Big News for the week of July 27th

Here's a few things that are going on this week. First off, I get to preach another 15 minute sermon for the pastors and interns this week. The text I picked is Romans 1:16-17 ("For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.' "). I thought this would be a great text until I saw that John Piper preached 6 sermons on these two verses...Needless to say, my work is cut out for me. Secondly, on August 1, two of the pastors and the five of us interns are headed to New Orleans for a few days to help some churches in the area. It's a great opportunity to see how the gospel is applied in a much different context than what we are used to. Also, it will be great to serve a community who desperately needs a break.

The most exciting news is that I have been offered the chance to serve at Veritas full-time as a Pastoral Assistant. It's a great opportunity to get down to the nuts and bolts of church planting. As the gospel is preached in our city, our church continues to grow. Being a young church with a small staff the pastors have quite heavy workloads. It will be my job to help them in the day to day tasks necessary to the growth of the church. Some of my responsibilities will be scheduling meetings, helping with weekly sermon preparation, discipling other believers and working with the pastors to cast vision for our church. This summer has affirmed my desire to be a part of pioneering churches. This year long staff position is a great way to get started.

You may have noticed the new support section to the right...The position at Veritas is full-time, as a result I must raise my salary in order to support Jessica and myself. If you feel lead to give you can do so there or if you would like to talk more about what it is that I will be doing or about support, give me a call at 440-655-3486. I would love to share with you what's going on! You can click here to view my support letter, which many of you will be receiving in the mail shortly.

Baptism and things of lesser importance

First of all, I need to apologize for my lack of diligence in continually updating this blog. Now that the unpleasantries are out of the way, we can talk about the good stuff...

Jessica and I were baptized today. What an incredible experience. It is was so awesome to be able to share each other's testimony with the people of Veritas. I was on the verge of tears all morning as I contemplated not only the burden of my sin but the even greater grace of God that he would love someone as wretched me. I pretty much lost it when reading my wife's testimony. Reading the words my wife used to describe what the Lord has done in her life and the sin that he has rescued her from is a moment that I will never forget. I couldn't be happier of the fact that today I wept in front of some 200 or so people. It's a really cool thing to see fellow Christians rejoice in the life saving sacrifice of Christ. God is so good and so faithful!

The internship has been going quite well. This week promises to keep the excitement of baptism going. Not only do I get to preach my first sermon, which is pretty exciting, but also we have a trip planned to Sojourn Community Church in Louisville. We're headed down there to pick the leaderships brains as how we can improve the assimilation process at Veritas.

Here are some helpful websites if you want to know about Veritas or churches that are similar:

www.veritascolumbus.com

www.acts29network.org