Update from the last week

I've been too busy of late to find time to post anything to my blog, so I thought I'd take a few minutes tonight and give a brief recap. On the heels of a very successful initial First Serve project the previous weekend, this past week was filled with pastoral ministry responsibilities. I officiated or helped officiate in 3 different funerals in just five days. Then on Friday it was off to Jefferson City for the quarterly meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Missouri. We had a very productive time together. Yesterday I had the opportunity of preaching in both of our morning services as our pastor was vacationing with his extended family in Colorado. I chose to relate the story of Esther as a drama and then focused on 4 principal truths from Mordecai's dialogue with her in chapter 4:13-17.

My main points were these:
1. You cannot always run away from trouble - v. 13
2. Silence is not always golden - v. 14
3. God always raises up a deliverer - v. 14
4. Great blessings carry great responsibilities - v. 14

I'll try and add a link later to the audio file when it gets uploaded in case anyone would like to hear the message.

Tonight I participated with about 20 of our folks in distributing some of the extra publicity cards highlighting some of our summer activities and ministries that were left over from the Downtown Days event. We met at 6:00 at the church for pizza and then split up into 10 teams. We had an odd number so I wound up taking one section by myself and stuck 100 of the cards in the doors of homes. It took about an hour and a half. The walking wasn't bad at all--though it was a bit humid still. The tough part was that almost every home was either a split level or a raised ranch and most of them had anywhere from 5 or 6 to 10 or 12 steps up to the front door. Multiply that number of steps times 100 houses and I got in a pretty good workout. My left knee let me know that it hadn't been exercised that strenuously in awhile.

It was a good evening and I'm relaxing a bit, reading some blogs before getting ready for bed. I have a meeting tomorrow with a couple of guys that I meet regularly with every other Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. We've been discussing Phillip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace?