Can I tell you how much I love and appreciate our church family?
We have three different worship teams in our church that do a four week rotation every month, and every once in a while, we get a five Sunday month like this one that totally throws things off-whack. Because of that, we didn't have a worship team for Sunday morning, and we almost ended up resorting to me leading worship with a banjo, which would have been pretty terrible since I can neither sing well, nor play the banjo. However, I am so thankful that Tracey volunteered to help organize a team for this past Sunday, and we were so blessed by the amazing presence of the Lord during our worship service!
Now let's back up a little bit to Saturday night. Our church was one of several different venues that hosted a CD release party for Christian recording artist David Bracken. Unfortunately, we didn't see a very good turn out at this event, but even though numbers were low, David still gave us 100% of his heart, and rather than just showcasing some of the songs from his latest CD, Scale Me Down, he turned the night into a worship event. I love his heart for worship and using his musical gifts to minister the truth of God's Word to people. And so I invited David to come and join us on Sunday morning to share a couple of his songs with our church, and Tracey invited him to join our worship team as well. If you missed the service, you can listen to or download the audio from Sunday which includes the worship team's rendition of "It is well with my soul," a few of David's songs from his new CD, and my message entitled, "Transformation: Experiencing Spiritual Growth." I want to strongly encourage you to listen to the message if you weren't there, as this kicked off a month of focusing on the spiritual disciplines that bring transformation into our lives. This is where God is calling us as a church family to go, so let's go on this journey together!
So Sunday morning service was incredible as usual. Then Sunday evening, we invited people to come out and help us tranform our auditorium into the Wild West Fun Fest, a fun outreach we had planned for children grade 6 and under. I was so blessed by the number of people that came out: we had the whole event set up and all of the candy bags packed in around an hour! I want to give a huge thank you to all of the adults and youth who came and volunteered their time to help us with this - you are a blessing! Our youth group took on a project together of changing our big kids classroom into a jungle shooting gallery, and I think they all did a fantastic job with that as well.
When Monday rolled around, we had our incredible team of volunteers in place and ready for the doors to open for 6:00 pm. We probably had around 100-150 people come through the building over the course of the evening, and I enjoyed watching the kids playing mini-golf and bowling, basketball and hockey shoot-outs, balloon darts, fishing pond, lasso roping, face painting and more. We had several people join us from the community as well, including some of the children who had attended our Vacation Bible School in the summer, and some of the students from our weekly Christian Club at ESS. Overall, I think the night was a smashing success, so a big thank you and God bless you again to all of our amazing volunteers - we love you guys!
On a personal note, after a long, full and busy weekend, after Liza and the kids went to bed last nght, I stayed up after midnight to kick off NaNoWriMo. If you have never heard of that before, it stands for "National Novel Writing Month." I have a few writing friends who participate in this event every year, and the challenge is simple: for writers to spend 30 days to reach for the goal of writing 50,000 words. As most of you are aware, I love to write, and published my first book, "Supernatural: Contending for Signs and Wonders Today" in June of 2010. Well, long before Supernatural, I had the idea for a youth fantasy book called "The Voyagers." I've had this story idea rattling around in my brain for about 12 years now, but have never got past the first chapter. And so, I decided to take this month of November to attempt to get this story written. I know, some of you are thinking - are you crazy? In addition to pastoring, being a husband and a father, leading weekly youth group activities, the Christian club at ESS, bi-weekly chapels at South Haven and monthly chapels at Eastgate, weekly home groups and more, and you're going to take on writing a novel? Yes! So, if I seem a little frazzled by the end of this month, now you know why... :) So, please pray for me. More than just being an entertaining youth novel, this story is a Christian allegory (similiar to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia). There's a mesasge in the story that I believe will speak to the church today! Thank you.
Click here if you want to follow my daily vlog (video-log) updates on NaNoWriMo...
http://www.youtube.com/user/ChristopherJordan007?feature=mhee
In regards to upcoming events, the most important one on the radar right now is our home groups. I want to encourage you to plan to get involved in our new six-week home group series called "The Life You've Always Wanted" by John Ortberg. These small groups are a great opportunity for you to get connected in deep and meaningful relationships with other people in the church. But it's also a place to learn more about the spiritual disciplines that we're going to be studying on Sunday mornings as well - topics such as how to pray, read the Bible, and more. Here's a brief synopsis of the material we'll be looking at in our home groups:
You Can Live a Deeper, More Spiritual Life Right Where You Are. The heart of Christianity is transformation---a relationship with God that impacts not just our 'spiritual lives,' but every aspect of living. John Ortberg calls readers back to the dynamic heartbeat of Christianity---God's power to bring change and growth---and reveals both the how and why of transformation. Paved with humor and sparkling anecdotes, The Life You've Always Wanted is an encouraging and challenging approach to a Christian life that's worth living---a life on the edge that fills an ordinary world with new meaning, hope, change, and joy.
Contact the church office for the address of a home group near you, and GET CONNECTED!
Finally, don't forget to check out this week's mission report below...
Praying God's richest blessings on you and your family!
Lots of love,
Chris Jordan
Lead Pastor, Beausejour Community Church
Church Web-site: www.beausejourchurch.ca
My Personal Blog: http://thelandofpromise.blogspot.com/
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