will do in the fall. I’ll put the steaks on at 6:45, and then we’ll be ready to eat at 7:15. Over dinner we’ll talk about parenthood followed by how the mortgage rates are doing.” How boring would that be? Can I not talk about Survivor at any point? What about any other subject, or am I restricted by how he had it layed out?

But sometimes I feel we treat our church services like that. We invite God to be present with us, but then tell Him exactly how we want Him to act/move during the service. All scripted out, every detail with (usually) no room for the Spirit to move us. Do we need a plan, an order of worship? Yes, I think there needs to be a structure. But I think the problem comes in when we get so married/attatched to “the structure” that we forget that God is not a “stiff” God. He wants to change things up now and then. He likes variety, I believe.

Can you imagine this? I’ve heard a few times that Will Smith turned down the role of Neo for The Matrix. That would have been really weird with him in it, don’t you think? Get this, he turned down The Matrix so he could take Wild, Wild, West instead.

These are pics of part of what we painted on our trip last week. Not going to win any awards, but not bad.

Did I make them big enough? Do they need to be bigger (after you click them)? Let me know.

Laddies and Gentlemen…meet Bishop Paxton Thompson (I think that will be his name)! This morning we went by some friends’ house and bought a dog from them. (You can click on the thumbnail above for slightly bigger pics) We had been talking about getting a dog for a while. Looked at some at a local flea market, nearly bought one, but backed down. I’ve heard some awful stories about pets bought from a flea market. But came to find out that some friends had the exact same breed of dog who’d just had puppies not too long ago.

After visiting a few times, we were pretty much decided on getting a dog from her…and we did today. Part of me wonders if it is a little early (it is just over 5 weeks old) to be grabbing a dog. Books I’ve read say it’s best to let them stay with their litter mates/mom until 7 weeks. But all the pups (there were six) were going to be gone this weekend anyway, so what did it matter? We were intent on getting a girl, but ended up with a guy when two of the three females were already gone, and the last girl’s coloring wasn’t as nice (is that shallow or what?). But anyway, here we are now with a new puppy!

Tonight should be interesting. I expect quite a bit of whining and all. Hopefully the dog will do better than I expect. Now my prayers are for my daughter…or maybe I should pray for the dog’s safety. She thinks he’s a splendid cross between a stuffed animal and a Gumby “bend-it-like-you-want-it” type of toy.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about him later.

Finally he sighed and said, “Well, if there was a God and he had a church – they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book.” I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. “Oh, God,” I just cried out, I couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know is the Church.”

Follow this link for the rest. It’s a great little excerpt from John Wimber.