A Little Down Time

This past week I took a week of vacation. Instead of going some place I stayed home and did a few things I had neglected because I did not have time. Some of it was church work. I met with a church planter our church supports. I also visited the worship service of a mission church our church supports. We took over the sponsorship when another church had to let it go.

Both meetings were very fruitful. The church planter is working in a mission near the LSU campus. Though they had some set backs because of heath issues and even death in the family, they are still committed to the work. They had to restart the work this past May. I was impressed by the maturity of the young I met with. It was a maturity that came from going through the fires of life.

Crossroads Church on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond is the church plant we sponsor. Their pastor is a 27-year-old man who is becoming an excellent leader of the church. The church reaches a lot of college students but they also had a few gray-headed folk there. It fact, it was good to see a wide range of age groups. We were met at the door with coffee and fellowship. The fellowship was sweet. The worship service is quite contemporary. They had a guest band this week which was acoustic and I enjoyed the music very much. One of them played a drum called a jamba. I was fascinated by the number of sounds that came from it. The music chosen for the service was remarkable in that it pointed to God and not to us. All too often contemporary Christian music is me centered. They used their music to point to God in worship.

When I preach, I stand before the congregation. Asah came out with a stool and a music stand and preached sitting down. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just different. But I will say that he preached a very good, well thought out sermon.

I am very happy that we are associated with Crossroads Church. If they are able to constitute as a church in the coming year, they will have gone from mission to church faster than any other church in our Association.