This weekend our family did a pretty typical thing on a Fourth of July weekend.  We “missed” church.  It wasn’t a last minute decision…we’d actually been planning for months to take a weekend away and recharge and relax.  Here’s a few thoughts from the weekend.

1.  Sunday morning goes by pretty fast even when you miss church.  I normally get up at five on Sunday mornings for my final run-through of the sermon for the week.  Our family leaves the house to pick up the donuts before 8am each week.  Here’s the thing I noticed…even without church…noon on Sunday came around pretty quick.  I didn’t exactly have time to paint a portrait…or restore an old car…or read that book I’ve been wanting to read.  Missing one hour of church on Sunday doesn’t exactly open up a world of other possibilities. Just sayin’ :-)

2.  I am so proud of the actionchurch crew!  I love the fact that Michele and I can be gone and actionchurch is better than ever.  In fact, the crew actually had a major problem happen on Sunday morning…and I didn’t even know about it ’til after it was handled.  No calls.  No Drama.  Handled.   If you see someone with a crew tag…or carrying something heavy…or working in the kids area and you appreciate actionchurch-let a crew member know that you appreciate them.  I do!

3. We also had a milestone this weekend in actionchurch “history” as for the first time, I was gone and we did NOT bring in an outside speaker.  James McBride (actiongroups director) did a great job kicking off the Waypoint series.  I am so glad God sent him to our team!  (If you were also “missing church” this weekend, don’t miss the podcast on Thursday)  James actually brought the original idea for the series about “stopping not staying”, and I am so excited to carry the idea on over the next three weeks.  Having an “in house” team of communicators has always been part of the vision of actionchurch.  This week we came one step closer to that goal.

4.  Even though I didn’t have a great deal more time over the weekend due to missing church…not preparing to preach is a whole ‘nother  thing…   Wow.  So glad to have a week to let my brain “reboot”.   I’m feeling really creative after a week of NOT having to be constantly creative.  (Sort of feels like turning off a program on your computor that has been running constantly in the background and slowing everything down…when you restart and shut it down for a bit, EVERYTHING seems to run quicker!)  So, thanks ac crew for allowing me to reboot, and restart.  Can’t quite explain it…but I needed that.

5.  Way more people “miss church” than go to church on Sunday.  I’m reminded of that every time I am away from actionchurch.  I want to see that change!  We’ve got work to do…

6.  I’m glad I am blessed with being part of a church that causes me to “miss church” when I miss church.   If you missed it this weekend…see ya Sunday.  You won’t want to miss it.