Pray for your Pastor

You know what I love? I love going to birthday parties, backyard get togethers, and anything that is a group of people getting together to just spend time together.

Do you know what I don't love? When the party, or get together is at my house. Then I have to organize it, setup for it, spend money on it, entertain, plant it out, and clean up after it.

When I show up to Church its easy to just walk through the door and enjoy the fact that everything is already setup, planned out, organized and put together just for me. Then afterwards I can walk out without a worry in the world.

So how does a Pastor do it? I gained an even higher respect for my Pastor (Tim Estes) lastnight when I had "one of those nights". My worship leader was planning to do an acoustic service then he was scheduled to speak. Around 2pm I got a call from him that his heart was giving him trouble. My first concern obviously was his health, but then I realized I have 90+ people to take care of and to make sure they have a good experience. So I show up to Church at 6:25 and now have 20 minutes to put together the service, and a sermon for these students. When it was all said and done it was a horrible flop and it didn't go the way I wanted at all. I put a lot of time, prayer and energy into Wed nights. I realize some of those students may never be in an environment to experience God the rest of their lives so I take it very serious. After service it hit me how much harder it must be on somebody who is Pastoring a Church. How often I just expect him to show up with a big time sermon and it to go perfect, and more importantly I realized how rarely I spend time praying for him and that he will stay encouraged.

From now on when you organize a get together just let that be a little taste of what it is like to pastor a Church... but keep in mind the Pastor gets to do 2 and 3 times a week.

Pray for your Pastor... and Youth Pastor :)

PB

Jesus Cooties

Yes my title last night was really "Jesus Cooties"... God gave me that title when I was praying... ok not really but it is a title students will at least remember. We talked about the need for us as Christians to be contagious with our "Christ Like" behavior. When everybody around you is happy and loving God, you will be happy and love God. We talked about the symptoms of somebody who might have "Jesus Cooties". Things like Daily bible reading, daily prayer time, faithfulness to the Church. I am thankful for the changes that are taking place in the lives of element students, but now its a time where we must become contagious of what God has blessed us with. Have you ever been in a church where the same 50 people you started with are still there? Somebody needs to infect that kind of Church with the "Jesus Cooties" :)
We need to show the world what we have, and not by forcing it on them but by being a walking testimony of what God had done in your life. I would like to share a video with you of some students who were recently infected with the "Jesus Cooties" (You know you love saying Jesus Cooties)



God Bless,
Pastor Brad