Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Holy Week


This might be the busiest week in the life of most churches. Obviously, for us at Discovery, not so much yet. (But no promises on next year.)


At Olivet this week, we kicked off Holy Week with the Palm Sunday service and the Easter egg hunt. We do the Easter egg hunt the week before, because we do not want to miss the celebration point of Easter. On a side note, it creates two big weeks for visitors back-to-back.


Wednesday will feature the normal Wednesday evening programs. I'm excited because I'm up to teach in the Matrix. At the beginning of the school year we went to team teaching. The upside was that it made the ministry less dependent upon me. The downside is that I miss the opportunity to teach some of the best middle school and high school students in Evansville.


Thursday evening will be our Maundy Thursday service. We will be remembering (perhaps that is the key word for this week: "remember") Jesus' final moments with His disciples. We'll celebrate community through communion this night. The service begins at 6:30.


Friday evening will be our chance to focus on Good Friday. I'm really excited because I get to help teach and design this service. I think I'll be working with Jeff Kleinschmidt, one of the most gifted acoustic guitar players that I know. Can't wait for this evening.


Sunday will celebrate Life and Hope. Easter Sunday. He is Risen! He is Risen indeed!


If you want to follow the Holy Week closely, check out In the Agora. They are observing this Holy Week on their blog day-by-day. Here are the previous days blogs.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Something to Look Forward To


I just got the chance to read Vince Antonucci's talk for the Exponential Conference. His seminar will be entitled, "The Idiot's Guide to Idiotic Church Planting." It's a homerun. Vince shares passionately about what church planters (and Christians as a whole) are called to be. He lays out a solid exegetical framework (big words) for the fact that we are called to be fools, idiots. He weaves his own personal stories in with media and sound advice to make one killer point. I don't want to spoil it for those who will be there, but don't miss it. You'll definitely be glad that you were there!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Know When to Fold Them



The headlines in tomorrow's paper will no doubt be about the Ohio and Texas primaries. There will be celebrations of Hillary Clinton's win in Ohio. They will say that Texas is still too close to call. Yet below the fold will be the story of two men who decided that it was time to fold.

Mike Huckabee stepped away from the Republican campaign today. Huckabee's attempt to win the nomination has seemed at best to be a long shot. However, he persevered even when the pundits said he was finished. In fact, he even won primaries after he was supposely finished. He stuck it out until it was abundantly clear that he could not win. In doing so, he helped keep John McCain, the newly crowned Republican nominee for President, on the front pages and relevant.

Brett Favre also announced today that he was hanging up his spikes. Favre, the holder of nearly every major passing record, stepped away from the game yesterday. He stated that the issue was not his physical ability to compete, but rather his mental fatigue. He realized that the Green Bay Packers were not likely to win the Super Bowl and so it was time to quit.

So what do we learn from these two men?

First, if it's not possible to achieve your objective, it might be time to quit. Rather than wasting valuable resources and time on the impossible, move on to something else that you could thrive at.

Second, when you do call it quits, it does not hurt to do so gracefully. Both of these men demonstrated an amazing amount of tact in calling it quits. They refused to trash others; instead they focused on the positive experience that they had.

Two questions do remain however. Who does Chuck Norris endorse now? And who will be the recipient of the next Colbert bump?