West Cocoa Chat

First, to my fellow blogger Trey (http://www.treymorgan.net/) Morgan, I feel your pain brother. I’m thinking of the joke one of his friends played on him with the goggling of his name and getting the question, “Did you mean “Works one day a week?” As a teacher I’m routinely hounded by similar comments such as, “Must be nice to work 9 months and have off 3.” Now this post is not a defense of accusations (BTW – it’s not quite 3 months :) ) like that but rather a reflection of the summer we’ve had as we get ready to head back to school Monday.

Our week of Bible Camp with Pat Pugh just can’t get much better and as I’ve told him for years, part of the reason I still do Camp is to get to hang out with fellow blogger Steve aka the (http://web.mac.com/smpuckster/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html) Puckster.

Our trip to New Orleans and the Carrollton (http://www.carrolltonavenuechurch.org/) touched us so much that as you know, Steven and Zack when back last week to continue to work with that church and the community around it.

Wilderness (http://wildernesstrek.org/) Trek – Wow! I’m still basking in the afterglow of that experience in Colorado. Some of our teens were disappointed because we didn’t go to the Mid-Ohio Valley Workcamp this year. Although I’ve loved that experience for years nothing in my opinion has been more spiritual of an experience than Trek.

Of course who could forget Steven’s and Zack’s “excellent adventure” to New Orleans. I couldn’t be prouder of the work and ministry they chose to do on their own.

We’re also in the process of renovating our auditorium. The paint started going on yesterday and hopefully we’ll have an “Opening Day” in September or early October.
We’ve been meeting in our Fellowship Room in 2 services, one being a Capella and the other being instrumental. Steven has really connected with the instrumental praise team. I’ve enjoyed hearing them practice every Wednesday night. Our a Capella praise team took most of the summer off but they are now beginning to work again.

I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be able to offer both modes of worship and at 2 different time slots. What we’ve discovered is that some folks are choosing a worship time based on the time and others are choosing based on a preference.

There have been 2 benefits to adding an instrumental service. One is that the number of members we have from the Conservative Christian Church (CCC) as well as many of us with a church of Christ background are being blessed by this new mode of worship at our church.
Oh, let me add an opinion here – it is my blog, right? J Any way, for our church we’ve been on a path to adding an instrumental service for about 2 years since our failed merger with a local CCC. The only things that were holding us back were being able to go to two services and the talent to lead and conduct an instrumental service. God was able to bring all of that together this summer. O.K., where is my opinion?

We haven’t started an instrumental service to say, “Hey, look what we can do.” An instrumental service for most churches of Christ would not be appropriate in my opinion. For us, God brought about a number of factors that were unplanned and unexpected, but then, He’s God.
The other benefit has been we have a number of folks who have found a way to use their musical gifts for God. So now we have an a Capella praise team, an instrumental praise team, and an instrumental praise band and it is working for us.

I’ll leave with this – wouldn’t it be wonderful and another way that Jesus’ prayer for unity among his believers in John 17 could be answered, if just the local churches of Christ in our county could accept (some of us do) each other. And, how about this, that we could get together and fellowship one another.

Further, that when we got together there would be no fear of each other. In other words, if we were at a neighboring church where we knew clapping during a service offends them, they could feel secure in knowing that we would refrain from such an act in their facility. We would rather enjoy the fellowship than the freedom that we think God gives us. What do you think, am I living in a fantasy land? Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to dream because the bottom line is this; we’ll all be spending eternity together any way.