The aha moment from last night’s get-together with friends new to our Ronkonkoma campus has demonstrated the importance of something we could easily take for granted. When we asked everyone how they found out about the church, a young woman who has become a regular told me it was …. the roadside signage.

Pushing those metal holders into rock hard, sun-dried ground is no joke – trust me, I do it some weeks. So much so that from time to time I’ve told the set-up guys not to bother. That won’t happen again.

What we heard from Danielle last night was that she thought maybe we were there some weeks and not others as the signs were not always out. Now I want to look into upgrading what people see as they pass by and we’ll ensure it’s there regularly.

Thanks Danielle – that really helped us.

Oh, and welcome!

+ Wow, that was one very full day. I’m shot.

+ It’s great to have our good friends Wally and Gwen Odum with us for a few days. Wally (pictured above) preached an inspiring, freeing message this morning. No wonder our folks are always so thrilled to see him.

+ Very good morning at both campuses. Great summer turnout.

+ Todd Davidson was back with us at Ronkonkoma. Love the way he leads worship. His rendition of  The Lord’s Prayer was powerful.

+ Good buzz around the place and a lot of excitement about the preparations for 10.10.10 – that’s going to be a very special Sunday.

+ Baptism classes in both locations this morning. Looking forward to Celebration Sunday on September 12th. We’re on course for seeing 100 people baptized in 12 months. Works for me!

+ Spent the afternoon at Paul and Pat Thompson’s house, celebrating Joe’s arrival back home. It is amazing to see what God has done for him and to hear a little more of what God is going in the life of his attacker.

+ Had a get-together at our house this evening for people who are new to our Ronkonkoma campus. What a great time. I loved hearing everyone’s stories of how they found us and what brought them back.

+ There were way too many desserts in our kitchen tonight and I ate way too much. Had better run some extra in the morning.

+ I am grateful to God for the privilege of pastoring so many wonderful people. Sundays rock!

I’m still pumped after our Meet The Pastors get-together in Mastic last night. Quite the crowd. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people, share with them what we’re all about and invite commitment. Next Sunday we have a similar evening planned for folks who are new to our Ronkonkoma campus and I can hardly wait.

There are two questions I always ask at these meetings -

1. How did you hear about our church?

2. Why did you come back the second time?

The answers are always fascinating and none more so than one I got last night. A lady in our Mastic campus told me she had first come to Ronkonkoma and had managed to get her 20-year old daughter to join her that morning. Turns out one of the main reasons she came back was that her daughter loved it.

What impressed the daughter? – The pastor wears jeans and Converse.

So to those who smile politely at my vast collection of this footwear of choice, now I must wear Converse for ever!

+ The day is far from over, but I figured I’d update my blog now as I may not have the energy when I get back home tonight.

+ Heading out in an hour or so for our Meet The Pastors evening in Mastic. Hanging out with around 30 people who are new to that campus, sharing vision and encouraging involvement.

+ Talking about new, saw a number of first-time guests on both campuses today.

+ Great to connect with several old friends who have made their ways back to us.

+ Taryn did an excellent job with the worship. I’m sorry but the bottom line in appreciating a worship set has nothing to do with musical skill or technical excellence (in which she ranks a 10), it’s all very subjective really. What did it do for me? Tons – helped me touch God in a fresh way. Thanks!

+ Our cafe needs to close earlier. Volunteers regularly miss the opening worship. They shouldn’t need to. Come earlier for coffee, etc and free them up.

+ Enjoyed teaching the final part of the series Confessions Of A Veteran Pastor. Praying the message stirred up faith. It’s unusual, but I thought it came out better the first time through than in Mastic – I usually have time to modify my teaching in my head during the ride over there.

+ Announced our plans for a major drive to reach unchurched people in both towns, but with a special emphasis on Ronkonkoma.

+ The best is still to come.

+ Preached way too long, so had to drive to Mastic fast. Made it in just in time.

+ We prayed for Anthony and Evelyn in Mastic, as they are moving to Ohio. Going to miss them, but I think they leave us stronger than they were when they arrived.

+ Get to sit and listen to my good friend Wally Odum preaching for us next Sunday. Always a treat. I want to preach like Wally when I grow up.

+ Praying that the property we own will sell for a good price and quickly. We feel to let it go, move on from thoughts of building a place of our own and use the resources from the sale to take ownership of one of the hundreds of vacant commercial properties all over the place. That will give us a hub.

+ Better nap for half an hour. Full evening ahead.

One Monday morning thirty or more years ago I was sitting with a group of local clergy at our monthly get-together in the Fishermen’s Mission overlooking the harbor in Fraserburgh, Scotland. We were quite a mixed bag, from all kinds of backgrounds, but I enjoyed catching up with these guys and spending some time chatting about ministry related issues.

On the day in question it was my turn to introduce a topic for consideration and I passed on some thoughts that I had gathered from reading the book Preachers And Preaching by the late Dr.Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

In all honesty, I was taken aback by the opposition that surfaced to Jones’ major proposition – that preaching is the most important thing a pastor does.

I believed that then and I believe it now. For all the 1001 things that make up a pastor’s life and service, I am totally convinced that teaching God’s word comes #1.

Some of my former colleagues simply could not grasp how, what they viewed as a 15 minutes homily, could be looked upon as so significant.

Of course I have never been one to preach just 15 minutes. The clock is my constant enemy throughout every message I bring. I’m trying desperately to keep it around 35 minutes nowadays, but do not always/often succeed.

Then again, let me state that teaching God’s word is far more than sharing a homily. It’s not just a religious chat, a motivational talk or the dissemination of Biblical knowledge.

There’s something supernatural about real preaching. That’s because the Bible is more than a book. It’s not just history, poetry and prophecy. It’s living, it’s eternal, it’s God talking.

That’s why hundreds of different people can listen to the same sermon and still think that God was talking to them alone. As the preacher becomes God’s mouthpiece, he talks to them individually, using the speaker’s words to create fresh faith and hope.

Preaching opens deaf ears. Preaching lifts broken spirits. Preaching promises God-given life-change.

Incredible things are happening while God’s word is being taught, much of which we don’t even get to hear about immediately.

I love to preach, not just because of the act of preaching, but because of what God does while it is happening.

It’s #1.

Got this from Perry Noble’s blog this morning and thought it was worth passing on:

#1 – Never follow a leader who seeks to build their platform through constantly tearing down the platform of others.

#2 – Never follow a leader who constantly makes excuses as to why they compromise their character…and refuse to confess and repent of obvious sin.

#3 – Never follow a leader that constantly talks about how gifted they are but refuses to serve in areas that requires them to get their hands dirty.

#4 – Never follow a leader that refuses to declare the entire counsel of Scripture because doing so might cause people to feel uncomfortable.

#5 – Never follow a leader who always has to make every decision…he/she has a control problem and you really don’t want to be around when God reveals to them how “out of control” they really are.

#6 – Never follow a leader who isn’t willing to admit their mistakes…but are always quick to point out yours.

#7 – Never follow a leader who is always quick to throw you under the bus and never has your back when you mess up.

+ Sitting right here in my den and not sure if I’ll get much further. I have my running clothes on, all ready to go, but I’m wiped.

+ Got home at 3.30, having left home at 7.00, so it was a pretty full day.

+ Highlight of the day? Our friend Joe was back in service at our Ronkonkoma campus for the first time since he was brutally attacked in June. That made my day. Please continue to pray for a total recovery. He leaves rehab for good tomorrow.

+ Loved seeing how excited everyone was when they noticed Joe was in the cafe. A lot of teary eyes around.

+ Had great worship time in Ronkonkoma, our own Alie Mueller and the worship band from her school – Smithtown Christian School. They were first rate.

+ Can’t say enough about the commitment level of so many of our folks. Dan Mitrani was leaving for vacation on the 9.00am ferry from Port Jeff, but came in first to set up the lighting for us. You can’t buy that dedication anywhere.

+ Kids area had a new look as they begin a new series on space. Sad thing was that whenever I said – “Space the final frontier” – I got a blank look in return. Where have all the Trekkies gone?

+ Showed my versatility by making the coffee in our cafe. Though I say it myself, it was pretty darned good.

+ Spoke to several first time guests. Exciting to see new folks, especially during the summer months. Loads of regulars vacationing.

+ Very happy to see how many people have already signed up for baptism on Celebration Sunday, September 12th.

+ Mastic was buzzing by the time I arrived. We have a great group of volunteers over there too, who make church happen every week.

+ Over 30 new people have signed up for next Saunday’s Meet The Pastors evening. Looking forward to getting to know them all better. Thankful for continuing growth.

+ Enjoyed lunch with my newly extended family. Eric’s daughters – my four step-grandaughters – are here just now and I’m enjoying getting to know them. Life often goes differently than we expect, but even amidst change there are blessings.

+ Next Sunday is the last part of our Confessions teaching series. My good friend Wally Odum will be teaching for us on the 29th and then we launch into our preparations for a very fruitful falll.

This has been an insanely busy week, compounded I guess by the fact that I did a couple of extra Weight Watchers meetings to help out colleagues who are away on vacation. But it has been a very encouraging week for a number of reasons, one of which I’m going to highlight here.

This week we’ve received several messages from folks expressing appreciation for our church and mentioning how God had blessed them since they had joined us. We don’t get a lot of those. They really did us good.

In our culture we are generally quick to complain, but slow to compliment. That’s why one email is like gold and several is an amazingly uplifting experience.

My thanks to those who shared their feelings – and wherever you worship, if you haven’t done so lately, let your pastor know he’s appreciated. It just might make a very tiring week into a very special one for him too.

+ Great morning at church today.

+ The Mets lost this afternoon.

+ The gym kicked my butt late afternoon.

+ It was the morning that mattered most out of all that of course.

+ It has been a challenging few months for us as a church in many ways, but an outstanding period in others. I felt like this morning we turned a corner. It was an outstanding day.

+ The music rocked at both campuses, with Todd Davidson and his band bringing it in Ronkonkoma (that’s him above) and our good friends from Lamb’s Chapel were terrific in Mastic.

+ I preached the third part of the series Confessions Of A Veteran Pastor, talking about What Gives Me My Biggest Buzz.

+ I get my biggest buzz when someone who was lost comes to faith in Jesus and that happened in both places today. Great day – heaven’s partying and I’m celebrating too.

+ Looking forward to Sunday evening meetings later this month with new folks from Ronkonkoma and from Mastic.

+ Surprised at how many new faces we’re seeing, especially since it’s the height of summer and of vacation time too.

+ Can’t believe the Mastic campus is almost one year old. That has been quite a ride.

+ We talked a bit about baptism today. Celebration Sunday will be September 12th and we’ll be baptizing that day. More than 60 people have taken this step since last November and we’re looking forward to adding to that number.

+ Man, this was a good day!

As I mentioned yesterday, we had some amazing times during the years I pastored Cairnbulg Assembly of God, like baptismal services at the shore that attracted unbelievable crowds. A newspaper reporter estimated there were 3,000 people at one, but there was no real way to verify the number.

Yet while there was a lot of very good stuff going on, there were tensions in the background over the direction in which I was taking the church, leading to my resignation in October 1984.

The remote nature of the community was to lead to a major dilemna. A substantial amount of people in the church actually liked the livelier services and the more contemporary approach I had introduced, but they knew that my departure would leave the pendulum to swing way back in the opposite direction to tradition and sterility.

They were not going to find another church that offered the style they had come to embrace and they did not want to go back into history. So what were they to do?

Several of these good people shared their problem with me and I realized that while I could well walk away (though I did not want to), they lived here and there was no live church around. Person after person kept telling me they could not settle in the church that would now move backwards and I prayed a lot about what to do.

Don’t ask me where I got the number, but I came to the conclusion that if 40 people asked me to start a new church, I would. 40 did and we launched Inverallochy Christian Fellowship in the village school with 112 people present for our opening service.

I led ICF for the next seven years and those were some great times. Sitting here now I think of the people who came to Christ, of the ventures we got into, of the dreams we shared together.

We used to baptize – in the sea of course – every month and each month there were new believers ready to take that step. We weren’t that polished and our Sunday meeting place wasn’t that great, but God did some amazing things in the Cotton Hall.

Of course there were tensions with the Assembly of God, which really was not far away at all. The situation was not ideal, but in an ideal world, I would have still been in a thriving Assembly of God and we would be moving forward in leaps and bounds. When that door closed another opened and I thoroughly enjoyed the ability to actually lead and to be innovative without being bound to the way things had always been before.

We had no history so we were able to simply build a future.

Fifteen years in one very special place was a blessing from God.