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Monthly Archives: August 2012

Some Sunday mornings seem like a train wreck waiting to happen.  This weekend was setting itself up to be just that!  Our youth pastor was scheduled to preach at Hazel Dell, but ended up having emergency gall bladder surgery on Wednesday, Battle Ground had a complicated sermon with tons of videos needing to be made on a computer that crashed, and volunteers were dropping like flies.  At one point I thought it could end up being a joke that wasn’t so funny.

But the same thing ALWAYS happens…the church becomes the church.  People came in early, with smiles on their faces.  Volunteers walked up and asked if they could fill in for anybody who was missing, the videos not only came together, but were perfect, and Josiah stepped up to the plate to not only preach, but preach with excellence!  There was a funny moment when I looked around and had nothing to do because everybody was already doing it.  I love when God reminds us that He has it all under control and the church is about HIM, not our smoothly operated systems.

The best highlight is that we baptized Kevin in the Deaf Church service on Sunday.  Congrats!  We are very excited for you!

Old pastor friends of ours, Paul and Joanie Walterman, surprised us on Sunday after not seeing them for about 10 years.  I lost it.  They were with us during the most challenging moment of ministry and their love meant the world to us.  Sometimes you don’t need to DO a whole lot to BE important to people.

Mark did the summer recap at Battle Ground, highlighting camps, missions trips, baptisms, and babies!  I heard it was a lot of fun!  Hazel Dell gets the recap service this upcoming Sunday.  It’s a “Don’t Miss” service!

We are four months into our multisite strategy.  We are seeing lots of good things happening and we are on the road to where we are going!  I really can’t believe it’s only been four months since launch.

Kris is easing back into reality after surgery!  It took 15 of us to cover her for a week.  She’s a busy lady and we very much look forward to having her back 100%.

We got some more Kid’s rooms painted this week!  Thanks for those of you who jumped in and helped hammer out two large rooms in one day!

Also, a big thank you to all of you who gave school supplies to help our local schools out!

I am looking forward to everyone coming back to a regular schedule in September.  I am so thankful that everyone seemed to have a great summer, but I miss seeing everybody on a regular basis.  I’m a sucker for a schedule!

We are beefing up our volunteer schedule for the fall.  If you are interested, we specifically need:  Sound people (we will train you), Media computer at Hazel Dell, Nursery, Assistants in KidCity, Host Team (greeters), and Babysitters for early worship practice (about an hour before services).  You can fill out a volunteer application by clicking HERE.

Have a great week!  I heard Thursday is supposed to be a hot one!

 

 

This is a repost from three years ago.  Enjoy!

My mother has a green thumb like no other.  She has one of the most amazing flower gardens I have ever seen.  It’s overflowing with one healthy plant that looks just perfect next to the plant beside it.  She has meandering paths, ponds, bushes, bird baths…it’s like a walk through Heaven.  Since I moved out 15 years ago, I have been trying to tap into her amazing ability to mold and shape a garden.  Year after year I get closer, but there are always a multitude of things that aren’t “working”.

I think I have officially discovered her secret…she has no mercy on what is just “good”.  She has no problem ripping out a plant that is slightly unhealthy.  She has no problem ripping out a plant that doesn’t go with her particular style that year.  She has no problem saying no to something that is perfectly good in order to say yes to the best thing for her garden.  And if something didn’t work the year before, she doesn’t give it a second thought.  She just simply tries something new and doesn’t beat her head against the same brick wall.

I find myself being a sucker for a deal.  If there’s something on sale…that’s my plant.  If I get a free flower on Mother’s Day, it’s going in the ground.  Not because I love it or it fits into the overall look that I have, but because it’s there.  And what I keep ending up with is a conglomeration of some things that I love and some things that throw off the feeling that I was trying to get.  I spend the rest of the season looking at the odd ball plants with a twinge of bitterness and not focusing on the plants that I love.

And here’s the irony…my mom and I are both really frugal and don’t spend a lot.  She just is willing to wait longer for what is perfect, rather than what is convenient.

How many times do we look at what’s around us and settle?  It’s “there”, so that MUST be God’s way of giving it to us.  It MUST be “His will”.  Or maybe it’s just there.  Maybe it’s not God’s way of speaking through opportunity.  Maybe it’s just another moment for God to teach us how to make the “best” decisions rather than just making “good” ones.

It’s time to settle for the right additions to our garden of life.  If it’s not beneficial, it’s not the right thing for this season.  And in the end, I know what will happen…life will be a beautiful place filled with all of the things that you value the most and not a lot of junk that is just altering your focus.  Thanks, Mom.  You continue to teach me through your love and life.

It is nearing the end of the long list of amazing adventures that the Coffee Church has been blessed with this summer!  The kids arrived home from camp on Friday night after a week of few showers, lots of games, and growing in their relationship with Jesus.  Thank you to Sarah Sherland and Mark Newell for going as cabin staff.  Your investment into their lives is eternal!  I accepted Jesus at Kid’s Camp in 1986, so I have a special place in my heart for this event.

AND….Will and Sarah Sherland announced their pregnancy right before Sarah left for camp.  Mark married Will and Sarah years ago, as the first North Creek wedding, so this baby is special for us on many levels.  Tears are flowing….

My oldest daughter went to camp for the first time.  She is “cleaning challenged”, so she fit right in with the all of the other girls who took home the prize of dirtiest cabin.  I’m not proud.

Mark and I were at Battle Ground on Sunday.  There were FOUR babies under the age of one month!  FYI:  We are creating a brand new nursing mom’s room just for the fleet of babies over there.  Coming SOON!

Matt spoke at Hazel Dell and he called me loud.  I told him that I just have very confident vocal cords.  We love Matt and Andrea and are SO glad to have them on our team and in our lives!

Jim spoke at Battle Ground and he called Mark and I “middle aged”.  I think I’d rather be called loud.  Jim is the Deaf Church Pastor and so we had to tie his hands behind his back so that he was forced to preach with his voice this week!

If you are one of those people who has been gone a lot this summer, don’t think we’ve forgotten about you!  We can’t wait to have you back after your summer winds down.

We are painting some of the Kid’s Rooms at Battle Ground tomorrow.  You can join us from 10:00-5:00 pm and help out!  It’s one of the easier jobs that we have, but also one of the most important.  Kids are a priority!

God has done some of the coolest things EVER this summer at the Coffee Church.  Each campus will have a service about all the amazing things that happened via baptism, camps, missions trip, and Sundays.  I can’t wait!

I love our church!  I love pastoring here, love our team, love our successes, and even love our struggles.  Find a church that you can love everything about and then pour your life into making even better.  Don’t sit around being grumpy about petty details, but jump in with both feet and LOVE the people, the process, and the pastors.  It’s liberating to get behind a vision and go one direction.

On that note, I’m cleaning out some closets this week and letting go of junk.  That’s liberating, too!  Hope you are blessed beyond measure.

We will never forget our time in the Dominican Rrepublic or the wonderful people that we got to interact with.  Our main agenda was to help with a summer camp for teenagers at a local church.  If you know anything about my life, I am a BIG fan of summer camp.  This was the first summer camp that they have been offered and we were humbled to be a part of it.  We lead workshops, games, crowd breakers, and gave testimonies.  It was a challenge in the intense heat with a language barrier, but I am proud to say that the 13 people we brought from the States gave it their all and did a good work.

At the end of the camp, 45 teenagers had accepted Christ out of the 150 attending and 85 of them signed up to be a part of small groups that will do a book/Bible study on purity in the weeks to come.  We will continue to pray that God works in the hearts and lives of these teens far beyond what we did!

We were honored to work with one of our missionary families, Jamie and Berly Bello.  We’ve known Jamie for decades; since college, then youth pastoring, and now supporting her on the mission field.  She spends her time raising up a generation of youth pastors in a country that has not typically had youth focused programs.  One of the youth pastors told me that Jamie was the first person to believe in the dream that God had put in his heart.  He is now youth pastoring (as a volunteer because there are no paid youth pastors in the DR) and is obviously anointed by God to change his nation.

This was the perfect trip for our church.  We got to pour our support into people on the frontlines of youth ministry and serve them with everything we have.  We love teenagers, we love our missionaries, and we love hard work!  Jamie said our group asked her more times than she could believe, “What can I do for you?”  If we left the DR nothing more than that, we were successful.

I’m not sure that anybody who went will ever be the same, and that is a good thing.  Our eyes have been opened to a culture where some things are different, but the needs, wants, and desires of the people are very similar to our own.  We all left with certain faces burned into our hearts, as God tied us to their hopes, dreams, and fears.  We will carry a little of the Dominican Republic with us wherever we go.

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