I’m a blog-lapsarian. Yes, I am. My last post is dated May 26, 2010. Hmmm… I know the Lord has decreed it as such so I won’t bother to get into whether it was pre or post-fall.
Much has happened since then—Spain won the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Wikileaks, the H1N1 influenza pandemic was officially declared over by the WHO, the Yankees imploded against the Rangers as Cliff Lee & some guy named Colby Lewis were absolute buzzsaws, North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island, we baptized 10 folks at Maranatha, Owen went from white to high-green belt (even Bethany’s now a yellow belt), we celebrated Maranatha’s 1yr anniversary, I entered my 5th decade of life, and today’s (April 5) my beautiful wife’s *33rd* birthday (the Kwaklings & I made her breakfast in bed).
This past weekend was a blast at Maranatha. We held our first Spring Conference with Pastor Joe Thorn from Redeemer Fellowship as our guest speaker (stoked about his upcoming book, NOTE to SELF), and the time was replete with biblical, gospel-rich teaching, seriously fun fellowship, corporate times of prayer devoted to “the God who is there,” and some serious Italian food from the Ciccione family (not mafia-run).
Joe geared his messages towards our 2011 focus on the 3D’s: Doctrine | Discipleship | Devotion to Prayer. With baseball’s opening day just behind us, I’ll stick with that theme and simply say that Pastor Joe connected in a major way on all five teachings he presented; he simply hit each one out of the park—listen for yourself. The brother can bring it with passion for Jesus and compassion for people. He is a bona fide church historian, theologian, pastor, church planter… challenged, convicted, inspired me as a church planting pastor.
The week didn’t start off with much promise as we discovered the retreat center we booked had double booked the weekend and for whatever reason, chose to hand us the short end of the stick. Tis not a good thing to have 70+ people registered for a retreat and no retreat center. So a day and a half was spent desperately calling and emailing an assortment of venues, and by His grace alone, there wasn’t much anxiety.
Eric & David, our retreat operations men, tackled this obstacle head on with much aplomb and in a short, two-day span, tweaked our “First Annual Spring Retreat” to a “First Annual Spring Conference.” And in God’s providence, Satan’s ploys to befuddle and discourage actually led to changes that enabled more people to attend! Far greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world… So serious kudos to God, David & Eric, and also to NJ Manna Church and North Shore Baptist Church for making their church facilities available (cost-free!) on ultra-short notice.
I am confident the time spent together worshipping as a family of God, a local church on mission, will prove to be fruitful as we seek “to make much of Jesus” in the Greater Fort Lee area. Beyond the conference context, the fam’ was able to spend time with Joe and Katherine (his eldest daughter) showing them some NYC sights. The weather left much to be desired but we made the most of it. Really appreciated Joe’s chill winsomeness and his encouragement to me, my family, and my flock… I gained a great friend.
