After making it through the Amazing Easter weekend, (Our Easter attendance topped 1,800.) Christie and I took the boys plus a friend on a college road trip. We thought about trying to see the movie with the same name but just couldn’t fit it in. So early Tuesday we took off to visit four colleges in four days. Along the way we saw some great (albeit very expensive) colleges, ate some great food (even Monicals Pizza – o yeah!) and had a chance to hang out with some old friends. All in all we drove 945 miles, had a great time with the boys and saw our financial lives flash before our eyes. If anyone is reading this and wants to bless some young men named Mitchell with great college gifts just let us know!

Today then, we continued our family week with “Family Bowling – Westbrook style” and will end it tomorrow with a Family Weekend at Westbrook. It’s been a lot of fun. There’s nothing like an intense road trip to bring the family together. We’re so keen on it, we’re planning another college visit to Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids. It’s spring break time… spend some time with your family!

It’s Sunday afternoon.  Westbrook is in the midst of her 7th and final Easter Service.  Gente Unida is holding a service right now that I must get to.  What a weekend!  What a God we serve. Thank you Jesus for dying for us… more than that Thank You for rising again!

It’s been a few days since I was able to post a blog because I have been out of town for the last couple of days. This little trip took me to Denver for a really cool coaching opportunity. The 2.5 day event was hosted by the Church Development Fund (our great ministry partners) and Church Coaching Solutions. I wasn’t doing the coaching I was getting coached. Even more, I was able to rub shoulders with some amazing pastors from churches all over the country. Many of these churches were relative in size to Westbrook. Others of them were much larger… meaning they ranged from churches in attendance from 3,000-8,000. It was awesome. In addition I was blessed to be able to hang out with a few guys who share a similar passion to be intentionally multi-ethnic . God’s word is so “on.” Iron sharpening iron!

Do you have anyone in your life that sharpens you? Think about it!

This past Saturday Westbrook held her first Leadership Community for 2008. It was a great day of community building, ministry training and leadership development. It was also a great day for our corp of leaders to be together for mutual encouragement. They were pretty much all pumped to say the least. From a multi-cultural perspective, we worked very hard to make sure that our Gente Unida famimly were with us as well. Even though GUM has their own band, singers, techs, children’s workers, guest services people, etc… we made sure that they were included in our training sessions. We are not separate churches we are ONE church with multiple congregations. It was awesome to see people of every color coming together to hone their ministry and leadership skills as one body. Leadership Community was just another example of the commitment to being a true multi-cultural church. But make no mistake, it takes hard work to make sure no one is left out.

I got back a few days ago from an amazing trip to the Holy Land. I was blessed to join up with 20 other Pastors and church leaders from across the country for an enjoyable and truly life changing 14 day journey. Thanks to the CF Foundation out of Atlanta, GA and to Emmanuel School of Religion in east Tennessee we were able to walk and and experience the lands of the bible. One of the more amazing things about this trip however was that it was less about tourism and picture taking and more about reflection, rest and renewal as Pastors. For me, it was all about having my spiritual well filled up. I had to admit to myself that I was pretty worn out when it came to my ministry and to be honest I had been running on fumes for quite some time. This pilgrimage to the lands of Jesus, was just the ticket to fill me up.

We visited a lot of really cool places, but more than just seeing them we were able to experience them and experience Christ while being in them. At nearly every site, the leaders gave us 15-45 minutes to sit and reflect and journal and pray and worship. It was a very rich time. Several of the other travelers were church planting friends of mine and I was blessed to make many additional friendships. We laughed a lot as we experienced a lot. For a funny take on some of our antics take a moment to visit www.vinceantonucci.com. Vince is a total nut and kept most of us laughing way more than we could handle.

I can’t stop talking about it, and am planning on sharing some of my experiences and learnings this weekend at Westbrook. Right now, I have a few quiet moments at Westbrook in the midst of our first Leadership Community of 2008. We have pulled together all of our ministry leaders together for one day on vision casting, ministry training and leadership development. What a rush to see several hundred ministry leaders connecting with each other and growing in their service.

Gotta run… glad I’m home but I could have stayed for another week for sure.