When I can’t be at home with Community on a weekend, I still find a place to go worship. This past weekend we were in Franklin, TN with some friends for a few days. 

Our friends go to a little Presbyterian church that is right downtown. They have a beautiful little building with stained glass windows, old wooden pews and a simple, classic look. The people were friendly and very good at making me feel at home. 

Problem was…I wasn’t! It was nice…but I was NOT home!

Missed you all very much. Can’t wait to see you again this weekend!!

While at the North American Christian Convention this week we had the unusual joy of going through the book of Revelation in all the main sessions. It was a little weird I guess for this kind of a conference and format, but it worked well.

There are many different views concerning this book in the Bible, however, each speaker did a real good job of handling their assigned task with depth, humor and respect. I found the messages (as a whole, although by different speakers) to be very well thought out and connected.

Rick Atchley, from The Hills Church of Christ, handled the difficult ground of chapters 19-20. One of my favorite lines from his message had nothing specifically to do with the book of Revelation…and then again, it had everything to do with it.

“It’s ok to disagree. It’s a sin to divide.”

While we need to have that concept firmly in tow when we discuss this stuff…I think we need it all of the time.

We won’t always agree. However, we do need to stand together!

The one quote I can’t get away from is something that was said regarding worship. A professor from Abilene Christian University, Randy Harris, said something I’ve been chewing on ever since.

“You don’t improve worship by talking about worship. You improve worship when you talk about God and the Lamb that was slain.”

There, now you can chew on that for a while too!

Go read Revelation 4 & 5. After you see the worship happening there, you can't help but notice where all the attention is focused.

Some summers Michelle and I have the opportunity to go to a special gathering called the North American Christian Convention. It moves around from summer to summer to different cities, mostly in the midwest, near the Bible belt buckle.

This year we’ll be in Louisville. While there is worship and preaching, it is also a great opportunity to re-connect with friends who are in the ministry from all over the Country.

We’d both appreciate your prayers as we travel and take in some of what God has planned for us for a few days. 

I’ll be keeping you posted from time to time with what God is teaching me. One-liners will be on Twitter and I’ll try to get a couple blogs up as well about what I’m learning.

We love you Community. 

After 31 weeks in HIStory we are ready for a new series. I’m excited to introduce our next series we’re calling The Vault this weekend. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this one.

Each weekend, for 6 weeks, we’ll be going back and highlighting some of our favorite stories in the Bible we didn’t have time to sink our teeth into as we flew through the Bible during HIStory.

If you want to read ahead, I’ll be teaching from Acts 2:14-41 this week and looking specifically at Peter’s first “gospel message.” I think we can a learn a lot from the style of the speaker and the response of those who listened.