On Sunday October 2, after our worship service, we will be heading to Dixie Orchards to have lunch together and go apple picking.
We also encourage you to pick an extra bag or two and donate them to our local food bank, “The Sharing Place.” Dixie Orchards are located at 14309 Dixie Road, Caledon, ON. To visit their website click on the graphic.
One of the problems with being a preacher is that you are always in evaluation mode. This is particularly true when you visit other churches while on holiday!
What is the worship like? Are there songs to take back home? What was the greeting like? Are they friendly enough? Are they welcoming enough? How comfortable am I in this particularly church culture? How weird do I feel? That last question isn’t my everyday general open-ended question that always seems appropriate to me. This is more of a ‘How weird does being here make me feel?’ question.
Then there is the preaching. Just as doctors make the worst patients, preachers make the worst preachees. We often get wrapped up more in critiquing than in listening to God’s speaking. Though, I have to say that I think I am better than many of my preacher friends in this regard—at least that’s my critique.
Keele Street/Maple Leaf Christian Churches, with the help of youth from Athens and Mt. Palaski Christian Churches collected food in West Toronto on Wed night.
The community support was wonderful and we were able to collect a substantial amount of food for the Sharing Place (624 Annette St.), our local food bank. In fact we were able to fill their pantry to overflowing! Thanks are extended to all the volunteers that helped and thanks to our generous community that responded so well to the challenge to help their neighbours!
One of the things I hate with a passion is having someone stand behind me and look over my shoulder. This is the case whether the person is the love of my life or a total stranger. They could be coming in for a kiss or the kill—it doesn’t matter because it pretty much affects me the same way and I pretty much react the same way.
It isn’t something that I admire about myself. It isn’t something I even fully understand. I think it goes to a much more basic and primordial level than I am able to access. Perhaps it is a protective instinct that God gave us so that we know when an enemy is creeping up on us? Maybe it has something to do with being a preacher and living next to an elder when I first entered the ministry? Maybe it is something to do with having three sons and only one computer for the majority of their lives growing up? Maybe this is just one of those areas in which I am able to exercise my unvarnished jerkiness? Because, believe me, I can be a big jerk if you stand behind me for any length of time!
What would it be like to look over God’s shoulder and watch Him work? Would you be able to follow the billions of things that He is able to juggle all at once? I don’t think so! Would you want to point to out a few things you would like Him to do differently, or faster? Probably! After all, that is part of the jerkiness of the human heart (Yes the word of the day is ‘jerkiness,’ but you may not want to use it in a sentence too often today!).
On Aug 4th, 7:30 pm, Keele will be hosting a combined youth worship event.
Robbie Sevilla, Youth Minister from Churchill Meadows Christian Church, will be speaking and a youth group from Athens IL. will be in attendance. Youth from all our area churches are invited to attend, as well as anyone from the congregations that are are young at heart and hard of hearing!
A free-will offering will be taken up in aid of Jose and Regina Fernandez and the new Brazilian church-plant meeting here at Keele.
Maybe it’s just that I am getting older, but I feel like I am starting to have a hard time processing change.
To be honest, I haven’t been able to keep up for a long time now, but I am just publicly admitting it now. In fact, the first crack in my “hip-with-it” armour started sometime in the 1990s. That’s when I first became aware that I no longer knew every musical group on the charts. At the time I sloughed it off to the fact that Sheila and I had three baby boys. Who can keep up with anything when you have three kids in diapers? Then I blamed it on the fact that I lived in Prince Edward Island, a world then-dominated by country music.
Then there is the obvious, behind the times ‘tell,’ which is that I still don’t carry a cell phone with me on a regular basis. Sheila and I share one and use it mostly for emergencies and for keeping connected to the kids. I don’t want one on principle really, at least that is what I tell myself. Presently we are without one since the last phone slipped into the dishwater and thus became permanently washed up.
Now you might think: “Perfect opportunity, Grant, to get into the cell game: time to pick up a smart phone of some kind, particularly when it was your wife that destroyed the last phone, time to cash in on that guilt and get something really sweet!”
True, I could justify doing that, but the truth is that I don’t want a smart phone. Dumb phones were hard enough for me to work, why would I want something that only makes me feel dumber? Did you know that smart phones are called smart phones for that very reason: their smartness is inversely proportional to how dumb they make you feel? John, my oldest, just the other day said, “Dad, Nokia makes a phone with big buttons and no features: that would be good for you!” That was the equivalent of him saying, “Dad, maybe you need a first response pager just in case you fall over and need to call for help. You might want to start thinking about a walker while you’re at it!”
Jonathan Payton has a message to share. At least I think he does, but I have no idea what that message might be. All I know is that most people don’t purposely draw attention to themselves when they’re about to break the law—unless they are making a significant statement. This is the kind of approach an organization like Green Peace has used to bring attention to important animal rights issues, for example. They sometimes break the law to get media attention.
Now, I have no idea what Jonathan’s message is, but maybe if I tell you what he did, you can help me figure it out. OK, so what exactly did Jonathan do? Well, first of all, he dressed up in a cow suite. This, in itself, is a statement of sorts, don’t you think? I mean you don’t just wake up in the morning and think—“Today definitely feels like a cow-suit day!” There had to be a reason for his choice of vestments—particularly when you find out what he did next.
Jonathan then proceeded to enter a Wal-Mart, load up a cart with 26 gallons of milk and then he ran out of the store without paying. As he sought greener pastures, he gave the milk away to passers-by. Galloping from the scene, he went right past a local McDonald’s (thankfully McDonald’s doesn’t seem too interested in using fresh beef or things could have “ground” to horrific halt! What would have happened if it were Wendy’s instead?). Jonathan was eventually corralled by local police. They gave him a summons, and then released him in “udder” disgrace.
For the past month or so, I can’t count how many times I have either said or thought, “What’s the big deal?” when it came to the Royal Wedding that just graced the world’s stage this morning. To be honest, I felt like a Royal Grinch of sorts, which is strange since I am one of those Canadians that like the fact that we are part of the commonwealth and I enjoy all things British and I admire the Queen immensely. I even bought a copy of “The King’s Speech” last week!
Still, I don’t understand how obsessed everyone got and I doubly don’t get why it seems like the US was more interested than Canada in the Royals. What’s up with that? I basically put it down to the desire for a real fairy tale. What’s better than a real Cinderella story? So my take is that the relevance of the Royal nuptials has been fuelled by females worldwide as two billion people tuned in to see the happy couple tie the knot.
Now I am OK with the desire for real-life fairy tales. I understand that life has been a bit grim lately and we are all in need of a moral boost. Let’s face it, 2011 has been about bad news. We are all in need of a fairy tale of the real life variety, so even though the appeal of the Royal Wedding continues to be lost on me, I congratulate the happy couple and all those who have been swept up in pomp and circumstance.