Trouble With Christmas

If there is one thing that I'm not sure if I appreciate about Canada is the ridiculously early Christmas season. There have been Christmas lights up for weeks now. I feel like the season will have worn its welcome before Christmas even roles around. I'm not trying to undermine the birth of Christ in any way. Please don't get me wrong. I'm talking about the Christmas season that this world has taught us to live. With lights and sounds and bells that jingle. Enough is too much. I need some turkey pretty soon or somebody might get hurt.

This past Sunday at church was very different from any other. To begin with, our congregation was massive. OK, so massive might send the wrong message. However, relative to the average Sunday there were a lot of people. There were at least 60 people there while our usual average is around 30. A one-hundred percent increase in one week is, I feel, something to take note of. It was also the first week that I was able to lead worship. It was exciting to be able to use the sound system properly. And by properly I mean project the sound of instruments and vocals from it. This does not usually happen. We also used a video projector and power point to display the words to the songs, opposed to the normal overhead projector. People seemed excited about the changes that took place judging by their positive comments. Obviously, these are just structural changes. Which on the surface look nice. However, I believe there need to be much deeper changes taking place in this church. Changes that no amount of organization can help. This is where prayer becomes essential. Please help.

This past week was the 24/7 week of prayer. I believe I mentioned the details of that in my last post. This was an intense week. Prayer is so powerful and its effectiveness from this past week has already been seen in awesome ways.

This week we are beginning a new class titled Foundations of Church Ministry. I'm so grateful for this class already. I've been struggling with "church ministry" for some time now and this class is proving to be really healthy for me. I'm sure I will have more thoughts on this by the end of the week.

My new favorite pass time has now become the game of Trouble. It's such an elementary escape from the never ending thought processes of school work. Trouble is one of the most valuable assets to my Bible college experience, right next to foosball and Bible commentaries.