Life @ Montrose, August 14

This Sabbath we are going to look at what Jesus taught about death (based on John 11:1-14 and Rev. 1:17-18). We've had a number of funerals this summer that have impacted our church family. This week we're going to study from God's Word why we don't need to be afraid of death. I hope you'll come and worship this Sabbath as we look for a message of hope from the teachings of Jesus.

This Sabbath afternoon there will be a special opportunity to pass out flyers in the English Garden part of Montrose as a part of learning about the needs of people in our community. This is the first part in participating in ShareFest. I know some people are planning to bring a sack lunch so they can go out and knock on doors right after church. Please contact Lamorna Riches for more information.

This week I received a call from Diane Davis, a member at Cedaredge, who is going to have a sacred music concern on this Saturday evening at 7 pm. If you would like to be blessed by some sacred music to close the Sabbath please come to the church to close the Sabbath.

Have you been following the olympics? What an exciting day it was this week to see Michael Phelps set a new world record with a career 11 gold medals. It reminds me of Paul's counsel about running the race.

The church camp out was a lot of fun. Dr. Timothy Standish shared with us over the weekend about origins. The weather was cool overall (the only time it was "hot" was when we went up hiking into a canyon to find dinosaur bones on Sabbath afternoon--ten to fifteen degrees warmer than the campground which was down in a valley by the river). One of the things that I learned about was trilobites. There are many different kinds but they only appear in the paleozoic period (not before or after). They also have complex eyes that mirror modern lens technology. There is no evolution from lesser eyes to more complex eyes. It seems pretty clear that they started out with complex eyes. Although we still have a lot of questions about the fossil record clearly we can have confidence in holding to an intelligent understanding of the biblical creation account. If you missed out you can download Dr. Standish's talks from the church web site (www.montroseadventist.org).

This past week I've developed a new schedule for my ministry. Some of you may not realize how intense ministry can be. I've tried to keep Mondays free for family time so I try not to return calls on Mondays unless they are an emergency (I still check my messages). I also have found that I need more time to spend time in sermon preparation and spiritual formation each week. It is easy to be incredibly busy. I'm going to begin reserving my mornings from Tuesday to Friday for this study time. Most evenings are booked up a month in advance between the three churches I have and it becomes extremely difficult to attend a meeting if I get a call at the last minute when I've already made another commitment. Last week while I was making two pastoral visits over a period of about three hours I received 20 voice mail messages. I do my best to return phone calls but some times it may not be until the following morning (especially if I get many of those calls in the evening) unless it is an emergency. I appreciate and value every phone call but I just want to share that I'm here to serve you and unfortunately there is only one of me!