day 5...

is tomorrow, but literally minutes away. Please pray that I will die of hunger...... the flesh of course.

Tonight, at church, we had our first message study group where a few people sit with Pastor Michael and study out his messages with Him. I must say it was inspiring, and sharpening. I think everyone should do it with some friends. We, realistically, are handicapped ministers (everyone) without a good understanding of God's word, and man it is FUN getting into the bible, historically and spiritually.

We have the real task of finding ways to present people with the word of God weekly and do it in such a way as to provoke change, or at least plant a seed.

I learned that A.D. means "Anno Domini" and does not stand for "after death" but signifies the BIRTH of Christ. That's awesome. Steven was martyred somewhere around 33 A.D. In that same year the bible calls Saul/Paul a young man. Interesting. Does that mean he was just over 30 or almost 30? If he was 30, that puts him around 60 when he writes Romans. That dude loved God.

Holla back...

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I love....

and yet hate technology. Twitter.com is so great yet so completely time consuming and potentially useless. I have set up, for the second time, a twitter account, so please check it out @ twitter.com/scottjunior or just grab the link to your right. Again it's pretty cool to see what goes on in others lives as long as it makes sense. A lot of twitter accounts I see are referencing things that are either out of context or completely random.

"Sassy Sue just laid out 5 yellow hamburgers according to historical documentation."

Huh? Well, mine will hopefully be as awesome and informative as this blog. Cross those fingers.

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Today...

felt so weird. Almost alien. I only had one sunday off, but jeez I felt like I hadn't been to church for half a year. It's not even that though. It's that for some reason I realized that for the most part people, some we know some we don't, show up for an hour every sunday, we sing and we talk to them about God, and then those same people go home. I kinda feel like I don't get it.

I mean, who are we that we get this attention. Like, what are people expecting from us. And boom there it is. That nasty "church" feeling. I just realized what it is. Church isn't some seminar that you sit through. Church isn't a lesson on how to be better. Church isn't a place to go to shake off your sin. I feel like, even if people aren't necessarily going to church for those reasons, that a lot of people keep others within the church at an arms length. Myself included in being kept at arms length. I saw a bunch of people today that I really do love and care for, but regardless of how we interacted this week my relationship with them will probably be exactly the same next week. I bet that's true for most people. I want to do whatever I can to make sure I am reaching people. Encouraging, challenging, loving, blessing people all over the place.

Man, church is a believers meeting where we talk about the things of God or who He is. It's a time of worship that is for God. It's a place where our shepherd reminds us what the word of God says, and then tells us to man up and do it. Or at least He should say that, and He does one way or another. Yucky, yuck!!! I got that nasty church feeling today. I don't like it.

How many people are just sitting? Counting time? How many people are out in OUR community that we are called to reach and impact. I want those people. I want to see, interestingly enough, the community become the committed, the committed become the core, and I want the core to get hotter for God. I don't want to have church, I want to have contact. With God and His people.

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