Mid-Week Memo

Hey Five Oakers,

I have a few things I want to share with you today:

#1- I was in Louisville over the weekend so I missed our worship gathering. I did, however, listen to Tim's message and he did an excellent job kicking off the "A Praying Life" series on Luke 11. Highlights...

• You'd think that with all Jesus' power, all he came to do and his 24/7 broadband connection with God that he would be more efficient with the use of his time.
• You have to put effort into making time for God just like making arrangements for a date with your spouse.
• Start small and keep going. Consistency is crucial.
• Jesus REALLY needed to pray. We REALLY need to pray.
• Some day we will die and we will know reality: we exist now only because God sustains us.
• When we get how dependent we are on God, we will pray.

#2- Thanks for comments on your Communication Cards this weekend. Here are a few:

• "Oh my!  You raised the questions I have about prayer.  Good to know I’m not alone.  Loved your analogies Tim." [No, you are alone. He included that stuff to make YOU feel better. (That comment was written by a personal friend, so don't worry, I can poke her.)]
• "Beautiful harmony by the worship team!  Tim, thanks for the encouragement in my prayer life!"
• "Really appreciated blessing/benediction/challenge at end of service." [You can expect more of this in the future.] 
• "As I speak to individuals in the community I am amazed how many people know about Five Oaks.  They are also considering coming.  That’s great - Praise the Lord!" [People are primed to be invited. We all need to pray about who we can invite for this weekend.]
• "The gluten free communion is terrible!  Please have some regular bread." [We'll consider it, but I'll just say that it gets very confusing and difficult to explain where the glutten free bread is when it's only in one place. There are several other factors in going all gluten free, but we hear you.]
• "Any chance we could have a communion station with cups?  For some like me that might have some germ-phobic tendencies we avoid the dipping because we know fingers have been in the juice." [Don't worry. It will build your resistance to germs. Okay, I'm only kidding. Again, we'll consider it, but just know that it's very hard to provide options (a lot more work for volunteers) and to communicate the options to everyone. But maybe there is a way we haven't yet thought of.]

#3- Justin Schaap and Dan Lukas came with me to Louisville so we could poke around Sojourn Church. Our time there was super impacting. We came away with some concrete ideas on how to bring more Scripture into our services, how to deepen our congregation's understanding of what we are doing whenever we gather for worship and how to deepen our engagement in worship. We are changing the whole way we plan our worship, but the differences may not be evident until mid to late March. I truly believe you will love it, and it will deepen your engagement with God in worship and your response to God and his Word.

#4- Why Sojourn Church? It's the church my son attends, but I've known about it for years through some other Five Oakers that moved there and attended. It's one of the most interesting churches I've ever attended. I hate to even try to convey why, because it's one of those things that has to be experienced. But our primary reason for going is that they have a very clear and thought-out order and form to their worship that in instructive to us and to how we do our Response services. This church also knows how to create great music. They are highly talented. You can check out their music here or on iTunes. You can check out a recap of one of the services from this last weekend here (we attended two of their locations, but not this one). We were very grateful for the time we had over supper with two of their worship leaders, Brooks Ritter and Chad Watson (and one of their musicians). Simply a GREAT trip!

#5- Lots of hipsters in Louisville and at Sojourn so took a few moments to see what it feels like.

It feels good. Also found some time to play Catan.

#6- Who gets a negative message on a fortune cookie? I did yesterday at our staff luncheon. The only one who did in the entire room. Take a look. (Sorry about it being sideways but I can't fix it.)

#7- Don't forget about the Jaime Jorge concert on Friday. Lois and I are making a date night out of it. Dinner then the concert. Interestingly, I heard a Cuban violinist in Miami recently. One of the highlights of our trip to clean out my uncle's house. He and a guitarist were playing beautiful music in front of a hotel on South Beach.

#8- We continue in our prayer series on the weekend as we look at the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11:1-4. Think about how odd this is:

• Jesus regularly spent entire nights in prayer, but when the disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he gave them a four-sentence prayer they could recite.
• When they ask to be taught, he doesn’t give a lecture on prayer. He goes on to tell them some stories about prayer, but his first action is to give them a prayer.
• The prayer can be recited. Jesus says, "When you pray, say, 'Father...'" Interesting that most commentators I read for this message can't see that. These are super-smart scholars, but I'm afraid their bias against recited prayers is too strong to see what the text actually says.
• It also teaches us about the content of prayer. Jesus doesn't say, "Only pray this prayer."
• Strangely, the content of the prayer is a series of requests. There are no direct statements of praise or thanksgiving or even confession. 

I hope you come to learn more. This message builds on last week's. Jesus was totally dependent on the Father. And the prayer he gave us to pray is a prayer communicating our dependence on the same Father: We need his purpose in our lives, his provision and his protection. (Yeah, three P's...it just happened...must be directly from God!).

Can't wait for the weekend! Love you all.

Pastor Henry

Mid-Week Memo

Hey Everybody,

I have a few things I want to share with you:

#1- Loved the opening last weekend with the slides and music calling us to worship. And I heard lots of comments on the stripped down worship that included the upright bass. I loved it. Oh yeah, the jazzy/funky outro was fun and engaging. Lots of people hung around to hear it to the end (not really the purpose of it, but fun). Thank you worship team.

#2- We wrapped up the EVERYTHING series talking about our work. I think the last point about being able to rest when you know your work belongs to God hit home the most. It certainly did with me.

#3- Lots of child dedications this last weekend too. I love the commitment we're all making when we dedicate children. Interesting thing is that we have more and more diversity of age groups every year. More and more of the empty-nesters like Lois and me and lots of young families. When I first came fifteen years ago we had one handful of people over 50. 

#4- 88 students are registered for the Challenge Conference in New Orleans! That's the largest group we've ever had go. It's a life changing conference. They also do a fair amount of community work at the conference. In fact, they're staying longer this year to do more work in the community. 

#5- The Jr. High ministry is working on raising funds to support a Compassion child for five years! I look forward to hearing how that goes.

#6- The Feed Event is full but you can call the office and get on a waiting list. Some spots will open. I love that people are bringing groups from work. Ashley Perry told me twenty plus Gold's Gym employees are coming (that's the gym where I work out). Love it!

#7- I'm loving my Kid's Hope sessions, but the child I'm mentoring is constantly afraid that he's missing lunch or recess. How do you explain that we're meeting for an hour with to a kindergartener? Anyway, the time flies by.

#8- We've set Easter times: Saturday at 5pm and Sunday at 8:30am, 9:45am and 11:15am. If they fill up, we'll add Saturday at 3:30pm. We hope to start registerations early so we can add the extra service with plenty of time.

#9- Several of our staff will be going to the Relevance Conference at Eagle Brook in May.

#10- We launch our new "A Praying Life" series on Luke 11 this weekend. This week our focus is on why Jesus prayed. If you figure that out, you have a big motivation for your own prayer life. We're also promoting a book by the same name that's my absolute favorite on prayer (and, interestingly, on parenting). Great stories and insights. Really, if you want a boost to encourage your relationship with God, this book will give it. We'll be selling it at the Resource Table. Check it out.

God bless you all,

Pastor Henry