Creativity

Ken Wilson posted this. It's great I am continually amazed at peoples creativity.

Sunday Thoughts

• The advent of British Summer time and the clocks going forward by an hour played havoc with out attendance today. It was way down. One of those Sundays as a Pastor you can go what on earth is going on! And all your insecurities come to the surface.
• Mark did a great job with his message on Its time for us to wake up to the mission of Jesus. Using the example of the elder son from Jesus story about the lost son in Luke 15 v 12 and following. Listen to it here.
  
• Although the elder son had been with the father throughout he just had not grasped it. He just did not understand the fathers heart. This challenged me. I have been in church for over 40 years and am asking the question again do I understand His heart. Clearly from this story its about the lost being found. What am I doing to find lost people?
• Dropped by McDonalds and picked up some breakfasts for our volunteers who were in early. Many of them arrive at 7am to set up and sound check etc. It went down well so maybe we will do it again.
• MK Dons are playing in the final of some obscure football cup this afternoon. Those absent from church have been noted. Hopefully I will see the second half. Come on you Dons.
• Just to remind you again our new service times on a Sunday are 8.30 am, 10.15 am and 12 noon. We didn't just change it for Easter Sunday.
  

Its Time to Wake up

Tonight the clocks change and British Summertime begins, well it does not really look like it at the moment, with us loosing an hour of sleep. Guess that this will be a real test of our new 8.30 am service.

Appropriately tomorrow Mark will be preaching a message called Awake! Its time to wake up to the world around us and the mission that Jesus has called us too. Here is a little video to get us started. See you tomorrow. Early and awake!

LifeChurch Rocks

Spent a great evening last night with some of the guys from LifeChurch. Bobby, Kevin Penry and Chris Byers were on a short visit in the UK on the way on to meet up with Rick Warren in Rwanda.

Mark and I were humbled that the guys would take time out of their shedule to visit with us. They have an incredible heart and vision to help and equip the church to be more effective in its mission to the world. They are keen to learn about different cultures so they can better fulfill their vision.

They are developing incredible resources for the church worldwide like open, swerve and YouVersion and giving it all away free. They are not content just to rest in the status quo but are looking to make a impact not for themselves but for Jesus.

Although I have been around church most of my life since becoming more involved on a full time basis a few years ago I have been surprised at the ego and competition that exists in pastors forums in the UK. With these guys there is a complete absence of ego in fact they seem to think they can even learn something from talking to the likes of me who is just making it up as I go along.

I'm encouraged that together with a kingdom mindset we can achieve so much more than we can in our own bunkers of self importance.

By the way YouVersion have just added the NIV and TNIV versions check it out here. They have a great daily reading plan here.