BUILDING YOUNG LIVES

Okay, so what was going on in our basement yesterday, you have been wondering. Well, we were doing some reorganizing of our offices (thanks Joe) to make room for the change I announced during this morning's service.

As a commitment to the development of a remarkable children's program, we are taking one of our key staff members, Charlotte Engel and changing her areas of responsibility.

Having functioned for more than seven years with outstanding volunteers in our kids' ministry and Charlotte as our full-time Administrative/Executive Pastor, we are making some changes to upgrade what we do for children. So she will be passing on some of her workload to an administrative assistant and focusing on making our Sunday morning kids' stuff the best on the Island.

I guess she will be our Administrative/Executive/Children's Pastor!

If anyone can pull this off, Charlotte can. She's going to be using an outstanding program - KIDMO and from the Sunday after Labor Day, the UA in Patchogue will be the place for children to be.

BATTER UP!

The Softball season starts tonight and our church team will set about maintaining their great record from last season - regular season runners up and play-off champions.

When we first started visiting Long Island, long before we came to live here, I was fascinated by this Saturday evening ritual. Apart from the fact that the game was totally new to me, it was riveting to watch the rivals on the field.

You learn a heck of a lot about people by watching them compete, so I'll be there observing tonight - and root, root, rooting for the home team!

WHY WE'RE NOT DOWNSIZING

When you get to the stage in your life that the kids left home long ago and most of your four bedrooms are unused space apart from the occasional visitor, a lot of people make the decision to downsize. That's a logical move - just have the space you need, without heating, cleaning and maintaining a bunch of rooms that really serve no useful purpose at all.

However, that wouldn't really make sense for us ... our house does serve a dual purpose. Above ground it's the Blackmore home - below ground it's the International Headquarters of Grace Ministries Inc. (that sounds a bit fancier than our church offices, doesn't it?).

And as I type this morning I can hear the sounds of expansion going on outside my door. We're adding another work station to our offices as part of fulfilling one of our major commitments for 2006.

What is it? I'll tell you tomorrow in service and for those of you who live in other countries or far from the beauty of Long Island, I'll excuse you for not being in church and fill in the details for you tomorrow night.

Whatever way you look at it, there's no room for downsizing here.

STAYING CONNECTED

Had lunch with an old friend today, Bill Clemens who pastors Christian City Church in Greenlawn - www.christiancitychurch.net

Since we both share a love for Indian food, it was natural to hook up at the newish Indian buffet in Selden, though it's not the smartest eating plan for someone working at dropping his final 30 pounds!

I haven't hung out with Bill for at least two years and I was glad to hear from him when he called last week. Sometimes life gets so full that we just don't make time to enjoy things like eating good food and being with friends. Shame on us. We parted this afternoon determined to rearrange our priorities a little better in the future.

Bill has just ended a very lengthy battle with the Town of Huntington over his church's plans to build on land they bought there. After years of hearings, court cases, etc., the Town finally bought the land from them and they were able to buy a great facility that came on the market not far from where they had been worshiping. It wasn't the way they had planned things, but God knew best and the outcome has been remarkable.

It reminded me to be patient with our own building battles, because God has the masterplan. I'm up for him surprising me like he did Bill.

SUPERCOOL PERSON OF THE WEEK

To get the good of what I want to say this morning, you really need to have read yesterday's blog entry first. So if you are willing to admit in public that you failed to read through Thursday's ramblings, why not take a moment right now? - and be certain, God will forgive you for your oversight!

Okay, so you got the point about useless people who are not willing to plug in and get their hands dirty? They just want what they consider to be a top spot and anything less just isn't going to happen.

Today I want to salute a small group of guys who are the opposite of that nauseating nonsense. They pitch in, they get their hands dirty, they do essential stuff that very few people see happening and they do it week after week without complaining because they are glad to contribute to what we're all about.

My Supercool Persons Of The Week are our set-up guys. These are the men who are at the movie theater every Sunday morning at 7.00am - and that means arriving in the dark in winter - and pull everything from storage, placing it where it needs to be for the various activities around the building throughout the morning.

They drag, carry, lift an amazing amount of stuff. Sound systems, lights, coffee machines, tables, chairs, nursery equipment, banners, signs, plants, stage props. It's 90 minutes of hard work.

Few are around to see it all happen, but if these guys didn't step up to the plate there would be no programs at all.

They're not looking for the limelight or working for applause. They're all capable, smart people who have responsible jobs and good brains. But on a Sunday morning they're willing to take off their coats, roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done.

They're the backbone of Grace Church and Supercool People.

Extremely Talented, Virtually Useless People

I stole this from the Blog of a friend of mine - guess people are the same the world over!!!


We’ve got this kid in our church that is an extremely talented musician. (I say kid but he’s in his early twenties which probably says a lot more about my age than his.) Anyway, he’s amazingly talented and he has a heart to do great things for the Kingdom. Unfortunately, he’s not too interested in doing anything less than great and that’s the problem.

Although he’s exceedingly talented and wants to be used by God, he’s seems to always be expressing what he won’t do. He won’t do this and he won’t do that. At the same time, he gets frustrated because he’s not being used by God. It’s almost comical.

The truth is that if this “kid” would plug in and get his hands dirty and do what is needed, there is no end to what God would do through him both here and beyond but since everything else is less than what he envisions himself doing, he’s virtually useless to our church and, I fear, to God.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Talent is vastly over-rated. I will take a less talented person with a great heart all day long over an extremely talented person with a bad attitude. Talents come and go but great hearts are hard to find.

On a side note, whenever I hear about this guy and his list of things he won’t do, I wonder what I’m telling God I won’t do.

Father, give me a heart that says “yes” to you no matter what.

PEOPLE

Having spent most of my life going to bed at midnight or after, I'm still adjusting to the new regime that leaves me tired enough right now - before 9.30pm - that I'm ready for bed and sleep. I never stay awake to watch the Tonight Show nowadays, which is probably not a bad thing!

Tomorrow will be an earlier than usual start as I have a meeting in Syosset at 7.00am. What idiot scheduled a meeting that early when it will take 45 minutes to get there? Good question - well, it wasn't this idiot!

There's a pastors' breakfast where a bunch of people are going to talk about the Willow Creek Association's August leaders' conference. They reckon on having 70,000 leaders sit in on the conference, most of them at satellite relays and a few actually sitting in Illinois and watching Bill Hybels in the flesh.

I won't even be around for the conference - vacation calls!

But I want to meet up with these guys tomorrow. I enjoy hanging out with pastors. I'm meeting with three different guys one on one this week, went to my regular monthly get-together with Patchogue pastors on Tuesday and will use the travel time to get to Syosset and back to hang out with my friend Anthony Pelella from Medford Assembly of God.

Pastoring is a special call and I've done it for longer than most, so if I can be an encourager for any of the colleagues God has placed around me, I want to do just that. I've always had a lot of support in ministry and it feels like this is the time for me to give back.

That's cool!

SOME GREAT MUSIC

Here are three albums I'm currently listening to - there's some great stuff on them ... you can buy the new Passion CD and Hillsong United as a combo on Amazon.com and get free shipping. But while you're spending your hard-earned cash, you may as well throw in Tree 63 too.

The song Party is track three on Everything Glorious. I hope our band can get into that - it's wild!

TITHING WORKS - IT'S OFFICIAL

You don't have to take God's word for it or mine either for that matter. Here's the official verdict from the noted theologian LL Cool J in Sunday's Newsday -

If it wasn't for my faith in God, and me paying tithes and using that and applying that in my life, none of the things people see happening for me would be happening. If you look at the trajectory of my career, since I started tithing I've done much better.

FINISHING THE JOB

Guess I ate too much Indian food on Saturday night - and leftovers of it after church Sunday. Didn't get to the gym yesterday afternoon either as I took Jonathan into Manhattan instead. Put all that on top of a week with too many deviations off course and that all conspired to a weight gain of 2.8lbs at my Weightwatchers meeting this morning. Not a good thing.

Now, if you're sick of hearing about my weight, health, or whatever, feel free to check back in tomorrow and skip the rest of this. Sorry if it gets boring, but next time you succeed in a major effort, you try keeping quiet!

Anyway, here's the point.

Since I passed the 100lbs weight loss goal five weeks ago, I haven't lost a whole lot more. With around 30lbs still to go, the major milestone I passed has proved to be a major hindrance. It's difficult to shake myself out of the satisfaction of shedding so much and get my head around the fact that there's still more to be done to finish the job.

Here's the preacher making a connection ...

In decades of pastoring I've met a lot of church people who have those same kind of problems with developing themselves and reaching their full potential for God. The majority come so far, are happy with what has occurred in their lives and never rise above mediocre.

It's true of churches too. But Grace's epitaph will not be that we came a long way and then stood still. We're going to finish the job, which means constantly pressing forward.

Our future is leaner and meaner!

FAMILY

Just got back from LaGuardia with our son, Jonathan. He's in New York for a design show next week and so gets to come and visit us with all expenses paid by J.C.Penney!

It's the first time we've got together since he was finally diagnosed with sarcoidosis and not the lymphoma the doctors thought he had - and he looks good. We weathered a trying few weeks as a family and thankfully are now moving forward.

So tonight we're going to sit aound and eat Indian food, chat, laugh, get ridiculous and be especially grateful for one another.

SUPERCOOL PERSON OF THE WEEK

She received an estimated 40,000 birthday cards and emails. There was a fireworks display this evening, a 21 gun salute and a whole lot more.

But so as not to leave her day incomplete, on the day Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 80th birthday, I want to formally announce that this remarkable woman is my Supercool Person Of The Week.

Now you can sleep well, Your Majesty!

THE DAVINCI CODE

This morning was one of those good times at the gym. I walked 6.5 miles and felt that I could have gone longer. The only restriction was not that I had run out of breath, but rather that I had come to the end of the time I had available today for exercise.

Time may have passed quickly because I was listening to a great message by Ed Young Jr - it was on Hell, maybe that helped too. I'll make a few notes on that while the thoughts are fresh in my mind and folks will probably hear them during my summer series on heaven. The other podcast I heard today was the regular fun show from Granger Community Church in Indiana. It was recorded last week and they were talking about the new series - Unlocking The DaVinci Code - that they were starting on Easter Sunday.

It's tough to get away from the DaVinci Code at the moment. The marketers are doing their utmost to get everyone talking about it ahead of the release of the movie next month and then there's a whole bunch of Christian writers, marketers, etc who want to draw our attention to it so that we buy their materials and do series like Granger is doing.

A pastor friend of mine on the Island called the other day and asked if we were doing a series on The DaVinci Code and when I told him we were not planning to he seemed surprised. Let me explain, it's not that I think it's a bad idea, but it's just that we have our focus for May planned already. Anyway, when did Grace ever fall in line with everyone else?

May is always our missions focus month and starting on Mothers' Day, the 14th, we're going to be focusing on spreading the gospel at home and overseas using the theme - SHINE!

I feel a bit like Nehemiah who when asked to come and talk about what he was doing rebuilding Jerusalem said - I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Missions is a great work, so I'm not planning on being sidetracked by a work of fiction, a Tom Hanks movie or Christian marketers who are after our money.

When The DaVinci Code has come and gone the work of reaching people for Jesus will still need to be done.

HEALING

I was just reading the blog of a friend of mine pastoring in Arizona, who was writing about healing and it reminded me of something that happened in one of our services recently that few people are probably aware of.

It was during our Win4Life series where we looked at Health, Healing, Happiness and Heaven (though Heaven was postponed because of a blizzard that closed down the theater we use and the streets too for that matter!).

On the Sunday when Lesaya preached about healing, she gave an opportunity at the end of service for people to receive prayer from our Prayer Team if they needed healing themselves.

Turns out there was a guy with us that Sunday who had been struggling with severe back problems for several years. He heard the message, asked for prayer and was healed from all his pain.

Good stuff, eh?

DIG FOR VICTORY

During World War II when food was rationed, people were encouraged to develop their own vegetable gardens so that they could be self-sufficient. The government slogan (well, back in the UK anyway) was Dig For Victory.

By the way, I learned this from my parents and through history lessons, not first-hand!

We did a bit of digging for victory at Grace House this morning as a bunch of folks started setting up our vegetable garden.

Long Island Cares put the whole project together, provided everything we needed (including plants) and once again showed themselves to be the stellar organization they are.

FISHING

You know the old saying about Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day: teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime, well what if you could teach him to fish while you were also giving him fish?

Okay, this is getting way too complicated for a Monday, so here's the simplified version. Our Grace Care outreach program begins an exciting new phase tomorrow. Kerri Tooker has been doing an outstanding task of directing our Food Pantry and Mobile Soup Kitchen for the past four years and tomorrow she opens up a whole new opportunity to assist those Jesus is most concerned about.

In partnership with Long Island cares, we are going to develop a vegetable garden at Grace House, which will be then be tended by some of our food pantry clients. The garden will accomplish two significant goals.

Firstly it will provide healthy, fresh vegetables for us to distribute to needy families from the community we are privileged to help. Secondly, it will be a place where volunteers can learn to grow different vegetables so that they have a crop for each season, to help their family's diet stay nutritious.

So we'll serve vegetables and teach the recipients to grow them. I love the idea and appreciate Kerri's commitment to the well-being of the hundreds of people we are helping every month.

Grace really Cares!

STRONG START

Here's part of an email I just got from Tony Balsamo, whose Integrity Christian Fellowship had its public launch in Yaphank today -

Thanks so much for all of your prayers for our opening launch service this
Easter Sunday morning! What a tremendous blessing it was to see the
excitement on the faces of God's people as they brought many of thier family
and friends to church....some for the first time! We had 162 people at
service today! God is so good!

That's a great start!

BY THE WAY ...

Starting our new series on Parenting on Easter Sunday was a brilliant move - though I say it myself! Got a ton of positive feedback.

SLEEPING!

I sat down on the sofa late this afternoon and didn't see daylight again till almost an hour lately. I don't often do that, so I guess I was tired. Part of that is probably due to the fact that I am sleeping lightly lately, keeping an ear open for how Gill is doing (nights are rough for her) and then there is the fact that this morning was busy at church of course.

It was a good Easter Sunday, with our attendance up by around 35% on an average Spring Sunday. It was good to see some old friends and also to see so many new faces around the place.

We had a bunch of people working on the kids' program and we re-launched our alternative service, Altered, with almost 100 teens and early 20's there (plus a few Peter Pans!). So the whole theater was buzzing with life. I love it!

One of the things I enjoy about using the theater is that it gives us the scope to develop different programs, aimed at various ages and even divergent tastes in worship styles. Now that Altered is back on track, what style comes next?

I like the idea of adding an acoustic, cafe-style service.
When? Not sure!
How? That's taking shape!

This is Grace Church - you never know what's next!

ON THE EDGE

Most of you would not believe this, but I have actually had inquiries from people asking what's been up with my blog this past couple of days. I guess since my last post was bragging on the Mets (now 8-1 on the season!), there might have been genuine fears that some disgruntled Yankees fan had committed some technological felony and jammed up this site. No such thing. Yankees fans are gentelmen (and women)!

Here's what happened - Easter happened!

There's a story about Smith Wigglesworth - an outstanding British preacher from the first half of the last century around whom hundreds of urban legends have grown up, bestowing upon him a superstar status that he most certainly would never have appreciated.

Wigglesworth was an uneducated, unrefined plumber from Bradford in the north of England who started to preach with some amazing results. The word is that one night he woke up and sensed a demonic presence in his room. Looking towards the foot of his bed, he saw the devil standing there. Far from nervous, Smith Wigglesworth uttered the contemptuous words - Oh, it's only you!, then he immediately turned over and went back to sleep.

I like that. Some people give the devil far too much respect. They seem to have a big devil chasing them all the time and a tiny God who they can't trust to look after them. Easter's about Satan losing and God winning once and for all.

So while I'm not an advocate of giving credit where it is not due, it is nonetheless interesting to see how complicated life often gets on Good Friday as we prepare for our biggest Sunday of the year. Maybe there are spiritual forces trying to hinder us?

That's how it was here yesterday and I'm still catching up. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And most of it had to do with computers, printers and all the other wonders intended to make our lives less complicated.

I won't bore you with the details, but do want to make the following observation. While we were stretched, we still got through it all. God's victory is absolute. Jesus is totally Lord and I can't wait till tomorrow for our special celebration of crushing defeat for the one who wanted to destroy us and overwhelming success for the one who rose from the dead to give us new life.

COULD IT BE?

Arriving in the USA almost fifteen years ago, one of the major readjustements was learning a bunch of sports that were seldom seen in the UK. There was no soccer worth speaking of, no cricket, no rugby - all of which had been a part of my life since childhood.

Instead there was football, baseball, ice hockey and basketball. Having sat and yawned at a Knicks game and been bored out of my skull watching the Islanders play, I did eventually get to understand the point of two other hybrid sports - football and baseball.

In both sports there are two New York teams of course and while my football loyalties had already been established - far from the Meadowlands - I had to decide who to root for on the baseball diamond. In my ignorance I opted for the underdogs and there have followed endless seasons of disappointment as a New York Mets fan.

Every season has started with great hopes, generally to see them dashed long before Memorial Day. But as I sit here tonight watching Martinez, Reyes, Wright and co, I dare to believe that this really could be the year.

Baseball is no longer a foreign game played by interesting characters in strange outfits - it's a game I enjoy. And I love it all the more when my Mets are winning!

RESURRECTION OF ALTERED

One of the highlights of this coming Easter Sunday will be the resurrection of our alternative service for teens/college age, Altered. It's a whole different scene from our main service which we call contemporary, but in all honesty is only contemporary if you remember the 70's and 80's.

Not that I'm knocking that style, it's just that the sounds of that era don't cut it for those born after Reagan left the White House.

Altered got off to a great start two years ago on Easter Sunday, but it floundered when its initiator moved to Texas last summer. So now it's back, bigger, bolder and badder, with a sound and a style all its own. We'll be doing it once a month over the summer and then when September hits (along with our new kids' program) Altered will provide a weekly alternative for those who want to worship in the style of their own generation and not their parents'.

EASTER ADVENTURE

Not that I need to put more pressure on myself, but this Easter I've decided to do that. Every year since I started pastoring, I've preached on some aspect of the resurrection or had someone else do it, but this year we're going for something - in the words of Monty Python - completely different!

Anticipating that there will be a crowd there on Sunday, the target is to get as many of them back the following weeks as possible. As part of that plan, we'll be starting our series on parenting - You Must Be Kidding - and the challenge for me is to make sure that Sunday goes well enough that a whole bunch of people return for part two.

I hate business as usual. I think I'm a bit ADD. I get bored quickly. So there has to be a new challenge and that's it for 2006 - getting the folks back again. Never mind counting heads on Easter Sunday, it's April 23rd that really matters to me now.

YO MO!

Did you see that ABC have re-done The Ten Commandments (the movie that is) and are showing it this week - minus Charlton Heston!

Here's an email I got today from our friend Dr. Michael Guillen -

Over the weekend, Laurel and I were in New York at a Summit of Christian Film and TV Professionals. At the event, we had a chance to hear from Judith Tukich (ABC’s executive in charge of synergy & special programming – which includes the Ten Commandments) and a Hollywood pastor who’s actually pre-screened the miniseries – both are sincere Christians.

Bottom line: the mini-series sounds like a winner. The producers appear to have made a real effort to tell the story of the Exodus with respect, authenticity, and integrity. So, I’d like to encourage you to spread the word …

WATCH THE SERIES! Do everything and anything you can to support it. Send a clear-cut message to Hollywood – we want more of the same. It’s on tonight and tomorrow night at 9 PM on ABC.

Works for me!

GREAT MORNING

What a great service this morning! Good crowd, tons of visitors, baptisms, very positive vibe - all this and Easter is still to come! Next Sunday is very much on my mind right now, but I don't want to totally let go of today.

Standing, watching people getting into and out of our horse-trough/baptistry, I was amazed at what God is doing in people's lives. Each of them has a different story, but they converge at Grace Church and more than that, at the cross of Christ. We were celebrating new life already - seven days before Easter.

An afternoon at the gym, a trip to Queens to srop off our friends who have been visiting and now I'm vegging out watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I love this program - it's like a picture of what we are all called to do, be involved in building up others and be restorers of hope.

GREAT DAY TOMORROW

When we started out we had a banner that we put on the wall behind the band. It contained part of our mission statement - To Seek And To Save Those That Are Lost.

None of the people getting baptized tomorrow was with us then. Almost all of them did not know the Lord back in 1998. So as they celebrate their faith, we can thank God for helping us to do what we set out to do and pray that he will help us to accomplish it even more thoroughly.

SUNDAY'S COMING

The head count is up to twelve people getting baptized on Sunday morning - I love it! It's what we're about, what we live for, why we do what we do. Every baptism is a testimony to a life that has been eternally changed by Jesus and seeing people transformed is why Grace Church exists.

We used to do baptisms in people's pools, but a couple of years ago we made the transition to using a horse trough on the stage on Sunday mornings so that everyone can celebrate what God is doing.

Setting it all up, making it happen and clearing up is all organized by one man who teaches our baptism class, encourages the candidates, does the dunking and sticks around to mop up all the water once it's over.

Leon Majeed has been with us almost since the start of Grace Church. I love the way he willingly gets on with whatever he's asked to do, takes responsibility and gets it done. Leon's as at home with practical tasks as he is with teaching our baptism class and every time he gets the first-hand blessing of baptizing people, he deserves it. He's in a league of his own - a real class guy.

And Leon Majeed is our Supercool Person of The Week!

ENOUGH!

I never saw it myself, maybe it never made it to the UK, but back in the 1970's, there was a movie entitled Network in which a network news anchor played by William Holden urged everyone to open their windows and shout, I'm mad as hell and I won't take it any more!

I thought about that phrase last night when I was driving home from an enlightening dinner with our attorney. We had been discussing the way in which the Town of Brookhaven has been stonewalling our legitimate application to put up a church building and what our next moves need to be to encourage them to do what the U.S. Constitution and Federal Law require. It's a sad day when law-makers have no respect for the law.

So here's my point. How long do we sit around and complain about them? Have unscrupuloua people taken charge of local government because people with principles have refused to get involved? Is this a problem of their making or just the result of our own passivity? How long do we continue to hold on to the victim mentality?

Maybe it's time for us to go to our windows, open them wide and shout - I'm mad as hell and I won't take it any more!

And in case you think this is just talk, watch this space. We're putting together a major plan to have Christian influence and values guiding the Town of Brookhaven. Lincoln declared that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth - successive local politicians have certainly banished it, but it needs to be brought back as our democratic right.

More later - but enough is enough - it's over!

FRIENDS

One upon a time in a distant land where a queen lived in a big castle and a game called "cricket" was played on plush greens throughout the summer months, a recent high school graduate stepped off a train in a small town south of the capital city to begin preparations for his life's work of serving seekers and building believers.

It was September 6th 1968 as I began to unpack my belongings in the dormitory to which I had been assigned at Kenley Bible College. As has always been my pattern, I was there early and so waited to see who would occupy the other six beds around the room.

Within hours every place was taken by aspiring preachers from all over the country and we embarked upon our adventures in theology together.

The bed alongside mine was claimed by a bank teller from Essex who had turned in his career opportunities with one of the top national finance institutions to follow the call he felt to share the gospel. He was a couple of years older than me, skinny, with Buddy Holly glasses and a large nose... and we became friends.

In a couple of hours I will be going to JFK to meet him and his wife as they come to spend a few days with us. Thirty eight years on we are still friends and Peter and Irene Butt are always welcome guests in our home.

Bible School behind us, we both started out pastoring church back in 1970 and here in 2006 we're still enjoying every minute of it ... and glad to be friends! They say if you have a handful of real friends you're doing well.

I'm doing well!

THIEVES AND LIARS

There's a statistic that I have mentioned the past couple of Sundays that I can't get out of my head. According to the Barna Research Institute (albeit back in 2000) -

37% of Christians say they tithe

12% of Christians actually tithe

Forgetting the 63% of Christians who live their lives with themselves in the pole position and tip God when they get the inclination, those figures show that 25% either lie about their giving or don't know what they give.

As I have bounced this thought around, I have benevolently come to the conclusion that we are probably looking at the latter rather than the former. I know for a fact that there are a heck of a lot of people around who are totally disorganized when it comes to their finances and it's likely that many of those Barna interviewed fall into that category.

But since we're stewards of what God entrusts to us, we really do need to have our act together. So if you think you're tithing, check the paperwork you went through with your accountant recently, or will go through in the next few days. It'll be there in black and white.

And if you need to get organized and you live in reach of Patchogue, you could really benefit from the six weeks class we have starting on Thursday evevning.

LOOKING BACK

I enjoyed preaching yesterday. That isn't always the case. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to flow and I still haven't worked out the secret after more than forty years of doing it. But I love it when I'm in the groove.

I began and ended with a quote from the Book of Proverbs -
Proverbs 3:9,10 - Honor God with everything you own; give him the first and the best. Your barns will burst, your wine vats will brim over.

That looks like a no brainer from the start, doesn't it? If you delve into the meanings of each word of those two sentences in the original Hebrew language of the Old Testament, it's still a no brainer.

What is wrong with people that they refuse an offer like that from God? - Give him the first and the best and you'll always have plenty.

That really sums up all that I was trying to say in almost three hours of talking as I worked through the Mad Money series. If you don't grasp that, and go for it, then to be honest, I can't work out what your problem is - except that maybe the great philosopher Forrest Gump had it brilliantly right when he commented Stupid is as stupid does!

THE BEST

Our worship team rocked this morning. They're great to start with, but today they were off the hook. So much so that a woman who is new to us wrote a note and dropped it in the offering to let us know how much she appreciated them.

Great job Nancy and co! Kudos to the guy who asked Donna to crank up the volume a bit today too. Who? - moi of course!