Well, the big day is here! I will be ordained in about 5 hours! Yay! I can’t wait! District Council has gone pretty well. Right now I’m sitting in a seminar with Ed Stetzer talking about being a missional church. Good stuff! In an hour and a half, we will get pictures taken with our kids, go to dinner with the in-laws and then come back for practice and more pictures.

It has been confirmed that we are the first couple to get ordained at the same time in Michigan, at least for the past 20 years that our district superintendent, Bro. William Leach, has been in office. We succeeded in confusing the ceremony. But, having practiced, all should go well. I must be honest that it was rather fun confusing things. :)

Ed Stetzer is a great speaker. He talks realy fast, but what he has good church planting stuff to say. He is saying that just like missionaries who go to other countries, we need to prepare for our “mission field” where we are pastors. We need to be intentional about reaching people. Just like missionaries learn a new language and culture, we need to continually relearn the culture of those we are trying to reach. That might mean having church in a coffee shop or bar. It might mean going out to help a farmer plant his crop. Whatever the situation of the people, we need to associate ourselves with them in an obvious way. We have “engage the culture where they are.” He listed three things that we need to be do in conjunction with each other.

“Our churches need to be biblically faithful, culturally relevant and counter-culture community for the gospel and the kingdom.”

Good stuff!!! Well, I’m signing off for now!

If there are typos in this post, my apologies! I’m using Hubby’s laptop. Did I tell you that a 7-foot shelf with 20-30 vases fell on him and his laptop? I don’t think I did. I blogged about it on my minister’s network on ning.com, but never copied it over. I will have to do that.