Monday Miscellaneous

- Our Junior High program this weekend was one of our best in a long time. It was nothing fancy, just jam-packed with lots of elements and variety. Attendance was up with the start of school, and lesson focused on a short, simple gospel presentation. Next weekend we kick off our church-wide "40 Days Of Love" series that we are calling "The Face Of Love". We have some fun stuff planned and it should be a good series.

- Saturday was our community-wide grand opening of the Refinery and it was a huge success. Approximately 4,000 (of which at least half were on our campus for the first time)people showed up for a three-hour open house. Good stuff.

- Our high school ministry is kicking butt! I technically oversee High School as well a Junior High, but have very, very little to do with anything going on in that department. Josh Griffin has been leading the charge for about 9 months now and, in my opinion, the team and the high school programs have never been stronger. The brand new auditorium that was built for their use in the new building is already too small to handle their Saturday night crowd...a great problem to have but also a bummer in a BRAND new building!

- It rarely happens, but this weekend a junior higher tracked me down after service to tell me that she spent some time telling her parents about my talk from last weekend and how she will always remember it. Of course, the part she remembered and shared with her parents was the goofy story I told to set up my talk. It didn't seem like she actually remembered what the lesson was about. Oh, well...baby steps I suppose.

-We learned a lesson this weekend that I would like to pass on; one I'm sure you already know: Junior Highers love rubber bands. To promote our new program, The 3, we put stacks of promo cards on each chair. It made sense to rubber band them together, but we didn't consider the fact that having rubber bands in the hands of hundreds and hundreds of junior highers could have an effect on our program!

- Guilty pleasure of the weekend: A group of "The Guys" went to see a late night show of 'Death Race' last night. Totally lame, but totally awesome guy flick.

- Painful moment of the weekend: Before the movie a few of us "old fellas" went for a late night skate at our new skate park. There is a new 5-foot half pipe that I have been promising to drop into and last night felt like a good time to fulfill said promise. I finally made it on my third try, but slammed really hard the first two times. Hard enough that my 42-year-old body is feeling it this morning.