The Leader Lifter Podcast - Kevin Presseault

I am just so thrilled to be a part of this church family! With the last few days around here I've just seen so much love being poured out.

I can't believe God would use a schmo like me to be a part of reaching his world! I just can't get my head around it...

I knew this day would come when I decided to be a pastor... but you're never really ready for it. This Friday I need to do my first funeral... and for a young man killed in a car accident.

So if you're praying kind please put me on your list.

I'm a hugger. Yes. I admit it. Nothing makes my day more then a good huge from a good friend. Hand shakes are for strangers and business deals. Hugs are for friends.

This weekend being back in Montreal I sure got my fill of great hugs when talking with great friends from the different ministries we were involved with back there. Today I feel like a million bucks and pumped and excited about kicking off this new ministry year! And I'm sure that it from feeling God's love for me through the hugs of these friends!

Now, here in our new home of Ontario... well... people don't hug. I guess Montrealers are just more lovie-dovie :) So, today I'm taking the Bible verse Romans 12:2 to heart! The verse says "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world"So, if the pattern of this Ontario world is not to hug... well then... I'm not going to conform to it any longer! I'm going to continue to show the world the love of Jesus the best way I kno…

Yup. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we're back in the car and heading off to Montreal for the weekend. We're dropping the kids off in Ottawa so they can go camping with their aunt and uncle and Danielle and I are hitting the Airport Hilton in Dorval for the weekend.

Friends of ours are getting married on Saturday. Looking forward to this one. It should be a real "collision of two worlds" for us. Turns out that the groom's family is all from Elmira, Ontario, the town where I'm now working as an associate pastor! In fact, I work with one of his cousins (she's the Director of Children's Ministry), his uncle was a former elder at the church, and a whole bunch of his relatives go to our church. And they're all heading down for the wedding as well.

It will be very weird and cool having friends from both worlds :) Yup... it really is a small world!

Also, we'll be at our Montreal church on Sunday, Westview Bible Church. I'll be doing a little so…

A few weeks back I was interviewed by Manda Gibson from Saddleback Church to get my opinion on Rick Warren's new podcast.

The article entitled "Rick Warren’s podcast lets pastors learn from each other" is now online. You can read it HERE. It's a bit misquoted... I was talking about how, now that I'm a pastor, it's easy to get stuck in the day-to-day of the church... that really had nothing to do with the fact that I came to faith in my twenties. Also, going to see the Transformers with a friend from outside the church was an example of the importance of having friends outside the church building. It's not easy for me to make friends outside the church... I guess for some reason guys just don't wanna hang out with a pastor :)

This is going to fall under the "Kevin, You're An Idiot" category...

For weeks now I've been trying to find a way to clean up the music on my iPod Nano. Since it only had 1 GB of space, it keeps getting filled rather quickly. I've been dragging files out of iTunes (but not deleted the physical files) and then playing those files using either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. This was starting to drive me nuts and I figured that there HAD to be a simpler way then this... after all how could you buy more then 1 GB of music from iTunes if you couldn't manage what is transferred to the iPod better...

I don't know why I didn't notice this option before... but RIGHT THERE on the Options for the iPod in iTunes is a simple little check-box...



"Only sync checked items"... so simple! How did I miss this??!?!? So I put all my music back into iTunes, selected just the albums and podcasts that I wanted on the iPod, did a sync and now have a whopping 315 M…

I'm very excited to have the Alpha Course starting at our church this September. I've seen so many families blessed by this course and praying that that will happen here in our town as well.

I did a review for the trade edition of Planet Hulk for the Radio Wayne podcast.

If you want to check it out, you can download the podcast HERE. You can also join the podcast's social network HERE.

I really enjoy the Radio Wayne podcast. It's the perfect mix of all the geeky hobbies that I love. And each podcast is only about 30-40 minutes. That's fits much better with my lifestyle. So many other podcasts are just WAY too long and lose my attention. I guess that's just my ADHD kicking in :)

If I ever do another review for Radio Wayne, I'll be sure to not do it at midnight when everyone is asleep like I did for this one. I sound like a goof!

Subscribe to Radio Wayne if you're into all things geeky. You won't be disappointed.

Monday morning, and the living is easy! :)

Actually, living has been quite crazy the last few weeks. Our ministry year kick-off is September 9th and I have tons to do to get ready for that. Not to mention all the work I've been doing around the house as well. Here is a quite brain dump before I head off to the church and attack this week.
I hate All Bran cereal. I've been trying to eat this stuff on a regular basis in order to help me get my cholesterol under control. I'm sure it's been doing that but it's like have a mouthful of dry grass. Ugh! I should probably start putting it in yogurt or something...
I thought the worship service yesterday was awesome! I loved Andrew's choice of songs... not easy to do since we had a guest speaker and weren't sure where he was completely going with his subject... but it all worked out great.
We're starting the Alpha Course at our church this September. This has really started to create a buzz around the church. I'm…

I'll be leaving the church shortly to pick up the family and drive to Toronto. We're all going to the Toronto Blue Jays baseball game tonight. I haven't been to a major league game since way before they shut down the Montreal Expos.

Not sure the kids will be able to sit through all nine innings... but I'm sure it will be fun for all of us.

I'm actually quite new to baseball and don't know much about it... this is actually the third game in the series against the Los Angeles Angles, and the Jays already won the series. Does this mean that tonight's game doesn't really count?? Does this mean the players will just take it easy and not really play all that hard?? I hope not... that would be boring.

I was just leafing through the latest issue of Christian Week (the Ontario edition) and saw this article about Drew Marshall, the "Canada's most listened to Christian radio talk show host". I don't really listen to all that much Christian radio so I figured I'd check out this guy's website.

I haven't listened to his show yet... but I did check out his appearance on 100 Huntley Street (which was deleted from their website, but thankfully it's on YouTube). I just love this guy! I love people who are so open to admit that they don't have all the answered to who God is and so open about their struggles in life. This guy definitely does that in spades! And I love the fact that he firmly believes that "Cultural Christianity is KILLING US!". Ever since I first read that expression, Cultural Christian, in the book Man in the Mirror, I know that that was exactly what I NEVER wanted to be.

So, if you like a little excitement in your life as you foll…

I receive a ton of mail here at the church. I'm always getting catalogues for resources, Bible study samples, brochures, etc, etc. I be honest, it can actually be quite overwhelming going over all of it and trying to figure out which ones I should give my limited amount of time to and explored deeper.

Well, today I probably received the most interesting mail since all year.

Today I received a copy of "Manga Messiah" from The Bible League of Canada. This is a retelling of the story of Jesus, illustrated in the highly popular Japanese "Manga" comic style art form. The comic is produced by Next Manga.

Just quickly going over this book I'm hugely impressed! I love the heading on the cover "Has he come to Save the world... or Destroy it?". Very cool! :) I'm not a huge Manga fan... it's not my favorite art style... this one is not as "crazy" as some other manga books I've seen in the past. I also like how they use the ancient Hebrew n…

You may or may not know that I'm big on doing the One Year Bible reading. I find this just such a great way to ensure that I'm getting my nose into the Bible on a very regular basis. Sure, I don't end up doing it every day... but this schedule does get me reading very very regularly for my own personal growth instead of just reading so I can teach something to someone else.

In this morning's reading was one of those verses which gets me all excited.

But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the
church.I've talked with so many people who put such a HUGE importance on Christian knowledge (Bible studies, expository preaching, conferences, Adult Sunday School, etc, etc) so that we can "show" people the truth of God. Now, this is important stuff and I think you should go after more knowledge... but this verse reminds us that this knowledge is not what is going to strengthen and build the church. This knowledge can in fact do nothing…

With my week off finished and my body hurting from painting all afternoon yesterday, I'm heading into this new week with a flurry of activity up in my head...
It felt quite weird being back in the downtown core of Montreal last week. Even though I worked there for 15 years I actually felt out of place... almost like a tourist.Spending a few days at my mom's was very relaxing. Being in a house with only dial up internet was a great way to force me to not be checking my email every 15 minutes :)Pastor Joel in Montreal is an evil tempter :) Trying to get me to move back to Montreal for a job at our church there was tempting for about 0.7 seconds.I'm have a TON things to get working on this week at the church. I'm excited to get to it. The trick will be to prioritise over the next couple of weeks.I have my staff evaluation next week... don't know why but that's making me a tad nervous... probably because it's my first one at the church...I really REALLY wan…

Got back home about an hour ago. Sure is great to be home... but it's only for another 30 minutes because we're heading out for a BBQ and a game of baseball with some friends here.

I'll try to blog later tonight with some highlights from the vacation.

We're now stopping for a quick dinner at my sister-in-law's place on our way up to North Bay, Ontario for the last part of our vacation.

Our trip to Montreal was fantastic. It was so great getting together with friends who we haven't seen in almost a year. It was a great to get caught up with everyone.

Finished reading Planet Hulk. Man that was great. I think I need to pick up more trade paperback comics instead of the regular monthly comics... Now to get back into my Star Wars book.

Last night we made it here to Newport, Vermont. Man this place is beautiful! We had lunch at this great restaurant right on the water. Very nice... especially since the kids were pretty well behaved :-)

We're just about to head out to the wedding. Looking forward to seeing some friends there.

As I'm getting ready to start a nice quick one week vacation I figured I'd just dump out a bunch of stuff floating around me head tonight...
Andrew, our Pastor of Worship and Creative Arts, ROCKS! I really enjoy working with this guy. Sure... he blames me for introducing new, more rock-type songs on Sunday morning, but I can take it :-)
I'm really looking forward to just spending time with Danielle and the kids over the next week. I sure hope our hotel has a pool...
I'm SO excited that our church is going to be hosting The Alpha Course this year. I'm a big fan of this and hope this will really get us more excited about reaching our community for Jesus.
I'm really glad I started collecting comic books again. I just love super hero stories. I just picked up the Planet Hulk deluxe hardcover book. This collects the entire Incredible Hulk story from the past year. Looking forward to reading this on my vacation.
I would really like to see an awesome Mighty Thor movie. I …

WOOHOO! Tomorrow the family and I are off on a week vacation. Like our true-to-form Presseault vacations we'll be driving a few thousand kilometers in the next week. In the morning we're heading to Newport, Vermont for the weekend. Then Sunday it's off to Montreal till Tuesday to visit friends there. Then up to North Bay to visit my parents.

I'm really looking forward to spending some fun time in the car with the family. Just hitting the road is always fun. The kids travel great and Danielle and I always have our best talks in the car :)

The vacation is a short one... so I'm praying for good times and good head rest. When I get back here at the church I'll have a thousand things to work on for September ministry start-ups and want to be refreshed to give that 115%!