Today is the day, I know that this is supposed to be about my musings of the happenings on Sunday but today is the day we are scheduled to have our sound system overhaul begin. I am just a little excited about this development. As for my musings …

-Our platform is set up for our Children’s Christmas Program that will take place next Sunday. I love having those type of things set up on a Sunday before the event. It is great promotion for the event and it is fun to preach with a little different setting. It is time for the Christmas program to happen. My wife is stressed to max as she is directing it this year. I think I have heard the songs for the program about 1,000 times. And I love the way this program presents the Christmas story.

-We had a few sound issues yesterday, which is a great reminder as to why we need this sound system overhaul.

-The congregation is getting more and more into singing as we worship. They were a quiet singing group when we arrived nearly 2 years ago. They were content to listen to the worship team instead of participating. But there are more and more people engaging each week. I love that.

-For such a mild beginning to the winter season we sure have had a lot of people sick.

-This past week I was humbled by the number of people in our church who serve with such joy and passion. We had a funeral and funeral dinner on Monday and people generously brought a lot of food and there were more than a dozen people who helped set up, serve and clean up. Our church is cleaned by volunteers and many people helped with that this week. There were 10 or 12 adults in the building on Saturday helping with the Children’s Christmas program practice and set up. On Sunday mornings we have people in the building at least an hour and half before the first scheduled thing preparing and praying. No wonder God is doing great things in our fellowship.

-On Saturday morning I was honored to speak to a community men’s group. I loved seeing the interaction of generations and being able to challenge and encourage them.

-On Sunday afternoon I went to our local hospital to visit someone from our church but I also went to visit and pray with someone who I met on Friday as I serve as Chaplain. This person is unchurched and they seemed pretty nervous about having to spend a few days in the hospital. So I went back and visited with them some more and prayed with them again. I am praying that this person remembers some of my words and begins to seek Jesus during this season.

-My sermon was part 2 of the series “Secret Wishes at Christmas”. We are looking at some wishes we don’t put on our Christmas lists and seeing how a character(s) from the Christmas story found healing for that issue. Last week was the wish for healing from a hurt by a family member or close friend and the character was Joseph. This week the wish was to feel included instead of feeling alone, left out and without value. The characters were the shepherds. I received a message last night from someone asking for the notes on the sermon as they had been discussing it with a family member and wanted to share deeper. I also was asked if we record the sermons, unfortunately our sound system does not have that capability, because they wanted a family member to hear the message. I have been really burdened for this series and have been praying hard that it would have great impact.

-I am in the process of planning a Marriage Retreat for our church, and for anyone who is interested, for late February 2016 (wow, 2016 … was weird to type that). I am burdened for marriages. For marriages to be stronger, for marriages to be healed, for marriages to be saved and for those getting married to plan on having a great marriage.

-Our attendance was down from the week before but was still 18 above our average last year.

-We added 10 more chairs in our sanctuary because of the consistent growth we have been experiencing.

Here’s hoping that you hear some new sounds of Christmas this week. That hope is in honor of our sound system renovation. I think I am a bit excited for this to happen.

Dennis