Apparently Diet Coke and flowers do not require the same refridgeration temprature. Anyone that knows me well, knows I enjoy ice cold Diet Cokes. In an effort to set up my office at church, I purchased a 12-pack of Diet Cokes and put them in the church frig that was also holding the flowers for this past Sunday. The frig was on low (i.e. not very cold) and I figured it was just to save energy during the week, so I cranked it up to chill my pops. Later I found out that not only does a cold frig keep sodas cold but it also freezes flowers! I wasn't expecting to have to begin apologizing until I had actually tried something ministry-related that backfired but I guess its good to get the excuse me's out of the way early on.
The service on Sunday went well after I was able to question the Elders two different occasions about exactly what was to go on and what my responsibilities included. One of the older ladies commented to me on the way out that she was looking forward to going through 1 Peter.
If like me you grew up in a contemporary church setting, let me give you a sense of what a traditional service in small town North Dakota looks like: piano prelude, welcome and announcements, silent individual confession of sin followed by a prayer of corporate confession, call to worhip reading, hymn, responsive reading, chorus, corporate offering of praises and prayer requests followed by a time of corporate prayer, offeratory followed by a corporate singing of the Doxology, sermon, hymn, Lord's Supper (1st Sunday of each Month), hymn, benediction, piano postlude, pastor greets congregants at door. The service proper is followed by a half-hour of coffee/fellowship and an hour of Sunday School.
We're starting to make the parsonage look like a home. We've finally unpacked all of the boxes, found a place for everything, bought some furniture, hooked up the cable and rearranged our dining room table. Now we're talking about what color to paint the walls and how to set up the furniture when it arrives.
Some other things that we've done in the past week included, on Saturday driving to a nearby town for ice-cream at the Crab Apple which is only open during the summer months, driving past fields full of corn and sunflowers, wondering why there are so many hay bales sitting on the edges of fields, searching two different grocery stores before finding black beans, thick teryaki sauce and Stove Top, receiving our first gift of beef from a family that had one of their cows slaughtered, viewing the Bourne Ultimatum in a non-stadium seating movie theatre located inside a mall, making two trips to Sam's Club, and taking a couple days to realize that the parsonage didn't have a microwave and then a few more days of realizing how much we take having a microwave for granted before we could get one...fifty miles to the nearest Walmart!
Overall things are going very well. Please pray for us to continue getting to know the congregation and the town of Underwood (ND town of the year '05-'06!). We checked out a book from the library on Underwood and I will try to fill you in on some of the highlights in upcoming posts. I will try to post at least once a week (probably Tuesdays) so be sure to check back weekly. I believe the digital voice recorder captured my sermon and so now I just need to figure out how to post it online. - By God's Grace
The service on Sunday went well after I was able to question the Elders two different occasions about exactly what was to go on and what my responsibilities included. One of the older ladies commented to me on the way out that she was looking forward to going through 1 Peter.
If like me you grew up in a contemporary church setting, let me give you a sense of what a traditional service in small town North Dakota looks like: piano prelude, welcome and announcements, silent individual confession of sin followed by a prayer of corporate confession, call to worhip reading, hymn, responsive reading, chorus, corporate offering of praises and prayer requests followed by a time of corporate prayer, offeratory followed by a corporate singing of the Doxology, sermon, hymn, Lord's Supper (1st Sunday of each Month), hymn, benediction, piano postlude, pastor greets congregants at door. The service proper is followed by a half-hour of coffee/fellowship and an hour of Sunday School.
We're starting to make the parsonage look like a home. We've finally unpacked all of the boxes, found a place for everything, bought some furniture, hooked up the cable and rearranged our dining room table. Now we're talking about what color to paint the walls and how to set up the furniture when it arrives.
Some other things that we've done in the past week included, on Saturday driving to a nearby town for ice-cream at the Crab Apple which is only open during the summer months, driving past fields full of corn and sunflowers, wondering why there are so many hay bales sitting on the edges of fields, searching two different grocery stores before finding black beans, thick teryaki sauce and Stove Top, receiving our first gift of beef from a family that had one of their cows slaughtered, viewing the Bourne Ultimatum in a non-stadium seating movie theatre located inside a mall, making two trips to Sam's Club, and taking a couple days to realize that the parsonage didn't have a microwave and then a few more days of realizing how much we take having a microwave for granted before we could get one...fifty miles to the nearest Walmart!
Overall things are going very well. Please pray for us to continue getting to know the congregation and the town of Underwood (ND town of the year '05-'06!). We checked out a book from the library on Underwood and I will try to fill you in on some of the highlights in upcoming posts. I will try to post at least once a week (probably Tuesdays) so be sure to check back weekly. I believe the digital voice recorder captured my sermon and so now I just need to figure out how to post it online. - By God's Grace
1 comment:
I just think this post is really funny. It would have been worse if you tried to cool off beer.
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