Monday Morning Clarity

Seems like the Monday morning clarity is hard to get going on Monday recently. Yesterday (Monday) I spent all day in Alabaster packing up stuff to prepare for the movers that will come soon and take it all away. So, no blogging yesterday, but a lot of time for personal thought as I was driving.

Housing Update: We have a contract on our house in Alabaster and were supposed to close this Friday, Sept 25. However, their is a delay and it looks like closing is pushed back to next week. Which...affects the closing on the house we are trying to buy here. We have not been able to set a firm closing date b/c of the uncertainty on our house in Alabaster. All said, hopefully we will close on both houses next week and can begin moving into our new house in early October.

Now on to other thoughts:

• Great Sunday morning at Sixth Street. The crowd was still a little smaller than I had hoped. I think some of the college football games are affecting attendance - especially the late night Auburn games. However, the atmosphere of those here was great. Good job by the praise team and choir. I appreciated Adam's lead-in to "From the Inside Out" and Whitney Patterson did an awesome job on the vocals.
• I preached Sunday morning on the Parable of the Ten Virgins and being prepared for the coming Kingdom. The main takeaway was "What gets me into church isn't what necessarily gets me into the kingdom." Felt a lot of freedom in the message.
• We'll be wrapping up the "Kindoms Collide" series this weekend and I am working on the next sermon series. Hope to have it mapped out by the end of the week, but with all the closing stuff on the houses, no promises.
• Sunday night was a great time of fellowship and food at the Family Life Meeting. Baptists and covered dishes go hand-in-hand. I also told everyone that I am convinced that the Greek word for "chicken" is somewhere in the Acts 2 passage on the church. I've never seen so many combinations of chicken dishes.
• At the Family Life Meeting, I introduced to the church what I felt like should be our Core Values for Sixth Street. I have received good reviews so far and lots of positive comments about the future. I am convinced as we focus on the Word and develop a missional strategy to make disciples, God will bless Sixth Street. Lots of work to do between now and the end of the year.
• I'm really looking forward to the church's kickoff of AWANA beginning Oct 21. Our church needs to have a program to help disciple children and reach families. I am glad for the volunteers that have stepped up to the plate.
• I am digging my weekly disciple group with two guys from the church. It's great to meet with other guys to talk about being better followers of Jesus. The success or failure of the church will be how well we can reach men and disciple them.

Gonna put a post up tomorrow about a review of If God is Good by Randy Alcorn. It's a great read.