There is nothing more that I hate...

Moving. Ahhhhhh. Every time I have moved, I said that I would never do it again. I am serious this time. I am never, ever moving again. Perla and I spent the day packing up the garage. We spent yesterday packing up our offices. We will spend the majority of this upcoming week packing the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Then comes the loading. I have some great friends lined up to help us, so I hope it won't take us too long. Then there is the travel time and the unloading. Then the unpacking. The whole process is just ridiculous.

You have likely surmised from the above rant that Perla and I are leaving West Union. I resigned at the church. July 27 is my last day and we load up and move back to Circleville on Monday, the 28th. It has been an interesting 15 months. I have certainly learned a lot. I have also made some great friends. However, we feel the very distinct call of God to head a different direction. We are excited about what God has in store for us, and for what He has in store for the church. We are also excited to being going back home!!!

Thanks for reading. This will likely be the last post. May God bless you and all that you do for Him.

Dave

Praising God for His Goodness!!!

It has been a busy few weeks. Before I left on vacation, (see previous post) I was working on my comprehensive examination for my PhD program. You must successfully pass comps before moving on to the dissertation phase of the program. What's more, you only get 2 chances to pass, or you get bounced out of the program. Praise God, I passed my exam the first time around!! This was a nerve racking experience, and I am glad that it is over. However, it was a positive learning experience, overall!! I finished a call with my comps mentor today, and she told me that 2 exams had been turned in to date. 1 passed, the other did not. She had to inform the other student that they did not pass. Not a fun job. I thank God He saw me thorough this!!!

At church, we had Friend Day on Sunday and saw about 50 visitors come through the door. It was a great day, a good service, and good food and fellowship. We spend the last 4 weeks talking about evangelism using Hybel's Walk Across the Room. I was feeling that most of our folks were getting it, but I wasn't sure that they would actually do it. They did. It was great. Praise God for helping us to understand the importance of relational evangelism.

We are having a our Name Change Celebration on June 1. This will be a great day to celebrate our past and anticipate our future. I believe that God has some big plans for us in 2008-09, and I am excited to be a part of His work here in West Union!!! To God be the glory...

Dave

How Do You Turn it Off???

So, its been about 1 month since I posted something. Thought I might just jot a few wandering thoughts down.

Nothing too huge has happened in the past month. We had nominations for our Church Board for 2008-09. Looks like at least 2 positions will be changing. We are planning our special name change service for June. Also, this past month, we have been emphasizing personal evangelism in our AM services. We used Hybel's Walk Across the Room stuff. I think it was good for our folks. We are having a Friend Day on May 18, and we are praying for at least 15 unsaved people to join us for worship.

This past week, we went on vacation. The Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. It was nice, but it is good to be home. While we were there, I found myself having a hard time turing off thoughts about church. I was continually thinking about all I needed to do (budgets, strategic planning, etc). When I say continually, I really mean in our down time when we were doing nothing. It was nice to be away, relaxing. But when I was just sitting around, I kept thinking about church stuff. I need to learn how to turn it off, I guess. On the flip side, I love it. It gets my motor going. So, it doesn't really seem like work (we get paid for this???).

Anyway, there's the update. A few things going on, but we are about to hit a busy season with camps, church ministry events, etc. I will update on how our Friend Day goes.

Dave

Are Week Long Revivals Effective Anymore?

Last week, we held revival services at our church. This was our first revival since I have come to be pastor. We did a good job getting the word out to our folks, we had a great speaker for the week, and we had a number of different music groups come. The only thing we really didn't have was, well....people.

There were nights that it looked like we had a good group, but that is because the singing groups had between 4-8 people total with them each night. Most nights we had 20 people in the seats. I was very discouraged by the attendance. I was even more discouraged after each service. It was great that the Holy Spirit visited us in a special way each night. Even though no one took advantage of the alter call, I knew God was working on the hearts of our people. More people needed to hear what God had laid on our speaker's heart and I was discouraged that they didn't come to do so.

Sunday morning was good. 62 folks came to worship with us. Sunday night was good as well. However, in an effort to offer some additional times of discipleship during our revival, I scheduled 2 Saturday workshops. One on getting out of debt and the other on effective Bible study. A grand total of 0 people came to each one. This was fairly discouraging.

On Sunday morning, our official church counter remarked that this was the lowest number of people we had ever had at revival. I told him that we weren't going to have it anymore (at least week long revivals). "What?" I explained that the week cost us over $1000.00 (which is a lot of money for a small church) and that we just couldn't justify the expense for the number of people who participated. When faced with reality and logic, to my surprise, he conceded and agreed.

Do week long revivals work? Are they effective? I suppose that depends on how we define "effective". I certainly believe that those who came were challenged. Revivals are more of a discipleship event now, it seems. You hear stories about how people used to get saved at revival all of the time. I am sure that this still happens. However, revival, much like Sunday School, has become more of a time of discipleship than anything else. So, do we simply need to adjust our expectations? My frustration level is high and my ideas are low. What should we do?

I don't know what the answer is. I do know that this Fall, we will be having a three day revival as opposed to a week long revival. I pray that our people will take advantage of these times of discipleship and growth. We all need to grow closer to Jesus.