I mentioned yesterday that we are moving toward hiring an executive pastor at my church. Our search committee has been doing some great work going through a boatload of resumes and they have begun interviewing some of the candidates.

I remember my interview process here at the church as a very positive experience. It was clear that the search committee loved the congregation, that they were excited about the possibility of me coming to OBC and they were very honest about expectations that I should have.

So if you were going to be hiring a new pastor for your staff team, what questions would you want to ask him? What would you want to know about his motivations, his dreams, his passions?

If you are a pastor or someone looking for a position, what questions would you want a search committee to ask you? What questions would give you a fair shot of giving that committee a real chance to get to know you beyond your cover letter and previous experience?

Let’s hear it!

..was good, again, but not as good as the season opener.

This was helpful in getting me all caught up.

HT: Corey Mann

…and there are really only four images which stick in my mind from September 11, 2001.

What do you remember?

This morning, my friend John led worship. He’s been on one of our worship teams for about a year and a half and has been helping give leadership to our youth worship stuff since the winter. I was excited to have him lead our Sunday morning for the first time this week.

And he KILLED it!! Seriously, he hit it out of the park. It was awesome. This morning was all about song flow, integration with the message and thematic consistency.

Here’s our list -

Sunday, July 15, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:16-21
Your Love Is Amazing – Brian Doerksen & Brenton Brown
Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomlin
Filled With Your Glory – Tim & John Neufeld

Indescribable – Chris Tomlin
Famous One – Chris Tomlin & Jesse Reeves
Blessed Be Your Name – Matt & Beth Redman

You’re Worthy Of My Praise – David Ruis

Dudes – the flow from the end of the chorus of “Holy Is The Lord” to the chorus of “Filled With Your Glory” was amazing!!

Go read the passage that we used for the service and you’ll know why we used this as a congregational reading during the second set -

Because we believe in and know the goodness of God,
we will always be joyful.
Because we believe and know that God hears us,
we will pray continually.
Because we believe and know that God is faithful,
we will give thanks in all circumstances.
We believe and know that this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

Alright readers – time to ask for prayer.

In exactly 9 hours we will begin seeing kids arrive for our first EVER Krazee Arts Camp. If you want an idea of what this camp is all about, here’s a little visual game.

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Alright, so I suck at this blogging thing. In my recent comings-and-goings I’ve failed to be consistent in my blogging behaviour. Hopefully the three of you who read this will forgive me.

Here’s a recap of what we did this past Sunday – we’re in the middle of a really great series in 1 Thessalonians that we’re calling “Like This.” Our Director of Youth Ministries, Kevin Van Dyken, had the unique opportunity of telling our congregation that one of the things they can do to keep our church healthy is to “respect and esteem” the leaders of our church. Not an easy task so I’m sure that our Senior Pastor wasn’t too upset that he was away on holidays and didn’t have to preach this message :)

Sunday, July 8, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:12-14
Your Grace Is Enough – Chris Tomlin version
There Is No One Else Like You – Robin Mark

That’s Why We Praise Him – Tommy Walker
Holy, Holy, Holy – Traditional

May The Words Of My Mouth – Tim Hughes

As a response to Kevin’s message we took communion together. Normally communion is done one of two ways – we pass the trays down each row OR we set up stations and people are served commuion. Because of the passage that Kevin was preaching this week and the focus on developing healthy community we thought we’d do something a little different.

We set up six communion stations around our auditorium and at each station we had communion trays which had both the bread and juice (we’re Baptists but not Baptist enough to use wine!) on the same tray. As people left their seats and went to one of the stations, there was someone their to serve communion to the first person in line. After this first person ate and drank, they took the tray from the person who served them and served the NEXT person in line. When that person ate and drank, they took the tray and served the next person. And on and on.

We had several positive comments from people that this was a good visual for them to immediately put in to practice what they had just been hearing from God’s word. Our hope, of course, is that the memory will stick with them and will continue to inspire them to serve and help the idle, the fainthearted and the weak.

Did I explain that okay?

A bunch of you are ending up here via the Willow Creek Arts Conference blog. Great to have you!

You might see that I’ve been out of the blog routine for a while. Read through some posts and you’ll get the sense that this blog is just to re-cap service ideas and let people know about some resources and tools that make my job a little easier.

What do/did you think of the conference? Best part? Biggest thing you’d change?