Its clean-up time, its clean-up time...

Anyone else remember singing that song at church when you were getting ready to go? Or maybe its just me being crazy again...
Anyway, it is clean up time for us. Robin and I, and to a lesser degree Rufus, are preparing to move into a house. It's not everything we ever wanted in a house, but it meets our major requirements for the immediate future. It is a house. And it has a yard. The rest was negotiable. We are going to be getting a grill pretty soon after moving, and we intend to have you over when you move here.

Tanner and Jessica are gearing up to move, just a little more than 20 days and you guys will be here. Bethany, Grant and Desiree we are not as sure on dates, but we know you guys are gearing up too. If it seems like things are finally getting rolling, good. I can hardly wait to see what happens in our community.

A few thoughts I have been having. Prepare to be stretched. It is going to be difficult at times, we are trying to do what few churches actually do, and that is to be the church first and foremost. That means it will take quite a bit from each of us, but it will only be as much as you can handle. I believe God has called a special group of people to do this together, and I believe he knows what he is doing.

Prepare to work hard. This goes some with the first, but, honestly, I would rather you just wait until Palm Sunday of 2010 to join us if you are not ready to work. That doesn't mean it won't be fun, but it does mean we should expect one another to be committed.

Be prepared to fight for one another and for our church. Sometimes it gets really easy to expect things to be easy. But I have found that in any relationship worth anything, there are times that I have to be persistent, that I have to fight to keep it moving and to keep it going well. It will be no different as we are starting a church.

Prepare to have a great time. Just because it will be hard, just because we may have fights and we may struggle at times does not mean that we also won't have fun. We are made for relationships, with each other and with God, and I believe that when we are working at those, we will feel fulfilled.

I believe in each of you. I know that God has gifted us all uniquely and purposefully. I am incredibly excited to serve with you, and soon.

As you are moving, how can we pray for you? If you have not signed up for a lesson or two from the last post, it's not too late. If you want to wait a little while, that is fine too. The main reason I wanted to get that up here is so people who wanted a lot of time to plan could do so. I mentioned before I am working days again, so that is awesome. I have found that I have a lot of time to connect with the guys in the program now, and that is really fulfilling. Any job leads for anyone?