Sunday Fellowship

Yesterday following church we got together with our sister church, Bethel Alliance, and enjoyed a co-ed recreational softball game together. I am a firm believer that we are all on the same team. Bethel is only a few miles from Cornerstone. A lot of our people must work together in Boone. Perhaps there are people we see everyday that we are not aware that they are believers. If that is the case, this could be a wonderful opportunity to build our support system.

Ray Hoke is a great man. He pastor's Bethel. He and I have been building our relationship. Yesterday we were able to start including our churches in the relationship building. I have been teasing my church that this is our opportunity to beat up on our big sister! We did it too. We won 15 to 7. I even took an at bat and had a single, but was thrown out trying to squeeze it into a double. I personally think it was a lot closer than it looked. My buddy Brian could attest to my congregation that at one time I got around the bases a lot quicker than what I do now...

This is the team photo that was taken after the game. The only thing that I will mention is that 9 of the 13 people in the photo were not a part of Cornerstone Church last year! Cool huh? God is doing a remarkable thing at Cornerstone!

Answered Prayer

A quick note to update everyone that the house is 100% sold. It closed last week. Thanks for all of your kind words and prayers over the past year. Hallelujah!

Neat Little Book...

I came across a neat little book last week at Barnes and Noble. It is a short book, only about 80 pages, but I found it to be remarkably interesting and thought provoking.

Seth Godin is in my opinion the guru of marketing. He knows his stuff. I have read several of his books, and usually re-read them once I have finished.

This is not Bible College material. Don't get me wrong, it is not sac- religious by any means, but his writing usually have no mention of the church, or God, or anything else surrounding a religious theme.

I first learned of Godin when I was recommended to read his first big seller which was called, "The Purple Cow." I was instantly hooked. Since then I have read, The Big Moo, Permission Marketing, and Free Prize Inside. This week in two settings I read, "The Dip."

Let me throw a quote to you from the book... “Never quit something with great long term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”

Granted this is not Scripture, but I believe that every single pastor in America can learn from this. Ministry is tough. In fact, sometimes it sucks! There have been multiple times this past year that I have wanted to quit. Be something else. Get a job that you don't have to take home. Quit listening to all the endless nagging. Make some money for a change. Just quit!!! The fact is that the long term potential of the profession that I have been called to do has the best outcome of anything else I could imagine.

The last page of the book says this...

All our successes are the same. All our failures, too.
We succeed when we do something remarkable.
We fail when we give up too soon.
We succeed when we are the best in the world at what we do.
We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit.

Let me highly recommend this book to you. I think that it would be well worth your $10 investment!