Kevin Presseault

Here are this year's pumpkins I made with the kids (okay, I did most of the work. At least they sat with me the entire time this year!) Turned out pretty OK. I think Cinderella is going to need a stronger candle to make sure I can get more light coming out the small details... Click the image for a larger version.

For the next few days I'm putting a lot of energy into our small group ministry. As we continue to move forward as a church I firmly believe that the best way that we'll be able to live out our mission of "Helping people grow in a meaningful relationship with God and each other" is to have a healthy, vibrant, growing, organic small group ministry. The first thing I'm looking at is the name of the ministry... this may sound dumb, but I think there's something to this... Small groups are known by so many different names in different churches: small groups, care groups, home church, Fellowship groups, life groups, etc, etc... I think the name reflects the nature and the purpose of the group. If I was joining a Fellowship Group I would expect to hang out with friends and eat cake. If I was joining a Care Group I would expect to find care and support for struggles that I'm going through in my life. So, if I already have a large network of friends I wouldn...

For the last 2 years I've been into trying to make our Halloween pumpkins a little more fun then just the traditional pumpkin face. The first year I used a Boba Fett template from the Star Wars official website. Last year I found this really cool site, Zombie Pumpkins! This site is FANTASTIC if you're looking for some great pumpkin ideas! This year I'll be making two pumpkins... each one chosen by one my kids. Here are sample pictures of what I'm hoping to accomplish. I'll post the final results of them tomorrow...

ARRGGHHH! This weekend I was bidding on an item on EBay. It was four trade paperback volumes of the New Avengers comic. Since I have volume 5 this would have been a perfect item to win. I was winning the auction right up to the last hour. I figured I had put in a good enough high bid to get it... Well, I was outbid. Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal... but the outbid notice only arrived in my Inbox 2.5 hours after the close of the auction! There was more then enough time to receive the notice then make another bid... Oh well. I guess this is God's way of telling me I need to not be so cheap and that I should support my local comic book store :-) I guess Volume 1 will have to be my celebration present after writing my seminary mid-term next week :-)

Last Saturday evening we went to the home of a couple from our church for dinner. We brought the kids with us. We had a wonderful evening of getting to know each other better while the kids played away downstairs with a huge box of LEGO (always a hit with my kids). Around 9:30 we realized how late it was getting and that we should get the kids home to bed. We called them up to us to give them the "five minute warning" before we were going to leave. They came and sat up with us for those five minutes... Well... three minutes later they were fast asleep on our laps! My kids haven't slept on my lap since there were tiny babies... and even then they didn't do it often. We sat there for another hour... because we were enjoying the company but also because we were loving the snuggle time. Man, I wish they could stay this cute forever!

This morning my family and I drove down to Oakville, Ontario in order to visit The Meeting House , the church for people not into church. We had a great morning... we managed to get there nice and early so that was perfect. I was worried that we'd be rushed. We actually got there 30 minutes before the service so that gave us time to find out where we needed to bring my daughter and get some information about the church. I was a tad surprised on the lack of any type of welcome team or greeters... I would have imagined that if anyone had a strong welcome team this would be the place. I guess this area is really the weak point of all churches :) Luckily the place was very well laid out and information was easy to find. The atmosphere was very laid back. The children's area was excellent. I really enjoyed Bruxy's message this morning. It was a great reminder and challenge for me personally on this importance of living a life where we don't live above our means so we co...

I've been blogging since April 2004. Back in my computer days I was hosting my blog with a provider who does IBM Lotus Notes hosting since that was the platform that I specialised in. A few months before I left the computer biz I decided to shut down that blog and move on to this one... I just wished that there was a way I could have imported those blog entries into this one. I was just checking out some Google referrers that I've received in the last few days and found that the old blog is still around... when I closed the account they never actually deleted it from their server. The full archive of all my old posts can be found at this link . Now I'm wondering if there's a way that I could get them into Facebook... that may work... since I can't figure out how to get them here.

This is a question that I've been asking myself long and hard over the past few months... One of my responsibilities as stated on my job description is "He shall pay close attention to his personal spiritual life, family, and service by maintaining a vibrant and maturing faith in Jesus Christ. Careful attention must be given to personal characteristics of integrity, vision, discernment, compassion, and humour." Now, this is something that I would hold myself to even if it wasn't a part of the job :) That's just the kind of man that I want to be. My personal spiritual life and my growing love of God and of people is of the utmost importance to me. I want to grow in this every day of my life. I knew right away when I first became a Christian that I needed to surround myself with more mature men. Guys who have walked with God a lot longer then I have. Guys who have been married longer then I've been alive. Guys who have raised their kids. Guys whose love for God ...

Last night my wife Danielle and I went to participate in an evening worship service at another church. No, we're not unhappy with the services here :) Two main reasons why we went. First, I'd like to be able to find a really loud rocking worship service to go to every month. I just really like loud music... it speaks to me. Second reason is I really want to make sure that I'm doing good spiritually. Sundays mornings have a tendency to become work days... I have a lot of hallway meetings and I spend too much time during the service critiquing it and wondering how others are doing spiritual. This obvious gets in the way of my own worship time with God... Anyways... we headed out around 5:50, a tad later then I wanted to since I had no real clue where we were going. I wanted to be able to get there early and check things out. Well, we got there at 6:26, four minutes before the service was supposed to start. Being rushed like this got me frazzled and already I was ner...

Just finished watching the first season of Battlestar Galatica on Friday. Man oh man! I just love this show! I can't believe I haven't gotten in to this one before. Of course the only problem is... now I have to get my hands on the second season DVD set! I was looking at a few stores yesterday... and I just couldn't bring myself to slap down $65 for only 10 episodes. Maybe I'll check out Ebay later today to see if I can find them cheaper. As a side note... what's with the cylons having a glowing back when they're making love??? That seems like a pretty big give away that someone is a cylon! When they are completely organic why put lights in them. That just seems dumb. You'd think just a simple cat-scan whould show that they have lights in their spins. That's really the only nit picking that I can do with this show. Everything else is just perfect.

This weekend we had the privilege of having Kim Phuc join us for our service on Sunday and to share her story with the community on Saturday evening. If you're not aware of who Kim is, she is the young girl in this photo who is running down the street naked after her village was napalmed during the Vietnam war. Her clothes were burned right off her back as the napalm burned her flesh. This photo brought the reality of war to so many around the world. Her story of faith and forgiveness is such a powerful testimony of God's forgiveness and the power that can come from God when we truly do "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us"! Kim now travels the world speaking on behalf of children who are the innocent victims of war. War sucks. Period. And it sucks even more when you hear these personal stories of how these children suffer because of it. Kim's story of forgiveness in this darkest of situations is such a light to those who could never imagi...

My sermon on the Greatest Commandment is now online at our church's website. You can download it directly by clicking this link . This was a hard message for me to give considering the crazy few weeks I've had here at the church... God really worked a number on me over this one. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day of the church, especially for those of us who work in full time ministry. God really reminded me this week that it's not about our sacrifices and our offerings... but all about loving God and loving our neighbor.

Almost the weekend! I love taking Fridays off. Makes for a great weekend not having to worry about Sunday morning right up till the last minute :) This week was great as I've been working on this sermon on the Greatest Commandment. This is definitely a "getting back to basics" kind of sermon... but, man oh man, did I ever need to get back to basics this week! So here's a bit of a brain dump... hopefully this will clear the head and get me to really relax this weekend! Our friends Dave and Kim are coming to visit us from Montreal this weekend! YAY! Can't wait to see them. They should be here before lunch tomorrow. We're so looking forward to hanging with them. Oktoberfest is in full swing here in Kitchener. We're hoping to find some family-friendly events on the weekend. Don't really feel like bringing my six and four year old to a good old fashion drink fest :) I hope the rain that they're forecasting doesn't show up. This Saturday i...

Today is the Ontario provincial elections. I've always really enjoyed politics. I guess I'm just one of those guys who LOVES to talk about the two subjects that we're brought up to believe we're not supposed to talk about: religion and politics :) Since moving to Ontario last year I really haven't been following what's been going on in our political scene here. Shame on me! I'm definitely going to have to do something about that. I would really like to start volunteering for one of the candidates... I wonder if they still need volunteers throughout the term or if it's really just during the election campaigns... Anyways, I'm heading out shortly to meet my wife at the school where we're voting. So, all you Ontario residents out there (yes both of you!) get out there and vote. It's one of the greatest gifts we have in this country - the other is health care! :)

This Sunday I'm continuing in our preaching series on the book of Mark. I'll be going over Mark 12:28-34 where Jesus talks about the greatest commandment. I'm really just in the beginning stages of the sermon. I would like to be look at the following three questions: Why even ask the question? What did Jesus' answer mean for the people then? What does Jesus' answer mean for us today? I'd like to be able to pull out the themes of man's tendency to worship the way God works instead of God himself and man's tendency to create the complex out of the simple. Both of these are from books that really hit me hard this summer, The End of Religion by Bruxy Cavey and Simple Church by Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger. I'm really looking forward to getting into this. It should be a lot of fun to put together and go over this topic. I'm always amazed at how when I have a topic to preach on it seems like it's a message just for me to remember and wor...

By far one of my favorite comics right now is the new new Thor series with story by J.Michael Straczynski and art by Olivier Coipel. I just picked up issue number 3 today and just loved it. This new series is a fantastic way to be introduced to this classic character. I love when you can pick up a new title of an old character and not be required to have tons of previous knowledge in order to enjoy the book. The story so far is simple yet interesting. Thor, the Norse god of thunder, was dead. As our all the Norse gods. And now Thor is back and has begun a search for the other gods who are lost among humanity. In this new issue he finds the first of the missing Asgardians... but not before confronting Iron Man. Normally this should have been a happy reunion between former Avengers and friends... but Thor is none too happy about the fact that Iron Man created a clone of Thor during the Civil War. The art is stunning. Every page is beautiful. It's no surprise that issue 1 and...

Tonight we had a meeting at the church to present an update on our church's building expansion project, entitled the Imagine Campaign. This has been quite exciting over the last few months to start seeing this come together and it was great tonight to finally share the building plans with the congregation. The Image Campaign team has been doing an awesome job with this and really need a big pat on the back for all their work! I haven't played a part in the actual planning of the new building... My role has been to evaluate our current ministry needs in the areas of Adult Ministries (which includes adult evangelism) and look at our future needs and what would be required of the facilities if we went forward with the construction of a building addition. The huge reality of my current ministry is that space is limited. Very limited. Even the greatest idea for a new ministry would be very hard pressed to find a single day in the week when adequate space could be found in the chu...

Lots of interesting search results which are bringing people to my blog. Here are some of the highlights for the months of September. Woodside Church Elmira Ontario : Got TONS of those this month. Guess I should put a link to the church's actual website on my blog so people can find that more easily. Here it is: www.woodsidechurch.ca "how do I get booked as a pastor" : Good question... I'm still trying to figure out how it happened to me :) novels about pastors : My favorite is "They Call Me Pastor: How to Love the Ones You Lead" by H.B. London Jr. I am thinking of pulling my son from french immersion : DON'T DO IT! Having a second language is a wonderful opportunity in life. I'm so glad my parents did it for me! And it starts with me : You're right... it does! Courses I need to be a pastor : You need courses??? :) newbie pastor : Yup. That's me. Pastor birthday party ideas : Still getting tons of hits on that one. Make sure y...

I'm behind on my reading for school... but at least I'm back into it and should be caught up by next week, which, by the way, I have to have read from Genesis to Esther in the Old Testament. Being off for Thanksgiving will be a big help with that! I'm also making my way through a few other books. I'm re-reading Simple Church with the rest of the staff here at Woodside. We read a chapter a week and then go over the discussion questions together during our weekly staff meetings. We just started last week and the discussions were pretty interesting. I nearly finished that Star Wars book I picked up months ago! It's nice to just read a book for fun and geek out with it. Gotta make sure I do that more often.