I am a guy who likes to give myself goals otherwise I totally waste my time. Even  as I am on vacation the next couple of weeks, I am setting some goals. I’m sharing them here so you can be praying for me and my family in this time of rest.

1. Rest Well - To say this summer has been long would be an understatement. Not only did we transition to life with a new daughter, Nya who we adopted in April from Uganda, but we also announced our intention to plant a church in Auburn Maine. The summer was full of web-site design, creating a budget, building a launch team, and filling out the A29 application. Add on top of that my dad (the Lead pastor of EABC) was on sabbatical so I preached a bunch, did more weddings then ever, and whatever else needed to be done.

2. Not Preach - I did a lot of speaking this Summer.  I think I preached around 42 times from May-Sept (17 weeks). Which for me is a lot. I guess that is a ton for anyone who is use to preaching once a week. It is not just the 42 messages, it the hours and hours of intentional study. Now I will not be doing that study for two weeks.

3. Play - I plan to play video games, toys, dolls, army man and whatever type of things me and my kids can get our hands on.

4. Date - I hope to spend a bunch of time with my wife. I need to love her more and that only comes through being with her. All the changes have been grueling on our family but we are doing great. Yet I want to do greater!

5. Read - I plan to read a couple books just for the pure pleasure of reading them. The first I would like to finish, A Meal with Jesus, which I only have about 30 pages left. Then I would like to get about half-way through Bonhoeffer which I have been read for a few weeks. After that I would like to jump into Richard Baxter’s, The Reformed Pastor.

That is the plan for the next two weeks of my life. Pray for, and with me that I would rest well, play well, and connect well with people in my community and especially my family! I plan to post on the blog. This is not work for me -this is fun.

Thanks for listening & praying!

Here is a video I am guessing many of you have seen (when I was shown it a week ago it had 1,000 views, not it has over 35,000), but it is of a former pastor from two towns over that was suppose to be a pilot on American flight 11, the airplane that hit the first tower. His testimony is powerful.

I remember 10 years ago. I remember what I was doing, and where I was. It was a cool, clear, crisp day New England day, the kind I love so much. I was on a roof, roofing, until we heard a plane had hit tower one, then we headed home and watched the TV the rest of the day. Do you remember where you where?

Happy Labor day to you all! Hope you are enjoying your Monday off, if your off.

Today my youngest son and I organized a bunch of books I had the chance to pick up. Last week I had the blessing of going to  my former mentors personal Library and grab some books. When I say some, I mean 100+ books. I grabbed a ton of gold from his personal library that I have now added to mine, with the hope I will use them to bring much glory to Jesus as Pastor Bob did for 60+ years. Hopefully I will pass my books down to someone who loves Jesus more than I do.

Many of the books were written by Carl F. Henry, Spurgeon, F.F. Bruce and then a wide assortment of authors from the past 100 years. There are a handful of older books, late 1800′s that are pretty cool to look through. As I was going through all the books, there was one set that I got really giddy about when I came across it. It was a 1844 printing of Thomas Chalmers complete sermon series. This would have been printed 3 years before Chalmers passed away and over 167 years ago.

Both books are in great shape, and even though they are not worth anything other than their content, they are a great find, in my mind. My first interaction with Chalmers was his article entitled  The Exlpulsive Power of a New Affection (linked to .pdf). So that was how I spent my Labor day. Enjoying the smell of old books, and perusing through the different books, I know I’m a geek!

If you are rained in today on the East coast, or simply are not attending church this weekend. You can watch me preach live here! The message will be right around 9:30am EST.

NOTE: this blog will simply be posted at 8:45am EST and then removed Sunday afternoon. If you are reading this via email, or rss then the content has been removed. Also I have never posted this type of blog before, and seeing how right now I am actually preaching the video may not show up! I am sorry if it does not!