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Showing posts from November, 2010

YouVersion Live

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I've been using YouVersion as one of my primary ways to read and study the Bible since October 2007. I use it to search for texts when prepping sermons. I use it for my daily Bible reading plan. I use it on my Blackberry so that I always have a Bible with me. And now I'm playing around with YouVersion Live to see how we can integrate that to our Sunday morning services. Why? Because I want to encourage people to get into reading the Bible for themselves and not just listening to me reading it to them every Sunday :) I love how with YouVersion Live we can create Events and have people point there with their smart phones for seeing the key Bible passages, polls, prayer requests forms and whatever else we can think of to tie in to the weekend service. In order to play around with this I've created an event for this coming Sunday. You can access it here . Have a look at it and let me know what you think.

Encourage One Another

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This Sunday I'm continuing our series on LIFE and living a life of encouragement. We are looking at the life of Barnabas and how he encouraged the early church. I'm reminded this morning of the verse in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." I am SO grateful for the men and woman who have encouraged me in my life. Especially those who have encouraged me in my spiritual walk with God. I remember too well the criticism I received from some people when I shared that I thought God was calling me to leave the IT profession and become a pastor. They were critical that God wouldn't use a new believer like me... or someone from my background... or someone without a masters degree and education. It was quite a discouraging and doubtful time. Was I just being conceited and prideful wanting to go into ministry? Was I not walking with God closely? But I had many others who were INCREDIBLY enco

How do you improve your preaching?

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I'm in the process of looking at my education and growth for next year. Going to seminary part time while working full time here at the church is an AWESOME way for me to continually grow and allow God to work on me to improve me. I'm also a big reader. I love reading different types of books to get better at ministry, pastoral care and leadership. And I like conferences and seminars. These are all great ways to learn and grow... I find that most of those help in a general leadership/pastor kind of way... but I'm finding it difficult to find resources to help me in my primary responsibility as a pastor here. Most books and conferences are hitting on leadership and specific ministries (evangelism, small groups, etc). I'm finding very little in the way of becoming a better communicator and speaker. I served as the Teaching Pastor. My key role is, obviously, teaching Sundays. The local Christian bookstore has nothing on improving preaching... the conference circuit

Mo Pastors Facebook page

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You can follow along and see the moustaches from the Pastors who have joined our team to raise awareness and support for prostate cancer by checking out our Facebook page . I'm sure it's going to be a fun good time of laughing and supporting one another as we join together in this great cause. Movember is going to be a great month! Be sure to follow along!

Thoughts on a GREAT Weekend!

This weekend was just awesome! Really was! I'm kicking off this week just pumped up and thanking God for all I was blessed with over the course of the past few days. Here's just some of the thoughts on this weekend. My parents came to visit so my step-dad could help rebuild my laundry room. I love doing reno work... but I'm not all that good at it. So it's great to have help from my step-dad with this stuff! We had quite the weekend redoing the plumbing and the electrical work for the washer and dryer. I learned a ton and feeling like I'm ready for any leaky pipes in the future :) It looks SOOO much better already and I can't wait to do more laundry. It was just so nice having dinner with family every night this weekend (Fri and Sat with my parents, and Sun with Danielle's sister). I'm so grateful for the family that God has blessed me with! This Sunday we had a family service at Greenbelt. It was great to have the kids join us for the sermon pa