Monday Morning Clarity

Well I missed last week's Monday morning update. Lots going on and not much time to get clarity last week. All in all, it's been a good first month on the field here in Alexander City. Lots of stuff has happened rather quickly. We did a lot of work to prepare our house in Alabaster to sell and then got out as soon as it was done. We moved into a temporary lodging provided by one of my church members. (Thanks Tina and Dewayne) We enrolled the kids in new schools, met teachers, learned the drop-off lines, etc. We've also learned the Sunday morning routine here at the church. Here are some random thoughts now as we enter into September.

• Great day of worship yesterday. The band and worship team sounded as good as they ever have in my first month here. There was a real sense of expectation among everyone yesterday.
• I'm enjoying preaching through this series on the Kingdom of God. Yesterday we tackled the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 focusing on the truth statement "Eternity is too long to serve the wrong kingdom." Felt like it was the best sermon in the series so far for me.
• This weekend we are looking at the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18. Gonna learn a lot about being grace receivers and grace givers.
• The worship center was very full yesterday again. It looks like we can comfortably sit 250 people in there and then it's full. We are already at 80% capacity so we need to start figuring out the next step. It was suggested to me last night that we need to start looking at 2 worship services.
• I also heard that several guys from the CACC Baseball Team showed up yesterday at 10:50 only to find out that worship was almost over so they left. That breaks my heart. We need to do a better job of communicating publicly as a church who we are and inviting people to come.
• I looked out over the crowd yesterday and I saw a great group of church members excited about their church. However, I didn't sense many visitors or unchurched. We may have become too complacent at doing church instead of being the church. We need to capture desperate prayer for the lost and unchurched around us.
• I have begun a routine that has left little time for personal prayer on my part. I must be leading out to make this a "House of Prayer" so I need to make some adjustments in the calendar.
• We had a great meeting with some of the parents yesterday about our children's ministry. We are bringing back the AWANA program to Sixth Street starting October 21 on Wednesday nights. We will need a lot of parents to support and volunteer to put on a first-class program for our kids. We have an awesome responsibility to train our children and a children-friendly church is a family-friendly church.
• We were led musically last night by a three-man group of students from Troy University named "Transistor". Great group of guys that blessed my heart and showed me that God is still doing something amazing in the generation of 20-somethings right now.

That's about all for now! Lots of stuff to consider, but I must get back to business (and prayer).