Weekend Review

What a great weekend I had. As a matter of fact, my entire family had a fun time, we were just not together.

Mary and the girls stayed close to home on Saturday, but Sunday morning, they headed down to our back-up church. My friend, non-blog Brad, has a back-up plan for everything and so, to put it in his terms, this would be our back-up church, Faith Life Fellowship, in Bentonville, AR. We go down every 2 or 3 months for the day and visit the church, as well as our friends. It’s a fairly new church, but they are doing many things right. Faith Life Fellowship is just slightly too far away to allow it to beome more than just our back-up church. We’ve also gotten to know the pastor and his family and we always have fun when we visit.

I was slightly bummed because I missed out on that, but I had alot more fun.

I had the pleasure of meeting and spending Saturday afternoon and evening with Clif Guy, IT director of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS This is a tremendous church, and they are reaching alot of people for Christ, averaging around 8,000 in attendance each weekend. I have a lot of respect for Clif, he knows his stuff. He told me much of the ins and outs of their use of technology and how they do things. It is pretty amazing to hear about all that they do with just a handful of people.

We also discussed a little bit about how they use Web Empowered Church and the impact it has had on his department. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do intend to become more involved with WEC and be able to be knowledgeable with all aspects of it. It’s a powerful application and one that I believe in. I have recently discussed WEC with 2 other churches and will be working with them to get it installed and fully functional in the near future. Talking with Clif and hearing first hand how they are using it has motivated me to get serious about it.

One thing that Clif is doing is starting to create a solid volunteer team and he is approaching it in a very cool way. He’s starting a weekly Bible study with these potential volunteers and through this, he can get to know them and see their hearts and attitudes. It’s one of those ideas that I think ‘man, why didn’t I think of that?’ I spent nearly 2 years at my church, intending to bring together this team of competent, motivated, ministry minded tech volunteers, but that was always pushed down on the priority list, due to just trying to keep up with everything. There are plenty of tech people around but it’s important to find ones that are humble and understand the underlying ministry of all of this technology. As I attempted to build a team, I considered many people in my mind and talked with a handful of them, but nothing ever clicked. In the last 6 months, I landed one solid volunteer that got ‘it’. He wasn’t a total techie, but he was learning and wanted to learn and that was cool with me, his heart was right. It will be fun to see how Clif’s tech volunteers come together.

After touring the campus, we worshipped together. Adam Hamilton is a dynamic preacher and his sermons are Scripturally based and he provides practical application. The Saturday and Sunday evening services are contemporary worship, which I like, I swore off of organs a long time ago!

Clif then treated me to a nice dinner and our conversation continued. It was a blast to spend time with someone who shares my passion about church and technology.

Clif, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to spend time with me. We’ve got a good thing started and I look forward to what the future holds.

Saturday night, I went to my sister and brother in law’s house, spent the night with them and visited their church the next morning. My brother in law is a pastor at First Calvary Baptist Church, in the heart of Kansas City, MO and that was fun too. I met some new people and had fun worshipping there, as well. This church is about 150 years old and their sanctuary is beautiful, however that’s an understatement. Very ornate, bold woodwork all across a high, arched ceiling. I love big, new church buildings, but there is something special about the old historic churches that’s pretty cool. This church is just beginning to make a turn and begin to grow again. It’s cool to see and they are setting the stage for an exciting future as they seek God’s will for their church.

Being the intelligent people that we are, we decided this is a great opportunity to pick up an iron bed that my sister didn’t need anymore. My daughter will get the bed and that will be the 4th generation in my family to sleep in that bed. Of course, we need to buy a new mattress and boxspring, we figured after the third generation, it’s time to start fresh. Reluctantly, Mary and I had to trade vehicles for the weekend. Both of us have an odd, unhealthy love for our own car, we have always been this way, so that’s why I say we reluctantly traded. But my car is not designed to haul a bed. So, I drove her van and it did very well on the highway. Her van has a ton of miles on it, but it’s like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and going and going….

After spending the afternoon just hanging out with my nephews, brother-in-law and sister, I headed out and got home about 8:30. About the time I walked in the door, I realized how wiped out I was. Mary and the girls got home not long after I did and we were all exhausted.

By the way, in case you didn’t notice, my family and I worshipped in 3 different churches in 3 different states in one weekend. How cool is that?