He is risen indeed!

Hello Everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Resurrection Celebration! We had a wonderful time worshiping in our town of Palouse.
It was a busy week- and weekend. I participated in the Tennabrae service at Garfield Methodist on Thursda. This is a quiet service of the Lord's Supper, Prayer, Singing and scripture reading. With each reading a candle is extinguished- there are seven candles. By the end of the service you are in the dark.
Tina, the kids and I went to a great reader's theatre at Garfield Christian Church on Good Friday. It was an excellent program. Danny was a little loud and active- as usual. But the youth and folks there did an awesome job.
Saturday, I started off the day with the monthly men's breakfast. We had some good eats! Thanks guys.
Following the breakfast a few folks from the church and many others from Palouse participated in tree planting. That was fun. Did I mention it was snowing on Saturday? From about 7am until noon, i think, it snowed. Crazy~ there is an old German proverb- "Green Christmas, White Easter." We had a Green Christmas and we almost had a white Easter.
Anyways after the tree planting we had a fun choir practice- getting ready for Sunday.
Oh- I forgot to mention that we discovered a gas leak on the church boiler on Friday. So for the rest of the weekend, including Sunday- we had only our fireplace in our fellowship hall to heat the whole church. The sanctuary was at 56 degrees when I came in on Sunday. But with a space heater, the fireplace, some body heat and solar heat- we warmed up to 65 degrees by the end of the Resurrection Sunday service.
148 people can make a lot of body heat. It was awesome to have 148 people there worshiping our Lord Jesus. That is 65 more people than Easter 2005.
Anyways the service was a bit long- we had the usual stuff- hymns, prayer, offering, give and take Bible Study- children's sermon- but we also had Lord's Supper and we had a mini-cantata. The mini-cantata included scripture readings and two "brief" sermons. Okay they weren't too brief.
Most folks stayed for the fellowship time afterwards and an egg hunt. Thanks for all those who did all the work on hosting the fellowship time and doing the egg hunt. Thanks also to Tecla for a job well done with directing the choir. Thanks also to Terry for playing piano so beautifully and Penny for doing likewise with the flute.
Thanks to Don for a job well done on the sound. We had lots of mics- and other stuff- and it was all very good.

The messages were this- we need the cross! And- the stone was rolled away THEN and NOW. And lastly the resurrection is a promise for NOW and LATER! I will be getting the sermon manuscript online on my sermon blog soon. Right now I am on a friend's computer- so I don't have access to my sermon file.
we are taking a brief post Holy Week break in chelan staying with our friends Ray and Christina. But we will be back to work by Thursday evening- or Friday morning and I'll be in the pulpit Sunday-- raring to go.
Thanks to all who pray for our ministry in Palouse. It is such a wonderful community. I am honored and blessed to serve in Palouse.
Christ is risen-

Baptisms and Confirmation

Praise be to God- I have lost track at how many times I said that today. Let me write it again: Praise be to God.
We celebrated six baptisms today and the confirmation of two baptisms. We are a Federated church- which means we are a combination of a few different kind of Protestant Christian churches- we have people that believe in believer's baptism (sometimes called adult baptism) and people that believe in child or infant baptism. We honor both practices, though I only perform believer's immersion baptism. I do, however, teach confirmation classes to those who were baptized as infants. Anyways- it was fun and awesome.
Tina and I didn't get any pictures of the baptisms as they were happening- so the only pictures I have to share are of me with the people afterwards. I have no idea how blogger will actually lay them out- so here are their names: Alyssa, Brenda, Eli, Gordy+Tereasa, Taylor, Haley, and Jake. The funny looking guy in the tie is me- Corey.

hey God- thanks for loving us and sticking with us and loving all these people. Thanks for bringing them home to a live of love, forgiveness, holiness and service for you. Hey God- I guess you were serious about this 'redeeming the world' thing! Thanks for working in this corner of your world. We love your presence.

oh- we had a ton of people in worship today- probably several tons literally.

A strong Christian Song...

My brother Casey sent me this song by Todd Agnew- the lyrics are true and challenging.

MY JESUS
Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ
Then why do you look so much like the world?

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land?
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand?

Cause my Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the rich
So which one do you want to be?

Who is this that you follow?
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side or fall down and worship at His holy feet?

Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part?
Sometimes I doubt we'd recognize Him

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and the least of these
He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable
So which one do you want to be?

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet would stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despised the proud
I think He'd prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd

And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!
Not a posterchild for American prosperity, but like my Jesus You see I'm tired of living for success and popularity
I want to be like my Jesus but I'm not sure what that means to be like You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You, love like You but then You died for me Can I be like You Jesus? I want to be like my Jesus

Good to be home...

We weren't in Palouse on Sunday, March 26th. We travelled to Heppner Oregon that weekend to serve at the memorial service for Kennethy "Kenny" Graves, 39. May he rest in peace. Please remember his family- especially his fiance Renee Kuehner in your prayers- this was a sudden loss.
We thank God for the gift of life given to the world that was Kenny Graves.

It was good to be back home for Sunday April 2nd service. Can you believe it is April?
This is Spring Break week for our school district and we were missing a fair amount of families and youngsters. But we had a spirited time of worship anyways! We had a very interactive give and take, discussing "Why worship?"- what we miss out on if we worship and what we gain if we worship. I learned a bunch.

You can read my sermon notes on my sermon blog- but basically I was led to preach a sermon on dealing with barriers that stop us from being who God created us to be. So I talked about sin- and letting things go and such.
I didn't check how many folks were there- but I guarantee it was our smallest group in 2006- it seemed like twenty people let me know that they would be gone this week.
Wherever you are- we pray for your safe travels and swift return.

We had a wonderful time celebrating the Lord's Supper. This month we are going to do it twice-we are going to celebrate it on Resurrection Sunday as well.
Speaking of Resurrection Sunday- I encouraged everyone present to invite at least a couple of people to worship with us on Palm Sunday and Easter. On Palm Sunday, this Sunday, we are celebrating with six baptisms and the confirmation of two baptisms. It should be fun.
peace. Corey