Kevin Presseault

Last week in our staff meeting we discussed chapter 3 of IT by Craig Groeschel. Again, another short chapter, but got me thinking long and hard about a major part of my ministry. I loved that he was quite upfront with the fact that simply looking at what other churches and ministries are doing cannot produce it . It is something far greater then something we can quickly learn in a conference, seminar or book. Now... am sure every single one of us would agree with this... however I've begun to realize that my actual working style wasn't in sync with this belief (why do I suddenly want to start singing boy band songs???) In my particular ministry I cover a lot of very different ground. Way back when I started I was told that I'm supposed to be the expert in all of these areas of ministry, and that I report back on what we should be doing in these particular areas. This is fine... except my list of ministry area is women's ministry, men's ministry, senior ministr...

What a crazy week! I'm speaking at our men's retreat this weekend so I'm praying, reading and working like mad to finish this up! I'm looking forward to this... but I wish it hasn't been so crazy leading up to it. Would have been nice to have a couple of quiet weeks before hand to prepare. We were out of town this weekend with Danielle's family. We went to spread her father's ashes with her brothers and sisters. Very nice weekend... but I'm sure I'm going to pay for getting home this morning at 2AM then at the church at 9. GroupLink went great last week! Four new small groups created. I could never have done that using sign up sheets in the foyer. I'm so thrilled that that worked well. I have a splinting headache right now... probably from the lack of sleep. I'm 3 weeks late getting the new Small Group Leader podcast finished. Figures. I'm also just late on a bunch of other things as well... and I have NO clue how I'm actua...

Tomorrow is the 2 year anniversary of when we packed up and left Montreal for our new life here in Elmira. Funny. Sometimes it feels a LOT shorter then that and other times it feels a LOT longer. Weird how that works :) We're heading out to celebrate our anniversary as a family. It's something we started last year so that we never forget all that God has done for us in this move. Isn't that the point for celebrating? And I guess being Montrealers at heart we're always looking for a reason to celebrate :)

This week, we discussed chapter 2 of IT by Craig Groeschel in our staff meeting. A nice short chapter but a really great example of what it looks like and what it looks like when we lose it . One little sentence in this chapter REALLY stood out to me. Craig describes his experience when he was invited by some other students to join them at their church that Sunday evening. He had spent the morning at a church that felt like "it was as if the church had died years before, but no one had noticed." The Sunday evening church was different. There was something VERY different going on. Craig puts it like this: Something special was about to happen. Everyone there knew it. They weren't just anticipating it; they were positively expecting it. They were POSITIVELY EXPECTING IT! I love that! They were positively expecting to come into the presence of the living God. They were positively expecting God to move and transform lives. They were positively expecting to leave that...

Check out this video! Two young guys, Kyle Martin and Gavin White, put this video together for our Men's Retreat which is coming up in October. They did an AWESOME job!! And the fact that I get to live out my Indiana Jones dreams is pretty cool too! Woodside Men's Retreat from Kevin Presseault on Vimeo . (If you're reading this on Facebook check out this link !)

In August, I read the book "It" by Craig Groeschel. Twice in one a week. I'm on my fourth time through it. We're reading it as a staff and I given copies of It to all my small group leaders and other leaders here at Woodside. I thought it would be fun to discuss it, chapter by chapter, here on my blog so that everyone from Woodside who is reading it can participate in the discussion. So let's jump into IT! If you're reading the book along with us then you already know what IT is... so I won't even bother to try to explain IT. The book does a great job of that. But what is it about IT that got me so passionate about IT. Well... if I can be brutally honest... this summer I was beginning to wonder if I was losing IT. Our summer was hard. Both Danielle and I working. The lost of Danielle's dad. No vacation time except a two short days after the funeral. I was exhausted, frustrated and feeling quite alone. I was questioning God. Why send me somewhere to los...

I really think we live in the best neighborhood in all of Elmira! One of my neighbors just brought over a coffee from Tim Horton's :-) She had picked up some coffee for her husband who works in construction and his crew but couldn't find them... so she dropped one off here. That just made my day :-)

This morning in the mail I received a free ticket to attend the Promise Keepers conference in Mississauga, Ontario on November 14 & 15. I'm SOOOO going to this! Last year, I was way too busy at the church to be able to make it to the event. This year, I'm actually going to be twice as busy that week but I'm dropping everything that weekend and going! My guys from Montreal are going to be there so I'm heading down to connect with them, and connect with God. That weekend is reserved just for me! Well... me and God! Hopefully that doesn't sound too selfish :-) But after the summer we've had, I desperately need a weekend to reconnect with a God who loves me, who didn't abandon me, and who wants to do incredible things through me if I could just step out of his way!

I did some more drawing today with the kids. Here's the latest attempt to rediscover the artist in me. This has been a great stress relieve over the last couple of days :-) Definitely will be doing more of this.

Last night I sat down and picked up a pencil and started sketching... that was the first time I've done this in YEARS! I had such a fun and relaxing evening doing this! I gotta do it more often. Here is the first sketch to come out of this attempt to rediscover the artist in me :-)

Our awesome worship Pastor showed this video to me a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was hilarious! (If you're reading this on Facebook, click the link to view this on my blog).

If you want to hear my incredibly geeky sermon on the Armour of Religion you can give that a listen to HERE . I'd love to get your feedback on this.

You know... sometimes being an ex-computer guy in ministry can be pretty frustrating! :-) Why? Because, back in the corporate world I had all these great resources for helping our teams to work more effectively and efficiently. And I would LOVE to be able to use them here at the church... but we just don't have the money to put into these things... so sometimes I feel stuck in the 1970's and not able to move things along as well as we could be. OK... I'm over my pity party :-) But I figured I would throw this out there in case some of my old IBM/Lotus contacts still read this blog... Do any of you know where I can find a free place to set up some Quickplace workspaces?? I would love to get a couple of them up and running for the church... so a couple of our teams can work together online. This would be a pretty small number of people... 20 to 30 max and I can't imagine it taking any significant disk space. So any leads on this would be fantastic! And much apprecia...

Every fall, the staff here at Woodside work through a book together. Last year it was Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. Starting September 9th we'll be reading " It " by Craig Groeschel. This book has really rocked me! I'm so looking forward to seeing what God will do as we read it as a ministry team. In fact, I'm so excited about it I ordered 30 copies of it to hand out to our Small Group leaders and other ministry leaders. Each week I'm planning on discussing a chapter of it on this blog and hopefully we'll get some good discussions going with the staff and other leaders here. Bring it !