Crazy Month

Time to shake the dust off the old blog. I've been pretty busy lately, here's a rundown of what I've been up to and what is coming soon.

March was a month of figuring some stuff out. We began to zero in on the location of our church plant. Our application for the school facility has been submitted and as of right now we are still waiting to hear back on that. I've been doing lots of talking with lots of pastors, church planters, and leaders over the last couple of weeks. I'm asking lots of questions and taking lots of notes. As we get closer and closer to September, my list of questions is growing more and more. We are still trying to raise several thousand dollars, and over the last couple of weeks some interesting opportunities have opened up that may result in some big time gifts. Last week my good friend Barry Rice of GO Church was in town and he spent the evening with our team encouraging us and helping us to understand God's heart for the church.

Our group continues to meet every week for bible study and worship and of course some great food. After Easter we will begin separating our bible study from our launch team meetings. We hope to make our bible study a little more public, meeting in a more public place - and make our launch team meetings a little more strategic and intentional, keeping those in our home for now. We hope that through our bible study we can continue to grow our launch team and be ready for launch in September.

Last week I drove to Memphis (750 miles each way!!) to spend the week with the Yucaipa High School baseball team that I used to coach in Southern California. They were there for a tournament and while it was a long ways away, it was probably the closest they will ever be to Durham. I had a great time. They gave me a uniform and put me back in the dugout with the team just like old times. It was a lot of fun. The team is pretty phenomenal too. They won the tournament relatively easily and are now 11-0 on the year.

This week my mom comes to town, and we are really excited to see her. She hasn't been with the girls since November, so she's pretty anxious to hang out with them as well. Thanks to skype, they have seen her and talked to her, but it's not the same. While my mom is here, we'll be taking a family vacation to Orlando. I'll be going to the Exponential Conference there, and the family will be joining me in Orlando thanks to the aforementioned Barry Rice. He is totally blessing us with a place to stay so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. And of course, being in Orlando we'll be spending a day at Disney. The rest of the time, the family will be hanging out at the pool and the playground while I'm at the conference learning about church planting stuff.

Along the way this month there are some other training things I'll be doing, as well as connecting with some more mentors and coaches. There's a possible trip to Arizona coming up soon but I'm not sure when that will happen just yet.

But the best thing of all - baseball starts again TODAY! Wish I could be in Anaheim watching my halos tonight, but thank the Lord for ESPN.

Posted in: Barry Rice,Baseball,Durham,Exponential Conference,GO Church,Story Church,update,Yucaipa