i’m currently in eagle, colorado, where the temperature is a blistering 1 degree. oh yeah, i can’t wait to go outside this morning.
eagle
had a great time up in the mountains this past weekend, as well as tuesday/wednesday… in my natural habitat (playing with sound gear). plenty of interesting stuff going on… but i’ll save that for later, because in my work frenzy to catch up today, i have managed to come down with a raging case of the shivers, with the occasional sneeze.
i plan to spend the evening on the couch with a blankey.
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| From Visit to Eagl… |
so it looks like i’ll be the interim worship pastor at this church up in eagle i’ve been talking about. starting next month, i’ll be heading up every weekend, plus every other week for a couple days. the interim period is until the spring, during which time we’ll be just helping this church re-establish an identity, and figure out how to best reach their community. the culture in eagle county is a bit peculiar, so it will take some time and effort to really figure it out. but in the meantime, we get to go to the mountains this winter– a lot!
i’m up there now, we’ve just spent some time brainstorming how to change the meeting space into something a little more inviting. in a couple weeks i’ll tell the whole story… for now suffice it to say the church digs have been temporary at best. we’ve gotten the ok to actually lease the place for a year, so there will be some semblance of ‘home’, and we can make the space more usable and inviting.
the first project before i officially start is the logo/identity/website stuff. my first official week up there is the last sunday in november, where i get to teach on a subject i’m very passionate about — the role of worship in church. it will be very fun, then we’ll kick into the advent/christmas season. oh yes. it’s here. then before we know it, we’ll be kicking it in vancouver for a couple weeks.
this is exciting. it’s nice to have a job like this again, even if it is very part time. now the work begins…
so we ventured up to eagle again yesterday. what a nifty place. of course, to get to eagle, which is on the west end of the vail valley, you have to go over two mountain passes, loveland pass at almost 12,000 feet, and vail pass at just over 10,000 feet. not just that, but after you cross the vail pass, you drop clear down to 6600 feet where the town of eagle sits. so imagine the fun when the first storm of the winter blew through. eagle had nothing but some good hard rain. the loveland pass, however, had some serious winter conditions – 8-10 inches of snow accumulation, and all the driving fun that comes with it.
the purpose for going up was that i was invited again to speak and lead worship at the c&m.a. church in eagle. it’s currently a small group (less than 30)… but it was still a great time. last time we went up, i pulled out one of my five sermons from compass. this time, none of the previous ones felt right, so i wrote a new one, which reminded me how much work really needs to go into those things. i could have probably taken another 3 or 4 hours to practice the thing out loud, and i would have found some glaring content issues, things that could have been either left out or moved around for better thought flow… but it still came out well. the beauty of preaching is that when it comes time to deliver the talk, God will do his thing and hopefully that leaves the preacher pretty much out of the loop. i spoke on i john 3, the part about loving with actions not words. it’s one of those basic things that we all know but rarely do, so the application part of it was a piece of cake. everyone seemed to track with me pretty well. it’s been fun to teach again, i really wish i could have done more of it at compass. perhaps i’ll get a chance to do more. we’ll see what happens.
this week, a friend from vancouver (you know who you are!) is coming to hang with us for a few days. we’re excited about that… i’ll need to buckle down and get some work done, rather than vacation for the week… and i’ll also have to show restraint and not spend a gazillion dollars showing off all the cool restaurants we’ve found. that being said, we’re excited for a friendly vancouver face to hang out with for a while.
