What a month!!

I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since I last posted a blog. Where has the time gone? Well, I know where it has gone to be honest - college started back up again, clinic takes up my other available mornings and today is the first time in a month when I have had a morning off of work/clinic/church/family to do my own thing, and guess where I am. Yup, that's right. I am sitting in my Bowie office enjoying some coffee, reconnecting with some of PG County's finest detectives, the mayor and some other church pastors who frequent 'my' office.

So this should be more of an update than a posting with an attempt at some in-depth meaning, I think. This past month has felt very hectic - only because I am teaching for 30 hours or so on three days and then treating patients for 10-12hours on two days and still trying to accomplish my tasks at church and my role as husband and dad. I have learned that trying to squeeze an extra 30+ hours a week into what was an already busy schedule doesn't really work too well. Something had to give - and the thing that gave for the first few weeks of this madness was actually sleep. For the first two weeks of college I survived (best word to describe it) on about 4hrs a night. Not too good, but just one of those things.

I have been trying very hard to not eat into family time, but I know I have sacrificed some of that too. Julie and I went out on our first date night in months two weeks ago. It was a beautiful evening and one that I would love to do every week, but at this season I dont see either of us making that regular a schedule. We just try to make the limited time we seem to have as effective as possible, knowing that Christmas is coming and a new semester with less pressure is lined up for the Spring.

Julie and I took on some additional responsibility this summer too - we are helping to coordinate our small group ministry in the church, really in the hope of setting up a good structure and format that can be taken on and run with by someone else. It seems that I have a ministry of short term fixes, ship-righting and passing the ball. Dont get me wrong, I love to start new ventures, but sometimes I wonder if we have started something that no-one else in the church wants to do. I'll talk about that in another post some day.

StreetReach continues to develop - some times in a positive way and then sometimes I wonder if we should just shut it down until next summer. The last Saturday we had arranged to go out and serve I had lined up three houses - not a large number by any stretch, and I expected about 12-15 people to show up. Pretty easy - 3 teams of 4-5 and these projects would be done pretty quickly. 5 people showed up. 5 people. Out of a church of some 200 adults and a youth ministry of some 60 teenagers - 5 people showed up. Disappointing to say the least. Having said that though, those 5 people served their hearts out and around 2pm that afternoon we completed the last of the three jobs and headed for home. So I need to be thankful that we served and reached out to three people in our community. There are three more people who know that they are loved by God. So we will focus on that instead of the paltry numbers in attendance.

Tonight we head to Catalyst 2009 - a leadership conference with some 12,000 other leaders gathering for 3 days in Atlanta for training and encouragement. I wonder what sort of challenges I will personally receive. I wonder what sort of challenges we as a church will receive. God bring it, and bring it full on!

I need it, we need it.

I'll write more later.