last weekend

You want to hear all the cool stuff you can do in Miami? Since I can't speak Spanish, it's probably not a good idea for me to live there, but the beach was great! Somehow (I'm a nonswimmer) I made it out to this sand bar where I was able to happily frolick about. Then one evening we watched a movie on the beach. They've opened up a outdoor big screen cinema where you bring your lawn chair and blanket. We watched "Enchanted", which is a perfect movie for that setting. Down on the Port of Miami we were also able to go up in a hot air balloon...where it was discovered that Caleb has a fear of heights, and then we went over to the "island of the rich & famous" on a boat so we could gawk at some mansions and stare at some celebrities while they were trying to have a peaceful weekend at their pool. Anyway, it was a fun weekend with the family. It's such a good feeling to see one's kids all grown up and still alive and basically healthy and self sufficient (more or less). What did you all do for Thanksgiving?

I am SO thankful...

I think I was supposed to go around today and videotape the staff stating what they're thankful for, and then have it shown in the Kid's Worship. It looks like it's not going to happen. It was a good idea, though.

I'll tell you what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for this church. With all its many members periodically tugging this way or that, I'm thankful to have many members! Little cloisters of folks can be sweet and simplistic, but it can also be suffocating. I'm thankful for the discussions and the conversations. I've been in congregations before where the conversation wasn't even allowed! (kinda like communist China) I'm thankful for my job. Whether short or long lived, it feels good to be here. No, more than good. It feels critical. That's the word. For some reason, which may long remain unknown, I feel it is necessary I sit here in this cute little messy office right now. I'm turning down auditions and I don't even know why anymore. Oops, I digress.

OK, it's true, I'm thankful to be in northern Virginia. Even with the traffic. After nine years of commuting 56 miles one way on Sundays, it's still amazing to be to be able to "run over to church". I remember at times being in tears, stuck on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, trying to get four teenagers over here by 6:00 for a weekend retreat. It was always this great desperate spiritual sojourn trying to reach the mecca known as FXCC.

Don't ever take this place for granted. I love FXCC. And I am very thankful for it.

Budget planning

So anyway, it's that time of the year when we look ahead to the next year and try to figure out how much money we'll need to do the projects we've either already done, or would like to try in the future. Everything is to be looked through the lens of our new Vision statement, which makes sense, and framed under one of the five components listed under "being God's Heart to this community". And then for each category of ministry, we are to have as a heading our overarching philosophy or goal. In other words, Lisa has one for the children's ministry, Chris has one for the student ministry, etc. So it was this overarching goal phrase that caused me the most need to stop and think. What is to be the overarching goal of a worship ministry? To honor God as the center of our worship and invite others into His presence? Re-reading my first blog entry didn't really help me at all. Certainly there was nothing there that could be easily boiled down into one sentence. My daughter Brooke suggested, "to open the door of communication between the temporal world and the spiritual one." If nothing else, that phrase should open the door to communication amongst ourselves! How can worship be defined anyway? We choose to adore and praise a Creator who has chosen, for reasons unknown to me, to stay (for the most part and as far as I've personally experienced) audibly silent. So what is the job of a worship ministry? Obviously to try and facilitate participants into the process of honoring our Father...but more than that....I feel that it is somehow wrapped up in the fact of helping people REALLY believe what they say they believe. How different would we live and act if we REALLY thought God loved us as much as He does....and that He really DOES have our best interest at heart? Anyway, for part of my over-arching phrase, I came up with "to help make viscerally real God's message of redemption, grace, love, power, and purpose." I had already turned that in and THEN had a moment of panic when someone told me they thought "visceral" meant "superficial. Hopefully it means the opposite. Where is that dictionery?