Moving, Vacation, Sermon Series Recap,

I had a great lunch meeting with John Fleming yesterday. John and his wife Ellen ive in The Capital Region of New York. They are Raising Support to go Full Time working to Turn Lost College Students into Passionate Christ-Followers through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. John and I connected very well and we share the same vision for the Capital District. I look forward to a future partnership with John and Ellen as we are both working towards the same goal. I encourage you to check out their blog and show them some support.

Melinda and I are in the midst of packing, yet again in our marriage. We just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary a few months ago and we are moving into our 6th house/apartment. Elianah is turning 1 next month and before she even turns 1, she'll will have lived in 3 different places!!! My prayer is that this is our last move in A LONG TIME. Why are we moving you ask? Well we're moving from our apartment into the church parsonage (a house the church owns). It'll be nice because we'll only be a mile from the church and we'll have more space - 4 bedrooms. More space for Elianah, Dash, and Jack to run around and chase each other.

If you want to help us pack and unpack the truck, that would be amazing. We're moving this Saturday (10/25/08) @ 11:00am. Contact us if you need directions to our apartment.

This week is our vacation (from all of our jobs) and we're spending it packing. Yeah!?!? Next year, we are really going to go on a vacation and take a family trip somewhere. We won't be in church on Sunday, but I'm excited that Michael Moore will be preaching and Keegan Sidhu will be leading worship.

This past Sunday, we finished up our series, "Caretakers for the Kingdom" where we looked at our role as stewards in God's kingdom. One of the most important aspects of our Christian faith is how we respond to God’s call to give our tithes and offerings to His church. A helpful tool I found regarding tithing comes from Andy Stanley's book, Fields of Gold.
The 4 P’s of Giving

1. Priority Giving – giving to God first prevents good intentions from waning when finances run low at the end of the month.
2. Percentage Giving – deciding on a specific amount maintains discipline in giving
3. Progressive Giving – gradually increasing the percentage given promotes growth in faith.
4. Prompted Giving - being willing to meet spontaneous needs prevents the relational aspect of giving from growing routine

Of course, below are the links to listen to the sermon and/or subscribe to the podcast. I also am posting the video we did to recap the entire series.