2008 is upon us!

And I hope you had a blessed Christmas and a great celebration of the New Year.   All of you certainly made our Christmas and New Years a wonderful time.  Thanks for your good words, your cards and your best wishes.  I am so grateful for the privilege of being your pastor!

Next Wednesday is the beginning of Family Night.  Dinner will be served at both campuses starting at 5:30.  Then at 6:30 there will be the presentation of a special program.  I'll be at Briargate and talking about a recent pilgrimage through Greece and Turkey following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul.  Hope you can be there! 

This weekend, I'm going to start a new series entitled "No Fear!"  We now live in a world with all kinds of scary things happening.  Places that were once considered safe-even sacred-are no longer.  But Christians have had a long history of dealing with the scary, so we are going to talk about how we live God's life in the midst of the world.  And we are going to start with God.  Should we be afraid of God?  Are we afraid of God?  The Old Testament certainly suggests that the fear of God is a good thing.  Is it?  Come this weekend and find out!

I don't know about you, but without worship, my week is incomplete.  Something is just out of kilter.  It's just not right!  And if I miss that weekend worship, it impacts the whole week.  So get your new year off to a great start.  Start with worship!  See you this weekend!