My Strange Dream (came true)

2 CommentsABOUT ME, MY BLOG, MY CHURCH, Community Church of the Hills, Hope Chapel Hill Country, , ,

I’m re-posting this article from September 13, 2014, originally called, “My Strange Dream,” because today, I realized, the dream came true. See the postscript at the bottom of the post.

I have a new Pentecostal friend who has proven to me that he walks with the Lord.

I met Amalio a few weeks ago when I was searching for a contractor to help put in new flooring in our church building due to a flood from a neighboring business. Also, I needed some minor remodeling done.

The first contractor I met gave me a quote of $12,000.00,  a bit more than I could afford. The second man surveyed the space, wrote down some figures but never got back to me. The third also had a quote that was too high.

Cost of house constructionI did not know what to do so I called a former congregant who was a handyman and he suggested Amalio. When I met him he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: He would provide me with two days’ free labor if I purchased the materials at Home Depot.

DEAL!

“But why would you do this, Amalio, you don’t even know me!”

He looked at the walls of Hope Chapel Hill Country, smiled, and said, “It’s for God’s Kingdom!”

“Let me pay you, though; what is your daily rate?”

“No, I can’t,” Amalio insisted, “I believe God wants me to do this for free.”

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Pokémon GO Into All the World

2 CommentsCommunity Church of the Hills, Culture, Pastor's P.O.V.,

A DEAD BODY WAS FOUND BY A 19-year-old Wyoming woman when she was playing the virtual reality game Pokémon GO. Police arrested four suspects who used the game to lure victims to be robbed in O’Fallon, Montana, and the Director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. cautioned, “Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism.”

POKEMON1

Unless you’ve been hiding under Donald Trump’s hair for the last month then you’ve probably heard about this app that has been downloaded over 75 million times and has over 20 million active users since it launched on July 6.

VOX.com explains what it is: “In simple terms, Pokémon Go is a game that uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon “appear” around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and catch them. As you move around, different and more types of Pokémon will appear depending on where you are and what time it is. The idea is to encourage you to travel around the real world to catch Pokémon in the game.”

CBN News calls this phenomenon a new ministry opportunity. “According to one survey, 82% of churches have reported an increase in attendance.”

church poke

They reported the following Tweets:

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No Longer a Stranger in a Strange Land

ABOUT ME, MY BLOG, MY CHURCH, Community Church of the Hills, , , , ,

I preached my first sermon at Community Church of the Hills one year ago last Sunday, July 10, 2015.

Never, in a million years did I ever expect to be pastoring a church in the middle of Texas, especially since I’m a native born—ahem—guy from the west coast, from the second largest city in America. (Is that vague enough?)

Oh, but what a wonderful change!

texas

I didn’t move to Texas like other Californians because of huge profits from the sale of their homes and getting double—triple—the value in the Lone Star State. I didn’t move as some sort of left-wing conspiracy to change the political climate of this Red State (I’m a conservative). I didn’t even move here as a protest against the Golden State and its strange brew of crazy, nonsensical, burdensome, ridiculous tax and social laws.

No, I came for one reason and one reason only: God called me.

I didn’t hear any voices, no angel trumpeted from Heaven nor did a lightning bolt strike a special place in my Bible. A series of circumstances aligned themselves together to cause me to pray about uprooting my family, leaving a church where I had been an associate pastor for fifteen years, abandoning a pension that I would receive in just five years, and, of course, saying goodbye to everything familiar, including family and friends.

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