Yesterday I took part in the one-day conference hosted by the Northern Plains District of the EFCA in which Dr. Walt Kaiser spoke on various issues regarding Christians are ethics. Included in his talks were gambling and greed, cohabitation and adultery. Although he taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for many years, he had moved on a decade before I arrived. So it was a great opportunity to sit under his teaching, if only for one day. The conference was held in Dickinson at a 4Cs Congregational Church that partnered with the NPD in hosting Dr. Kaiser. In addition to the wealth of information on pressing ethical issues of our day, I also greatly appreciated his passion for expository preaching (where the sermon gets its form and content from a single passage in Scripture). All-in-all it was well-worth the 2:30 hour drive each way!
My wife and I had some great fellowship opportunities this past weekend. Saturday night we drove out to one of the families in the church that lives in the country and played Settler of Catan with them. We picked up Settlers at our previous church and have since been able to pass it on to at least one family here in Underwood. In fact, they not only have the original game but also the Seafarers expansion. Neither my wife or I had ever played this version but were able to pick it up pretty quickly. Then on Sunday evening we were invited over to the house of a new family to our church who are our age and have three young kids. We had fun discussing theology with them, playing with their kids and enjoying a wonderful taco bar. They joked that both times they've had us over it's been for Mexican food. We explained that being from Southern California, we believe that you can never have too much Mexican food!
On Sunday I announced to the congregation the plans for hosting a Community Carnival on October 31st. In our discussions the past couple weeks at our weekly Community Group, I have been so encouraged at how our people have responded very positively and have been coming up with great ideas for the event. This will be a large undertaking for such a small congregation but I believe that if we're faithful, God can use this event to have an impact on our community. Please continue to pray for our planning of this event and that it would be a success.
By God's Grace, Jeff
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