Founder's Day Weekend A Win!

Please join me in giving a big shout out to God for a great Founder's Day weekend (May 16-17)!

On Saturday, God brought just the right amount of people to hand out over 1,400 frisbees during the parade. Through a great brainstorm from God late last week, we decided to have an impromptu pizza party at our house on Friday night and attach our invite post cards to the frisbees. This allowed us to only hand out one thing instead of two during the parade. Obviously, this cut our labor in half and allowed us to get out all the frisbees sufficiently (without holding up the whole parade). It was fun to see children clamoring for something they wanted- one of our frisbees! This opened the door to give out invites to our Sunday gathering...and more importantly keep communicating to the community that we are here, we care, and we want to be a force for demonstrating the love of Jesus in practical ways.

After the parade, we hosted a booth at the Founder's Day festival. We again sponsored "Chulo" the clown (much to hundreds of children's delight!), painted hundreds of faces, and gave away many balloons. The most important part of this time was numerous positive interactions with people from the New Albany area. ClearView is becoming a fixture at community events...and people are noticing. One man said, "You guys are so community minded, I think that is really neat." A friend of mine commented, "ClearView has sparked some healthy controversy in our church leadership about why we are not more involved in the community." Perhaps God will use us to spark further mission and draw others out to where people are already gathered.

On Sunday, we hosted our May key gathering (a rallying point for our team to work extra hard at inviting guests) around the theme God's Stimulus Package: Real Hope For Turbulent Times. We had a great time together with 55 people in attendance. This is the largest gathering in ClearView's short history. We had great turn out from our team and several guest families. The mood was great, we enjoyed a good time of worship together, and people seemed to respond well to a talk from God's Word based out of Matthew 6:25-34 where Jesus talks specifically on worry and how to overcome it through focusing first on God's agenda for our lives.

Specifically, I am thankful to God for:

• Our ClearView team. These are busy weekends...many of our people gave significant time and even responded on short notice to help us assemble frisbees/invites. They are moving our work forward with less and less dependence on outside help.
• Friends of ClearView that came to assist- friends from our neighborhood, other local churches, and even the mom of one of Seth's schoolmates! Special thanks to Jen, Emily, and Beth (each came from out of town and painted faces for 5 hours!).
  
• Very positive interactions with people along the parade route and at the festival. Each appearance at community events seems to spark deeper interaction with people we've met through various contact making streams- coaching, school involvement (PTO), community events planning, etc.
• A strong Sunday at ClearView. Our team was encouraged and I believe God was pleased.

Would you keep praying with us for spiritual movement from our involvement in the community? Only God can move someone from parade contact to Christ follower. But, we long to be part of that journey with those God calls. Pray with us for movement...

New Sport, New Team...New Contacts

I've enjoyed watching Seth try something new this week- he started practicing t-ball for the first time. This has given he and I something new to do together. He loves for me to pitch to him while he learns to hit and we've spent much time in the last two weeks tossing the ball back and forth in the back yard. Last Saturday was Seth's first formal practice with the t-ball Athletics of New Albany's Little League. This was a great opportunity for us to meet 7 or 8 families, only one of which we'd ever met before. I'm not coaching this season, so I have the opportunity to hang out on the sidelines and interact with the other parents.

I'm thrilled that Seth is enjoying this new sport, is trying something new, and that we get to spend time working on new skills that both of us enjoy. Also, this is a new outlet for ministry relationships. Pray that God would lead me to spiritually searching people. We're studying Colossians 4 tomorrow at our ClearView gathering- pray Colossians 4:2-5 for me as I interact with the other parents of children on Seth's t-ball team. Thanks!

A Milestone For ClearView...And Our Family

Last Sunday (5/3) was a real joy! ClearView celebrated it's first baptism. We baptized three people...of varying ages and with unique stories of how they came to follow Jesus. It was a thrill for me to see us carrying on an important function as Christ-followers- seeing people publicly express their faith by being immersed in water (meaning of baptism). Baptism is special because it is more than a ceremony or ritual...it is a physical means of obeying Jesus that doubles as a symbol of a powerful spiritual reality- heart transformation!

The first person ever baptized at ClearView is Kayla (13). She is a special young lady that visibly loves Jesus and others. It was a joy to have her family with us to witness this special day. Kayla shared that she was facing some deep challenges in her young life when her mom, Melissa, explained to her about Jesus' love and forgiveness for her. She has been learning to follow Jesus ever since.

Patrick came to know Jesus in his mid thirties. I had lunch with him the week before and was thrilled to hear his story. Patrick is a deep thinker and God used some key friends in his life and the writings of people like C.S.Lewis (Mere Christianity) to answer significant faith questions and lead him to a point where one night, he simply couldn't sleep. Patrick knew he needed Jesus to forgive him and lead his life, so he got up in the middle of the night and cried out to God, inviting Jesus into His heart. Patrick and his wife, Anne, have become an integral part of our ClearView team and family...so it was a joy for me to play a small part in his spiritual journey by baptizing him.

Sunday was also a thrill for Trish and I in that I got to baptize Seth! He has been asking us to be baptized for months. After talking with him more about it and seeing him grasp what it means to be baptized and why we do it, Trish and I decided he was ready to take this step in his spiritual journey. Jesus commended a child-like faith and we see this in Seth. From the perspective of a six-year-old, he fully understands who Jesus is, what Jesus did, his need for Jesus' forgiveness. It was fun to see his faith symbolized by him being baptized and I am so happy that I got to do it! :)

Praise God with us for this good day at ClearView. And, pray with us, that God would continue to shape Kayla, Patrick, and Seth into His followers and ambassadors. Thanks!