Leeland - Carry Me on Your back

Proud Papa Moment...

This qualifies as a proud papa moment.  My youngest son, Zach, was called up from the JV baseball team last week to play in his very first varsity game.  He was awesome!  From today's Windsor Beacon:

"Rightfielder Zach Samples may have been new to the varsity baseball lineup, but he swung the bat like a veteran to cap off Windsor's three-game summer series sweep of Berthoud on Wednesday afternoon.  Samples, who singled home Lance Harper in the 11-1 victory joined fellow freshman Patrick Fisher as the "call-ups" from the junior varsity squad to replace several varsity starters who were attending football camp."

Read the Entire Story Here

The River flows in the Park...

Today was our first in a series of services in the park. We are nomadic and without a building for the next month or so. I have solid confidence that God is in control and that there are people that we will be meeting each and every week in our various locations. Today there were 94 of us at Windsor Main Park and we had a great time. The worship was upbeat and celebrative and we met some new friends. I'm very much looking forward to what God has in store for us each and every week.

Step By Step - Bryan Duncan

Cliffside Baptist Church

The first church that ever trusted me enough to let me pastor them was the Cliffside Baptist Church of Amarillo, Texas. Cliffside was a church on the verge of closing. It was a handful of mostly senior adults who were desperate to save their church. I was a young twenty-something, out-of-work, wanna-be pastor who had nothing to lose. We were made for each other. Somehow Cliffside grew under my leadership. We did the hard work of knocking on doors, reaching children, and figuring out ways to improve the broken down buildings. We painted, we prayed, and we refused to give up. I remember cleaning out the rusted baptistry for our first baptism (theirs and mine). I remember illegally digging and installing a new septic tank system (we chose a holiday weekend so that the city wouldn't notice). Remember, I was young and they were desperate. Lots of lives were changed in those days including mine. Whenever I'm in Amarillo, I always drive out to Cliffside and take a look. Here's a link to their website: http://www.cliffsidebaptist.net/.

Grace in the Park...

Grace River is in the early days of a new stage in our young life as a church--what I'm calling "Grace in the Park". It appears that we will be worshipping in the park for the next several weeks--perhaps through mid-July. Our first "park-Sunday" will be this coming Sunday and we will be meeting in Windsor's Main Park. It's a beautiful park with giant trees and lots of shade. Our stage will be the gazebo in the center of the park. I've attached a picture so that you can see our new sanctuary. I am mindful in these days that it is God who said that He does not dwell in man-made tabernacles. He is a God who dwells in the hearts of men. I fully expect that there will be new friends who discover us in the park and perhaps experience Jesus for the very first time. I expect that we will discover the purpose in our journey and the worship in our wandering. God has opened this door for us that cannot be closed and we will walk through it.

SHAME

"Shame is a kind of soul murder. Once shame is internalized, it is characterized by a kind of psychic numbness which becomes the foundation for a kind of death in life. Forged in the matrix of our source (family) relationships, shame conditions every other relationship in our lives. Shame is total non-acceptance. Shame is a being wound--in other words, it has to do with who we are at the deepest level--and differs greatly from the feeling of guilt. Guilt says I've done something wrong; shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt says I've made a mistake. Shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what I did was not good; shame says I am not good" (Don Williams, page 35-36, Jesus and Addiction).


"Our response to shame is to try to cover up, for fear of exposure. We fear facing the results of abandonment: depression, aching loneliness, and the loss of our true self. In place of God's image in us, we create the false self, a Hollywood movie set behind which we hide. This screen is made from our own fears and fantasies. The scripts are written by other people. If we are honest, it often seems that we are acting in someone else's movie. We have become people pleasers, trapped by performing in order to gain acceptance" (Don Williams, p36, Jesus and Addiction).