Christopher Laurie’s Memorial…

took place today at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Ca.

If you would like to watch it, it is archived at the church website here.

You can watch it all or just certain segments. Please continue to pray for the Laurie’s as the pain of this type of loss usually really sets in after the memorial.

Lord be with Brittany, Sophie and their unborn child…envelope them with Your love and peace in such a way that they will sorrow as those who have hope beyond this life. Jesus thank you for that hope, may it be our constant guardian through the difficulties of this life.

Flashback

Today is my daughter’s 6th birthday so she had several of her friends over for a slumber party. With all those girls invading our house my 4 year old son and I decided to go to the movies. We were going to go see “Wall-E” but by the time Carson finished his piece of pizza (if only he ate real food as fast as he does Mike and Ikes), we tracked down his missing flip flop and I changed his pants after he decided to relieve himself there instead of the toilet, we were way too late for the movie so we went to Best Buy to purchase a movie instead.

After perusing the endless supply of Disney and Nickelodeon selections we decided upon one of my childhood favorites…

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

As I’m writing this Carson and I are watching these classic episodes…in some ways its seems like yesterday when I was enjoying these little mutants myself. The graphics and storyline are pretty cheesy but how cool is it to watch my son get excited about the same show I used to watch when I was his age.

Sorry I haven’t posted my notes from the Burning Questions Series. The notes need to be typed up and I’ve been pretty buried of late. The audio will be up on the church website by Monday afternoon if you’re interested.

Have a great weekend!

Not quite what I had in mind…

Tonight’s study didn’t go quite as planned…in fact I think it completely flopped.

I’m pretty much convinced that I left everyone more confused than if we hadn’t even attempted to answer the question in the first place.

Sometimes being a teaching pastor is the most amazing job in the world…at other times (like tonight) you want to run and hide and pretend that you work at McDonald’s (would you like it super sized).

This “Burning Questions” series has been much more difficult to teach than I thought it would be. It’s hard to prepare for it and even more challenging to teach. I think overall it has been and will continue to be fruitful and beneficial but I’m pretty discouraged with myself at this point.

Prayer: Does it change God’s mind?

Tonight I am teaching the third of a seven week series called “Burning Questions” Our topic tonight will be prayer…specifically “does prayer change God’s mind?”

Pastor John Duncan

Here is a letter from Pastor John Duncan who just recently retired as Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel Lake Elsinore in Lake Elsinore, CA. This story was first reported on the Phoenix Preacher blog.

“I purchased from Toyota of Temecula on June 12th of this year.

I will restate the facts once more. On June 13th, when I had owned the car for only one day and took it out for the first time, the car overheated heating coil blew out, causing hot fluid to spew out on my bare foot and the air conditioning stopped working. I will state again that the car was in my possession for less than 24 hours at that point, and had registered just 42 miles.

I immediately informed the Toyota dealership that the car was unreliable and I wanted it replaced with a new car. They came and towed the Matrix back to the dealership, where it remained for 27 days before it was “repaired” and returned to me. The repair was faulty. It has since been back in the shop several times for various problems relating to the first breakdown.

The burned foot caused financial upheaval for me, because I am the sole caregiver for my wife, who is bedridden with Multiple Sclerosis, and am also trying to recover from severe heart failure, which occurred last fall. My doctor ordered me to stop caregiver duties immediately, because I could not bend the foot without risking breaking the skin. I was informed that due to my limited circulation, an infection in the foot could be very serious. With no other choice, I had to spend my own savings to hire round-the-clock care for my wife. This continued for the three weeks that I was ordered to stay
off the foot and cost me several thousand dollars. I had been working hard on my cardiac rehab program set by my cardiologist, and was up to walking over 3 miles in an hour, but after three weeks on no exercise, I have suffered a set back and I am down to less that 2 mile in an hour now.

It is clear that Toyota is responsible for this chain of events. No one else is to blame. I have repeatedly asked for a different car, and the response I have received is that “it’s my car and my problem and I can take it up with Toyota.”

The car has now been in the shop and out of service for well over the 30 days required by California law before it can be declared a lemon. Even after it was past to point of being a legal lemon the Matrix in question had an intermittent (unpredictable) overheating problem. Toyota could not get it to overheat when they had it in the shop, so they returned it to me with instructions (which I still have on a voicemail) to drive the car to them the next time it overheated. When it happened again, I tried to drive the overheated car from Lake Elsinore to Temecula a distance of about 20 mile however, the car only made it a few miles before starting to lurch and jerk back and forth. The “check engine” light came on and the air conditioner quit working. I was still only a few miles from home, and being that I have severe heart failure and could not risk being exposed to the heat, I drove it back home. They came again and have now towed the Matrix back into the shop. I don’t believe they will be able to repair it this time, being that it is already a legal lemon, but they still will not give me my money back, or a new car or make a suitable offer for the medical expenses I incurred from this incident.”

If you feel compelled to come alongside of John to assist in this matter. You can send a courteous email to the owner of Temecula Toyota:

Mr. Don Atwood

datwood@toyotas4u.com

Pray for Greg Laurie and family

Christopher Laurie, the 33-year-old son of pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie, was killed at around mid-day today ( Thursday, July 24, 2008 ) in an automobile accident on the 91 freeway in Southern California.

Skip Heitzig, senior pastor of Calvary of Albuquerque said, “Greg Laurie is one of my best friends and my heart dropped and is still falling.

On behalf of the Laurie family I want to solicit as many prayers from the Body of Christ as possible. “Christopher (we all called him ‘Topher’) was on the 91 Freeway in southern California when this occurred about mid-day. Topher was the firstborn son of Greg and Cathe. He is not only survived by his parents but by his wife, Brittany and daughter Stella and by his younger brother, Jonathan.” Heitzig went on to say, “Please keep this precious family lifted before God’s throne, that God’s peace and comfort would envelop them and that He would guard and embrace their grieving hearts. Topher and his wife used to come every week to our church at Ocean Hills while I served there. I was able to watch their relationship blossom into marriage and rejoiced when their daughter Stella was born. ”Though I know he is right now with Jesus in heaven, I will deeply miss this talented and sweet young man. Thank you for your prayers.”

Greg is the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship. He has been used by the Lord in a mighty way to lead hundreds of thousands of people to Christ. He is also an inspiration to many Calvary Chapel pastors including myself who admire him for his passion for the lost, his innovation and creativity in ministry, and his absolute refusal to divide over minutiae even though he receives intense pressure to do so.

I have only met Greg once and did not know his son Christopher but I’m deeply saddened for their loss.

Burning Questions Week #2

I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had much time to post…but here are last night’s notes from our burning questions series.

The question was “Where did we get the Bible, and how do we know it’s reliable?”

Also…if you are interested in listening to the audio teaching of this series you can access it here.

Burning Questions Week #1

For the next 7 weeks on Wednesday evenings I am teaching a series we’re calling “Burning Questions”

Over the last several months we’ve compiled questions from people in the church and now I’m going to answer those questions to the best of my ability. The questions will range from topics such as Eschatology, Angels, Creation, Prayer, and Heaven. We begin with a few songs of worship, I then introduce the question and “attempt” to answer it

after that I open it up for “conversation” shh…I don’t want to get labeled emergent. Ok Ok we’ll call it discussion to keep the discernment guys off my back. And then we close with worship because even in our best effort to answer these tough questions we must concede that God’s ways are beyond our ways and His thoughts are much higher than our thoughts so we are left to simply worship Him.

Last night I began the series by answering the question…

“Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us.”

Here are my notes…

AViD (A Voice in the Desert)

I just returned home from a week in Vizcaino, Baja Mexico. 17 young people from 4 different churches gathered together to learn the Bible, hear from Jesus, glean practical life and ministry tools, share the gospel, and serve people. Each of the represented church’s pastors will spend one week there leading the group.

In spite of the crazy travel there and back (don’t ask about the 13 hour bus ride in an outhouse on the way home) our portion of the trip was amazing and I know that God has much in store for these young people over the next 3 weeks.

In my time with the students we studied John 13-21…focusing on Jesus’ humility and servant’s heart. We also discussed ministry extensively using Warren Wiersbe’s book On Being a Servant of God as our text. Warren says, “ministry takes place when God’s resources meet human needs through loving channels to the glory of God.” I think this is an excellent definition of ministry and we had a great time breaking it down and looking at it biblically.

We had some great times of ministry as well. We held an outreach in a little oasis in the desert called San Agnacio. We were able to lead several people to Jesus…

as well as minister to dozens of children in both San Aganacio and one of the many “campos” in the area.

The vision I had for this event was to provide an atmosphere where young people could get away to hear from Jesus and minister to others. It was so exciting to see this vision come to fruition and I’m really looking forward to see the impact AViD has upon these young people in the future.

I am looking forward to putting together a short term trip to Vizzy this spring. I would encourage those of you who attend CCCC to begin praying about joining us on this trip over spring break ‘09. It’s a long trip but it will change your life.

Pastor Bill Walden and Cornerstone Ministries of Napa, CA. are continuing to pursue their vision of building a facility to host American missions groups. This facility was inspired by La Posada in Rosarito Beach. The facility has much work yet to be completed but what started with an idea and a bare piece of property is turning into reality. In addition to AViD there is much going on in Vizzy…a Calvary Chapel has been planted, there are 4 full time missionaries and dozens of short term missionaries that travel down each year, and an annual pastor’s conference that encourages pastors and leaders in the entire South Baja region.

What a blessing to serve Jesus…in south Baja, at Calvary Chapel Crook County, and right here at home where my wife and two kids need me more than anyone else.

grace…ryan

Death to Self

“To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.” Thomas Merton