Timing is everything

We are in the middle of the Christmas season, so it caused me pause when I received a note yesterday that said construction crews would be working in my office for the next couple days. Why not! I have always loved working from the Panera office. It has been amazing to watch this project go up, but for the next few days, I won't, as I will be working from the north branch! (Panera on 202 and Naamans Rd.)

Amazing how a coat of white...

I am sitting today at Panera working on video for BVBC's Celebration Sunday. It amazes me how a coat of snow gives a different perspective on things. A week ago, with temperatures in the 60's and leaves still on the trees in my back yard, it felt like the middle of September. Today it truly looks and feels like December, with the Christmas decorations outside the window. I love snow, and so a day that was going to be buried in work is now just a bit brighter. Hope you all can enjoy it!

(P.S. I was very proud of the Delaware school system. Not one school was closed or called 2 hours late, just because of a few flurries!)

Friends refresh the soul

I am posting tonight from my friend Al's guest room. Al and I grew up in the same home town and lived together for four years in college. He, his wife and beautiful family now live in Nashville TN, along with some other friends from high school.

I am here because about the middle of October my wfe and I noticed that it might not be such a bad time for me to get out of town and clear my head for a couple days, just before the Christmas season gets into full swing. So Wednesday morning, I packed up the new van and drove down to Nashville.

I am amazed at how old friends from a different era of life can refresh the soul, and inspire great thoughts and desires. It was so good to see three different families, each doing so well, raising kids and making a difference in the lives of the people God put them in contact with. I came here to clear my head, but I am going home with a head and heart filled with the desire to love my family, do my best at work, and glorify God in all that I do. God is so good!

Will write more later, but I need to get to bed. Long drive back to Delaware tomorrow!

An Amazing Gift

Hello all

I am sorry we have been away so long. It has been a very busy summer, but something happened to my family and me that we needed to share with you. We have never seen the love and faithfulness of God in such a powerful way.

At the end of September, my car was due to go through inspection, an inspection that it was sure to fail. The 15 year old, 215,000 mile car had reached it's end. Financially, our family was not in a position to purchase a new vehicle on our own. So we started to pray.

On Monday night, my wife Jen and I were out for supper with our ministry team when I got a call on my cell phone. Michael, a salesman at Carsense in Hatfield, asked me if I needed a car, and informed me that we were approved for a car. I didn't understand what he was saying. I thought it was a sales call, and I was frankly put off by this aggressive tactic during my supper hour on my private cell phone. (How did he get my cell phone?)

It took me a while, but I finally started to understand what he was saying. Some unnamed person had approached him with a check in our name that would allow our family to purchase a "slightly used" vehicle. After finally making sense of the whole thing, we agreed to meet Michael on Tuesday evening to pick out a vehicle.

Here it is! A 2005 Chrysler Town and Country.

The vehicle is loaded! Power everything, stow and go seating (no more throwing out the back when we need to take the seats out), and only 40,000 miles. And the best feature of all......an onboard DVD/Gaming system. (Manny's blank stare brought to you by the DVD player and an episode of Timmy Turner)

God answered our prayer! He used someone from His church to bless us beyond what we every could have expected. To my wife, this gift was God's way of saying to her, "I hear you, I know what you are going through, and I love you." To me, this gift was God's way of saying, "My love isn't based on how you think you are doing, it is about what I am doing. I will show my love when I want and how I want and for my purposes." We both were so humbled, and grateful for the love of our God.

This doesn't mean that God is going to answer every one of our prayers in that dramatic a fashion. In fact, often the opposite is true. How often do we sit and wait for God to answer prayer, thinking he is far off, thinking he has forgotten us? Be encouraged! Though the answers may not come, God is there, and his love for you and I is never far away. Our ability to see it isn't always the keenest. Sometimes, God's love is best shown when he has us wait. I pray that God gives you and I the ability to be patient and trust his love when it feels far off, but also enjoy his love when it comes close.

To the Saint who blessed us: your gift was given anonymously, so the only name that is ever attached to your gift is God's. You have blessed us, but every time this story gets told, you give glory to God. May God bless you richly, as you have blessed us and Him. To you we say thank you. You will always be in our thoughts and prayers!

WOW! Where did May go?

I can't believe May is almost gone! April seemed to drag on forever (because Easter was in March), May finally started and BAM!! (doing my best Emeril imitation) June is here.

The transition to our interim worship scenario has been smooth by most accounts, and that is because we have had so many people step up and get stuff done. Thanks to you all!

One particular group has been our sound team. Last Thursday, four of us went to NYC to receive training on our new Sound Board, the Yamaha M7CL.

This board is AMAZING, and will be the brain behind the system that goes in the new sanctuary. It has been a huge benefit for us to have the board early. That way we can learn it now, and hit the ground running when the new facilities open. It has also tightened up our sound in the gym. The band never sounded so good!

(This paid advertisement brought to you by Yamaha, now ... back to the story)

So... On Thursday, May, 22, Matt Douglas, Rob Elkins, Bill Ebbott and I made our way to SIR
(Studio Instrument Rental) in NYC for a day in intensive training on the board.

The training was of huge value! Having had two weeks on the board with the training we received from Advanced Audio Visual, we were able to get around. But the training we received from Yamaha took that knowledge and applied it to the rest of the board. It taught us ways to think about sound and the logic of the board. The best part, ... the one day event, including continental breakfast, lunch, software, jump drive, and polo shirt was...FREE! Yamaha does it right, and because of that we have nothing but high recommendation for their product and their customer relations.

On our first morning break, we walked out of our studio into the hallway to stretch our legs, and heard a band kickin' it in the other studio. They were VERY good, and we all wondered who they were. We happened to glance down at the road gear stacked in the hallway and saw this...


No... it couldn't be "Steely Dan", the 70's fusion band, could it? Sure enough, and at the next break, we had a chance to talk to part of their crew. They were in town for a week, doing some local shows, and were using SIR for practice. It was a blast to hear them play, and check out their gear.

Following a long day, we had a great meal at Don Giovanni's on 21st St. and 10th Ave, and caught the train home.

(Personal sidebar: I sat next to a gentleman on the way home who was from Edina, MN and who loved the TWINS! The hour train ride flew by as we discussed the Johan Santana trade, and the adventure in center field that is Carlos Gomez. It was very enjoyable! I think God delights in arranging those kind of small details in life to show us how much he loves us.)

BVBC People are OUTSTANDING!

It is 1:00 Tuesday morning, I have been on my feet since 7:00 Monday morning, but I can't sleep. I am so proud of a group of 40 people who dedicated a portion or all of their Monday to help us strip our sanctuary, load everything that needed to be stored in the trailer, set up the worship environment in the gym, and prepare our equipment for the worship experience at McCrery's. At the end of the day, the entire Sanctuary was stripped, the Library was emptied of extra book shelves and set up for the "Coffee Corner", and the band had its first rehearsal in the gym using the new Aviom in ear monitors.

While having all that work done is exciting (pictures to come, right Cassie?!), what was far more exciting to me was watching these 40 people step up and take ownership of their church. Pastor Mark challenged people to engage the next 18 months. He said, "You want to be able to say, "Do you remember when we ..." The people who helped us today engaged. They will be able to say, "Remember when we stripped the sanctuary in a day? I was there!"

It was also amazing to watch people who have called BVBC their home for many years meet each other for the first time, as they worked together on this project. We will see this happening a lot over the next few weeks, as people worship at different times and in a different location. No more sitting in "My Pew!" It is going to be fun to watch!

Time to go to bed! Thanks to all you who were able to help today. You were amazing! You were the church today!

Sign Language when there are no deaf people present?

Two weeks ago (I know, I am very late with this post!) we used a creative presentation of Psalm 139 to set up the choir's anthem, "Everlasting God" by Tom Fettke. Suzanne Howell, a blind member of my choir, read Psalm 139 from a braille Bible. At the same time, Kara Clark, a member of our congregation, did a sign language interpretation. It was a very powerful presentation, and I was very pleased with the response.

One of the questions that came back to us was, "If there are no deaf people in the congregation, why use sign language? Isn't that just showy then?" I appreciate that question, because it allows me to get back to the conversation about removing distractions from our worship environments.

One of the greatest distractions we face in worship is monotony, the same old thing in the same old way. Had we read Psalm 139 as we normally read it, it would have been effective, it is God's word. But I believe human nature would have taken over, and by verse 4 or 5, we may have mentally tuned out. Having someone sign the verses engaged our congregation, myself included. I was watching each gesture, trying to see how each movement represented the words being spoken. I was engaged for all 24 verses. My choir members, who sit facing the congregation, commented that it looked as though the congregation was very engaged with the reading, as well.

Will we do this every week? Of course not! It would loose its effectiveness. But on this particular Sunday, I was very pleased with the results.

Getting excited!

Just to see what this might look, sound, and feel like, we held our Monday night Worship Ensemble practice in the gym, complete with our sound system, video system (roughed in) and 350 chairs!

We were pleasantly surprised with the sound, and we will see what happens once all the equipment is in place! It is going to be a new season for us, full of new opportunities. Pray that God allows us to seize those (His) opportunities and reach more people with His great story!

Getting Ready...

Pastor Mark Smith is preaching this weekend at church, and as an illustrator, he is using a clip from the film "Gettysburg". It should be a powerful illustration, but it got me thinking about the rest of my week in a very different way.

Monday, May 5 is a huge workday at church. We will be stripping the sanctuary of everything we need to keep (video system, Organ, Piano, Audio System, lights, costumes, robes, decorations, other equipment). We will also be prepping our gym for the contemporary worship services that begin there next Sunday, May 11. We will also preparing our equipment for McCrery's, the site of our traditional worship services starting also on Sunday, May 11. It is going to be a very busy day!

This week is turning into a huge preparation for that day. It is almost like preparing for battle. We know that date of the "battle". Until then, we will stockpile supplies (in our case, making sure we have all the right equipment (patch cables, rack mounts, etc.)), review our troupe lists (volunteers who are coming to help out), and our battle plan, (making sure we have the right people doing the right things in the right sequence.)

It is going to be very exciting, and I am so grateful for those who have already signed up to help out. We are going to be a good crew!

Further Signs of Things to Come

The asphalt path between McCrery's and the YMCA is now complete!

This was a small, but very important step in the whole Phase III process. This path will allow BVBC members to walk between the YMCA parking lot and McCrery's Auditorium, the location of our 8:30 and 10:00 Traditional Worship Services.

Construction also began on gym. The gym you ask? As part of the preliminary work we are putting in a double door to the gymnasium. Carl Jones and his crew went to work. They knocked out the existing wall, and will be recycling the current double doors in the fellowship hall. (Great Idea Jollie! It saved us boatload of money!)

Construction also began, and is nearly finished, on the new "Coffee Corner", a remodeling project done to our current library. It will open the area up to have coffee and fellowship on Sunday mornings. Once construction starts, we will loose the use of the current "Java Fellowship" area in the fellowship hall.

The Library will still be functional. We have removed the books that haven't been read in a while, and are putting the more popular literature in the shelves along the walls. The shelving units and the desks in the middle of the room will be put in storage, leaving us with an open place to fellowship and share a cup of coffee.

Phase III is winning!

Today I:
Ordered Sound Equipment
Bought Brass Quartet Music for Sunday services.
Trailer to hold Equipment we will use for Phase III worship
Worked On Signage for the Parking Lots and the buildings for Phase III
Prepped music for The Boy's Rehearsal
Prepped music for The Worship Choir Rehearsal
Prepped for The Brass Quartet Rehearsal
Lead The Boy's Rehearsal
Lead the Worship Choir Rehearsal
Lead the Brass Quartet Rehearsal

I have a feeling this is what life will look like for the next four weeks. Please be praying for all of us as we move forward. It has been amazing to see God's hand in all of this. He does provide the strength for us to stand up under all he gives us to do. To God be the glory!

Seeing God through the Eyes of Another

6:00 Worship was lead tonight by Brian Bortnick and Anthony Leounes. They don't go to our church, but are friends of Laird Townsend, one of our guitarists. Brian has an amazing story of how God pursued him and has given him a story to tell. We only caught a thumbnail sketch of his story, but if you want more information, check out his myspace page or his website

What impressed me about him was his overwhelming sense of joy. This was a man who loved the life God has given him, and he loved to tell people about it. There were maybe 50 of us there, but that didn't matter to him. He told us his story and sang his music as though he were singing to thousands, which he has done in the past with his former band Octane. Numbers didn't matter to him, he blessed those who were there and he challenged us to be bold with our faith. I hope we have a chance to hear more of his story, and more of his amazing music. Please pray that God continues to bless his ministry.

The First Signs of Construction

Like the citing of a robin signifies the arrival of spring, so to does the first hole in the ground signify the start of construction at Brandywine Valley Baptist Church.


This "hole" is the beginning of a path leading between the YMCA parking lot and McCrery's. By May 11th, this pathway will be completed, and the membership of BVBC will be able to use that path to get to our traditional services being held at McCrery's. There will be more and bigger holes to follow, but for now, this is where we start. It is going to be a lot of fun!

One Hour, how do you hit the ground running?

See if this sounds familiar.

I hit the snooze bar too many times. My spouse hit the snooze bar too many times. We are running ten minutes late. Breakfast was burnt, cold, or didn't even happen. I have indigestion because I ate my burnt/cold breakfast too fast. I had an argument with my spouse/kids because they are the reason we are late. My spouse/kids had an argument with me because I am the reason we are late. We hit every red light on the way to church. Because we are late, we had to park at the very back of the parking lot, making us even later. As we walked into church and took our seats, it felt like every eye in the place was on us. How embarrassing! Did the pastor up front glare at us for being late? Wait a minute, I put on one black and one navy sock. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Selah

And now ... we expect you to instantly place all these distractions aside and allow yourself to have one hour, oops, 50 minutes of intimacy with our creator. Cue the Mission Impossible Theme!

I think the largest distraction we face entering a time of worship is the time it takes to get to church. So how do we, as environmental creators, take a congregation from the hectic process of getting to worship, to actually worshiping God in spirit and in truth?

In our worship tradition, the Call to Worship is one of the first elements. It's purpose is simple, "call people to worship." We use anecdotal stories, scripture readings, video clips, or other things to achieve that purpose. The trick has become to remember the purpose , and keep it fresh.

I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, a liturgic worship tradition. It is one of the most beautiful worship services, but it also presents a great challenge. Every week the prayers and the patterns are predictable. This can unintentionally allow the congregation to "going through the motions"or "doing church on auto-pilot". Our minds wander so easily.

I had the privilege of attending mass recently, and watched this phenomenon in action. That was until the priest, for what ever reason, stopped at the end of a prayer and personally expounded on the prayer he just recited. It was amazing to watch the congregation look at each other, as if to say, "Wait a minute, that is not part of the normal worship. What is he saying?" Those statements by the priest brought the words of the prayer home. It caused the congregation to engage in the process more then they were seconds before. Those words were the ones being talked about in the parking lot and I am sure around the supper table that night.

What that priest had done, in effect was to call his congregation to a greater depth of worship by getting their attention. He didn't let them just go through the motions. I really appreciated that. How do we make sure that the call to worship, a standard element of our worship times, doesn't become something that people just sit through, but that engages them, and call them away from the distracted process of "Getting to Worship"? How do we keep our call to worship doing it's job?

Creating Worship Environments

January...2007. Atlantic City, NJ. My staff and I were on a retreat, seeking God's guidance in planning our worship times. (No, we weren't fund raising!) We longed to create worship services that had a positive, weekly impact on the life of our congregation.

God gave us the concept of "Creating Worship Environments". We realized that it is impossible to orchestrate the movement of God in peoples lives to a specific moment. We simply don't know where God has each individual at a given moment. But what we could do is create an environment that put our congregation in a place with God, where all the distractions of this life were set in their proper place. Our goal became to create an environment where God could do what he needed to with our congregation; where he found them and in ways that only he could know. Too often this doesn't happen because our distractedness gets in the way.

It was a powerful concept for our team, and helped us considerably through the course of last year. As BVBC goes forward with our construction phase, there will be a whole new crop of distractions for us to deal with. I look forward to the challenge! Over then next couple weeks, I thought we could consider what it means to create distraction-free environments, both in theory and in practice. This should be a great conversation!

Song Story from Sunday

Lisa Burchnall does a beautiful job of decorating our church for the holidays. Every Easter she covers the cross at the front of our sanctuary with white silk Easter lilies.

This Sunday night, we sang Kristian Stanfill's version of the hymn "Jesus Paid it All". At the end of the song, Melody, Kaelin and the congregation sang the chorus a cappella, which ends with these words,
"... sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow...".

Those words took on a special meaning for us Sunday night, as we looked at the image of the cross before us covered in white Easter Lilies. Think of the text, "Sin had left a crimson stain..." When Jesus body was taken down from the cross, the cross wasn't clean. It was covered with dirt and with the blood that was pouring out of Jesus body as he hung there. The crimson stain was on that cross because of my sin and the sin of humanity.

"... He washed it white as snow." I grew up in Minnesota, which is snow covered 13 months of the year, (at least sometimes it feels that way!). The baseball season opener was last night, and if the Twins didn't play in the Metrodome the game wouldn't have happened, because it snowed 8".

All that to say I know a little bit about snow. When snow covers something, it looks clean...for a moment. Then the wind blows dirt off the fields and the snow gets "dirty". Or it starts to melt, and looks more like ice than it does snow. If snow were to fall on a cross, it would cover the top side of the cross, but you would still see the cross, the blood stained cross. Evidence of my failures would still be seen. So for me the snow analogy comes up a little short.

However, as I looked at the cross covered with lilies it was this amazing contrast of death and life. It was as though those lilies, a powerful symbol of beautiful life, sprang out of that blood stained cross. Its that image that gives us hope! We can have new, beautiful life because of what Jesus did for us on that cross. The sin stained cross cannot be seen anymore, because it has been covered by Jesus death and resurrection. Can we live in that freedom? Can we forget our sin as God does, throwing it as far as East is from the West? Can we truly live AND LOVE as free people?

Something my family will never have to worry about!

The scene from the porch today was very funny! I was having supper at the window seat of the local 5 Guys burger joint. Out from the dollar store to my right walks a young woman (late teens/early 20's) and her boy friend. They stand in horror next to their shiny new BMW, wondering why neither the key or the push button mechanism wasn't working. After a few moments, they figure out why the car isn't responding, and also why the shiny new BMW parked 3 spots to the left is blaring it's horn at them! With relief they climbed into the correct BMW and drove away. At least they didn't do something drastic like breaking the window, as we saw happen in those Southwest Airline "Wanna get away?" commercials.

No, my family and I won't be facing that problem any time soon. That doesn't tend to happen when the family jalopy is a 93 Saturn with a cracked front panel and mismatched front seats!

The Silence of the Sabbath

Over the past week, I took the opportunity to read the four Gospel accounts of the events of Holy Week. It was a reminder of my seminary days, when we studied theories on who each of the gospels were originally written for. It was fun to see what was included in each gospel and what was different.

I was impressed by one of the strongest similarities in all four Gospels. Nothing happened on the Sabbath. The events of Good Friday found Joseph of Arimathea scrambling to beat darkness to get Jesus' body wrapped and placed in the tomb. But it wasn't until the day after Sabbath that Jesus' followers did anything else. Why? Because they were devout Jews, and they followed the Law, which said that nothing was to happen on the Sabbath. Christianity was indeed "First for the Jew".

What does it mean to be connected?

At a staff meeting this week we were talking about the word "Connected". What does it mean to be connected to someone? To an organization? To an idea (mission and vision)? Is connection really something that can be universally defined? As we got into the discussion, we quickly realized that connection is largely a subjective issue, and is very difficult to define. A person can have a long term association with a person or an organization and yet not feel connected to it, and at the same time, someone can have one, powerful experience with a person or organization and feel strongly connected.

The one word that kept coming to me during the whole conversation is "Relationship". Being connected to someone or something was evidenced by the presence of a relationship, not just an association.

This got me thinking about what we do in worship, because in worship, we try to encourage peoples relationship with God. Oftentimes, the result of doing this well is that a relationship is built with our church, and with the members of our congregation. This purpose should never be of first importance, worship is and should always be about glorifying God. But we can be mindful of the relationship that builds with and within the church. There are some ways we can be intentional in encouraging those relationships. This especially becomes important as we enter the challenge of worshiping without our sanctuary.

Welcome to the Porch!

Life used to get its meaning from the conversations we had gathered in community in places like the front porch. It was there that the wise instructed the young, the young pushed the wise to see an ever changing world, and everyone felt like they belonged and had a voice. It was there we heard the stories that made us the men and women we are today, told by the men and women who made us who we are.

The porch has slowly lost its position in our culture, being replaced with fences. People increasingly have lost touch with their neighbors, but still long for a community of people to walk the journey of life with.

That is why we gather in this place. To share life with each other in an authentic community. We may live all over this amazing world, but on the porch, we are community. Come journey with us.