Selling our Home!

We had our first formal offer on our home in Hawley that has been for sale now for five full months. The offer stunk! It was $14,000 less than the already twice dropped price!

This is a tough spot for us to be in. We really financially need to sell this home so we can get back on our feet, but I do not want to give it away. This was our first home that we have ever owned. It will always be very special to us.

We would appreciate your prayers. I countered an offer to the potential buyers. It was no where close to what they had offered. Please pray that we can work out all of these stinky details!

Fish Fry!

We had a major fish fry on Saturday evening at Randy and Jill King's home. It was a blast! We had 37 people come out to enjoy my "catch" in Minnesota. This particular fish was caught by my friend Mike. This Northern Pike weighed more than eight pounds!

It was good to get away for a few days and reconnect with some old friends from Hawley. We fished pretty much non-stop for two days. We limited out both days and I had lots of fish to share with my friends in Boone.

There was lots of ice on the lake we fished on. Here is a picture of me working my way through about 20 inches of ice. Thankfully Mike has a sharp edge on his auger. It made it a lot easier to get through the ice.

It was about 10 degrees while we were fishing. The outside holes kept freezing over. We had to open the holes again every hour or so. I was happy that we caught fish. We have been discussing genuine fellowship and sharing my fish was a good opportunity to put feet to our faith.

Enough with the ice, on with the warn weather!!!

Chicago Bears 39 - New Orleans Saints 14

I have been predicting this the whole season... Bears and Colts in the Super Bowl. In fact, I was irate this past week as every single (expert) predicted the Saints would go into Soldier Field and beat the Bears. Sure it was a beautiful Cinderella story, but come on, Walt Disney is not the owner of the Saints!

No one took into consideration that the Saints had not played in a game colder than 40 degrees all year long. They had not played in those type of conditions one single time. In fact, they even practiced in the Dome all week in preparation for the game.

The Bears had lost only three games all season, and the Saints had lost six. The Bears were playing in front of their home crowd in Chicago. They also do have a pretty fine offense to go with that deadly defense. How could every single (expert) pick against them?

I have to admit when Reggie Bush made his touchdown (that little summer salt was pretty pathetic) I was getting nervous. The turning point was the safety for the Bears. I told Cindy right after it happened, "There's the turning point. We just won!" I was right. It was like throwing raw meat to a hungry dog.

My son Josh loves the Colts. It will be a fun game to watch. Go Bears!

A few days away...

It is official... I am going to take a few days away and travel north to MN and catch some fish! My buddy tells me that the fishing is good and i need some time away. It is also the best time to go, as Cindy will be starting radiation next week.

Since I came to Boone four months or so ago, I have been locked into fourth gear. I need a few days away so that I can catch my breath.

I love to fish. It has been a long time since we had fresh fish, so I am hoping that we limit out. the word on the street is that the Northern pike are doing very well. It would be nice to get into some walleye's though!

I am a little nervous about going back to Hawley. I know that they are having a candidate in a couple of weeks. I would not want to do anything to distract from that. I have been praying for our church family in Hawley regularly since we left. I am excited about God's plans for the church and believe that He is going to continue to do awesome things there.

Please keep me in your prayers as I travel back and forth this week.

My Blog

I saw this on Pastors.com and thought it would be beneficial for anyone who reads my blog to see this...

Here are 10 ways I think pastors and their churches can use blogs to reach out, reach in, position themselves in the community, offer biblical resources, and more:

1. Blog your city – Talk about upcoming city-wide events, upcoming service projects of your church, share photos of the city, neighborhoods. Use your blog to love on your city and her people.

2. Blog the news, pop culture, issues – Weigh in on these things with a biblical perspective (and, a loving one).

3. Blog on money and personal finance – That's what this "anonymous" guy does on his blogs. He blogs on something dear to his heart – money – and his company – Moose Tracks Ice Cream – gets great publicity.

4. Blog on marriage, family, and parenting – Give tips, offer links to relevant news and reports, and, of course, your sermon series on those topics.

5. Blog devotional comments throughout week – Invariably you will come across golden nuggets of truth in your sermon preparation time that will not make it to the pulpit on Sunday. Use these chips of gold to take your people deeper into the Word.

6. Blog about people – Tell stories of life change, what God is doing in your church, link to people, talk well about people, show photos of people ... get the "people picture" here? These are the "human interest"-type stories that people love.

7. Blog your sermons – Retell your sermon illustrations, elaborate on some teaching or facet that you couldn't spend more time on in the pulpit, or offer a devotional guide to accompany your sermon series.

8. Blog on resources for the Christian walk – Give links to good resources, like Bible study sites, Bible reading plans, and even, gasp, other pastors' sermons. Also: Blog on great books you're reading and sweet music you're listening to.

9. Blog to inform – Not only for your community and the watching world, but also for the media ... and your congregation.

10. Blog the Gospel – Blog as a missionary would, retell the Gospel story in your own words, offer insights from your personal life.

Three quick tips for prospective blogging pastors

Be realistic – Set a doable posting schedule. Start by posting once a week (pick a day) and keep it short (100 words or less).

Write to a friend – Think of your posts as an e-mail to a close friend.

Use a free blogging service and keep it simple – Use Blogger.com or WordPress.com and turn "off" the commenting function. Keeping up with comments could keep you REALLY busy. Use one of their free templates, keep it simple, then if you catch the blogging fever, start adding more bells and whistles.

New Phones

Another piece to the puzzle of leaving Hawley and being permanently in Boone has been accomplished. We have switched our cell phones to local Boone, IA numbers.

It is funny all that needs to be done. It is not just jumping into the car and presto! We had to change addresses, schools, homes, and even phone numbers.

We spent two hours in the mall in Ames yesterday making the switch from Alltell to Verizon. This is the phone that I got. I am stepping up in the world as this one has a camera. It also has blue tooth technology, whatever that means. Josh helped me to download the Brady Bunch song for my ring tone.

Technology is cool!

A New Graduate Class

I just started my third graduate class this week. It is called Leadership and Diversity. I have mixed emotions going in to the class. I am a little overwhelmed with the syllabus for the course. It looks to be a very tough class. On the other hand, I'm excited as the course is being taught by Rick Mann, who is the new president of Crown College. It will be cool to interact with him regularly for seven weeks. It will also be more encouragement for me to put my best foot forward.

There are four books required for this course. the first one is the bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I have skimmed through this book in the past, but never really sat down and tried to digest it before. It is truly an amazing book. There is so much that one could comment on.

One area that has kept me thinking is when Covey talks about the different Quadrant's in one's life and how we spend our time doing the not-so-important, and the very-important or urgent gets missed. Prioritizing one's life is very important.

As a pastor, I could spend my entire day just answering and talking on the telephone. Telemarketers alone could fill my day with new gadgets and programs that my ministry must try-out... It is imperative that I make time in my planner for those important things that must get considerable time. I must block out huge amounts of time each week for my sermon preparation. I must block out time each week for my family. Most important, I must intentionally block out times to spend alone with God. If I don't schedule those things, it is a fair chance that they will get squeezed out! Make time for what is important!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody. Wow, it is unbelievable how tough 2006 was. There were oodles of changes in our family. I am praying that 2007 is much better than 2006. I have a lot of plans for Cornerstone Church this New Year.

Just next month we will welcome The Power Team to our church to hopefully kick start our official re-launch. Then in March we have plans to send out 11,000 fliers all over Boone County to invite people to come and worship with us at Easter time.

Our church continues to shows signs of growth. In fact, we averaged 113 in the month of December. Also, December was the highest giving month of the year for us. God is indeed doing a great work here at Cornerstone Church.

We have our Annual Meeting planned for January 21st. There are a few more changes that are going to take place. I'm praying that God would show up in an awesome way. There is way too much good going on to let small stuff keep us down. Happy New Year!