Monday Morning Sabbatical -July 1st, 2013

Week four of the Southbrook Summer Sabbatical was a blast.  

We returned to Fort Wilderness for our fourth annual Family Camp.  Fort Wilderness is truly a premier Christian Camp, located near Rhinelander, WI.  Fort Wilderness offers the full range of programming: Family Camps, camps for youth, a three week long camp for High Schoolers, Men's and Women’s retreats and even a nine-month long training program for those out of high school.

We love going to family camp, as the accommodations are first class.  Our cabin has room for us all, a place to play family games along with our own private bathroom!  This is how to do the outdoors!  Lynn and I did an hour long horse back ride through the woods, we all went to the shot-gun range and attempted to shoot clay targets.  Jacob loves the 22 range and the archery center...

The people who attend the camp are a rich mix of ages and family types.. Single parents, grandparents with their grand kids, parents with young children and even a newly married couple; all come together for an amazing week.

So if you are looking for a solid opportunity for spiritual growth amidst the Northwoods of Wisconsin, I highly encourage you to check out Fort Wilderness.  www.FortWilderness.com

Yesterday I attended two churches, about as stylistically different as possible.  In the morning Lynn and I, along with my mom, attended Word is God Worship Center on 33rd and Vliet Street, in Milwaukee.  This central city church is led by Pastor Ansen Beverly-Davis, a friend that I've known from High School.  The worship is free-flowing/spirit directed; rich with tambourines, shouts of praises and ‘amens,’ led by worship dancers in flowing white and gold-trimmed robes.  We were honored to be seated on the stage for the entire service, and I was asked to participate in the laying on of hands for those who came up to be anointed with oil and for prayer.  The sermon text was Nehemiah chapter 4, and was presented with a strong emotional appeal.  Near the end of the service, I was asked to speak, so I delivered greetings from our Southbrook Church Family to our brothers and sisters who attend Word is God....

Sunday evening I went by myself and worshipped at City Reformed Church, which meets at 5pm at the Brew City Church building located at 1036 North Van Buren Street, in Milwaukee (near Buca di Beppo’s).  City Reformed is a church plant from Brookfield Christian Reformed Church.  In contrast to Word is God, City Reformed is more ‘high church’ in terms of its structure: communal recitation of the Apostles Creed, singing all verses of the hymns, group confession of sins, etc...  The sermon text was Acts 2 and it was delivered with a strong cognitive appeal.

I so love visiting other churches, for it reminds me of the breadth, the beauty and the diversity of God’s Kingdom!

Semi-Random Thoughts:

-Let’s remember to pray for the families and friends of the 19 firefighters who were killed fighting the Arizona wild fires.  How about dropping by your local fire station with a note of appreciation, or a homemade dessert?  I know that this would be appreciated.

-As much as I miss my church family at Southbrook, I am profoundly grateful for this time of replenishment!

-Reading a lot from a range of Christian perspectives about the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding same-sex marriage.  I hope to post more on this soon.

-Watched the movie ’42’ with the family.  This is the inspirational story of Jackie Robinson, the first man to break the color barrier in Major League baseball.  Wow, what a great movie about a great man!

-Southbrook’s blood drive resulted in our ability to save 61 lives!  Thanks to Ron L. and the rest of the crew who organized this great event.

Monday Morning Sabbatical -June 17th, 2013

Bible Cliff Notes, King David and an 8th Grade Graduation

Week two of my Southbrook Summer 2013 Sabbatical is in the books; and what a week it was!

Our son Jacob, graduated from 8th grade and it was exciting to see him walk across the stage at his graduation ceremony.  Of course this means that Lynn and I are getting older, which is exacerbated by the fact that our 13 year old son wears size 12 shoes and is around 6 feet tall.  What happened to how things used to be?!

Truly enjoying the time to be replenished, though sincerely miss the people of Southbrook Church.

Had lunch with my friend Erica, who encouraged me to take some time this summer for a solitude retreat.  So in August I will be spending 5 days alone...  Thanks to generous Church friends who loaned me their cabin!

Blessed to have some time with dear friends John and Dolores.  John was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.  They spoke of their love for God and how He and His people are helping them with the strength that they need.

Spent a day studying doing future sermon preparation.  Looking forward to digging into the Life of David this fall.  Thinking about calling the series: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  What do you think?

Enjoyed my time with Pastor Mark, who is the lead pastor at The Ridge Church in Greenfield.  We toured each other’s churches and learned about each others ministries.  Lynn and I went to the Ridge on Sunday and it was great to see a full house of people worshipping and being fed by Pastor Mark.

Thanks to Dr. Evil (you know who you are), for giving me the Cliff Notes of the Bible.  I am sure that this will be a solid assist to me...!  Finally something at my level.

Saw the new Superman Movie with the family.  Didn’t realize that it was going to be a biography.

While driving to the movie on Saturday, we saw groups of people from Southbrook Church outside the Franklin Police Department, serving through our Compassion Weeks.... How wonderful it was to see these men and women serve Jesus by serving the City!

Humbled and Hungry....

Cleaning Toilets for Jesus

Does Jesus want you to clean toilets, weed a neighbor’s garden and hand out bottles of water to those along the nature trails in and around S.E. Wisconsin?  Well, if you are a part of Southbrook Church, the answer is Yes!  Starting in the middle of June,  Southbrook will be kicking-off our Seventh Annual Compassion Week of Service.

Eight years ago we asked ourselves a difficult question: ‘We do a great job at loving people when they come into Church, but what are we doing to actively go out and model Jesus’ love to our Community?  We realized the answer was ‘not much;’ and from that time -Compassion Week was born.

During this last decade we have partnered with the local public schools, nursing homes, businesses, Police and Fire Departments along with regional hospitals and local Health Departments in an organized attempt to model Christ through planned acts of service.

To be clear, our sole intent is to use service projects to model the love of Christ to our local communities.  We do not do this in order to get more people to come to church, or to try and distribute  literature about Southbrook.  Rather through these intentional acts kindness, we are actively taking Christ into areas traditionally viewed as off-limits to the Church.

Once, I cleaned the bathrooms at a local Coffee Shop for 3 months; as a way of modeling the ethos of Compassion Week.  The owner was a Muslim man who I befriended through my patronage of his business.  When I asked him if I could clean his bathrooms- he perplexingly asked, ‘Why?’  What a great opportunity for me to lay out the gracious gift that Jesus provided to humanity, and how my service was just a reflection of what God has done to us!

How have you seen other model Jesus through acts of service?