SUMMERTIME CHURCH

Church in the summer is a mixed bag. Yes, many church members are on vacation, doing some traveling, and sometimes just not quite making it to church services. As I have matured a little in my ministry and as a husband and father I have become less critical of vacation time away. As a matter of fact, my wife and I just spent a few days away for our 25th anniversary.

There are some positives as well. Today 20 of our middle schoolers will return from Super Summer, and 26 of our Senior High will go to Super Summer. That is a high point for our Youth. God does many wonderful things during these days at Ouachita Baptist University. In a couple of weeks we will hold VBS, then we will take off for Americus, Kansas to hold VBS for a small rural church. A week or two after that our children will attend camp in Siloam Springs.

I have learned that Summertime Church is not really a slump, it is just different, and that is okay.

As The Deer

Every Tuesday morning, our Minister of Music and I get together for a time of prayer. Mark is bivocational, so this time serves as our "staff meeting." It is also a time of Spiritual accountability and sometimes worship. Lately, we have been driving just to the edge of town where several whitetail deer live. We see them almost every time we go out. This morning as we were checking out the deer (and the police were checking us out) I thought of the 42nd Psalm - "As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God."
As we pray for Revival in our church, I am confronted with this question "Do we?" "Do I?" Do I really long for God. The deer will go to every length to find nourishing water. The deer will cross busy highways, slip by playgrounds, dog pens, and get out in broad daylight - whatever it takes to have water. The reason we do not have Revival is because we do not really desire it that much. Just this weekend I had the reality of how much we need Revival, and how much we do not seriously desire it when I was confronted to the pettiness of God's people. May God first make us thirsty, then Revive us.