Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had an awesome Turkey Day and that you've harmed as few people as possible on "knee them in the face" Friday. The Baker's had an awesome dinner yesterday in MN, and my stomach is still bulging from it (for my lovely critics, with names usually start with K and B, who would be quick to point to my always large belly, it has grown all the bigger). Andrea joined the ranks of America's Dumbest Idiots and stood in the cold for and hour and a half this morning to get a doorbuster (I enjoyed a wonderful warm bed and sleeping in). From the battlefield reports I've heard it's crazy out there. Our hyper two year old has been all over the place, and is especially enjoying singing Christmas songs with her cousins. She is having simply an amazing Thanksgiving.

I think sometimes we need a tad bit of a reminder that Christmas is not about waiting in lines, getting good deals, and spending lots of money to impress others and to make ourselves happy. It's certainly not about being so focused on buying stuff that we trample an innocent person to death (sadly, that actually happened today and I hope the people involved enjoy jail): http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=316fb59a-e2e7-40d2-a73d-01653a1aae01
It's about Christ coming to save us, to give us a gift of salvation that can not be bought. It's also about giving in a similar Christ like way. So think about God's ultimate "doorbuster" and give out of love, and nothing else, this Christmas season.

Back from vacation

Well, I got to finally enjoy a few days away from crazy hoodlums, I mean kind, loving, and wonderful youth groupers. Actually, the Baker family did enjoy a few days in Iowa seeing family and enjoying the Kings Pointe Water Park Resort in Storm Lake. It was a nice break from the craziness of the fall ministry season. You all will get a laugh at this though. Our hotel room was placed right in the middle of guess what? A high school youth group retreat from a Reformed Church (one about 5 miles from Pastor Steve's last church)! I can just never escape it can I?!? We seriously were surrounded by amped up high schoolers (although I do have to say they were calmer then ours and no one was randomly singing to people on the elevators as far as I know), which I can say I and everyone in my family is totally used to, but it would be nice to escape it at least once. Oh well, God has a fun sense of humor.

I did get to return for a good night of high school youth group. While the game was a flop (the same movie trivia program that worked great last year seemed to this time generate all movies from the early 80's and earlier), we had three great speakers join us to talk about disabilities. Phil shared about losing his leg, and having a "rod" put in the other one, while Steve and Wendy shared about the experiences of their son. We were reminded that regardless of ability we are all children of God, created in God's very image. Major thanks to them for giving their time to speak with us.

We are starting to get really pumped up about our Silver Birch Retreat January 9th-11th. Yesterday was the deadline, but something really cool as happened. We have already filled a bus way beyond capacity, so we have to get a second one. Therefore lets go ahead and see if we can fill that one too. We'll take registrations for another week then. It's awesome to see the mountain of forms in my office and the amount of excitement over this trip.


Oh and half way through this post we lost power due to the great Hingham Power Outage. About 8 solid hours without powers because our power company has all the power for our town routed through one pole the placed just off a busy highway that I think has a magnet in it attracting cars. That thing seems to get knocked down every few months. SO ANNOYING!

Growth night and other ramblings

Well we survived another Growth Night service, with somewhere north of 100 people attending. I hope everyone is enjoying and getting at least something out of their small groups (leaders having a Sundae bar this week probably helped), and it sure sounds like things are going well with our adult groups. I'm honestly glad we don't have a December Growth Night. They take a ton of work, and it will be good to take a step back and really see what we want to do with this (don't worry, it's not going anywhere). I am totally open to suggestions and tweaking things. Our #1 goal in starting this was to provide students (as well as a segment of the adult population) a worship service that was geared towards them in a meaningful way. While we're not going to be moving away from doing worship as a part of our ministry, as it's something really important (not to mention central in the Bible) ,we want to make sure we're doing the type of music and other elements (videos, skits, mini-messages, etc.) that helps our students worship and grow. The feedback I've been getting and seeing is that we've made a nice start considering roughly a year ago most of our students knew little about contemporary worship. It was awesome tonight having people singing back at us loudly (we as a band could barely hear ourselves and we had it pretty cranked), which it pretty cool. I also see many more people opening themselves to worship in new ways (clapping, prayerfully singing, waving arms, etc.), which is also sweet. I hope to spend the next few months really talking to students and getting as best an idea as possible as to what specifically you want us to be doing. This is your worship service, so you're gonna start getting some real ownership as to what goes on.
Tonight's set list
Not to Us: Chris Tomlin
Blessed Be Your Name: Matt Redman
Holy is the Lord: Chris Tomlin
Mighty to Save: Hillsong United
No One Like You: David Crowder
Every Move I Make: Fusebox

Scripture: Judges 7:1-3

Middle school recap

Our Middle schoolers had a fun night that included the guys pretty much mopping the floor with the girls in a variety of games, from climbing over each other, to passing a ball in a crazy position, to memorizing images on the screen. I hope everyone had a great night.

Our HABIT for the week was Bible Memorization, which I know sounds like the worst topic in history. It just wreaks of total boredom right? But think about all the things we have memorized. Songs, movie lines, sports team lineups, and even annoying commercial jingles (call Empire... Today! Gosh I HATE that jingle). We memorize a lot, so why not the Bible? Here's my example for why Bible memorization is important. We all know I'm a caffeine addict. I can hardly function without it. Sometimes my wife will surprise me when I get home that we have to immediately turn around and go out with a group of people, which I so don't have the energy for. So the only thing that can save me such a horrendous situation is... a nice, cool, refreshing, and caffeine laden Mountain Dew. So I tell my waitress: "I will take a Mountain Dew please." And her response "oh, we don't have that. How about a Sprite?" A SPRITE!!! Are you kidding me!?! I want the most caffeinated normal soda and you want me to have a Sprite, which has NO caffeine! Are you kidding! At that moment I am so craving, indeed almost feeling like I NEED a Dew, that I could just scream. You know, life can be like that too. I remember in Seminary when we basically had to memorize the Bible. They would pick a couple of books on an exam and we would have to literally write what happened in EVERY chapter of that book. Yeah, so that means you basically have to know what happens in the entire massive Bible. There were so many times when I just wanted to give up and do something else with my life, because I never thought I could learn all that. But that's when I'd remember "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13). Having just that little portion of God's word stored in my mind reminded me that God would help me through if I worked hard and trusted Him, and indeed that's what happened. You see memorizing scripture is liking having a reserve Dew on you at all times. It gives you that extra boost, that extra focus in those tough times when you need it. Psalm 119 says "I have hidden your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you." We memorize Bible verses so we remember to live the sort of life God has planned for us, a life that is awesome for us, others, and God.

We are challenging are middle schoolers to memorize 10 bible verses each by Wed Dec. 10th (there are a few extras in Andy's office). They all received key chains with 50 verses, so they have plenty to choose from. Any small group getting all members to 10 will get a special prize, and the person memorizing the most will get a gift certificate to their favorite store.

My mega mess

So last night I was finishing dinner preperations at home when I got a call to help someone load something at church they were taking out of the youth room. It was perfect timing since I had just put dinner in the oven and it was going to be 15-20mins before it was done. So I headed over to church and started moving couches out of the youth closet of doom before the people arrived. I was about done with the last couch when it knocked over a cooler that has apparently been in the closet well before I got here. Why do I know that? Well because it opened up and every soda can in it not only hit the floor but immedietly shattered open, spilling their lovely fermented wettness all over the carpet. Now, to make things all the more fun this was about 45 minutes before I had to be at a meeting, so I spend about 30mins on my hands and knees (luckily with some help) trying to soak up fermented soda (did I mention the cooler was totally full?). Now I'm down to 15mins and smell like fermented soda, which happens to smell quite similar to beer, so yeah probably don't want to go to the elder's meeting like that. Now before I can leave I had to move a couch out of the hallway into a classroom, which normally would not have been a big deal. Except this was a hide-a-bed couch. And of course with Murphy's law in full swing the bed totally came out from under the couch. So here I am holding up this couch and the bed has fallen out and is on the floor. Now we're at about 10mins before meeting time. Fortunately my anger allowed me to have an incredible Hulk moment, forcing the bed up through the couch long enough to throw the whole thing in the classroom, shut the door, turn off the lights, and run out of the building before anyone got there. Then I went home and took a shower by dumping about a 1/4 bottle of shampoo on myself. Amazingly I was only a minute late getting back to church and smelled like shampoo and not fermented soda. Yeah crazy things happening!!!

Hanging around the office....

So I have to admit I'm just not in the mood right now to finish my message for tomorrow night, so updating the blog for the first time in awhile seemed like a perfectly good distraction.

It has been a pretty amazing fall around our youth program. We've had some really fun games and activities this year is both groups and created plenty of hilarious moments. Our middle schoolers had an awesome trip to Silver Birch, both groups did some great service projects, and I think both groups have had some good discussions on our topics throughout the fall. One of the most exciting things has been the number of students we are ministering to on a weekly basis. This past week we had fifty five students between the two groups, which is such a God thing since we only have 49 students in middle school and high school in the entire congregation. And neither group was doing anything out of the ordinary: it was simply a normal week (I just happened to count noses for once). We have over a dozen students now regularly attending our youth ministry that have no connection to HRC (and many to no church at all), which is just so exciting. I think we often hide behind this idea that their is no evangelism and outreach that can be done in Hingham/Gibbsville/Oostburg because everyone already has a church. But the reality is there are many unchurched young people, and many more whose families are "members" at a church, but hardly ever attend. You know, I love all the fun stuff we do, which is why I know many of our students come (or bear with being forced by their parents), but what energizes me more then even an energy drink is seeing all these students coming into our ministry and some of them making first time commitments to Christ. Our goal as a ministry is multi-faceted, and with good reason, but we can never lose sight of the importance of reaching the unchurched. It is just so incredibly vital and central in scripture (think back to Jesus' last words before ascending).

Some pre-election comments

I try to stay pretty much out of trying to sway people's votes in elections because I guess I don't see that as the role of a pastor. My role is to preach the gospel, present the teachings of Christ and the Bible, and train disciples of Christ. In a way that role is political in that when people live a life following God it's going to natural influence their life in a ton of ways, including how they vote.

While I'm not going to endorse a candidate here I do want to remind everyone of an issue that has somehow been forgotten in this campaign amidst the war and the economy and that is this: the next president will likely get to nominate between 2-4 supreme court justices. With the court currently fairly evenly split on many issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, religious freedom, and others, the next president will have the opportunity to influence decisions (and therefore offical government policy) for decades (usually a president nominates a 40-50 year old, who stays on well into their 70-80's). If you're still picking a candidate or deciding if it's really worth going out tomorrow I really urge you to see where the two candidates stand on many of the major social and religious issues facing our country (they're VERY different). This election could really affect this country for decades to come. Look at the candidates, the issues, the scriptures, your heart, pray, and then vote tomorrow.