We are in that in between time. The time between Christmas and New Years. The time when we are supposed to be making New Year’s Resolutions and contemplating the meaning of our life or something like that. I tend to not make any resolutions but not because I don’t believe in change or transformation but because I believe change and transformation are things that happen daily and weekly- not once a year because I am filled with regret looking at the past 12 months. Change happens and is evidenced in the little moments in life. How do I react when I am tired? How do I react when I tell the kids to go to bed for the 304th time? Do I do sweep the floor even though I am exhausted? Do I blow up when the grumpy person cuts in front of me? These things only work out as I am changed into the person Christ wants me to be as I am filled with the Spirit and evidence the fruits of the Spirit.

Rather than making a resolution this year, why not seek God and ask Him to show us areas of our life where we need more of His Spirit to shine through or bring change to our lives? Where do we need to evidence more of His Holiness?

This Sunday night from 7 – 9 pm we’ll be having a very impromptu New Year’s Eve hangout. We’ll be showing a movie and have tables ready for board games. Bring your own games, drinks and snacks.

The Prayer Table is still begging to be filled. Please don’t forget this. My little son Peter was asking me about it and said "Dad, we gotta keep working to fill that table, let’s prayer together." Our participation in community prayer WILL make a difference. Let’s keep praying together. We will celebrate with something special once it is filled.

How are you doing on that visioning worksheet from last week? I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted your input! Keep it in mind. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Please pray for the service this Sunday and for me as I share from the word and for Lisa Osiowy as her and her team lead worship.

God bless.

Pastor Dave

Merry Christmas!

My prayer for you is that you truly experience Christ this season as you celebrate His birthday. Whatever you do, make Christ the focus. Christ is truly the only answer to the troubles in our world. He always has been, he always will be.

Here’s a video to keep us focused on the true meaning of Christmas. Extending grace to others because of the grace we have been given.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am-7EI3O7Dk

A reminder that our Christmas Eve service is here at 7:00pm. Have a great holiday!

Hi everyone. We’ve sure been experiencing some abnormally warm weather these days. I only cried a little about the fact that there is not enough snow for my snowmobile. Oh well, maybe it will still come! Once again, there is lots to talk about and remind you of, so buckle up.

Some important upcoming events:

• We are going to wrap up men’s prayer for the year this Thursday at 6:00 am with a men’s breakfast! We’ll pray, have some great food and have a short bible study. See you tomorrow morning bright and early.
• This Saturday at 9:30 am is the women’s Christmas brunch here at the church. Come and invite a friend.
• On December 24th there is no morning service here. Instead we will be having an evening service at 7:00 pm to celebrate Christmas Eve! If you would like to attend a morning service, the Presbyterians will be celebrating at 10:30 am and all are welcome to join them.
• On December 31st at 7:00 pm, there will be an informal gathering here at the church. We’ll be showing a movie that involves battling and a dwelling space and rhymes with star boom. This movie will help to remind us all of the importance of prayer. There will also be tables set up for board games. Please bring your own drinks and snacks.

This Sunday we are having a Christmas Celebration Service and an Ole Fashion Potluck (say that with a southern accent). The turkey and fixings will be provided. Please bring a salad or a desert and bring a friend who might need some encouragement. The service will be filled with carols, kids singing, and fun stuff for everyone. I’ve got something up my sleeve as well. I’ve attached a picture of a boat… that’s the only clue you’ll get.

Also, last night at our board meeting we begin working through an exercise to help plan out and dream for the future of our church. If you would like to join us in this process, please prayerfully work through the attached worksheet and either send it back to me or come and talk to me sometime in the new year. I’d love to hear your thoughts! We want to think big and I know God has given some of you some ideas that we might need to hear about.

Finally, please pray earnestly for the service this Sunday and please invite a friend.

A reminder that the hamper items are due this Sunday as they will be delivered shortly after.

God bless,

Pastor Dave

Well, I guess I got my snow. A little more would be nice, but I’ll take what I can get. It looks like the weather is supposed to warm up so we might end up losing a bunch of it pretty soon.

I’ve recently started to modify one of my go-karts. It used to be one wheel drive and could go about 55 km/hr, but that just seemed a little boring and slow, so I’m attempting to upgrade the power plant with something that has a little more spunk – 2 stroke motor with a four speed transmission :). I don’t think I could not upgrade!

Isn’t there something wired within us to constantly improve whatever we are doing? If it’s not there or if it’s been lost, I can’t help but think that something has stolen it away. I wonder about my faith walk as I say this. Where are we hoping to upgrade our relationship with God? What areas do you need to improve? I think we can sometimes get a little stagnant in our faith and we lose the drive to improve or grow. Allow God’s spirit to speak to you as the new year approaches. I think we all have ways that we can grow and with that growth comes life, excitement, challenge and all kinds of good things.

This week I will be speaking on 1 Peter 1:3-6 and focusing on the idea of rejoicing in our salvation. We’ll be taking a break from speaking on Nehemiah and on prayer until the new year begins. But please don’t lose sight of the call to prayer we are making. Please fill the prayer table. Please pray more than you have before, even if that only means 30 minutes a week. It is prayer that will continue to bring the kingdom of God here – and I think we can already see things starting to come. Also pray for Lisa Osiowy and her team as they lead the worship.

Speaking of prayer, this Saturday is Second Saturday. We’ll be meeting here to pray at 7:00pm. Our focus this week is the youth of our community. We’ll be praying for as many as we can by name.

Pastor Lindsay has faithfully been putting time into upgrading our website when he is able. He’s been doing a great job and recently we started putting some of the sermons online. We’re working on getting more up, but for now we have the whole series on PRAY from October and November. Your can listen to them here: sermons.

Christmas Eve we’re having a service here at 7:00pm. There will not be a morning service that day. We’ve invited the Presbyterian church to our Christmas Eve service in the evening and they said for those of us who would like to, we are welcome to attend their morning service at 10:30 a.m. Feel free to attend one or both, but whatever you do, enjoy the reason for the season.

Lastly, on December 17th we are having a big Christmas potluck. I encourage you to invite a friend for this service as it will be pretty laid-back with lots of carols and Christmas cheer. Think of this as our Christmas banquet as a community.

I think that’s all. God bless you. I am so proud of this church and how much you all care about it and put energy into it. I am so proud of how this church gives! Have a great weekend!

Pastor Dave

Hey everyone. I hope that your week has gone well. I have recently got an older snowmobile that me and the boys can’t wait to get into some snow. So I apologize but I have really been hoping for some snow. On top of that wouldn’t it be nice to get some snow for Christmas. "I’m dreaming of a brown and muddy Christmas." -no one.

I am excited to hear of people getting inspired to pray more. One person I know took a prayer rock and placed it in a place he felt God needed to show up, so he left the rock there for a while, prayed about it and then brought it back to the church. I think this is awesome! Let’s continue to rally together in prayer! Remember what it says in Nehemiah about rallying together- our God will fight for us.

This Sunday we’ll be taking up an offering for the GTA church planting initiative of ACOP. Remember that Daniel and Anna Cole will be joining us via skype so let’s be praying and thinking about that. They will be available to answer our questions and we’ll get to pray for them and their team. If you do make a donation to that initiative please clearly mark on the envelope "GTA" so that we can get it to the right place. I sent out some links last week but here’s another one that might interest you, it’s a link to a facebook group so that you can keep up to date on things, http://www.facebook.com/gtalaunch. I might share a little bit that morning but most of our time we want to spend talking with them and praying with them.

Please plan on attending our pot-luck on the 17th after church. It’s going to be a Christmas potluck. We’re gonna go all out and decorate. We’re going to provide the Turkey and the fixings. We ask that you please bring either a salad or a desert. We’d also encourage you to bring or invite a friend. We’re going to sing lots of Christmas carols, the kids will join us for that service and are planning on singing a song for us. It’s a great time of year to welcome people.

This Sunday we’ll also be starting our Advent celebration. Instead of our traditional readings I plan on doing something with the kid’s time to celebrate and recognize Advent. Also please note that on Christmas eve we will be having only an evening service. There will not be a regular morning service on that day.

Mike Zorn and his team are leading this Sunday so please uphold him in prayer. Pray for God to be present and to be moving in our service as well as we talk and pray with Daniel and Anna.

God bless,

Pastor Dave

I’ve got a lot to cover this week so strap in. Actually, do strap in because it’s going to be an exciting season for us as a church. I feel like God has got a lot in store for us and there is lots of exciting things to look forward to.

On December the 3rd we are going to hold a GTA Initiative Sunday. That’s GTA as in Greater Toronto Area, not the crime grand theft auto. We’re going to be talking about the church planting project that ACOP is getting involved in and taking up a special offering for the church planting initiative. Daniel and Anna Cole are a part of the team that is making this happen and we’re planning on skyping them into the service so we can talk to them and ask them some questions. I’d like you to begin preparing your heart as to how you would like to support this initiative financially. Also, I would like you to consider joining their launch team. A scary thought maybe, but would you consider the idea? Are you looking for an adventure of a lifetime? This might be the thing that God has been laying on your heart. If you’d like to learn more in the meantime, please check out this website: GTA Initiative.

Our rock table has filled a little bit, but I think we can do better. Remember, all you have to do is pray with someone during the week and you can place a rock on the table. Could be a friend, a family member, a brother, a sister, whoever. I’ll be reviewing what the rocks symbolize a bit this Sunday and continuing to preach on Nehemiah. We’ll be looking at Nehemiah chapter 4. Feel free to go ahead and read that ahead of time.

I’m excited to tell you that a women’s prayer group started this Tuesday over the noon hour. They’ll continue meeting at 12:15 on Tuesdays here at the church. All are welcome. Good job ladies. Men, we’ll keep meeting Thursday mornings at 6:00 am here at the church as well. The breakfast after at the Petro-can is icing on the cake.

Our Kid’s Church is currently looking to recruit more people to volunteer. If you have signed up but have not got your application in please let me know and I will help you. If you are interested in helping please me know as well. We have jobs that just about anyone can do and would not necessarily involve teaching- but we do need the help. A good problem to have! We’ve got lots of kids to take care of. Waylon and Rachel Kardash, Liz Wicks and Tamara Speidelsbach have been doing a great job leading our Kid’s Church program so far. The best way to say thanks is to get involved.

As we shared a few weeks ago, our level of giving is not meeting our current level of expenses. That means that we have been running a deficit. Just to be clear we are not going into debt! There have been a couple people asking, so I just wanted to make sure you understand. We have some savings that we planned to use to kick start some things like the youth ministry so for now the deficit is being absorbed by that savings. However, this savings will not last forever and we sincerely hope that we can continue doing things the way that we are. In order to do that our giving needs to increase. I would ask again that you make this an object of prayer.

Lastly I just want to share a youtube playlist of some of the songs we’ve been singing lately. I think it will help to make some of these songs a little more familiar. You can find it here: playlist. In case you haven’t heard BreAnn Zorn, Stacey Mitchell, Rachel Drinnan and Lisa Osiowy have taken the helm of leading our worship department as a group. They’ve been doing a great job and we’ve had some great worship over the last few months. Thanks so much!

As always pray for the service this weekend and for God to build his kingdom here. Thanks for being such a great church to lead.

God Bless,

Pastor Dave

I almost missed getting this one in since I was away at a conference all week. I was going to type an email while I was in Banff, but the days were so full that by the end of the day I was ready to crash. It was a really good event that I will tell you more about soon. There was a big focus on evangelism and church growth which I am praying that we will see more of here in Grenfell. Please continue the journey of prayer that we are on, there is no other way to see this happen.

Speaking of prayer, please don’t forget your rocks! You still have time to pray with someone and bring a rock. Let’s fill that table before Christmas!

Tomorrow is pot-luck, so come prepared to share in some good fellowship together and some good food. It’s a great day to invite someone.

Please pray for Pastor Lindsay as he’ll be speaking tomorrow. Please pray for anointing and for God’s strength to be upon him. Please also pray for Mike Zorn and his worship team for tomorrow as well.

God bless,

Pastor Dave

So I have got a lot of things to cover this week and so I will try and be efficient. First of all I am away from Sunday afternoon to Thursday afternoon at an ACOP leadership conference. Please pray that it will be a fruitful time. I’m really looking forward to it. I always come away encouraged and inspired after being at something like this.

This Saturday at 7:00 pm is our Second Saturday prayer gathering. This time we are going to focus our prayers on our First Nations communities. Please join us! It will be a very similar format to our prayer summit a few weeks ago.

Next Thursday the 16th we are hosting a joint worship service here in our church at 7:00 pm. It’s called ENCOURAGE. Kipling and Yorkton churches will be joining us. We really feel as though it’s going to be an awesome time of just enjoying God’s presence and worshipping together. This is open to anyone and everyone.

Tomorrow, Pastor Lindsay and 9 youth are going to the November retreat at the Regina Ap. He’ll be away until Sunday afternoon. Please pray for him and for the youth that God will touch their lives. Gatherings like this can be very transformational for youth. Thanks to Pastor Lindsay for making this happen.

This Sunday I’m going to be speaking on Nehemiah 3. Please take a few moments and read that before you get to church on Sunday. I am going to be speaking about the need for community prayer. I’ve got a special surprise to unveil. Dean Drinnan and I have been scheming and building something to show you. You won’t want to miss the reveal. I hope it will be something that will inspire you. Please also pray for Stacey and her team who will be leading this Sunday. We sure do appreciate the Mitchell’s. Serving and working so hard for our church and for this community. Go hug our youth pastor today!

God bless you.

Pastor Dave

Some snow, I mean poplar fluff (for those who are continuing to live in denial), has fallen. For those who love to snowmobile, your time is coming. I, on the other hand, who love to dirtbike know my time is ending for this year. Time to lock myself in the garage and begin my next project!

We had an awesome night last night at the warm up spot. Thanks to everyone who helped out with that, it was a really great time. Maybe I say that selfishly because I just love sitting by a campfire.

Last Sunday Julie Dimler shared a very important message from the board regarding our church finances. As she said, we have been running a deficit this year, which is not a surprise to the board because we have very intentionally stepped into some things over the last year and a half or so. Some, building related, like the flooring. Some, ministry related, like hiring a youth pastor. What allowed us to do this is a large endowment that the church had been sitting on for a number of years. The board decided to spend some of it to further God’s work here in Grenfell. I feel as though we have been able to do that. The number one sign for me among a whole bunch of other positives? Around 20 kids in church (and sometimes more) every Sunday and 20-30 youth being ministered to on a weekly basis. These two things are absolutely exciting! I feel that we need to continue what is happening, but the reality, as Julie shared, is that unless we see an increase in our giving, some of what we are currently able to do, will not be possible.

So, in light of that. All I would ask is that you pray and listen to how God may be stirring your heart. The church runs on the basis of generosity and sacrificial giving. Without you we could not be where we are at, but I wonder if this is a season where God is calling us to more? Some of you have asked about doing fundraisers or holding other events. While I think that these have their place, I don’t think that they are how God wants us to finance the regular ministry of the church. I think God’s work runs off of generous, sacrificial, confidential giving. Anytime we add something to this, we take something very sacred away from the process of giving.

As always, please pray that God would give me clarity and wisdom as I share this Sunday. Also please pray for Rachel as she leads worship. I know it makes a difference when you pray!

God bless. Thanks for being an awesome church!

Pastor Dave

Good morning everyone. A light skiff of snow and just like that winter sneaks in on us. It’s actually kind of hard to believe that it is here already. I guess my plans for sun tanning tomorrow afternoon are probably not gonna happen.

This Sunday we are going to do something a little out of the ordinary in our service. We are calling it a Prayer Summit. Our time of worship will be normal, but after the kids head downstairs I will share for a few minutes from Nehemiah 1 and then we will go into a time of prayer. We will have a moment of personal prayer and contemplation and then we will have a time of "small group" prayer. I will provide some guidance for this in the service and there will be a leader in each group. Not everyone will have to prayer- if all you want to do is listen and agree that is 100% alright. I think it will be a safe and comfortable moment even for someone who is new to God and to the church. Finally, we will have a time of corporate prayer. I have already asked several people who will lead our church in corporate prayers for various areas of our church and our community. The whole thing will be a little bit out of the ordinary to a regular service but it will be a good thing. I believe we need to become a little unsettled in order to move into a life of prayer as a church. If you have the time to read Nehemiah chapter 1, think about the idea of being unsettled.

As always I would ask you to pray for me as I lead this service and pray for the worship team as well. Lisa Osiowy will be leading.

I would also ask that you pray for Pastor Lindsay and Stacey. Stacey is currently experiencing some health complications with what the doctor’s think is her gall bladder. Please pray for her and for Pastor Lindsay.

Thanks to everyone who sent me a card and who said congratulations regarding the ordination service. You are a great church to lead and I am so proud of what is happening here. We are growing and we are seeing new life come into the church. Would you please be intentional about welcoming newcomers and with building relationships with those who have recently made our church home. And for those who are relatively new, we welcome you and are so excited you are here!

God bless,

Pastor Dave