This is me and Joe Noonen before the ordination service. After the GS ordains you, you get to select a mentor to pray a prayer of blessing for you. I chose Joe. 

Standing Ovation

Well Monday night went better than expected in some ways, worse in others, and wonderful overall. I practiced a ton for my song cause I was so nervous but when I got up there it was if I never practiced. I was off pitch, tune, tempo, and everything else I could be off on, but everyone was dying laughing. When I finished everyone gave me an instantaneous standing ovation for my pastor's report. Here's a written copy:

In the spirit of John and Charles Wesley, who wrote hymns to the tunes of the popular songs of their day, I rewrote a popular song of our day for my pastor’s report. And in the spirit of many a men who have no singing ability, I now sing for you my pastor’s report.

We got preachers; we got teachers;
Some singers and hand wavers
An’ we got leaders; we got servers
An’ we got, friendly hand shakers
And the college kids prayer walk our neighborhood
Mm, mm, mmm… I love our church

We got saints; we got seekers
Creative types and dreamers
An’ we got front row sitters, and plenty in the back
Encouragers and those who comfort
And we all talk about how God’s been good
Mm, mm, mmm… I love our church

I love our church
It’s my kind of place
Just walk in through the front door,
Puts a big smile on my face.
It ain’t too far, we come as we are
Mm mm mmm I love our church

Seriously now, it has been a good year for us. As you can tell from the song I really felt in this last year we have come into our own as a church and it has been great to see God continually work in our midst. God has been more than good to us and we praise His Holy name!

Now all I have to live with is everybody giving me complements, well most people tell me how awful it was in a way that I think is suppossed to be a compliment. It was really fun and I'm glad I did it. You only get to live once, so you might as well have fun living it. And I and I think most others there that night had a lot of fun.

Soon to be Ordained

I get ordained this Tuesday night. In all of the events of the past month I more or less forgot about this coming up and the significance of the event. But it is finally here and my favorite GS, Jerry Porter, will be ordaining me.

The ordination service is in the midst of this thing we Nazarenes like to call district assembly. It's not as bad as it sounds. One of the things that goes on during district assembly, besides the ordination service, is the pastor's reports. Each lead pastor of a church has to give a 2 min. or less report to the assembly on how your church did in the last year. My report was scheduled to be given Wednesday morning, read after I'm ordained, so I decided to be creative for my report and write a song for it.

Well we had to turn in a copy of our reports in a few weeks ago to the district superintendent who for some reason really liked all the new start pastors reports (five of us including me) and asked us all to give our reports during the opening service of assembly Monday night, read before I'm ordained. This is a big service mind you and I'm going to sing my report and I don't sing good at all. Gulp! I'm so nervous.

For those of you who want to know, I rewrote Toby Keith's "I love this bar" and renamed it "I love our church." It should be an interesting couple of nights this week to say the least.

anticlimatic

The genetic doctor visit today was very anticlimatic. I guess we were hopping for them to tell us how serious or how not serious her case was and things like what her IQ will be. But they didn't tell us much of anything, in fact they hardly looked at her. But it was still a good experience, they were all real nice and very helpful. The only hard part was when they showed us a picture of her chromosones and we saw three of them on the 21st set. I think it made it kind of real right then or something cause I wanted to cry when I saw them. Thanks for all your prayers today!