Monday morning has arrived right on schedule. I'm glad to see that; I'd hate to see the days of the week get out of sequence. How would we handle that?

We had a great service yesterday. We had a baptism, brought two new members into the church and I preached the sermon and played a trumpet solo. We had 92 in attendance. How wonderful to see the pews filling in a little more each week. A year ago our attendance was 56. I guess we are doing something right. I just hope it keeps going at this pace. It would be nice to be able to turn a really healthy church over to the new permanent pastor, --- if we ever actually get one. Right now that process seems to be going extremely slow. I call it working at "church speed" which is even slower than congress.

We are supposed to be having storms this afternoon and maybe even tomorrow. We can use the rain again but we don't need any severe storms. I'm waiting to see if the roof fix the contractor did actually took care of the problem. I really hope so.

Our big news locally is a mess going on with one of the non-denominational "mega-churches" here in town. They have a membership of about 7000 people, although I don't know what their weekly attendance is. Ms. Kate and I have attended that church a few times and enjoyed the service although it is conducted differently than the "traditional way" we do things here. I know they hold several services every Sunday and their sanctuary holds about a 1000 and from what we have seen, every service is full. Their board of elders fired the lead pastor and the "teaching" pastor. Now, two more pastors and an elder have also resigned because of that. I don't know how big their pastoral staff is but it would not be unusual for them to have at least a dozen. I feel for the congregation. Our church here has a long history of inner church turmoil and is in fact the reason we are without a settled pastor today. But, I can't imagine the turmoil they must be going through. From news reports there are several different stories and reasons being given for the actions that took place and thank goodness none of it has anything to do with improprieties on the part of the pastors. It seems to be a difference in theology and how the church should be run. It would be terrible though if the spirituality of the congregation had been ripped apart because of egos. When that happens people storm out of the church mad at the world and the church and God and they often stay away from church because they feel they have been betrayed. My point in telling you all of this is to ask you to add that church and those 7000 parishioners to your prayers  and hope that they can have many prayerful discussions and come together again.

That is about all of the news that's "fit to print" for today. I'll be going out to do some visitation today maybe. I've had some stomach issues today and maybe I should postpone that in case it would be viral. I pray your day will be blessed and I pray you take the time to stop what you are doing and give thanks to God Almighty for a day full of blessings. Peace.