Hartland Hometown Celebration Parade Outreach

Sanctuary is going to team up with S.H.A.L.O.M. Ministries (http://www.shalom-ministries.org/) to host an outreach to Hartland on Saturday, August 1. (For more details, go to www.aboutsanctuary.com/outreach.asp.) When I met with the ministry leaders last week, Tony Vento, the director of S.H.A.L.O.M., suggested that our church should hand out bottles of water at the town's upcoming 4th of July parade. I felt that this was a good idea, so I checked into it and found out that Hartland's annual "Hometown Celebration Parade" is going to held on Sunday, June 28 at 1:30 PM. When I was talking to the staff at the village hall about the parade, I was told about the fact that some churches participate in the parade itself. Right away, I began to envision what it would look like if Sanctuary marched, but the thought that we're too small took over and so I dismissed the idea.

However, I still wanted us to distribute the water bottles, so at our home group meeting this past Friday, I led a discussion about "servant evangelism" and what God was leading us to do. (To learn more about servant evangelism, go http://www.servantevangelism.com/. It's got great information about the rationale for such service and lists tons of ideas about projects you can do.) Well, we not only had a great Bible study, but God's Spirit began to push my faith and challenge me. We were hit with two big ideas: first, double the number of water bottles I originally thought we'd need and second, try and get into the parade.

I went back to the village hall after Memorial weekend was over and we had no problems getting all the right paperwork to register the church to march in the parade. Of course, now we have some little issues to deal with, like designing a float, getting a banner, picking up the water bottles, seeing if we can get customized bottle labels, and getting all this done by the end of June. The Lord who calls us to ministry is faithful to make that ministry happen, so we believe that Jesus will see us through. One of the fellows in the church is making use of his business connections to get the water bottles and labels and another believer we know offered to construct the base of the float for us. The theme of the parade is "There's no place like home" right from The Wizard of Oz, so this should be fun!

In virtually every pastor's seminar I've attended over the years, planning and scheduling are stressed as crucial to ministry success. I understand how they can make life easier but, with that being said, there's nothing quite like the quick and sudden moves of the Spirit. All Christians, even plodding, methodical ones like me, have to be ready to turn on a dime to keep up with Him. The Lord's trustworthy, isn't He? I know He is!

Return from Singapore

I'm back from my trip to Singapore and even though it was a blessing to travel and teach there, I'm glad to be home. I wasn't sure about whether or not God wanted me to teach at TCA College (http://www.tca.edu.sg/) but I was told by a couple of advisors that I'd never have enough information to make a decision unless I flew over there. So that's what I did. Sometimes the Lord gives you experiences just to teach or reinforce things that He's already communicated to you. The trip there reinforced my need to stay in Hartland, WI, and develop Sanctuary. As a matter of fact, after I returned, the Lord directed me to two passages of Scripture: Psalm 122 and 2 Samuel 5:6-10. Both passages discuss Jerusalem and God used these to stress to me that I needed to condentrate on "my Jerusalem" which for now is Hartland. I remembered Acts 1:8 in which Jesus casts the audiences of the missionary ventures of the early church in a series of four concentric circles: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. Through that verse, I felt like the Lord was telling me not to ignore "the uttermost parts of the earth," but rather to focus at this stage of my life on Jerusalem. God's Word brings peace and it certainly ministered to my heart, so I had to let go of the possibility of teaching in Singapore at this point in time. Our future is in Christ's hands and although we may not know every think that He's got planned, we can trust Him that He knows what He's doing. In short, Jesus is reliable! That's my experience; it is yours, too?

This is my very first blog entry. Right now, I'm juggling helping my wife with two sick boys (and a little girl who's not sick), working on a school project for one of them, and scrambling to get ready for a trip to Singapore on Friday. Sometimes the Lord takes us through seasons of relative (or even absolute) calm; other times, we're in a whirlwind. Either way, at least I know that Jesus is Lord, He rules over my life and my circumstances, and He makes everything right when we trust Him. I trust Him; how about you?