We have a lot of babies happening in our church right now! One of our Worship Leaders and our Children’s Pastor are due the SAME week in July! Everyone is welcome to come and help us celebrate the upcoming birth of Alissa’s daughter and Vanessa’s son THIS Saturday, June 2 at 10:00 am – 11:45 am. We’ll be having scones, fruit, coffee, opening gifts, and praying a blessing over their upcoming additions. All ladies are welcome!

Alissa is registered at Cotton Babies and Target. Vanessa is registered at Babies ‘R Us and Target.

Join us at North Creek Church – Battle Ground Campus – 500 SW Eaton Blvd, Battle Ground, WA 98604 for a great morning!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend…a little late! Even though I’m way behind on my weekly highlight blog, I do want to honor all of those who have given their lives for our freedom. As Christians, we should be most grateful that we live in a country that allows us to believe and proclaim those beliefs without persecution.

Sunday was a good morning! I thought more people would be out of town, but both campuses were fairly full of people and LOTS of new guests as well. Thanks for coming to visit us!

I taught Tiny Town at Battle Ground and enjoyed being back in with the toddlers. It’s been a while since I’ve taught (although I pop in alot!). I am always impressed that the little ones in our church are great at worship and Scripture memorization…and they make it fun by dancing and screaming, too!

We had most of our staff team over on Sunday for a BBQ instead of our regular staff meeting this week. We’ve got an incredible team! And the 20+ children who come with them aren’t bad, either! So blessed to be surrounded by these people in my life.

It was also my youngest daughter’s 6th birthday yesterday! She invited all of the girls in her class for lunch and cake, which was awesome. She LOVED hosting them all and playing the afternoon away. Kennedy was horrifically shy for the first four years of her life. I can remember her preschool teacher being concerned for how she would function in Kindergarten with her social insecurities. I was the one SHOVING my kid into the church classroom because she just wanted to be with her mom. Now here we are, one year later, and she is much stronger, more confident, and able to communicate what she wants appropriately. I am glad that we made her jump into situations where she had to make friends, where she had to talk to teachers, and where she had to find a way to be comfortable without her mommy attached to her. It was difficult to navigate that issue, but I think she’d still be in my arms all of the time if I’d have let her! So proud of you, Kennedy!!!

We are still short a couple of volunteer spots in Battle Ground, although we are doing AMAZINGLY well overall. If you play bass, play drums, or love toddlers, we need YOU! The toddler class actually just needs assistants, so you don’t even need to teach! Just come ready to play and color! If you have another passion, we need one more of everything at both campuses in order to make the scheduling more fluid and ready for growth. Sign up to volunteer HERE.

Love my life, love my church, and love my Jesus! If you were out of town this weekend, we hope you were blessed and we can’t wait to see you on Sunday!

If you want some insight into my soul, you’ll always know when I’m wrestling with God when I blog less. (I define wrestling with God by the feeling of God trying to get my attention and me trying to figure out what He’s telling me.) I stare at my computer having a thousand words to write, but not being able to articulate what my heart is feeling. Honestly, as pastors, we wrestle with God alot. I think it’s in the job description! It’s not when the attendance is down or the finances are struggling. It’s not when our marriage is tense (yes, even we have those seasons). It’s really random and unpredicatable and it usually precedes God doing something significant, sometimes in the church as a whole and sometimes within ourselves. I feel like it’s God’s way of purging out whatever it is that He needs out in order to fulfill His purpose. At this point in ministry, I know the feeling and I both love it and hate it at the same time. It is this mix of being grateful that God is working in me, but really frustrated that I don’t “get it” right away. The feeling often reminds me of watching my second grader work on math problems.

Here’s my thoughts on how to wrestle with God:

1. Pray it out. When you feel stuck, frustrated, irritated…just pray out those emotions, but with one thing in mind: God, what are you trying to teach me in the midst of these feelings? Complaining for complaining sake isn’t going to get you far, but telling God where you’re at with the intent of learning where to go is beneficial.

2. Be aware of God’s messengers. I know that God uses people to speak into our lives all of the time. I am even sure that they are probably unaware of just how important their words are most of the time. In the midst of my wrestling this week, God has repeatedly sent people with the same words for my life. (This time those words are PROMISE and HOPE. There’s more to that story and I’ll share it someday!)

3. Hide. Even Jesus withdrew from the crowds now and again. It’s OK to drop off the radar every once in a while and focus on your own stuff. If you feel rushed to hear from God because your agenda is in the way, that’s really contrary to the point of pursuing His will for your life. And no, this one is not easy for me at all…

The bottom line is that growth is difficult. Just as joints and muscles ache when they are being stretched, so does your spirit ache when it’s being stretched. In fact, if you don’t experience discomfort in your walk with Jesus, you should be concerned that you aren’t allowing Him in to the deepest parts of who you are. Wrestling with God is not a bad thing…just realize that He will win every time!

What a beautiful weekend we had in the Pacific Northwest! We’re back to a few days of rain, but at least we had a week of sunshine to tide us over!

Congrats to Scott and Dana at the Battle Ground campus on the birth of their new son, Pierce! Pierce graced us with his presence after being born on Wednesday!!!

Love this picture of our three ladies due in July. That’s one of our children’s pastors and two of our worship leaders…yes, we are trying to figure out how to run our church in July and August while they all take time off with their babies. It would be an awesome time to volunteer!

Speaking of volunteering…if you know of a drummer in the Battle Ground area that needs a church, I know of a church in the Battle Ground area that needs a drummer. Have them email matt@coffeechurch.com. We pay in coffee.

Summer Camp signups went out this week! Youth Camp is June 25-29 and Kid’s Camp is July 30-Aug. 3. The due dates for registration are June 7 (Youth) and June 24 (Kids). We have partial scholarships available if you need them. You can put that on your registration forms when you turn them in. Take a note that no scholarships are given out after the initial due date.

Chinook Elementary in Salmon Creek is in need of 100 volunteers for their carnival on June 2 from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm. They only need volunteers for 30 minute or 1 hour shifts. We would love for North Creek people to be a part of saving the day! If you are free, please email stacy@coffeechurch.com. Teenagers are welcome! They also need people there early for setup as well (mostly to make cotton candy).

We got a very nice email from Battle Ground when we got home. Here’s a bit of it: I just wanted to let you know that the message today was amazing. I think God was speaking directly to me. Also, I have been enjoying the worship so much every week. Please let the worship leader know in Battle Ground she does an amazing job.

Matt and Mark did an amazing job of leading worship and speaking in Hazel Dell this week, too. We got a Facebook shout out that said, “Awesome church service this morning! Thankful for my life and all my healthy children!”

Honestly it’s hard not to be in two places at once when they are both doing excellent ministry…

I love our churches. I love our people. I love all the new babies. I love the chaotic mess that we’ve created. I love what Jesus is doing in the hearts and lives of his people!!!

I was recently reading a blog titled Why We Can’t See What’s Right in Front of Us (You can find the complete article HERE) and was fascinated at how STUCK our human brains can get. We tend to see one view of our circumstance, rather than looking at the situation from multiple angles to determine the best outcome. Because we tend to see things from our one, most common, perspective, it can literally cost us our lives.

Here’s a bit of the text that fascinated me most:

For example, the people on the Titanic overlooked the possibility that the iceberg could have been their lifeboat. Newspapers from the time estimated the size of the iceberg to be between 50-100 feet high and 200-400 feet long. Titanic was navigable for awhile and could have pulled aside the iceberg. Many people could have climbed aboard it to find flat places to stay out of the water for the four hours before help arrived. Fixated on the fact that icebergs sink ships, people overlooked the size and shape of the iceberg.

The problem is we tend to just see an object’s use, not the object itself. When we see a common object, the motor cortex of our brain activates in anticipation of using the object in the common way. Part of the meaning of an object is getting ready to use it. If a type of feature is not important for its common use, then we are not cognizant of it. The result: our brain’s incredible inertia to move toward the common. Efficient for everyday life, this automatic neural response is the enemy of innovation.

Isn’t that incredible!?! Everyone saw the iceberg as the enemy. The icebergs were the biggest concern going in to the building of the Titanic and once the unthinkable happened, the concern became the unshakable reality. That massive, solid, floating, platform wasn’t there to save them, it was there to kill them…or was it?

It makes me stop and look at the situations in my life that I have catergorized as potential problems. What if that “problem” is also my solution? What is the very things in my life that I think are my losses are actually my gains, if I will just let go of the fear and use them to my advantage?

It’s an interesting shift in my thinking, especially as a Christian, to view the world as if no situation is to my demise because I serve a God that works all things for my good. No weapon formed against me will prosper because the weapon pointed at me can actually be used to save me if simply put in different hands.

Yes, the iceberg may have damaged the ship, but it was the inability to focus on the possibilites that drowned the people.