We have got so much to be Thankful for.  I am so filled up I can hardly stand it.

Pastor Rob Daniels is the speaker of the day at Westbrook as he completes our current sermon series called Tales Of Real Survival. In fact he’s cranking right now as I type in our 3rd service. The final message is all about the Apostle Paul as the ultimate survivor. Be sure to listen to the podcast of this message. When the worship time was over Pastor Rob challenged us to live out God’s plan for all of us and be ready to tell our tale of how God carried us through. Man, I am so THANKFUL for this guy!

One of the most missionally attractional ministries at Westbrook is GUM’s English as a Second Language program. The ESL program began as an outreach even before Gente Unida’s weekend services began. The concept was to begin a ministry that would encourage Latino or any non- English speaking people for that matter to get comfortable with Westbrook’s facility before we ever invited people to come to church. It seems that often people are leery of going to a new place until they are assured that they will feel comfortable there. That’s a true emotion with all people across the board so we have worked hard at making our facility a welcoming and warm place for our community so that that barrier might be broken down. Now, the concept of being “missional” implies going out to the people rather than having them always come to the facility. We get that~ but at the same time this program obviously needs a location to meet at. Westbrook’s facilities were designed for purposes such as this. This ministry is called the Center for Learning English and may even branch “out” into our communities as it grows. This fall in addition to our Monday and Wednesday AM classes a Tuesday evening session was added. The mission of meeting peoples needs is being fulfilled and God is certainly at work.

On Sunday night after all of all Pastor Ricks student ministry events were over we (along with Pastor Amado and I) headed up to Wisconsin for a couple of days of seeking God and planning our teaching and message series for 2009. This is always a great time as we pull away from the daily flow of the office and home and can just evaluate the spiritual needs of our body and seek what God would have us say. Our retreat location is perfect (thanks Today’s) and since there is no TV or distractions like that we are able to really focus. We are walking in sync as well so that the consistency of our teaching will be felt across all of the congregations of Westbrook Ministries. Please pray for us as we continue to hammer out this next year’s schedule.

Well every so often ministry can throw a heavy week at you.  Such was the case at Westbrook this past week and especially today.  On Tuesday, three of our Westbrook families were touched by death.  All of them sad, two of them quite tragic.  Once we received the news of these families going through painful times, the church really kicked into gear.  Calls were made, families helped, meals prepared…  It’s so great to see the family of Christ sharing life (good and bad) with each other.  Pastor Amado held one funeral this morning, while I shared a funeral in another town at the same time.  I was able to stop in at both luncheons though.  I am so proud of the Westbrook people.  All of the families have been touched a positive and spiritual way.  Way to Go Westbrook.

The heaviness of the day however ended with me being blessed to share in the Baptism of a great guy at Westbrook.  Complete Joy from some times of sadness today.  Please pray for all of these families.

Lots of stuff brewing through my brain as we get ready for a new week~

* Hanging out with Jason and Cheryl and Truett for the night. Our whole family was together for the funeral service of Grandma Bennett who passed away on Wednesday morning. Grandma B was 94 years old and was such a faithful servant. The preacher of her church said in the funeral message yesterday that she recently told him that she would do anything for the church and serve anywhere they needed her. She was a great example of “running the race”. How inspiring!

* Today was another awesome day at Westbrook. We continued in our series called Tales of Real Survival and talked about an Old Testament survivor named Elijah. He was a great study on serving God in the midst of a faithless society.

* Since the ABC’s of Financial Freedom series our offerings have increased by 23%. We are so blessed and so blown away at God’s faithfulness and our peoples obedience.

* The Holiday season is just around the corner. Westbrook is hosting the Bolingbrook Community Thanksgiving Service on Thanksgiving eve. Chris and his team will be leading worship that night and I will be speaking.

* Gente Unida’s ESL program (the Center for Learning English) is growing. They recently added a Tuesday PM classes. This is going to be a focus of one of my upcoming posts entitled Mult-Culturally Missional series.

* We continue to talk with Design/Builders. As we wait for God to lead our building process we continue to do our part in being prepared.  We are developing leaders and articulating our dash board indicators of spiritual growth. Westbrook will be holding another Growth Weekend later this month with Dr. JK Jones.

Are you a Missional church?

If I’ve heard that question once, I’ve heard it a thousand times in the last year or so.  Being missional seems to be the new big buzz word.  If it’s a buzz word or a fad thing or not… the bottom line is that it is certainly a biblical concept.  Taking the gospel out to where the people who need gospel are—  well that’s just biblical isn’t it.  It seems that if a church is a biblical church~ then it’s going to take the message of Jesus INTO the world.  While we are beginning to adopt this terminology in our church, being Missional is not something new to us.  More than just being missional in general, we also work very hard to be Multi-Culturally Missional.  So over the next several posts I want to share some of the Missional things that we do around our place with a specific focus on our multi-cultural passion.  If you have some Missional ideas please send them my way and I’ll include them.