Great Escape Clergy Retreat 2007!

Great Escape Clergy Retreat 2007!

The recent Western Pennsylvania Conference Clergy Retreat titled ‘The Great Escape’ was a wonderful opportunity to gain new insight on some life principles as well as “The Life Journal” approach to teaching members of the body to self-feed.

The guest speaker was Bishop Wills and one of the ways he conveyed 5 excellent principles was through a video by Wayne Cordeiro. The principles are:

1. Know what fills and drains you. Figure out what gives you energy and what takes it away. This extends to anyone with spouses so that they can write down what fills and drains themselves and exchange it with each. If someone is single focus on what fills and drains yourself and if someone is married make sure you do not drain, but rather fill yourself and your spouse. This is also helpful for the spouse. Wayne took some time to talk about the rising divorce rate of people in ministry.

2. Understand balance in life. There is a balance between family/home life and ministry. One needs only to understand that the fulcrum moves. The fulcrum being the point two objects are balanced on needs to be moving and not static. If we allow room for following the Holy Spirit’s lead then when there is a push in one area or another then we can adjust the fulcrum so that if there is more needs at family move the fulcrum toward family and so move the fulcrum toward the push or direction from the Holy Spirit. This works the opposite so that if there is a need toward ministry the fulcrum can be adjusted as long as we remember this is not fixed and thus should not stay stronger to one or the other when the balance is shifted because of the push of the Holy Spirit.

3. Lead out of rest. Schedule rest points even though we might not always keep them, but make them the norm. An example of this is that Monday nights is family night for my family as well as Friday’s are my day off. On top of this I work a half day on Saturdays. Granted I am only a student local pastor supposedly only working part-time at the church and the rest of the time is to be devoted to studies while I am in Seminary. However, the point is if you do not even schedule times of rest then you are already behind the eight ball.

4. Find a lighting rod. This is to say when problems arise there needs to be a less biased person that is not related to you or the church you are serving that is reliably confidential like a professional councilor, but if that makes you uneasy then find a friend or mentor and share with your family from what Wayne Cordeiro calls “sharing from the victory side”. The victory side means that you share once the problem, dilemma, frustration, or tension has passed.

5. Disciplined daily devotions. This is important because “you can not give what you do not have”. This is the place where the Life Journal was discussed. The Life Journal is an approach to help everyone, all followers of Christ, be better devoted to God, coming closer to God, following Jesus way better, and seeing the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This Life Journal is a daily devotional where there is a plan to read the bible in a year, but if you follow it you will read the entire Old Testament in a year and read the New Testament twice. Wayne Cordeiro explains that the Life Journal follows the S.O.A.P. technique so that you read scripture, write out one or two verses that stand out. Then briefly write out observations about it and then write out the application usage. This is followed up by writing out a prayer.

***** Disclaimer: This is an oversimplified and out of context example only meant to show the basic idea of the S.O.A.P. technique and this is not meant to limit people, but guide the general populace. If this does not work for you it can be altered to fit the person..

This S.O.A.P. may looks something like this: if the passage chosen was “Jesus wept” an observation might be that Jesus cares and an application might be that if Jesus cares this much so should I. This leads to the prayer that the Holy Spirit might show me how to be more caring and follow Jesus example.

God bless,

Corben

Pearl is Learning and Teaching

On Sunday evening there was a hymn sing at Bridgewater and since there is nobody in the congregation who could lead the singing and Corben is not a song leader we recruited my Dad. Therefore, I decided to cook dinner and have both my Mom and Dad over for dinner before the hymn sing. We were getting ready to eat the menu was homemade chicken noodle soup and Italian bread. Everyone was getting ready to eat and Pearl decided that she was really going to say the blessing so she did. I understood she said God at the beginning and Amen at the end with a huge smile when she opened her eyes. I did not understand a word in the middle, but I know God did. That would have been enough for me but she showed us more latter. When we were about done with dinner, Pearl ran to the kitchen for more bread. She grabbed the end of the loaf that I had not cut and took off. My Mom told her to wait she would cut it for her. Pearl said no I do and ran to the dinning room. She proceeded to come to me rip off a piece of bread and hand it to me, Corben, than my Dad, than my Mom. She than stood in between her Grandma and Grandpap and said "now eat." She continued to do this until there was no bread left. I guess she is listening and learning in church when I think was this really worth the effort this morning. Jesus said "Let the children come," some may believe children should not participate at the Lord's table, because they do not understand, but I say as Jesus said let them come for they do understand. They understand better than we do at times.