The Return

We had a wonderful vacation! But, it is good to be home. We have never taken a full two week vacation as a family like that. I am sure we will be doing it again.

That said, I am ready to jump right back in and charge ahead. That is one of the points of vacation after all; recharge and refresh for the next season.

It wasn't planned beforehand, but I ended up taking a break from blogging as well. Even my activity on Facebook and Twitter was greatly diminished. I'll be picking back up this week. I have several posts I want to write about some of the observations and experiences coming out of General Council and our time away.

For now, a couple quick thoughts:

We MISSED Capital City! It was even more evident as we were talking with people in the lobby and halls today. During the service this morning, I was very aware of how much of a privilege it is to pastor here.

While we were away, we had a couple of different approaches to filling in for me being gone on Sunday. The first Sunday, Lou Scalzo, youth pastor at Highway Tabernacle in Youngstown, filled in. Lou is my successor at Highway and he is a good communicator and storyteller. Many have shared some very positive feedback from his message. Lou was quite complimentary of the people of CapCity. He thoroughly enjoyed his time here. The second Sunday, we showed a video message from Craig Groeschel. Again, I have heard very positive feedback from the message and even the effectiveness of video. One of our board members and missions director, Don Rowles, wrapped up the service. Nathan did a great job covering things in my absence. God is putting together a fantastic team here.

This morning was incredible in so many ways! Elena led the songs; of course she is my favorite worship leader! She did awesome as always. The whole band sounded very good and they handled things well.

We had a full service with communion, a missionary guest, a couple of videos, and I was pumped up after not preaching for two Sundays! We went a little longer than normal today. :-)

Missionary Guy Deal and his family joined us today to share what God is doing in intercultural ministries here in Columbus. Very cool to see people from different cultures coming together to grow and serve in unity.

It was a very impactful service as God was speaking very specifically to some folks and we took a few moments in the middle and at the end to give them on opportunity to respond. The communion time today was significant in itself.

I won't rehash the message here, but I started sharing on our vision and direction covering the core value of courage. The next two weeks, we'll cover some other areas of the vision and direction that I believe God has set before us. A line was drawn in the sand. And when the challenge was given to cross that line several did boldly! There are some families and lives that will be impacted greatly because someone said "yes" to God today and stepped out in spite of fear. You can listen to the full sermon online tomorrow (hopefully, the podcast will be on the site then). I will also make sure the podcast from the Sunday Lou spoke as well as a link to the video from Craig gets posted.

As I said this morning Capital City, hang on it's about to get very exciting!

I could ramble on here all night, but I have done enough of that today. ;-)

Will post more later...