West Cocoa Chat

“Tired and encouraged.” Are those two terms ever used that much together? It’s late Monday night and I’m tired from the events of the last 24 hours. We invited the boys of the youth group yesterday after church to come to our home last night. They ate copious amounts of pizza and chocolate chip cookies, played, held a devo, prayed, and no doubt stayed up very late.

We have an unfurnished mother-in-law’s apartment on the second floor of our home whose stairs wore me out as I assisted the boys in bringing up a T.V., a x-box system, air mattresses, pillows, sheets, and blankets for their enjoyment. They’re a great group of teen boys most of which will be heading to Pasgolua, Mississippi to work with John Dobb’s church in the ongoing Hurricane Katrina recovery work in about a week. My son will be one of the guys going and I’m bummed out that I couldn’t get out of an Educational Conference I’ll be attending in Atlanta, Georgia the very same week.

If that wasn’t enough exercise we started the process of painting our master bedroom as well as laying down laminate. Steven helped me pull up the carpet and it’s padding as well as pulling up all of the carpet strips. My father-in-law came over and we painted our bedroom as well as pulling and painting all of the baseboards. Tomorrow’s task will be to lay the laminate and then start the process of putting our bedroom back together again. O.K., enough of the “tired” (someone cue up “Lilly” from the movie “Blazing Saddles” singing “I’m Tired, So Tired.”) part, lets move to encouragement.

Many of you know that our church was involved in what could have become a historic moment in our history. This work unfortunately will not come to fruition and it was my task to inform our church family yesterday during what we call a “Family Talk.” I told our church family that despite this project coming up short I was proud of them for several reasons:

1. In most coC’s, the very talk of our project would have split most coC’s wide open. We did not lose one single member due to this attempted project.

2. Our church has put their proverbial “mouth” where the Bible speaks and doesn’t speak. The unscriptural notion that the use of an instrument in worship is a sin has been studied and rejected by our church family.

3. At some point down the road I can see us still adding an instrumental service to go with our acapella service. I relayed a conversation I had with Milton Jones of the Northwest Church in Seattle. Early in our project I called him to ask his advice. He was actually nice enough to talk to me for well over 30 minutes despite the fact that we had never met. I’ll never forget what he said at the end of our conversation.

He asked me if I had any kids so I told him about Steven making some kind of statement that at times he probably feels he is the second coming of Peter Frampton. Milton then said, “Look at it this way – our kids are drawn to music and when they get out on their own statistics say they will more times than not, look for an instrumental church. There are plenty of instrumental churches out there with very questionable doctrine. If your church adds an instrumental service then you can be sure that your kids will stay in a church that tries to be as close to Scripture as humans can be in their flawed efforts.” Enough said there.

4. Bible Camp. When we were un-invited from our previous Camp due to our project I was hurt personally. Then God opened up Camp Ithiel to us and we were able to leave the legalism that now engulfs our former camp. We were able to invite Brother Pat Pugh and what an effect he had on our kids. Many of our teens told me that in all their years of attending camp our week was the most spiritual week of Bible Camp they had ever attended.

Can a “loss” ever be a “win?” In this case, I think it is. We will now pour our efforts into effective body ministry and reaching out into our community in the name of Jesus. Many of you have been praying for our “project” and I want to personally thank you. They were felt. If you want more details feel free to email me. God bless.