Quote: #9

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - G. K. Chesterton

Re: The Coolest Toy Ever!

TASTY!

The Sunday Shout-Out: July 27th, Edition.

Today we Shout-Out the people below who came in and cleaned up around the church yesterday. We also want to Shout-Out the crew from the Manchester area small group who came in Friday night and cleaned the carpets in the administrative offices as well as the sink and nasty coffee pot in office #110.

Blessings,
PB

The Coolest Toy Ever!

I just got the coolest toy ever: an i-ROAST2 coffee bean roaster. I burned the first batch and I think that our house might smell until sometime next Tuesday morning (just a guess.) But the second batch looks GOOD! I can't wait to grind 'em and then drink 'em. Here are the before and after pictures of my green and then formerly green coffee beans from Ethiopia's Yirga Cheffe region. These pictures are from the second batch. The first batch looked something like what I imagine charcoal gravel would look like - if you made gravel out of very small bits of charcoal.

Here is an old coffee documentary for you.

Blessings,

PB

Index of Leading Indicators.

The "Index of Leading Indicators" is an American economic index intended to estimate future economic activity. It is a helpful tool that economists use to help them chart financial policy in governmental as well in business arenas. That is all that I have to say about that, after all I am about as far from an economist as Mt. Everest is from the Grand Canyon.

But I have been thinking about leading indicators anyway, because there are leading indicators in church and ministry life as well. And I would like to share with you the reasons for my thinking about these things.

#1: I heard a very well known ministry leader make the following statement not too long ago. "The months of July and August are basically throw away months in a church calendar." The contention was that because of summer vacations and the back to school focus that grabs families during these months, it is basically impossible for a local congregation to make any kind of real advancement. This conclusion was based upon well over forty years in active, successful full time ministry in the local church context. The leading indicators of summertime family activities had led him to this conclusion.

#2: I recently had a discussion with a ministry leader whose ministry has experienced an unusually high level of personnel turnover. Though unavoidable, turnover is almost never welcome and, leading indicators would say, an obstacle to a ministry's smooth operation.

While I understand the value and, yes, even the wisdom present in leading indicators I also recognize that they are still only indicators; knowing that they are not declarations of the way things have to be and are not even necessarily true indicators of the way things presently are. The "U.S. Index of Leading Indicators" has itself incorrectly forecasted at least five recessions that did not occur over the last fifty years.

So, I choose to be mildly optimistic for at least two reasons. The first being what we just considered; indicators are not in and of themselves facts. Reason two: God is bigger than indicators. History is filled with story after story of God trumping indicators. Therefore I can pray with confidence in, "...the God who gives life to the dead (now there is a leading indicator if there ever was one) and calls things that are not as though they were." Romans 4:17

My conclusion is that with God in the mix it surely must be possible for a church to grow in every way that growth can be measured in both July and August, not to mention September - June. And that if He so chooses, even ministries that are experiencing great times of transition can experience an increase in both quality and effectiveness in the mission that God has called them to fulfill.

Finally, I would encourage all of us to respect rather than reject the leading indicators in our lives. Work hard and pray hard that the negative pictures they may paint do not come to fruition and that any blessing they may indicate is on the horizon does indeed flesh out in the end. But reverence, worship and trust God above and beyond all indicators, because only He is fully reliable.

Blessings,
PB

Quote: #8

"Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it...Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference...God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but His settled opposition to the cancer...which is eating out the insides of the human race He loves with His whole being." - Becky Pippert

The Sunday Shout-Out: July 20th, Edition.

The "Shout-Out" is taking this week off. In its place we would encourage you to call someone you know and personally "shout them out;" expressing your personal appreciation for them. See you next week.

Blessings,
PB

Quote: #7

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."
- William James

The Sunday Shout-Out: July 13th, Edition.

Attention all VBS workers, today we Shout-You-Out. For every hand you held and for every neck you hugged, thank you! For every craft and every snack you made, thank you! For every dirty hand washed and for every runny nose wiped on your shirt, thank you! For every unruly child that you loved and for every "I want my mommy" child that you comforted, thank you! For coming early and for staying late, thank you! For setting up and for tearing down, thank you! For cleaning up messes you did not make, thank you! For making the love of God a more tangible reality to every child who was here with us this past week...Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! This Shout-Out is yours.

Blessings,
PB

Vacation and “The Good Life.”

Our vacation is more than half over – so far so good. Vermont is beautiful in many ways, we have lucked into some genuinely enjoyable experiences and living in the same house with 18 people isn’t as difficult as you might think. In fact it is truly nice to be in such close proximity to family for an extended period of time for a change, Kyle is especially enjoying this time with family.

Even still, it has to be said that vacation is not the good life; neither are the weekends for that matter. I remember a song from the early eighty’s by Loverboy called, “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend.” It is one of those horrible songs that get stuck in your head and keep you awake at night; I hate those songs! But it seems to me that too many of us are doing just that. We get to work early on Monday morning and immediately start counting down until the blowing of the whistle on Friday evening and then sometime Sunday afternoon a feeling of dread sets in as we perceive the creep of time as Monday morning; without our permission I might add; invariably approaches. And as far as vacations go, no sooner do we get home from this year’s trip, than we start daydreaming about next year’s trip, if we can afford one next year. We get back from our week to two-week dalliance with the good life and resign ourselves to another year of drudgery.

It might seem oxymoronic to say this but I’ll say it anyway – time off is not the good life! And while it’s true that time off and rest are good and necessary things; they are in part what the Sabbath is about. Still, we were created for so much more than a break every now and then. Jesus said that He came to give us abundant life, and if that can’t happen everyday, well then you can hardly call it abundant. Jesus also made it clear that the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, and if our highest aspirations are only to reach our next time off, then truly he has done it successfully. That is he has stolen our joy, killed our purpose and destroyed our potential.

Life with God is the good life and it is available to all of us, right now, with the families that we have and with the jobs that we have. And that means that you don’t have to relocate, quite your job or leave your family in order to experience it. You might need a change of perspective but you don’t need to lose weight or have “Botox” injections to have it. Because, you find the good life wherever you find God and God is everywhere, even in your areas of hurt.

It is time that we pursue the good life by pursuing God first, most and always. The old song said it well when it said, “turn your eyes upon Jesus, and the things of world will grow strangely dim.” The things we do in our day-to-day lives are the building blocks of the good life because it is there that we come into contact with our daily need for God’s grace and His presence. It is there that we are most likely to encounter people who have been beaten and left for dead by this world and therefore in need of a “Samaritan” to walk by and bind up their wounds. And it’s there in our desperate moments of weakness that we experience His strength being sufficient for us. And that’s why I believe that God would have us passionately enjoy our vacations and our times off, even while we passionately love our everyday lives. The good life is everyday life.

Blessings,
PB

The Sunday Shout-Out: July 6th, Edition.

Who in their right mind would take a week's vacation spending it with six Jr. and Sr. high boys to sleep on church office floors, clean chairs, and other acts of get your hands dirty types of ministry/service? Paul Hauffman would, that's who. In fact he did just that last week and today we give him the Shout-Out! He and six of our boys; Corey and Tyler Bangerd, Matthew Davis, David Hauffman, Sam Long and Kyle Smith; are recently back from a week long ministry trip to Boston, Ma. where they prayed with strangers off the street, served in soup kitchens, handed out food at a food pantry, cleaned up a local church, handed out church flyer's, etc., etc. etc. . Paul got them there, gave spiritual direction to them while they were there and got them back safely. (We hope with his mind still intact.) Today we Shout-Out Paul Hauffman and give God thanks for his ministry to our students.

Blessings,
PB

Vacation In Vermont.

Wish you were here!

Blessings,
PB

Quote: #7

"Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

Leviticus 25:10...as cast on the Liberty Bell.

Happy 4th of July,
PB

A Question.

Here's a question that I frequently ask myself: "Am I pursuing God or am I seeking comfort?" Or to put it another way; "Which do I most desire: the presence of God or a life of ease?" Of course the preferred answer is that I'm pursuing God; that I desire His presence in my life far more than I desire a life of ease and comfort. But is that always the case? Probably not, because there are times in my life when all I want is to have everything go my way. There are times when I want everyone and everything in the world to be ordered around my personal preferences. Also, there are times when I would rather not deal with service, sacrifice and obedience. You see, I want what I want, and I want it now! But this attitude is antithetic to the Jesus way of life who, if you remember, prayed; "Not My will but Yours be done." I want to be like Jesus, but frequently I am not...rats!

So the question remains, am I pursuing God or am I seeking comfort? The most accurate answer is that sometimes I'm pursuing God, sometimes I'm seeking comfort and sometimes I'm not sure what I'm doing. Which brings up another question, "How can I better know which I'm pursuing at any given time?" Here are just a few of my thoughts:

• If I pray with desperation when all of my needs and most of my wants are met - I'm pursuing God.
  
• If I stop praying the moment things start going my way - I'm seeking comfort.
• If my Bible is a source of inspiration and life change - I'm pursuing G0d.
• If I read my Bible because I think God might get mad at me when I don't - I'm seeking comfort.
• If I'm asking myself, how much more can I give - I'm pursuing God.
  
• If I'm asking God, how much I have to give - I'm seeking comfort.
• When I want a greater capacity to forgive others - I'm pursuing God.
• When I'm demanding that others forgive me - I'm seeking comfort.
  

I also want to know how I can ensure that I'm more faithfully pursuing God? I think maybe that I should start by asking, seeking and knocking.

• Ask God for an increase in my desire to know Him.
  
• Seek God for a clearer understanding of His truth as revealed in the Bible.
  
• Knock, knock, knock and then knock some more. In Jeremiah 29, God has promised that when I seek Him with all of my heart, then I will find Him.
  

Blessings,
PB