Our youth pastor Kyle roped Shaun (kids pastor), Disciple (missions pastor), and I into this little video the other day.
it was fun while we were messing around making it…
now that i look at it, i realize it is serious blackmail material.
hope you enjoy…
(by the way, my wife makes a cameo at the very first).
peace. out.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvf-fPkY0Y]
So, it’s the week after Easter so i guess what all of you are wanting to know is, “How was it?” Right?
i know there are probably pastors out there that look at this blog (whether they will admit it or not) and i know what every pastor does after Easter…we check out other pastor’s blogs to find out how it went for them. Right?
every pastor during this week, will look all over the internet and the “blogosphere” to find out who had the big numbers, who did the cool thing, who had the most salvations, etc.
So here we go…
i refuse to tell you the numbers.
i refuse to talk about salvations.
i refuse to talk about metrics.
i refuse to tell you how many services we had.
i refuse to tell you how many first time guests came.
i refuse to play into the game that says we are “ok” or “cool” or “relevant” because of the numbers!!!
hope you had a great Easter, hope you can get thru “black sunday.”
peace. out.
I am preaching thru the book of judges right now at theedge. It’s a book that i have never really spent a lot of time on, but i always like the stories and the sermons i hear from it. So, i felt like God was leading me to walk thru it with the church. I read thru the whole book by myself, just to get acquainted with it. Let me just say…it’s depressing! Seriously. It starts out kinda ok, but then it gets progressively worse and worse. By the end of it the Israelites are in all out civil war, completely away from serving God.
As we have taken the time to go thru each chapter, i have noticed a theme. Trust God! It all comes down to trusting God.
The Israelites constantly choose to turn away from God and they consistently end up in serious trouble. It never fails. The more they choose against God, the more they suffer. If they would just have remembered how good God had been in their lives they would never have to worry about war, and trouble, and famine.
How stupid were these people?! Oh, wait a minute! I guess as stupid as you and me!
That’s right! We do the same thing, don’t we? It seems that one of the hardest things to do is remember God. I struggle with it all the time. Every time i get frustrated, angry, sad, upset with others, mad at my wife, blow up at my kids, curse out that bad driver that just cut me off…i can directly trace it back to not trusting God! That’s the bottom line. We can try to candy coat it or justify it, but at the end of the day…i don’t trust God. And neither do you.
So, let’s get honest with ourselves and work on this trust thing.
Well, our family is always expanding! Here is the newest addition to the Hogue clan.Baby Jude! He was born on the 4th of January. He was over 7lbs and he had hair! That might sound weird to you, but it was really weird to us! All of our kids have been born bald, so to have one come out with hair (much more, dark hair) threw us for a loop. he has been great and we are so blessed by God to have 4 incredible and healthy children.
This last picture is of Goldie and Jude together, just about 2 weeks ago.
OK, i know it’s been forever since I have written anything so i think i will try to catch you up on a few things.
In November ‘07 10 of us from theedge went to Gulu, Uganda. It has been in a nasty, 20 year, civil war. It is fairly peaceful right now, so we decided to go and help minister any way we could.
A mom of one of our members actually lives in Gulu as a missionary and runs a mission house and a children’s home along with many different ministries in northern Uganda. It was an incredible trip. We were on the ground for 9 days and we never stopped once! It was hard, but it was the greatest time of ministry in my life. We fell in love with the people. We prayed for the sick in the hospital, we played with the kids at the children’s home, we went to 3 different government camps to minister, speak, go door to door, do a children’s crusade, and help with a medical mission.
We are planning on going back again this year.
Please be praying for the people in Uganda. We pray that God will bring an end to the war, and spread the Gospel throughout the region!
I am the lead pastor of the edge church in Edmond, Ok. I have been married for 14 years to Brittany and we have 4 amazing kids…Levi, Crew, Goldie, and Jude. Read more..
