Pastor’s Blog

Gail and I had a great trip to Canada. Here are a few pictures (with captions).

Our first camp-site, on Prince Edward Island

The home which inspired 'Green Gables'

Second campsite, in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia

The ferry from Prince Edward Island to Nova Scotia

Part of a peninsula thrust out into the Atlantic on Cape Breton Island

One of many lobster boats off Cape Breton Island

Low tide on the Bay of Fundy at Blomindon Provincial Park

Cliffs at low tide, Blomindon Provincial Park, Nova Scotia

Cliffs at high tide, Blomindon Provincial Park, Nova Scotia

The beautiful wife and the cliffs, Blomindon Provincial Park, Nova Scotia

After Low Tide, Halls Harbor, Nova Scotia

Before High tide, Halls Harbor, Nova Scotia

Before low tide, Halls Harbor, Nova Scotia

Gail enjoying her lobster at Halls Harbor, Nova Scotia

The lobster fisherman, Halls Harbor, Nova Scotia

I was excited by the participation in the first week of our Education Summit. The purpose of this blog is to summarize what went on at that meeting and give you a little insight into the rest of the process – - so that you will want to be involved!

We started with prayer and a brief history of education at Trinity – partially because we wanted to celebrate what God has done so faithfully over the years, and partially because what we’ve done is the foundation for any changes we might make now. I can’t reproduce all that we said in that history, but a couple of the slides will give you an idea of the content:

This is the bulletin for Trinity’s first official worship service. Note the primitive logo! But notice also that ‘Trinity News and Notes’ was present the very first week.

One of the first ministries we did at Trinity was Age Integrated Sunday School. If you look carefully at the handouts above, you’ll notice that the ‘Puritan’ age integrated Sunday School began the very first week that Trinity officially met. We’ve wanted to give families the opportunity to be learning together from the beginning.

Another early ministry at Trinity was Trekkers – Trinity Evangelical Kids Klub. This was our children’s club program, grown in-house, and served us well for many years.

The Awana Club program is a relative latecomer – it started in the fall of 1998. Lee Norbraten, who made such a critical contribution to Trinity’s education ministries, was not only the Commander of our Awana program but head of our C.E. Committee and one of our long time Sunday School teachers.

After not too many years of doing Age Integrated Sunday School full time we began to see the need for some age graded classes. Helped by many fine teachers (some of whom are shown above), we eventually settled into a pattern where we did Age Integrated Sunday School in the summer and Age Graded during the school years. This also allowed us to have some fine adult Sunday School classes through the years.

The Women’s Fellowship was one of the earliest formal ministries at Trinity, and has provided many wonderful events, Bible Studies and retreats for the ladies of the church. The Men’s ministry has always been a little less formal, but has had a number of retreats, Bible Studies and meals through the years.

L.I.F.E., our junior high and high school youth group, also got a relatively early start at Trinity and, led by several great couples and individuals, has been a strong source of teaching and fellowship for our young people.

A few relative new-comers to the ministry scene: the AfterL.I.F.E. group, which ministers to college students and young adults; they are shown at Bible Immersion Camp, an intense week-end of Bible Study which has been used with both High School and adult groups; finally, we’ve been experimenting for almost a year with Sunday morning Small Groups. The latest Small Group topic, the Focus on the Family Truth Project, has been especially well received.

With that background (and more), the first week of the Education Summit went on to think about why we need this process now. Then we reviewed the goals for the process. Those two key slides are shown above.

We talked for quite a while about ‘what’s on the table’: what are we examining and what might we change? The short answer is ‘everything’. Though we expect to strengthen and sustain many of our current ministries, we also need to be open, at least in the brainstorming part of this process, to many new ideas. One that has already been stated repeatedly is to implement a more relaxed, parallel structure for our Sunday mornings, with Sunday School being held at the same time as the first and second services, possibly with a different emphasis in each instance.

In order to have time to prayerfully evaluate positive alternatives, the Education Summit will meet three more times before the end of June, as outlined above. The three additional meeting dates are May 28th, June 11th and June 25th.

Finally, we assigned a little bit of homework to the group. We divided into ten different teams of two or three, each of which took responsibility to evaluate one of Trinity’s current education ministries. The evaluation is very simple: what can we celebrate about this ministry, and what are challenges to this ministry that need to be changed or improved.

We would love it if you would participate in that evaluation. You can e-mail comments on any of these ten ministries to me, pastor@trinityfellowship.net. Or even better, send your comments on the brief Survey Gizmo survey here. You can take the survey several times if you want to comment on multiple ministries.

Please be praying that God would use this process to bring unity, organization and effectiveness to our educational ministries.

After Becky Casselberry’s wedding, Gail and I had the chance to take the family to Yampa, Colorado, to spend a few days in the mountains in the snow. Our accommodations in Yampa were provided through a ministry called En Gedi Retreat. En Gedi’s mission is to provide a place where pastors, missionaries, and church workers around the country can take a little time off, a little time to reconnect with God, and a little time reconnect with their families. Currently En Gedi has no facilities of its own, though they are in the process of completing a cabin as the first step toward their own retreat center.

But in the meantime they use, as available, a wonderful lodge on the Fish and Cross Ranch just outside of Yampa. This 4000 acre ranch is owned by a believer and is used for hunting and raising cattle. The lodge is used by both secular and Christian groups for hunting trips, ranch experience trips, business planning conferences and get-aways. Because we booked early and came during a relatively slow part of the season, ‘Fish and Cross’ was able to offer the lodge to En Gedi (and to us) for the week at no cost. What a blessing!

We had a grand time:

(click on any image for a full-size, 1600×1200, version)

This is the view east from the lodge at Fish and Cross Ranch at sunrise. This was the view Gail and I saw from our bedroom windows.

This is the view south, from just below the lodge. The red barn is classic. The horses remain in the pasture all year, even through the worst storms of winter.

This is the view west (or south-west) from the deck of the lodge. The high flat mountain is one of the Flattops, the unique mountain range in this part of Colorado.

This is the Lodge at Fish and Cross. It is a beautiful Western themed building with seven bedrooms. Gail and I stayed in the corner top floor bedroom, the closest room in the picture, with large windows facing east and south.

We did a lot of sledding during our four day stay. Hannah and Ruth especially enjoyed getting out in the snow. This is the view from the hill ‘behind the barn’ down at the ranch complex.

Fish and Cross is a working ranch and they have to feed the horses every day. During the winter they hook the draft horses up to the sled and haul hay out into the pasture. The family (including Caroline Casselberry, who joined us on Tuesday) went on the sled early one morning. Michael loved it and went again the next day.

The Ranch graciously supplied snow shoes, and Nick, the son-in-law of the ranch owner, took us on a wonderful three hour trek into the aspen forest.

Another feature of the Ranch is the cowboy hot tub. While drilling for oil some years back, they discovered a hot spring over 1000 feet down. It is 105 degrees F all year. They have dug and lined a small pool where you can sit in the warm water (then cool your feet in the snow). They recommended going at night, but we opted for a daytime visit.

But the things that captured and blessed the eyes while we were there were the snow-enhanced views. We’ve been to Colorado in the summer, but never while there was snow, and it was wonderfully beautiful.

Many of you - well, several of you - well, one of you – asked that I do a post on the Houston Aramco Half Marathon. I’ve put off doing so waiting for some decent pictures, but I’ve come to the realization that as far as pictures of me go, there is no such thing as a decent picture.

But I do want to report on the race because it was great fun, despite the fact that I didn’t do as well as I’d like.

Positives first: when you participate in a big race like this, it’s a real party. The roads are almost lined with people cheering, the fellow racers are happy to be there, the organization is superb, and the freebies are great. I’m a sucker for a T-shirt and I got two out of this, so I was in heaven. Plus a free breakfast. The other major positive was that I finished, and in under ten minutes per mile. The third major positive was that the weather and the route were just perfect. About 45 degrees with beautiful sunshine.

The only real negative was that I had hoped and trained for a much better time. For some reason still to be completely explained, I have had major trouble with calf cramps the last four times I’ve run longer than eight miles. It happened in all my recent training runs and it happened in this race. I began to cramp about nine miles in, and fought with the cramping for the next four miles. I never seriously considered stopping, but I walked a lot more than I would have liked.

I had already done most of what I could figure out to avoid the cramping, including increasing my electrolytes, adding carbs the morning of the race, changing my breathing, etc. But I couldn’t beat the cramping. Since the race I’ve decided that it was my overall conditioning that was the major culprit: I had stopped almost every kind of conditioning training after my back went out this summer. So my plan for this year is to increase conditioning and try some electrolyte pills and figure this cramping out well before next year’s race, and then to do much better.

By the way, I’m very seriously considering signing up for the Saturday half marathon in Seabrook on March 15^th. Anybody else want to race? The limit is five hundred participants, so let me know ASAP