Making a difference

This picture is a delivery that was made this week to a school just a block from our church. It is the school my daughter will be attending kindergarten at this year. I am the dude in the middle back. The guy next to me is Bob Stevenson, the principal at the school and to my right is our WMU director. The kids are some students at the school. Our church collected nearly $1000 worth of school supplies for kids who can't afford them.

Today was awesome as well. We had lunch at our church for the 60+ teachers and staff at the school. Bob introduced me first as a parent and second as the pastor of the church. When he told the teachers that our church was the one who collected all the school supplies, smiles came across all their faces. I was asked by several of the teachers if we could do the luncheon monthly for them. We went all out for this luncheon. We did grilled chicken sandwiches and grilled chicken salads. Our church family really came through on this one. The teachers were very appreciative of what we had done to help them.

These two acts of Christian love I can tell already are going to go a long way in reaching out to that school and those teachers and kids. Please prayer for our church and for Beall Elementary as we seek to make an impact on that place for God.

Football and Life

I was browsing some blogs today and one I came to was from someone that spoke at the Pennsylvania/South Jersey Convention several years ago when I was pastoring there. Alvin Reid is one of the most genuine guys I have met. He wrote this week "Everything I Need to Know About Ministry I Learned Playing High School Football." It is a great help. I have linked it for you but I wanted to relate a story about High School Football and what it taught me.

I had a coach in McKinney, Texas that taught me an important lesson for life through a football analogy. Coach Sam Serio was the coach's name. He always told us that, "If you do your job the scoreboard would take care of itself." He would say something like, men if you linemen will block who your suppose to block, qb you hand or pass the ball to whom you are suppose to, RB you hit the hole you are suppose to and recievers you run the route the way it is suppose to, I promise you the scoreboard will take care of itself and we will win.

Though this was not always correct. We weren't perfect it never seemed to work out the way it was suppose to. You know things happened. A guy on defense would blow up a block and mess up the whole play. The center(me) quaterback exchange would get fumbled or something like that would happen. If we were playing Gainsville in Gainsville their field would be a mud pit and nothing would go right. The thing is that we couldn't focus on one play we had to do it every play even when the last one went bad. We had to play the game for the whole game, not just one or two plays.

The life of a Christ follower is much like that. You do the things that you are suppose to do and the scoreboard of life will take care of yourself. You read, study and absorb God's word, you spend quality time with God daily in prayer, you use your talents and gifts for God the way they are supposed to be used and let yourself be a witness then God will take care of the rest.

Just like football things are never perfect. People lie, cheat, steal and hurt each other. Then for some reason we stop doing what we are supposed to do and start worrying what everyone else is supposed to do. We live in a messed up world where people don't do exactly what they are supposed to do. Just like that football team we need each other. We can't do it alone. We need to encourage, work with and strenghten each other. Then we need to get back on track doing what God wants us to do. Just like football we have to play for the whole game and we are not done till life is over.