Trash Can Baptism

Each year a group of West Side Christians, joined by others from area churches, assemble at Butler Springs Christian Camp in Hillsboro, Ohio to lead a week of camp for fourth and fifth graders. The week usually ends with a trip to the camps pool to baptize those who had come forward during the week. However, this year the week ended just a little differently.

This year’s week of camp was packed full of Bible lessons on the Armor of God, trips down the zip line, afternoons splashing in the pool, hiking to Fort Hill, worship around the Vespers fire, and so many other thrilling activities. While some things went as planned, others things did not. One afternoon we lost swim time, because of severe thunderstorms moving through camp, so instead we played dodge ball in the gym and watched a movie. Two evenings we found ourselves inside for vespers because of more severe storms. Flexibility became the theme of the week.

Through all the much needed rain, through the thunderstorms, God was still working in the hearts and minds of the campers. On Wednesday and Thursday night we had nine kids come forward expressing the desire to give their lives to Christ and be baptized. On Friday afternoon two more shared with us that they wanted to be baptized. It looked like we were going to baptize eight kids at camp with three planning to go to their home church. Everyone was gearing up for a big celebration on Friday night at the close of camp surrounding the pool.

And then, just as we were finishing up, another thunderstorm rolled in knocking out power. Needless to say baptisms in the pool were not going to take place. Fortunately Butler Springs is prepared for this ... in the event of thunderstorms, baptism take place in the cafeteria in a fifty-five gallon trash can. I have to admit I thought their plan sounded a little strange.

Before we started doing baptisms, three decided this was not the way they wanted to baptized, and to be honest, I couldn’t blame them. But then my mind completely changed. Gus, one of the full time camp staff members spoke about the origins of the trash can baptisms. In his explanation he said something that I hadn’t thought of. In an attempt to paraphrase him he said … “Just as a trash can holds and helps remove the unwanted tossed aside everyday household items, the imagery of baptism as a grave holds and removes the sins God is forgiving. What a fitting place to have your sins washed away and removed than in a trash can.” That statement made a profound impact on my attitude toward trash can baptisms.

My attitude was altered again when I got to watch four children be baptized and then completely changed when I got the privilege to baptize our own Tyler Land this way. What an awesome symbol of what happens to us in baptism. In the process of forgiving us our sin, God washed us clean, burying our sins in the watery graves of baptism. While my first inclination will always be a baptistery, swimming pool, or creek, if none of these exists then I will have no issue reaching for the nearest fifty-five gallon trash can.

Sunday @ West Side

I am absolutely in love with what is going on in our church right now. Sunday at West Side was truly a great blessing. The introduction to moving to two service went incredibly smooth (Maybe too smooth leaving Marty asking what kind of monkey wrench will soon creep up). We still have have issues that need to be worked out, but all in all everything flowed very well. I want to send out a thank you to all who made it possible. It was because of you that this was a huge success. I am thrilled to see what will take place next week.

By going to two service we are now able to really push the idea that all West Side Christians are asked to worship an hour, study an hour, and serve and hour at the very least each and every week. Now on Sunday morning you can serve during one of the services and still worship at the other service. If you are not serving now, please begin praying about ways you can serve in the near future!

We also kicked off our new sermon series … “Taking Truth Next Door” … answering the question “how do I love and lead my neighbors to Christ?” On Sunday we learned how to inherit eternal life, the response was loving God and loving people. In doing so we also learned from Jesus that our neighbors are not just the people next door. Our neighbors cross every cultural, ethnic, racial, economic, and gender boundary that may exist. Our neighbors are anyone we encounter.

I am excited about the future of West Side. Please continue to pray that this congregation continues to live out our mission of loving and leading people to a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ. God has many great things in store for us if we continue to follow his lead.

Lessons From a Church Builder

Do you ever feel overwhelmed? Do you ever feel like you are inadequate as a minister, leader, parent, spouse? To say I wasn’t feeling that way right now would be a total lie. We are in the process of adding a second service here at West Side and there is a lot needing to be discussed to make that happen. With all that has to be done, I feel like I am in over my head and no where near prepared for this. And then in one of my email thread there is a personal comment at the end.

During a time of change like this you never know what a personal comment might entail. I recently received one that was an attack on me. Those are never fun to read. But today’s wasn’t that way. Today’s was encouraging, uplifting, and really needed. The comment basically said we are very blessed to have you, what you are doing is great, please know I am there to talk, and we are excited about watching you grow. If I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed that might go straight to my head. But in the middle of what we are experiencing that was exactly what I needed to hear.

It is amazing how God sends messages right when you need it. Yesterday I had a discussion that left me asking … “Why am I doing this?” The note I received a few weeks ago did the same things. An email I received almost a year ago really beat me down. It took me weeks to even share it with my wife. But every time God sends someone to me right when I need it. He did this for me in my first ministry so many times. There were times where I just wanted to give up. There were times when I wanted to walk away. There were times when I wanted to leave school and just mow grass. But God would send people with just the right words. I am so thankful for that. If it wasn’t for those words, I don’t know if I would continue to do this.

God sent someone several months ago. During a ministers meeting we invited a minister whose church had went from overly traditional to completely contemporary. He shared in his talk about how horrible the first six or eight years were. But he stuck through it. He had broad shoulders. He took the beatings. And now, God is richly blessing his ministry and their church. Oddly enough, those were words of encouragement.

In the email I received today, the last line really struck me. The more I have read it the more talking points I see in it. I will only share one today, and possibly others in the future. She said … “God has given West Side the awesome responsibility of seeing you grow and mature into the amazing minister you will be.” I am young. I could take that multiple ways. But I acknowledge and hope I always do and that I haven’t arrived yet. That I do have a lot of growing and maturing left in me. It is my prayer that I am always teachable. It is my prayer that I am always growing. It is my prayer that I am open to God’s guiding and leading in my life. If not, then I need to walk away, hang it up, and not bear the broad shoulders needed for this job.

Photo Courtesy of andres.thor's

The Weekend at West Side

West Side experienced a wonderful resurrection weekend. On Saturday morning we hosted a Easter Egg hunt for toddlers through 6th graders. We had a really wonderful turnout and all 1,300 eggs put out seemed to be found.

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. We had a wonderful service with 170 people filling our sanctuary and a total attendance of 211. Church growth experts say that a growing church can take their Easter attendance and project what they will be averaging in three years. This give us a real good target to push for and move towards.

Things have been really busy around West Side. We are gearing up for some big changes in the next couple of weeks. I am really excited for the launch of two services as well as the kick off of our new sermon series “Taking Truth Next Door.” This is an exciting time in the history of West Side and something you do not want to miss.

A Year in the Life of Organization

In 2012 I am on a mission to organize my life more completely. I am using the Friday section of this blog to announce tools I plan to use and chronicle the changes I am making. Here is one…

This year I am on a mission to better organize my life. I realized that to be successful in my ministry it had to be done. One of the things that desperately needed to change was my weight. I was constantly tired. I never felt good. I knew that I needed to get the pounds down both for my health and my productivity.

When I begin 2012 I was somewhere over 315 lbs. I don’t know where I really was because when I started our scale only went to 299 lbs., and then it stopped. After working on weight loss for a week or more I decided I needed to know so I bought a scale. I began at 315.? something lbs. As of this writing (March 6) I have lost 26 lbs.

When I began this process I did not want it to be a diet. Dieting in my mind leads you to loose weight for a period of time. I wanted this to be a lifestyle change. I wanted to change my eating patterns and my lack of exercise. I knew I would have fail days, but I wanted them to rare and not the norm. I began with some goals. I wanted to get to 290 lbs. by March. I was able to accomplish that goal. With that I wanted to begin walking and then running. I haven’t yet done that, but plan to soon. I am trying to figure out when the best time in my day will be for that.

I feel I have done pretty well at my lifestyle change and am excited with the changes. One thing I can attribute is something called FatSecret. I was looking for an app that would help me manage my weight loss. I downloaded the first one I found and soon fell in love. I also found the internet version of FatSecret and fell even more in love. FatSecret is an amazing tool. Between the app and the website I am able to track and record my food intake, my exercise, my weight loss, create recipes, journal and connect in community.

The best part of FatSecret is the ability to keep track of my food intake. I can do this multiple ways. I am able to use the website and search for or enter the food I have eaten for the day. I can enter it by searching their amazing database by food types, brands, restaurants, and many more. I can also enter it by using my phone in similar ways as well as using the barcode scanner on my phone and then selecting the number of servings I am consuming. This is truly a neat way to use the tool. One the website and my phone I am able to see something like this ~

On the day of this writing this is the food that I had already consumed for the day. This has become amazingly helpful through this process.

There is so much you can use FatSecret for. I plan to share more throughout the year about all you can do with FatSecret. I hope this serves as an introduction to an amazing free tool you can use online at your continence.

 

The Photo used above belongs to Jonathan D. Blundell’s Photostream

A Year in the Life of Organization

Don’t fret, while I have not been submitting things to the blog, I have not failed at my organizational goals. I started out the year with many goals at hand. Probably too many. Below is the list of what I can think of:

• More blogging with structure
• Loosing weight with a goal of 90 lbs. total and then seeing where that leaves me
• Spending more time in personal Bible study outside of my reading for lessons, sermons, devotionals, etc..
• How I spend my time with Crystal and Alivia – (My job requires hours in the evening, I have to find out how to best love, enjoy, invest, and share myself with them and my ministry. This is about proper balance)
• Spending more time reading and less with the TV
• Reading marriage books
• Reading church growth books
• Reading Christian living books
• Reading and organizing how I read blogs
• Structuring the transition process here at church
• Organizing my week around the things I know need to be done.
• Cleaning and keeping my office clean

As you can see I had a lot of aspirations as I began this year. All of them are valid, and all must be accomplished at some point. However, I may have tried to tackle too many at one time. This year in the life of organization is about learning what works for me, my family, and my ministry to make me a better man and leader of Christ’s church here in Lebanon. What this process has taught is what I need to organize first before moving on to the next thing. I have begun to organize them this way;

1. Spending more time in personal Bible study
2. Organizing how I spend my time with Crystal and Alivia
3. Loosing weight
4. Structuring the transition process at West Side
5. Spending more time reading
6. Organizing my work week
7. More blogging
8. Cleaning my office

So far I have done very well on a few, and getting better on others.

I have missed just a few days this year in my daily Bible reading. Part of that was due to sever back pain I experienced. During that I couldn’t focus to remember what I was reading. I was however able to catch up and am still on track to complete this plan on December 30th.

I have also done really well loosing weight. To date I have lost a total of 26 lbs. I have had my good days and bad days. I have learned what a good portion size is and even traveled to Georgia with out gaining any weight while eating out. I have reached a plateau, but that has only reinforced in my mind that I have to be strict at this and make this a lifestyle change, and realize it won’t happen in just a couple of months.

I am struggling with the time commitment between church and family. I am praying that it is only the season we are going through. At West Side we are in major transition. We recently introduced a new ministry system, are planning and implementing a two worship service approach, starting a worship band, launching and teaching about our vision and mission, as well as many other subtle changes. All this requires an immense amount of time and commitment. Balancing this out is part of my learning curve. I have done great some weeks and horrible other weeks.

Those are the three that I am working on the most, the rest will come in time. This has been a fun and revealing process for me. Next week I plan to share the tool I am using to help me loose weight.