Forgive . . . Love

"God forgives you, and you must forgive yourself. God loves you, and you must love yourself. For only when you love God and yourself can you love all of God's creatures." --Priest to Frankie in Angela's Ashes

Non-alcoholic Pong Shots

Some guys from Olivet Nazarene University--maybe with a little too much time on their hands. Still, that's college life. Thought my Lafayette friends would like this.

Wordle and the State of the Union

Very interesting website (http://www.wordle.net/) that creates "word clouds" from a source of text. I heard about this on C-Span tonight as they did one for the President's State of the Union Address. Here's a link to the actual site:

State of the Union Wordle


Here's another one mentioned on C-Span--it's called a word tree (from a website called Many Eyes). It essentiall takes the complete text and allows you to select a specific word and then the word tree visually reveals all of the connections in that speech to that particular word. You can link to it here:


State of the Union Word Tree

Works versus Effort

I like this description that I came across last night of the distinction between works and effort in the general introduction to the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible:

"The opposite of grace is works, but not effort. 'Works' have to do with earning, and there simply is nothing any of us can do to earn God's love and acceptance. And, of course, we don't have to. God already loves us utterly and perfectly, and our complete acceptance is the free gift of God thorugh Jesus Christ our Lord. In God's amazing grace 'we live and move and have our being' (Acts 17:28). But if we ever hope to 'grow in grace,' we will find ourselves engaging in effort of the most strenuous kind. As Jesus says, we are to 'strive to enter through the narrow door' (Luke 13:24, emphasis added). And Peter urges us to 'make every effort to support [our] faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love' (2 Peter 1:5-7, emphasis added)."

Emmaus Road Church 1st Preview

This last Sunday we had our first preview worship gathering at our new time and location: 11 a.m. @ 2602 Nebraska Ave. We had 31 gather with us and two responses to begin following Christ! To the right is a picture of our new meeting space.

God has been so good getting us to this point. Although at times it's been a very difficult 2 years, God's given us just enough for each day--just enough to keep pressing on. Two of the most recent have been significant donations to ERC: one covering the rent of our new location for the upcoming year, the other a gift to be used as needed. Another has been the presence of two new families who have felt called to join the work in significant ways. All of these are reminders to me that God's in this thing, and it's His to grow and do with as He will.

Many thanks to you all who are praying.

If on a winter's night . . .

Received this album for Christmas. Few people write with the skill and depth of Sting. If you're hankering for a good listen, check out his newest work: "If On A Winter's Night . . . "

ERC Is Moving!!!

For those following the saga which is Emmaus Road Church as it joins in God's movement in Toledo, I wanted to give an update as to where we are.

Next month ERC will be moving out of our current location into a new one. We will be sharing space with Campus Crusade and Younglife at the corner of Nebraska and Westwood Ave. about a mile south of where we are now.

This new place provide a much larger space for worship gatherings and also a large area for children's church. At the same time, the rent is significantly less than what we're currently paying. It's a real answer to prayer as our lease was up this month and we knew we were in need of a larger space.

Here are some pictures of the new place. Keep us in your prayers as we transition to 3 preview worship gatherings (Jan. 10th, Feb. 7th, Mar. 7th) and then our launch date of Easter 2010.