But bear with me, the holiday season is CRAZY!
So this is what has been going on since I last "blogged."
We ended our series, "The Kingdom of God and Money" the next to last Sunday in November. The last Sunday in November started the Advent season and so Meredith, two friends--Jeff Gravens and John Gram--and myself wrote an Advent devotional that we handed out to our church. This was a daily devotional that was intended to help families focus in on the real "reason for the season" as some would say. Our hope was that after the series on money and our responsibility when it comes to how we use our money (or wealth) that the devotional would help to keep that focus going through the Christmas shopping season.
I believe the devotional was a success and people really liked it. I got a report from a pastor who was using the devotionals in his church, and he said he was receiving a lot of positive feedback. So it looks like we will continue this trend next year. I should remember to send a shout out to Meredith's mom, Sharon Pillion for doing an excellent job on the printing and binding of the devotionals for the church, they looked FANTASTIC!
We ended the Advent season with a Christmas Eve service that Meredith planned out. She did a great job. The turn out was good considering that it was our first time doing it in a while, and the weather outside was frightful (snow and ice). I personally thought it went well and hope everyone who attended enjoyed the service as well.
Christmas morning, Mere and I headed out to Abilene to spend a few days with her family. Dr. Brian Brewer, a professor from Truett Seminary preached on the Sunday after Christmas allowing Meredith and I to attend services in Abilene with her family. It was a welcomed break, but there was a sense of sadness of not seeing the people of FBC Chilton on that Sunday morning.
I guess that is what caused my sickness and left me in bed and having an explosion of vomit the day after Christmas! Other than the sickness, time with family was good. Sorry to Mere's family for apparently setting of a string of virus attacks!
Our first Sunday back, we picked up in the book of Acts and are continuing that series. My hope is that we will learn lessons from the early church about what it means to be a church and that it will manifests itself into how the community of Chilton views us. I will keep an update of what we are talking about as we go through the book.
Lastly, we are going through the book of Mark on Sunday nights. It is my favorite gospel and I am looking forward to it. Also we have our first mission trip as a church coming up during Spring Break (first one since we have been here) and Meredith has planned a lock-in for the youth on Jan. 22, and a Disciple Now the last weekend in February! We also just completed what I thought was the best conversation we have had as a book club recently. The book we discussed was C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce." My thoughts on the book and the discussion will be in a separate post.
Well that is our lives here in Chilton from the last post until now, I hope you enjoyed it! 2010 (properly pronounced: "twenty-ten") :) is going to be AWESOME!!
