The Orchard Blog

It’s Monday!

Is that weired to announce a Monday followed by an exclamation point? I hope your Monday is a great one and a catalyst for a great week ahead.

I’m sitting in a Borders in St. Louis getting ready to hit the road again for some church related meetings. These next couple of days are going to be somewhat crazy-busy for me, so I am looking forward to gathering with all of you on Wednesday night to worship God together at our First Wednesday.

If you’ve never been to a First Wednesday, I want to invite you to come out and experience our monthly worship gathering. It’s a great time of spiritual realignment and focus. I’m especially excited about this one because we will be water baptizing a family in our church who have, in the last couple of years, made The Orchard their second “family.” It starts at 7pm. Hope to see you then.

By the way, this past weekend was a great one! I can’t fully describe the awesome feeling it is watching our volunteer force work so hard to create an awesome environment at The Orchard. In fact, during our Connecting Point on Sunday someone mentioned how there is no way we could possibly pull off what we do at The Orchard without the faithful service of our volunteers. That is so true!!

So, a quick KUDOS to all of you who faithfully serve week after week. Don’t forget that you are involved in the most life changing force in the world – the local church. Thanks for all you do. Keep up the great work and get ready for some incredible days ahead.

Well I’m off to meetings. Hope your week is a great one. See you Wednesday night!

What does it mean to be IN THE ZONE?

We’ll find out on Sunday.

Until then – I’m off for a much needed night away with my family. Have a great weekend – see you Sunday!

Lately I have been studying servanthood, as it pertains to church leadership/volunteerism, as well as serving others in our lives outside of church.

I was reading recently where a leader was talking about living a life of servanthood. He issued a caution in his writings, he said: It is generally easier to hear about serving than to actually serve. (True story) This leader relayed that he knew a woman who, when she was facing an important operation, asked her husband to look after the children over the weekend. He said no, he was going to attend a huge rally for men that would teach them how to live as Christian husbands and fathers. He refused to serve his wife on the grounds that he had to attend a conference where he would be taught and inspired to SERVE HIS WIFE!

What I gathered from this author’s writings, which I found completely valid, was that inspirational materials and teachings on servanthood are inspiring, encouraging and life-changing (if applied), but many times we miss the opporunities, because we are too enthrolled with “self.”

Maybe we can take a lesson from this author – stop “just” listening to servanthood ideas, and start actually serving others.

Let us all say it together…”OUCH!”

Here’s a question that Colleen posted on the blog:

If dinosaurs are billions of years old how does that fit in with creation? I understand that animals were created before man, but there wasn’t billions of years between the creation of animals to the creation of Adam, right? I have heard that dinosaurs are possibly addressed in the bible but where?

Great question. There are so many great resources that would probably be a lot more helpful than my comments on this.

Obviously, the word “dinosaur” doesn’t appear in the Bible, but there are words that people have theologians and brainy Bible people leaning towards the idea that perhaps dinosaurs were mentioned under the name “dragon”. Here are a few scriptures where the word “dragon” or “dragons” is us
Deuteronomy 32:33; Job 30:29; Psalms 44:19; Psalms 74:13; Psalms 148:7
Isaiah 13:22, 34:13, 35:7, 43:20; Jeremiah 9:11, 10:22, 14:6, 49:33, 51:37; Micah 1:8; Malachi 1:3

There are some interesting uses in these verses. What’s interesting to me is that there isn’t much evidence of “dragons”, but there is tons of evidence pointing towards the existence of dinosaurs. So in my simplified way of thinking, it would totally make sense to me that dinosaurs were indeed a part of the landscape at some point many years ago.

Here is a link that might help point you in the right direction. (Hugh Ross is one of the best Christian/scientific researchers I know of.

Reasons.org – this is Hugh Ross’ website which attempts to answer a lot of questions regarding Creationism VS. Evolutionism. He also has some good links to discussions on the age of the earth.

Check out this link.

I know that I haven’t answered your question, but there’s something to point you in the right direction for now. Does anyone else have any thoughts?

Hey faithful OrchardBlog readers… It’s time for you to speak up! We want to hear from you. What’s on YOUR mind? What topics/thoughts/ideas would you like to hear about from the Orchard staff?

Here’s what we’re going to do:

We are going to take this next week and keep our ears peeled to what YOU are thinking/wondering about/curious about/etc… and use the OrchardBlog spot as a place to share our thoughts.

Click on the COMMENTS button at the end of this post and TALK to us. It’s open forum. Go for it.

What’s on your mind?

Of all the things that influence children’s growth and development, one of the most important is the reliable, responsive and sensitive care children receive from their parents. Parents play a key role in our children’s development, along with intelligence, temperament, outside stresses and social environment.

For more information, check out a great website for parents: http://www.focusonyourchild.com.

Oh man, it’s been quiet here at the OrchardBlog. But NOT quiet at the Orchard! In fact, Monday we all returned from our staff retreat (which went great!) and then last night we had our First Wednesday Gathering.

Last night was great. We focused on the love of God and discussed ACCEPTING, EMBRACING and DISTRIBUTING His love to others. It was a refreshing evening and a great time of worship.

This weekend I will be continuing our series, Multiple Choice. We’ll also be having a parent-baby dedication during our 10:45am service. Baby dedication is a public commitment on behalf of parents to raise their children with God’s help and according to the Scriptures. Really, it’s more of a parental dedication than anything. Plus, it’s a lot like giving back to God (i.e. our children belong to God and we want God to use them how HE sees fit). It’ll be a great weekend!

One more thing – who are you inviting to the Orchard with you this weekend?

See you Sunday.