Ouch…everything hurt this morning after about 10 days of RUNNING to get the new year off of the ground! Today was definitely a day to honor the sabbath, rest, relax, breathe, and enjoy my kids!

On that note…Mark and I are SO excited about the next season at North Creek! We are loving the health of where we are at as a church.

Small Groups are officially open for signups! We had a GREAT first two days of registrations and I look forward to all of our groups being full over the next week or so. You can sign up at coffeechurch.com under the Ministries link.

I worked in the Great Adventurer’s this week and enjoyed it as usual. Parents…I highly recommend randomly going in class with your kids every so often. It makes a difference when you are sitting in the class, seeing what your kids are doing. You don’t have to commit to any certain number of times, just email our kid’s pastors and tell them you are coming in to be a part! Volunteer to lead a small group while you are in there. It’s AWESOME!

We had our Volunteer Meeting last night as well. It was SO fun! We recapped 2010 and looked ahead just a bit. We are focusing on personal growth for our church and being a healthy, vibrant, growing church. We also gave out gifts, laughed alot, and worshipped together. We have the BEST volunteers! I laughed because we had more people at Volunteer Training last night than our first year’s average attendance…HAAAA!

It seems as though moving our service times has worked wonders for our 9:30 am service! It has leveled out in attendance and feels great!

Corey and Julie were back again for their second weekend of getting acquainted with their team. He had Emily lead her first song and she did a beautiful job! Way to go!!!

Thank you to our staff for a long weekend! We know that you all were busy the whole time and we appreciate your hard work. May your week be filled with many blessings and lots of coffee!!!

See you next week!

Today I went on a walk through Hannah Oja’s life. Hannah was Kris Gray’s grandmother and she passed away earlier this week. As a tribute to her life, we headed out to her property to remember who she was and to hear stories. It’s such an interesting journey to open the doors of a grandmother’s house and peruse their favorite things. It’s a full life reflected in every object and picture.

As we walked through her house, Kris told stories of her childhood spent in those rooms and out in the yard. She talked often about traditions that were unique to their family. She told stories of Hannah’s life and how she lived it to the full – even sky diving when she was 83 years old. She showed us the newspaper clipping of Hannah’s family escaping a viscious fire in Minnesota many, many years ago. 436 people in their town died that day, but Hannah’s family drove off with their belongings tied to the top of their Model T. That same Model T was sitting dusty in the garage that we toured and a picture of her grandpa leaning against that car lay on the dining room table. All the trinkets contained a story and all of the stories came back to family. Family…family…family…it was all that Hannah knew, loved, and poured herself into.

As Kris talked I literally saw Grandma Hannah’s legacy in her life. Kris’ love for her family, her quirky traditions, and her constant need to create memories…those traits are not her own, but stolen from a fiesty little lady that was the glue that kept her heritage at the forefront. It was a picture of hope. Hope that maybe, if we love enough, the best part of our character can be passed into other people and carried from generation to generation. Maybe this short life that we’ve been given is worth more than we can imagine – not when we spread ourselves out to the multitudes, but when we pour all we can into a handful of people that we believe in no matter what.

I took a lot with me from that house today…mostly a deep appreciation for the fact that Hannah birthed these values into Kris, but also the desire to do that for my own kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. Whether your family is given to you by blood or you “adopt” people that you consider family, I hope that you will take an opportunity to slow down your daily agenda and make a memory with the people that matter the most to you.

And Kris…she was so special…and you are so much like her. In her honor, may you spite Kylie by double piercing your ears for your grandkids. May you suck all of the “good” chocolate off of the peanuts. May your pancakes be too large for your plates. And may your heritage continue through you for many generations. Thank you for sharing Grandma Hannah with us!

Great article to share with you this week!

One of the Worst Verses in the Bible by Steven Furtick
Monday July 5th, 2010

Let me introduce you to one of the worst verses in the Bible:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11

If you’ve been in or around a church for more than two weeks you’re probably tempted to label me a heretic right now. Because that verse is the golden child of the Christian universe. It’s the place we go to in the midst of chaos to reassure ourselves that God has our back. It’s the promise we claim when we’re worried about the future. In fact, it’s probably the most popular promise of God in the entire Bible.

But it’s not the promise found in the verse that makes it so bad. It’s our response to what the promise is predicated upon. Before Jeremiah 29:11 comes Jeremiah 29:10. And there we find the context of God’s promise: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.”

God had plans for Israel. Plans of prosperity. Plans of giving them a hope and a future. But first came 70 years of exile in a foreign land, waiting for the promise to be fulfilled.

70 years of poverty preceded plans of prosperity.
70 years of pain and danger preceded plans of no harm.
70 years of seemingly hopeless present circumstances preceded plans of a hopeful future.

This is the reality we don’t like to talk about when we quote Jeremiah 29:11. Yes, God does have plans for us. That’s an incredible promise we should cling to. A promise that’s true. A promise that’s more than a pipe dream. But it’s also a promise that doesn’t always find its completion now. Sometimes it’s later. And later is usually always later than we want it to be.

What makes Jeremiah 29:11 one of the worst verses in the Bible has nothing to do with the verse itself. It’s the imposition of our timetable onto it. We expect the utterance of this verse to calm the chaos now. To get God to reveal our future now.

But that’s not the purpose of this verse. It’s supposed to give us something to cling onto in the midst of chaos. In the midst of an uncertain future. In the midst of circumstances that scream the very opposite of what God is telling us He has for us.

It reminds us that regardless of what our present reality and waiting might tempt us to believe, God has not forgotten about us. We are still His people. He is still our God. And while we might have to wait in a place we don’t want to be to see them come to fruition, He still has plans for us.

And it’s when we can embrace this that Jeremiah 29:11 becomes one of the best verses in the Bible.

Having a service on 1/1/11 is super cool! 🙂

We changed service times this weekend and only a handful of people forgot and came early! The change seemed to balance out our services nicely. The 9:30 am was well attended and so were the other two. Thank you to those of you who jumped to the earlier service to make room in the 11:00 am for guests.

Corey and Julie Sublett started as our worship pastors this weekend! They did a great job and look forward to meeting everyone! I trust that you will fall in love with their family and find out that they deeply love and value relationships.

Chris Harold spoke a great message on sin. Sometimes I think that those of us who have been Christians for a while forget the profoundness of God’s redemption of our lives. I LOVE to be reminded of how big my God is to cover how big my sin is!

Small Groups are getting finalized and we’ll be rolling out the options next weekend for our new 10 week groups! Stay tuned!

A drunk driver hit a transformer on our property and knocked out our power late Friday night. The PUD got us up and running by late Saturday afternoon, but with the freezing temperatures, our building was COLD! Thanks to the Saturday crew for enduring a colder than normal service!

We are off and running for 2011 with some GREAT things in store for our church!

It was exactly 10 years ago today that Mark and I started pastoring in Vancouver! Our road from Seattle was an ironic one. We had just been let go from our youth pastor position and were completely lost and dumbfounded by the next step. The night we got fired I asked Mark where he thought he would like to be. His answer…Vancouver, WA. I told him that the local Assembly of God church had just hired a youth pastor and that was not going to be an option for us. Nonetheless, with no connections to Vancouver and having only even been there a couple of times, Mark held fast to the notion of going there anyway.

We began interviewing for different youth pastor positions. In fact, we interviewed at 13 different churches. Everytime we left and said, “This is not the place for us.” In spite of the fact that we had no income, we just kept saying no. And then, one day, the church Mark had dreamed of being at, called him. They were making a sudden change in their youth position and wanted us to come and interview. In fact, when they called the Network Office to ask about potential applicants, they were given only one name…Mark Newell.

We could have skipped the interview. It was so impossible and so God, that as we drove south on I-5, we laughed at the whole situation. Why would God drop Vancouver in Mark’s heart and then have this all unfold? It’s because He had an agenda for us and for this city.

Now, ten years later, we look back with joy at the journey. Five years of youth pastoring here and now this will be five years of birthing a church. We love the relationships that we’ve built! We have now been working hand in hand with Joe and Kris Gray for a decade and many other of our relationships began shortly thereafter. It’s hard to wrap our brains around the fact that God planned the steps of all of us for such a time as this.

So, here’s to ten years my dear Vancouver! We’re planning on being buried here after many decades of ministry in our community. From the lowest point in our lives to the greatest joy…isn’t that how God always works for those who love Him and live according to His purpose?