GBC Church Family Picture April 2008

No Errands in Heaven

I apologize in advance because this post has little to do with church planting. Today I’ve been pondering how our status as fallen creatures wastes a huge amount of our time and money. This morning I ran a couple of errands:

• Tire rotation: because tires wear out (and I had to go to two service centers because the first had a broken lift)
• New contact lens case: because eyes wear out and we need contacts; and because harmful bacteria grows in contact lens cases
• Snail killer: because the snails are eating our pumpkin plants (did they do that before the fall?)
• Hydrogen peroxide: for my canker sores inside my upper lip
• Dry upholstery cleaner: because my daughter who has croup is taking a steroid medication that loosens her muscles, including the ones that control her bladder; and she was sleeping in the recliner because she can’t sleep prone due to her cough and congestion.

I know that’s not a very exciting list: not what we normally blog about. But this has been a fruitful meditation for me. Without sin, there would probably be no tires to wear out, no lifts to break, no need for contacts, no bacterial infections to grow in my case, maybe no plant-damaging snails, no croup, and no need for steroidal medications and dry upholstery cleaner. And I wouldn’t have needed to spend any of my time on those things.

The bottom line: my errands were a sober reminder that sin stinks. We’re reaping the consequences in many more ways than we will ever realize. Just think – I could be a much more productive church planting pastor if I didn’t have to run all these errands! Then again, my natural sinfulness also delights in laziness – and that seems to kick in just about the time when I finally get the errands done, and have time to be truly productive…

The mortgage crisis

I just posted an article for our church family with biblical principles related to the current housing situation. You can read it at  www.findhope.net.

Upsize

We purchased a 7 x 14 trailer with a ramp and sold our 6 x 10. We purchased 20 more chairs, and David is building rolling carts for them since we will have a ramp now. This trailer can probably hold 150 chairs – the auditorium at the school won’t seat much more than that.

A Praying Church

You cycle through various ministry emphases simply because you can’t emphasize everything at once. A current emphasis that has been growing in my heart is the desire to be a praying church. Another pastor shared with me the idea of making a church family prayer card (just like you have missionary prayer cards), to help your people pray for one another. So we are trying to get a picture taken so that we can do that. We also are starting a prayer time between the 9:30 and 10:30 service, where a small group will pray for the upcoming service. We’re also at the end of I John, and the difficult section in 5:14-17 ended up being a wonderful challenge for us to pray for one another.

We’re very excited that Eric & Alicia True have been able to purchase a new home in Menifee. You can go to www.liveheritagelake.com, check out the picture of the pool, and then razz them about how tough it must be coming to Southern California. They will share their presentation at our sending church, Heritage Bible Church, next Wednesday evening. It’s sweet to consider that 5 years ago we were sharing our presentation at Heritage – now 5 years later they will be hearing a presentation from a potential ‘granddaughter’ church out of GBC.