It hurts to type...

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There is something that I haven't been telling you. I started working out. Pastor Mike is a dedicated worker-outer and he has influenced (guilt tripped) me, my brother and Pastor Nelson into working out with him in the mornings at the church. It has been going on for 3-4 weeks now. I have not told you because I did not want anyone bothering me with accountability, smile. I know that this is right and good...it is just so difficult to stay committed to.

Well, Mike killed me the last 2 mornings and right now, it hurts to type. Yesterday, my hands felt like jello and it hurt to text. It is a good feeling though. Isn't it amazing how you can work out a few weeks and it does more to your head than your body. I mean, I keep looking down at my arms and chest and thinking "wow, look at that definition." LOL! No sure what this is impacting most...my body, my eyes, or my brain.

Either way, I gotta keep with it, so go ahead and ask me how I am doing with my commitment when you see me next.

--Noah

Weekend Report

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A few things about this weekend:

  • Back safe from the wedding. Arrived home at 3am Sunday. Great trip. All went very well. Melyssa is officially married and planned a lovely wedding.
  • Yesterday afternoon, I took a coma! (it was more than just a nap, smile)
  • Pastor Mike preached his first sermon at CCF yesterday and did a fabulous job. Get the CD or listen on the web if you missed it.
  • Over the last few weeks, I feel like we have been observing "Extreme Makeover: Worship Team Edition". The Worship Team is configuring themselves on the stage in new ways, gelling together and playing with renewed excellence. I am super proud of them and excited about where they are headed as a team! Man, yesterday, they even had new curtains and lights and mics....good stuff. Go Caleb, Karen, Pastor Mike and Team!
  • Recently, I have almost felt guilty...because I have felt much more freed up to "only do what only I can do" than I have ever felt before. Lots going on, but it needs less and less of me to make it happen. Scary and great all at the same time! It's what I call GOOD STAFF!!
  • Example: Pastor Nelson has assembled just under 30 people to run International Sunday Meal and Celebration. I know nothing and have done nothing, but it will happen with great thought and excellence. He has it organized and full of member involvement! I love it!
  • Speaking of which...who are you BRINGING to International Sunday this weekend?

Wedding Day

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We made it safe. Smooth trip. Having a good time enjoying family. Today is the big day as my Sister-in-law gets married. You know what is so cool....in the time that Melyssa lived in Maryland and went to CCF, she built some meaningful relationships. Among them were Chris and Tonya Wood and they traveled up here for the wedding. So, last night we got to hang out and laugh a lot with the Wood's...in New York. Tell me why we have to travel 400 miles to hang out with church friends?!?!

--Noah

Off to "La Boda"

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Tricia, Davis, my Mom and I are leaving in 30 minutes for Upstate New York. My sister-in-law Melyssa is tying the knot on Saturday. Tricia is the Matron of honor, so she and her sister have loads of things to do tomorrow as they get ready for the BIG day. We will be in the Albany, NY area. Pray for our trip and the wedding. We intend to leave there Saturday night when everything is over (around 10pm) and drive all night to get back home. There are lots of reasons that we wanted to be back by Sunday PLUS there are no flights out of Albany late enough on Saturday or early enough Sunday to get us home for church. Unless plans change...we will see you Sunday...tired as we may be. Thank God Pastor Mike is preaching!

--Noah

Ghetto Baltimore

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On Tuesday evening, I had an eye-opening and heart-touching experience that I want to share with you. I had a District Pastors meeting at Wilken's Ave. Mennonite Church in Baltimore. I accidentally arrived 45 minutes early (I wish that would happen to CCF members on Sundays). Anyway, since I had time to kill and it was a beautiful 75 degree evening, I decided to cruise around the streets of Baltimore with my doors locked and my windows down...makes sense, huh? After 5 minutes, I was in deep thought about what I was seeing. After 20, I was becoming choked up and felt like I was going to begin weeping for these streets. In 30 minutes I saw drug deals, drug dealers, prostitutes, drunks, open alcohol, high people stumbling around, tears, anger, children with no parents around and hardly any clothes on and more...a lot more. This area surrounding this church is ripped with pain, brokenness, poverty, lost people and stuck people. I cannot really even articulate it for you here, because even as I type right now, I am feeling for this area and lost people in an overwhelming way! I don't even know what to say.

Let me start here. How broken are we for broken people? How much of your energy goes into people that are lost, confused and dying? Have you ever driven through a neighborhood like this? Listen, I know that the nations need us! But, I am also struck by the fact that my neighborhood needs me! Baltimore, DC, and PG County has no shortage of lost and broken lives that need put back together.

I think that God is looking for people that are going to love the lost more than they do the saved! ...And live that out by putting more of their money, effort, time, energy and resources into going after them. Maybe, just maybe it should be the church? And don't tell me that it's already doing it...because it isn't! The church spends the huge majority of its money, time and energy pleasing itself and what kind of music and carpet it wants.

My prayer this afternoon is that we will become urgently concerned about loving and reaching people so that Jesus can forgive them and heal them! If this post wasn't already so long, I would start sharing with you what God has been showing me in Luke 7:36-50 over the last few days. Will post on this soon.

--Love you!

Club 56

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Club 56 is our ministry to CCF 5th and 6th graders every Sunday morning. They are using some material called Grapple. Each week they Grapple with another deep spiritual question. Rebecca Winner provides leadership for this ministry. She sent me this email earlier this week. With her permission, I am sharing it with you, and I think it will encourage you as it has me:

Sunday’s lesson was "Why doesn't everybody go to heaven?" It's the first in a 4-week unit on Jesus and salvation. We started during the clue time (which is where kids do some exploring in the Bible to answer questions related to the lesson of the day, under the coaching of their small group leader) by having kids look through the gospels for the different ways that Jesus described the Kingdom of heaven. We shared those verses with our small groups, and then each kid wrote a short description of what they thought heaven was like based on Jesus' words. They had a variety of insights. Then we moved into a small group time where we discussed several passages about who gets into heaven, and what the critera is: Matthew 7: 13-14; Romans 6:23; Isaiah 59: 1-2; and Romans 5: 20-21. Our 2 key points were that sin separates everyone from God, and that salvation is God's free gift through Jesus.

Many, many of our kids thought of heaven as a reward for doing good and had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that salvation isn't tied to our behavior. They had lots of questions: What if someone is bad for their whole life and then asks for forgiveness? Why should we bother doing good things if that's not what gets us into heaven? What if we're doing bad things for a good reason? What if we're not murderers but we still sin a little? We ended our time of Bible study by emphasizing the fact that salvation is God's free gift through Jesus: we can't earn it and we don't deserve it, and if we think we deserve it, we're not being honest with ourselves.

And AFTER this great class discussion, one young girl came to and asked me how she could be in a right relationship with God! We talked about what it means to ask God to forgive your sins and accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross, and about Jesus coming to live in our hearts, and then what it means to follow Jesus in our day to day lives. I encouraged her to think about all this and told her that when she was ready, I would be happy to pray with her.

So please pray for this young girl and for the 18 other kids who were in Club 56 last Sunday...they are thinking deeply about important spiritual issues, including their own salvation. I'd appreciate it if you would pass this prayer request on to anyone else that you think would be willing to pray specifically for the 5/6 graders this week and during the next three weeks as we continue to challenge them with their need to accept Jesus's free gift of salvation for themselves.

Club 56 has a great team of leaders: Rebecca Winner, Dami Bello, Joyce Brown, Lisa Edwards, Cori Haynes, Joe Kaye, Gail Medford, and Darrell Winner. They could really use 2 things:

  1. Prayer for these kids during this unit.
  2. One more male small group leader! They need a guy who likes kids, loves the Lord and can give us one Sunday a month. Small groups are 4 to 8 kids--never more than 8--and leading a small group involves coaching them through clue time and leading the discussion during Bible study time.

Ornamental or Useful?

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One of the things that has stuck in my spirit the most since Sunday's Potter message is this....

You probably know that once pottery has been formed, it has to be fired through a kiln...which is like an oven for pottery. Once it goes through the kiln it becomes hardened, strong, mature, and usable. If it does not go through the kiln, it is not even usable. Oh, and the hotter the temperature, the harder the pot becomes (Pottery is fired up to 2,000 degrees). Even if a clay pot sat out for 100 years and dried out, the slightest little bit of water would turn it back into a soft lump of clay.

If there is not a lesson in that for us, then I am not typing right now! Check this out...in the same way:

  • We need to go through the fire to become usable, strong and mature. (James 1:1-3)
  • The hotter the fire, the stronger and more usable that we become. So, remember that the next time that you are going through trials. The hotter the fire, the stronger and more usable you become. God must have a strong purpose for which He is preparing you!
  • If we do not go through the fire, the only use that we have is to sit there and look pretty (if that)...to be ornamental.

So I ask you, do you want to spend your existence being ornamental or usable for God's purposes?

House Guests This Week

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Tricia, Davis and I are honored to be hosting the Kauffman family this week (yesterday through Wednesday). It's Glenn and June and their kids Lia (13) and Austin (11). The Kauffman's have been missionaries through EMM (Eastern Mennonite Missions) to Hong Kong for 15 years and are planning to move back to the States. Glenn is the representative of Missions in Southeast Asia.

The best part for us...Glenn will be the new Bishop of the Baltimore-Washington District and the Kauffman's are moving to Laurel this summer and will be making CCF their home church!

They are lovely people and it is going to be a great joy to have them in our lives and community.

8 Principles of Pottery

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After numerous requests since yesterday morning, I thought I would post the 8 Principles that I shared...here they are:

8 Life Principles from the Potter and Clay.

“Being Shaped by the Potter”

#1: God is the potter, we are the clay. (Genesis 2:7 and Isaiah 64:8)

#2: The Potter always has a purpose for the clay. (Jer. 1:5)

#3: The destiny of the clay is subject to how it responds to the Potter. (Jeremiah 18: 5-10)

#4: Clay is not intended to do the shaping, but to be shaped! (Isaiah 29: 15-16)

#5: The movement and momentum of the clay impacts its outcome!

#6: The Potter will always remove some of the clay during the process.

#7: Potter’s take stubborn clay and start over all the time! (Jeremiah 18:4 and II Chron. 7:14)

#8: Clay becomes strong when it goes through the fire! (I Peter 1:6-7)

Now, invite you to do me a favor! Leave a comment here if there was another principle that God revealed to you during this experience. I have already heard several perspectives and insights that the Lord revealed to some of YOU! I would love to hear more....maybe we could do a sequel someday! Comment if you've got one.

Pottery Sunday a HIT!

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Today was an absolute blast! It was the realization of a dream that I had about 6 months ago while we were in PA visiting some friends. I have never been more distracted while preaching in my life ( I wanted to watch Becky make pottery the whole time)...but the grace of the Holy Spirit intervened and it still impacted people. It was so fun to see the illustrated message come to life for different people in different ways.

A big shot out to Becky from Greenbridge Pottery for coming in and making today even more special.

People were amazingly responsive to the message...my prayer is that we all continue to respond to the Potter, allowing Him to shape us beyond just today.

Want to share more later...gonna run and take our guests up to Annapolis for the evening.

Peace!

I am thankful today for...

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...A great Executive Board Chair! I really appreciate my relationship with the Chair of our CCF Executive Board. If you don't know him, his name is Hal Smith. We work very well together and I really appreciate his support and our friendship. He has many years invested in this church, yet still is a visionary and forward thinker and very excited about where we are headed! Just met with him for three hours this morning and it felt like one hour. I am thankful for Hal today!

Randomness

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Hey, here is a few random updates/thoughts:

  • Davis is not feeling well. Fever of 102.7 last night. Pray for the little guy. He is not himself and I have him today.
  • Really looking forward to the message Sunday and how it might "shape" us. Cool point that came up in our Small Groups last night...Lopsided pottery is often still usable for its intended purpose....lots of lopsided pottery running around out there.
  • We will be getting a new Bishop/Overseer in our District this summer. His name is Glenn Kauffman. The Kauffman family has decided that they will move into the Laurel area and make CCF their home church. They are wonderful people coming off of 15 years of missions work in Hong Kong. I look forward to how they may lead CCF into missions involvement in China. (Look forward to going back to china within the next year!!! Shhhhh....don't tell anyone yet!)
  • Pray for our missions work in Guyana. Lots going on. Some things unfolded just yesterday. Please pray for peace and direction and for wisdom as we lead. We will share details as we can.

Gonna jet and run some errands with Mr. Davis.

--Peace be with you!