7zeroes

Not a great start...

It’s Wednesday night, about Midnight, and it hits me… “I’m supposed to speak in chapel tomorrow!” Not a problem. I go into my room, set my alarm for 6am, and sit down to think and pray about what I should speak on. After an hour or so, I go to bed.

It’s 6am, I jump up, get in the shower, get dressed, grab my bag with all of my stuff for the day and start to walk out the door. Just as I was about to leave, something catches my eye. It’s a clock. A clock that reads 4:30am. Yeah. That’s right, I woke up at 4am misread my alarm clock and was about to be 3 hours early for chapel.

I get back in bed, thinking I might be able to get a little more sleep… and I do. I wake up and realize it is 7:20am. I’m late.

I redress and run out the door.

I speed across town, praying that I am not going to be so late that it completely ruins that whole schedule of the school, never to be invited back again.

I pull into the parking lot of the school at the exact time that I was told chapel was going to start.

I grab my bible, jump out of the car, and quickly make my way toward the building that I think is where the school holds chapel.

As I am walking to the door, I am met by the principle. I immediately start to apologize for being late, which is one of my personal pet peeves, so you can imagine how I feel when I am the one who is late.

The principle just looks at me and says, “No problem. Chapel isn’t until next Tuesday.”

So I wasn’t late. I was early… real early.

But the good news is I was at the office before anyone else!

Welcome Back Kotter

It has been quite a while since my last post. In fact it has been 69 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes and 23 seconds since the last time I posted anything. There has been a lot happening in all that time, but I guess that’s what that old saying means… you know the one, “What a difference 69 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes and 23 seconds can make”

Why has it been so long since I have posted you ask? Well, since the last time I posted anything I started a new job. I now work at Shady Grove Church in Grand Prairie Texas as the Children’s Pastor.

Many of you may know that I grew up at Shady Grove Church, and to be honest, I always knew that some day I would end up back there. I just never would have thought it would be this soon and as the Children’s Pastor.

I do have to say that it is good to be back. I was not sure how I would feel or how hard it would be to fit back in where I have spent so much of my life. Things have changed so much in my life. When I left Shady Grove I was eighteen years old, right out of highschool. My family had just moved to Tennessee and I was not sure at all what I was going to do with my life. Over the next few years I was re-introduced to God, I met a girl who would become the greatest wife any man could ask for and we have had a beautiful little girl.

My wife and I are really enjoying being at the new church, we thought it was going to be a really hard transition. We were attending another church that we absolutely loved, one of the greatest churches on the planet (Fellowship Church), but we knew it was God and it really has been great.

Being a children’s pastor is like nothing I have ever done before. I am having so much fun. So far we have had three services that I have led the Children’s church, and I have to say it is exhausting. I usually leave the church on Sunday morning with half a voice and the need to sleep for two days.

You can see some of what we are doing on the new Shady Grove Kids website.

I am sure that I will have a whole lot of funny stories over the next couple of years as I dive into this new ministry.

But just so you know that just because I have “a real job”, and that I will not have anything interesting to talk about or show you anymore… don’t worry. Don’t you know that strange things just follow me?

Take this for example.

This last Monday, I am walking into the from entrance of the new church and I notice something spray painted on our entry. Yeah that’s right, someone actually vandalized the front of our church. The only thing different about this “tagger” was the message he left… probably the worst grafitti in history. I took a picture just so that I could share it with you.

That’s right… we were tagged. I think that this might be gang related… that is if there is a gang in Grand Prairie that going around using the lamest, most used up sayings in history.

I’m surprised we havn’t heard of more churches reporting getting hit with other things like: “let’s go Viral” or “We not generation X, we Generation X-traordinary”

What about you? What slogans do you think I should warn the other churches about?

Leave a comment with you tired saying… for the best one I will email you an ice cream cone! (I just hope it doesn’t mess up anyone’s harddrives.

Everything's Coming Up Milhouse!

Right out of bed yesterday, my day started… frustrating.

I am not a person who stresses. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was actually stressed out. I do however get frustrated.

I really cannot nail down anything in particular that does frustrate me, most of the time it is something that I can’t do anything about. Whenever something comes up in my life, I usually ask the question, “is there anything I can do about this?” if there is than I do it, if there is nothing I can do, I get frustrated.

Yesterday morning was one of those days that I had exhausted all of my options in a situation that I was dealing with and it started to get to me.

I am a Christian, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is in control of my life, and that he not only knows whats going on in my life, He wants to be an active participant in my life. I believe that, but sometimes I don’t remember that.

Yesterday, in the middle of my “crisis”, I was reminded what it says in Matthew 7:11:

“How much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”

Once that sank in a bit, and I started to let some things go, BAM! things in my day began to turn around!

It ended up being a great day!

Did all of that days problems go away? No.

Is there anything new I can do in order to fix the situation? No.

Am I worried? No.

A wise man once said:

“Everything is coming up Milhouse!”

-Milhouse Van Houton, The Simpsons