Dunk-a dunk dunk

After 12 years in ministry...

After 6 years of pastoring...

After 29 years of living....

I have the privilege of baptizing my first two sisters in Christ this weekend.

It is totally cool to see a life go from wandering aimlessly into wandering with a purpose. It has been great seeing these two grow over the last few years and to see what God is maturing them into. Please pray for them as they step into the waters of grace.

Now, our baptismal is not your traditional baptismal. When we moved into our first location on Lower Greenville the past tenants left us a few surprises. One such item was one of those super heavy duty iron bathtubs. The landlord informed us that it was used as a cooler in the salon for folks to grab a beer while they got their hair and nails did.

We'l probably keep it after we move out of the building and into homes. Its kind of a tradition thing. We've had 7 (I think) baptisms in it since our inception in 99 so there's a bit of sentiment tied to the 200 pound monster we call our baptismal. Plus, its "portable" so if we ever decided to do an outside gig, it would be useable in that location.

We're having our first home meeting next weekend. We'll have a dinner at Stephen's house and break the bread & drink the cup with the meal. After that we'll discuss some ideas for structure in the home gathering. While we will be making room for felxibility, it will be good to have some sort of outline that will allow for the edification of those gathered. A teaching time as well as a prayer and minsitry time will be high on my list of priorities, but the working out of those will take on different faces.

I would like to hear from you some ideas that you might have for the home gathering. What has worked for you? What has flunked?

Also, if you know of others who have history with the home gathering, please ask them to drop by here and give some input.

thx