Post-weekend purge.

So it's been another whirlwind week. Every weekend I find myself asking where the week went; it's just crazy how time flies!

- Monday was the first day of school for several school districts in El Paso, including the Ysleta district where I live and where I volunteer. Every Monday at lunch I volunteer at Wayside Teen Center, and I've missed that all summer so it was good to be "back in the saddle", as they say.

- Tuesday was a super crazy office work day, and we met with the landlord of the shopping center that the Firehouse is in and talked about what we want to do with the suite next door that we will begin renting in September. We're going to make it a game room, leaving ALL of the current space in the Firehouse open for people to spread out in discussion groups on Sundays and more room for rows of chairs and to play group games on Thursdays at the Mix.

- It was really exciting to talk renovations, and I can hardly wait to see the work begin - but there is so much to do in order to do even such a minor renovation. Crazy!

- Wednesday was all day staff, which I wrote about earlier this week (see it here).

- Thursday was the Mix ...and it was awesome! You can read about it here.

- Friday ...ahhh, my day off. Oh how I love Fridays! I had some Peter Piper Pizza and then chilled at home and saw the movie August Rush. OH MY GOODNESS, that is a great movie! I love the music in it ...I just may buy the soundtrack.

- Saturday was the same as every Saturday has been for like 2 months because of the rain: yard work. There's been so much rain that the grass and weeds grow like crazy so between 4 yards at 2 homes, that keeps me very busy. After yard work, I had to go get some stuff done at the office for our Sunday morning gathering at the Firehouse, then make a Wal-Mart run. I was running around so much that I didn't even get to have dinner until about 8:30 pm.

- And today ...let's just say ..."eventful." After our church gatherings this morning, I took Kayla, David, and Leah Pryor out to eat at Pei Wei, and Rick Lovelady and Briana Loya joined us. Man, Pei Wei is so good! Anyway, for some reason in the men's restroom there's an interesting sign that seemed a bit out of place - see if you can figure out why:


After Pei Wei, I took the Pryors home. They live out in the county, in Fabens, Texas. I pulled up to their home and asked Kayla where I should park. Her response: "Oh anywhere." Naturally I thought "ok, I'll park anywhere." In hindsight, I probably should have thought it out a little more.

So I pulled up right by the front door and when I stopped, I saw a bunch of rainwater in the grass and thought "I'd better back out and park somewhere else" and then I heard it: the sound of tires stuck in the mud.

(you can't see it, but the front passenger's side wheel was stuck in the mud down to the axle)

So that was a new experience for me. I've been stuck in sand, but never in mud before. After probably about 15 minutes of pushing and rocking the car back and forth, we finally got it out (though Kayla and Leah made the bug guard on the front of my hood come loose).

The Pryor parents came home and showed me around the campus (they live at the International Family Missions site in Fabens), and then I headed home around 5 pm.

On the highway home, going 70 mph, the bug guard flew off my hood, struck my windshield, nearly scared me to death, then landed on the highway behind me and shattered into several pieces. Thankfully there was no damage to my CRV, but now it looks weird without the bug guard.

So all in all, it's been a great week. I really enjoyed hanging out the Pryors today, and I'm really looking forward to not working tomorrow because it's Labor Day. Can you say cookout!?

Friday Five - People.

So it's Friday (just barely, but there's still about 20 minutes left as I start writing this), and that means it's time for another Friday Five. Today I'm going to tell you about 5 people who were once in my life but are not anymore. These people aren't dead, they just aren't really major players in my life anymore (people I see, talk with, and interact with everyday) - but I wish

1. Dave & Katie Schubert. A 2-for-1. These two (three now with baby Haley Grace) were monumental in my life when I began full-time ministry. They were my first financial supporters when I began as an intern at Del Sol Church - that means they were the first people to say they believed in me. They let me be a sort of junior leader in a small group, and really respected me as a rising leader when everyone else still treated me like I was just a kid. Dave is an amazing leader and is a great teacher and preacher. He taught me the games of Mao and Signs. I could go on and on, but man - I really miss these people. They live in Chicagoland now and it's pretty expensive to fly out there so that makes it difficult to visit but I hope that someday soon I'll be able to see them again. Man - I just love them and owe so much to their influence in my life.

2. Ashley Fendley. My favorite redhead and pretty much my closest friend during my upperclassmen years. We talked about so much, we had one of those "I like you and you like me but neither of us said anything until years later" type of relationships so we flirted a lot but I never really took action because I was a freakin chicken. But she really was a good, honest, always-there-for-you friend and she'll always have a special place in my heart as a good friend.

3. John David & Patricia Delgado. Like Dave and Katie, these two had a HUGE part of my life as a pastor, leader, and Christian. They poured so much time, emotion, and money into me for nearly 4 years before they left Del Sol for a church in the Atlanta area. We were all three so different and that led to so much frustration, anger, encouragement, and learning together. It was some of the most genuine community I had ever experieced and I miss that iron-sharpening-iron/I know you, you know me relationship. John David and Patricia knew pretty much everything about my heart and my personality and I knew so much about theirs - and I really miss that. That relationship is one of those once-in-a-lifetime relationships that I wonder if I'll ever have again outside of marriage.

4. David Wagner. David was one of my youth when I was starting out in youth ministry; for a long time he seemed to really be passionate and genuine about his relationship with God. He is an incredible leader and could have been an incredible leader in the Church. We spent so much time together, from menial work to worshipping together at Promise Keepers to setting dry brush on fire with fireworks on the 4th of July. We had so many fun times and so many deep, spiritual times ...but then he met a non-Christian girl and you know how the story goes from there. I still love him though, I still like him, and I still see him so full of potential and I hope and pray that God will recapture his heart again soon.

5. Bryan Macias. Bryan was a lot like David. Same age, same graduation year, same leadership potential, but he had a huge heart for God and really seemed like he was gonna stay strong and be a faithful Christian well into college. He had such incredible, amazing faith like I had rarely seen in anyone, let alone someone his age. He was the kind of person that convicted me and challenged me to grow not by his words but just by the way he lived his life as a Christian. But for whatever reasons that I honestly have no idea what they are, we drifted apart as he drifted away from God. Thankfully he met a Christian girl and she seems to have influenced him to come back to God; I hope and pray it's a genuine comeback.

Dang ...now I'm all melancholy and sad. I miss these people so much, but I'm also so thankful for the time I did have them as major players in my life.

the Mix last night was amazing!

So I taught on prayer last night at the Mix. If you were there, remember that prayer is our lifeline to God, so no prayer means no life.

(That was my "one thing", a la Andy Stanley's book "Communicating for a Change.")

I must tell you that I was really nervous and uncomfortable about my message; I wrote the main outline a couple of weeks ago and filled in the "meat" of the message this week, but I felt very uncomfortable about it for several days and I just could not figure out why. I wanted to rewrite it and kept asking God to show me what He wanted me to say, and in the end I was not able to rewrite it at all.

That was a really good thing - a God thing, really.

See, after investing some time with God on Wednesday, I felt good about the message. I felt it was what God wanted me to speak. All week long I have been asking - nay, begging - the Holy Spirit to anoint me and inspire me and fill me as I spoke. I'm always nervous when I have to preach because I recognize that being a preacher is a huge calling from God, and 2 Timothy 2:15 sets a high standard for how I must handle God's Word. When Thursday night rolled around, I was nervous because I had only had a chance to look over my notes once since I had written my message and I did not want to improperly handle God's Word.

Right before we started the program, I had Lee Loper pray for me and it's like he knew what was on my mind even though I didn't say anything about being nervous. He prayed for me to be courageous and when he prayed that word, I knew God was gonna do something great. Our youth lead worshipper band did a pretty great job and for the first time in a long time, I just got lost in worshipping God through music as we sang.

When they finished their last song, I went up and it was like all the nervousness and anxiety just fell right off of me and the Spirit of God fell on me like the heavy rainfall that was going on right outside the Firehouse.

So I went up on stage and man did I preach! I felt courageous and bold, felt God's power in me, and knew it was God speaking to me and through me. I saw several people wiping away tears in their eyes and even the brand-new 7th graders were engaged and listening to my every word.

It was amazing and it was totally a God-night. It was His anointing on me, it was Him keeping the crowd under control and engaged with the message. It was Him working on the hearts and minds of everyone in the audience, and I believe that He did something last night which we will begin to see the fruit of pretty soon.

God's doing great things at Del Sol Church's Fire Youth Ministry. I'm humbled and honored that as 1 Timothy 1:12 (NLT) says, Christ "considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve Him."

All-day Staff Meeting.

Today was our all-day staff meeting at Del Sol Church. From 9 am 'til just past 3 pm, we came together as a staff to review our Grow Process. In other words, we asked "How are we doing as a church in Loving God? Loving People? Serving the World?"

We asked some tough questions in our evaluation - as individuals we had to look at our own leadership, celebrate our wins with each other, and encourage each other as we admitted our failures.

It was a LOOOONG meeting, but a really good meeting. We asked tough questions, we made some tough decisions to cut activities and programs that don't help us accomplish our mission, we tweaked things that needed tweaking, we prayed, we cried, and we left with a renewed sense of commitment to being a church that is all about Loving God, Loving People, and Serving the World.

- I love that we can disagree and still be one.
- I love that we can be blatantly honest and still be one.
- I love that we really don't have any sacred cows and are willing to consider not doing something, even if it's not a bad thing we're doing.
- I love that more and more, justice and compassion are becoming the focus of what we do
- I love that we have so many people in GrowGroups
- I love that "Loving God, Loving People, and Serving the World" is not just hanging on the wall, but is happening down the hall
- I love that so many are serving and giving financially
- I love that we're growing more and more united each as a staff as the days go on.
- I love that criticism isn't seen as personal but as something mean to be a better church.
- I love that criticism is few and far between, but praise is abundant.
- I love that after so long, we're finally growing again.
- I love that Pastor Walter still gets fired up about the parking situation.
- I love that our church family is more and more getting the mindset of thinking outside of ourselves to Serve the World.
- I love that we're open to whatever God is leading us to do.
- I love that we're serious about using technology to reach people for Christ.
- I love that the idea of us being a multi-venue and/or multi-site church is not an unrealistic dream in the not too distant future.

I love Del Sol Church.



The mission of Del Sol Church is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by creating environments that encourage and equip people to Love God, Love People, and Serve the World.

We need prayer in the Borderland.

So nearly 1,000 people have been murdered in the drug cartel violence in Juarez, just across the border from El Paso. Now, there is a possibility the drug violence might spill here into the United States.

Most authorities are saying this is not a probability, but just a possibility and that if it does happen, there will probably not be innocent bystander killed. Either way, this is messed up and this is a time for us to pray for the El Paso/Juarez borderland.

You can read about it here: http://www.kvia.com/global/story.asp?s=8897111



God, we need You to step in and intervene. Bring sanity out of the madness, bring good out of the bad, show Yourself mighty and bring Your renown out of this evil.

Post-weekend brain purge.

- What a crazy week! Today was Promotion Sunday at Del Sol Church's Fire Youth Ministry, one of the biggest Sundays of the year, so planning for it all week was a beast ...but a good beast.

- It was seriously crazy - I think it's gonna take a few days to recover.

- We had 54 junior highers and 43 high schoolers this morning, plus several parents at both gatherings. That's a total of 97 youth today! That's pretty good considering we've been averaging around 65 - 70 youth the past year.

- It's great to have higher numbers because of promoted 6th graders, but we've also been seeing numerical growth through our youth inviting their lost friends to the Mix on Thursdays. Lost people growth is the kind of growth I want to see, not "sheep swapping" growth. Pray for lost people growth!

- Because of our growth, we need more adult leaders (especially in the junior high!) so please pray for that.

- Also because of our growth, the church council approved our proposal to rent the suite next door to the Firehouse in order to make it a game room/small group gathering room and give us more room in the main area of the Firehouse for future growth. That is a HUGE answer to prayer and I am SO pumped about the coming renovations!

- I love it when God brings the words of the Bible to reality in life. Proverbs 11:25 says that the man who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. On Friday, I had the privilege of being part of a conspiracy of grace and even though it required me to work on my only day off, I finished the night feeling so refreshed and blessed because I had been a part of blessing someone else. I love conspiracies of grace!

- I FINALLY cleaned out my CR-V on Saturday. It had been so dirty and muddy from all the rain we've had lately and it had been driving me crazy! It's so stressful for me to drive around in a dirty car, but it always feels so good when I finish cleaning out the inside of my car and get to enjoy having a clean interior to drive around in.

- One word to describe Promotion Sunday this morning: Crawesome. (Crazy+Awesome=Crawesome).

Election '08 - I've made my choice.

This is the man that I want to be the leader our great country for the next 8 years: