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 :-)