I’m sitting here watching the Giants / Eagles game after helping Christie clean up from dinner tonight.  My awesome wife fixes a dinner every Sunday night for Reid’s (our #2 son) Guys Cell Group.  It is always a fun night and enjoyable to see these young guys grow in Christ.  She pulled out all of the stops tonight and made Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy and Corn.  Of course there is always fresh Brownies.  Grif and I are happy with this set up as well.

I can’t help it but thoughts from the day are just rummaging through my brain.

*Pastor Amado did a super job speaking today as he delivered sermon number two in our Advent Conspiracy series. The theme of the day was Give More to follow up from last week’s Spend Less message.  Following each service we shared in a time of celebration and appreciation for Amado as he completes his ministry at Westbrook in December.  Special thanks to Anntoinette and Beverly for their efforts in making this great time happen.

* As a part of Family Weekend, we had our families together and then were led in worship by our Velocity (Student Ministry) band.  They were super.  Good job guys!

* I saw over and over again God’s grace and peace that was poured out upon people’s lives today by the power of the Holy Spirit.  As we prayed with people and encouraged people today His love made weak people strong.

* A strong, healthy church is led and directed by strong , healthy Christ-followers.  Westbrook is blessed to have some great leaders and great elders.  Thanks for your counsel and support is hardly enough.

* There’s no better way to end a super day than a prayer of Thanks and a good’s night rest. SO…  Goodnight!

… The kids in elementary children’s ministry have a deep and heated discussion on “what color was Jesus’ skin.  Seems that this debate took place today during our third hour and the concession was that surely his skin was “light brown.”  How cool of a conversation that must have been!

After while I’ll be leaving to go hang out with some of the coolest people in the world as our annual Staff get-away Retreat begins tonight.  Our entire staff will be together for several days of connections, fellowship and intense planning.  Please pray for us as we look into 2010 and look deeply into the eyes of Christ to see what he would have us do. This is always a rich time to celebrate our different cultures and to celebrate and visioneer our upcoming year of ministry. I can’t to share what God is doing.  Here is a pic of last years group.  Thanks Mr. D for sharing your Varna house!

Today at Westbrook was an awesome day of Celebration as we came together to not only Celebrate Christ, but to also Celebrate the impact and blessing of Westbrook Church. 13 years ago this weekend, Westbrook began.  Since that day families have been touched, marriages have been healed, hearts have been changed and lives have been  transformed.  It is such a blessing to see what God has done through this special place. To help us celebrate, we invited  a young band from Nashville that call themselves Sidewalk Prophets  to join us.  Not only did they lead worship, but they also led us in great celebration.  We most certainly took the  concept of celebration to the fullest degree like they did in I Chronicles 16.  When the Ark of the Covenant was returned to the house of the Lord, they celebrated with Great music and singing.  David cried out…  Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all of his wonderful acts.  Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

All in all it was a great day.  The house was packed each hour. The Spirit was pervasive each service and the Lord was certainly honored.  Thank you God for 13 years of Your Blessing!

Earlier today we ended another fascinating CLD Tier II here at Westbrook.  These two day sessions are basically continuing education workshops for our growing Christ – followers who have completed the initial CLD process.  Over the years we have brought in some phenomenal speakers and this recent offering was no exception.  Our topic was Kingdom Work and Social Justice and our speaker last night and this AM was Arloa Sutter.  Arloa is the Executive Director of Breakthrough Urban Ministries.  She is an amazingly sharp, articulate and brilliant woman.  Her heart for Justice Ministries and for Community outreach is contagious.  The people who were at this session were all inspired to think deeply of our place in this ministry.  Her words were simple… If you love Jesus you will love the poor and the down and out.  PERIOD!

How much deeper do you need to go than that?   Periodically we encounter people who have been at our place and they get all hyper spiritual and think they need more and deeper~  and we are not providing that for them. How sad for them!   They are the very people who don’t even come to these sessions.  This woman was a deep thinker, a deep teacher and a deep theologian.  Even more, she challenged everyone of us to the very core of our Christian walk to re-think these issues.  Thanks Arloa for taking us all to a closer seat with Christ!

Well tonight is going to be just a super night for a bunch of people who are serious about growing in the Lord at Westbrook. Tonight is our CLD Tier II practicum with Breakthrough Ministries in the city of Chicago.  We have been ministry partners with Breakthrough for the last bunch of years and I have been blessed to become acquainted with their Executive Director Arloa Sutter over the last year or so.  Tonight a huge group of us are heading into the city to experience the ministry of Breakthrough and then tomorrow morning Dr. Sutter will be with us at Westbrook to de-brief with our group about what it means to serve the poor and the needy.  I think this is going to be one EYE – OPENING event.  Not only will we experience ministry first hand, but we will also have the chance to process through it theologically and spiritually.  Please pray for all who will be a part of this CLD Tier II.  Then the rest of the weekend is filled with the other sessions of our Christian Life Development process.  What’s more we are in the final stages of translating all of these sessions into Spanish.  Here we grow again!

Well we are just minutes away from starting one of my favorite events of the year to celebrate the Diversity and cultural beauty of Westbrook Church.  We call it our International Feast.  On this night we ask everyone who will be attending to bring a dish from their country of heritage.  We set up our facility in sections and people can feast on whatever they like.  Any palette will be satisfied.  What’s more it brings our congregations together and allows us to enjoy the beauty of God’s church.  It really is what makes our Multi-Ethnic church so beautiful.  Top top it off we have an amazing Latino band opening up the event and Mr. Fischer (Daves dad) playing Polka music on his accordion!  I’ll post pics later!

Christie and I crossed an exciting milestone in our parenting this past Monday as did our oldest son Tyler.  We dropped Tyler off at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, MI for his freshmen year of college.  It was an exciting yet emotional day.  After arriving on campus, he had a sports physical (he’s playing soccer) picked up his new laptop (every incoming freshmen gets a new laptop) and his room key.  From there, we started adjusting furniture, carry in loads of stuff and helping his get adjusted.  The day was capped off with a really cool dedication service where Tyler and all of his new classmates were prayed over not only by parents by University President Joe Stowell.  It was very moving, and though I bit my lip a few times… I held it together.

Throughout the course of the day, I saw over and over again why we are so proud of Tyler.  He is a wonderfully talented, compassionate and gifted young man.  I think God has some great things in store for him.  As we drove off campus we felt a sense of peace that God would protect him and lead him to new heights in his life. We’ve already been missing him but Skype is an amazing way to stay connected.  I pray that when your time comes… you will have a similar wonderful experience.  Thank you Jesus!

Happy Anniversary to my sweetheart of 21 years today.  Christie and I were married at 11AM at Prospect Christian Church on August 20, 1988.  The weather was killer hot (in fact it was one of the hottest summers on record in Chicagoland).  The church was not barely air conditioned and we were in black tuxes.  My dad did our flowers- bright red roses. The girls were red dresses.  You would have thought it was Christmastime.   It was a great day, except the cake melted!

To celebrate I delivered 21 red roses to Christie’s work and kidnapped her and took her to lunch at Zen House.  I’ve got a dinner date planned for her as well tonight.  Can you imagine putting up with me for 21 years.  She’s a saint!

I LOVE YOU ~ Christie

We’re back safe and sound from New Orleans, Appalachia, and Arizona. Great testimonies yesterday and a great service. Thank you Lord for safety over the last two weeks. Thank you Lord for the impact that our people made and that was made on our people. Remember to pray for the students in the city this week working with the Chicago Dream Center.