Your Grace Is Enough - Matt Maher

Here's our song for this week @ Drennon...

Captured by the Spirit

For my day job, I am the art teacher at an elementary school in Oldham County, Kentucky.  I've been in the public school system here for nearly seventeen years, and I'll admit that some days I'm more motivated than others, more effective than others, happier than others.  Today seemed to be one of those days, and I give the credit for that to the Holy Spirit.

What struck me today was the helpful attitude I saw from some very young children when they needed to help some of our special needs children.  In a world that can be completely disheartening at times, I saw a few kids give of themselves unconditionally to make sure a few of their challenged classmates had just as much enjoyment as possible on our Paws-itively FITT Friday activities.  Most Fridays we integrate music, technology, PE and art activities into ways to get physically fit, and it's a chaotic mess (a good mess, though).  These kids I'm alluding to helped lead around their special friends and made sure they were safe, pariticipating and happy.

It's beautiful to see, and although I don't know any of these children's spiritual affiliations within their families, it's Jesus.  In Luke 13:34, Jesus says, "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings."  That's what I saw in the hearts of a few young children today.

It

During my frequent visits to Lifeway Christian Store lately to buy both the Courageous movie and our new NIV Bibles, I came across this book by Craig Groeschel.  I had seen his book Weird at the Disciples of Christ General Assembly last summer, and have it downloaded to read on our Kindle, but I used a coupon to buy It because it looked like exactly what I needed to read about jump-starting our church.  I had felt myself to be in a rut as a leader of late, and needed some fire.

This book has given me that, or recaptured "it" for me, in a way I had sort of forgotten.  I've read far too many Christian books by pastors that want us to adapt to exactly the type of churches they have, usually pastors whose churches are flashy, high-tech and edgy.  No doubt, those churches are experiencing a success of one sort or another, but our little country church at Drennon isn't that sort of place for many reasons.  First and foremost, I don't think the people there want that sort of change, and I don't even think the folks of Henry County want Drennon to completely leave the nineteenth century of its heyday.  Drennon Church and especially the Drennon Springs community surrounding it are as historic as they can possibly be, and we like it that way.  We're a small, tightknit church, and we like it that way.  Growing a little larger in numbers, and much deeper spiritually, would be great, though.

Craig Groeschel uses his book It to encourage us as church leaders to capture, or recapture, "it", meaning the Holy Spirit.  Churches young and old, big and small, high-tech and low-tech can have "it" or just as easily not have "it".  So much of what I've been thinking lately in relation to Drennon while reading this book makes me think that we can definitely grow deeper spiritually, and maybe even add a few to our numbers, if that is what God wants of us.

It's easy to say this kind of statement, but I believe this book might be the most influential one, to me, that I've read since entering the ministry.  It spoke to me, and I hope I can take the ideas it inspired to our church and help us find "it".



Be Thou My Vision

Something's going on at Drennon, despite my failings as a pastor and our failings collectively as humans on earth.  Our folks are quietly coming up with great ideas and recommendations that are Kingdom-centered and outward-focused.  We've started working on our church vision, trying to focus and hone our ministries so that we better serve Jesus while we're stranded here on earth.

It seems each week, and sometimes each day, I'm seeing more and more things our people are doing in this vein, whether it's an elder trying to go deeper in his congregational prayers, or a musician flexing her muscles instrumentally, or different ladies coming up with catchy, but true, phrases towards our vision, or members nominating very interesting people for leadership positions, or everybody buying new NIV Bibles for our church use, or making sizeable gifts to help renovate and rejuvenate our buildings, or even me feeling more led to speak loudly during service, be unleashed from hiding behind my clergy robes, introduce a prayer warrior program during the service and add more contemporary music (those ideas concerning my leadership are not mine but borrowed, stolen and found from others, haha).

I feel such a strong spirit right now at Drennon, one that I truly haven't felt in this particular, specific way since arriving here in July 2009.  It's not because of me, or us, but I know it's because of Him.  We've suffered so many losses, illnesses, injuries, surgeries and problems as a small body of Christ, that I guess we've had to dig a little deeper spiritually in spite of ourselves.

Praise Jesus!  Thank you Lord!  To Him be the glory now and forever!  Amen.

Our New Church Bibles

It's been a long time coming, but this afternoon I was able to pick up our new church Bibles.  We have some beautiful, fairly new KJV Bibles in our sanctuary already, but I have wanted to add a modern translation for church use ever since arriving at Drennon two and a half years ago.  Plus, it's gotten so more and more of our members have asked me what sort of Bible to read from instead of the King James, due to the fact that the KJV is just so hard to read.

It was a great phone call to receive at school when I got a voice mail from Lifeway Christian Store in Louisville, saying our Bibles were ready for pickup.  It was a really difficult day today for me and my family, with lots of stuff going on distracting us from our school days.  To hear from Lifeway, and then to go down to the store and open up a box of beautiful navy blue Bibles, written in the brand-new NIV translation, was a joy.  Kind of an affirmation on a very emotionally cloudy day.

We started asking for folks to purchase these Bibles for church use only about three weeks ago, and already they've been paid for completely by church members and regular attenders.  I will never want to start using the KJV Bibles we have at Drennon, because it's the most beautifully written translation, still probably the most trusted and definitely the best for memorizing Scripture verses.  Now, though, we can alternate back and forth between the majestic beauty of the KJV and the ease of understanding of the NIV.

The Chair, by James L. Rubart

The Chair is the second book I've read this past year by James L. Rubart, a fairly new Christian author.  The other one, Book of Days, concerned a hunt for the scriptural Book of Days, while this one dealt with a chase for the possession and use of a chair purportedly built by Jesus Himself during His carptenter days.  Both books were fast-paced, action-packed suspense novels, and were absolutely fictional stories.  Neither a physical Book of Days existing here on earth or a legendary chair built by Our Lord are actual objects that anyone claims to exist here today, but that is irrelevant to what these books are about.

Rubart explains in the afterwards of both books that they're more about what goes on inside of us as humans in relation to the Gospel and each other.  I would agree with that.  In both books the main characters are men who come to Christ due to their being thrown into these biblical archaeological mysteries.  Anybody at Drennon knows of my interest in biblical archaeology, due to my speaking on several current subjects as well as about the numerous holy relics that remain in churches across the world today.  To me, putting a character's inner struggles and journey to Jesus against a backdrop of biblical archaeology draws me right in and satisfies me as a reader.

The mysteries themselves in Rubart's books are not really the greatest.  They're good, but also pretty thin since there's no evidence in real life for anything like Jesus' chair or an actual physical Book of Days.  That takes away somewhat from the stories due to my interest in the subject.  Again, though, that's not the main point of Rubart's books.  His stories are about more inner journeys, inner mysteries, and because of that I'll continue to read his books.  He has only one more thus far, called Rooms, and I have a sample downloaded to our Kindle already.  I'm sure I'll read it sometime soon.



Renewing Your Mind

I'm on my way into a formation meeting for our upcoming Residents Encounter Weekend at the Kentucky State Reformatory. Always great to hear our music team practicing those beautiful contemporary Christian tunes...

Anyway, on the drive over I listened to a part of the "Renewing Your Mind" program with Dr. R.C. Sproul, on WFIA 94.7 FM. I always feel very enlightened and educated from the Gospel when I listen to Dr. Sproul, and he's quickly become one of my favorite teachers. If you've never listened to his teaching, I believe his program is from 5:30 to 6:00 pm daily.

Now on to the meeting, where I also hope to "renew my mind"...