Welcome officially to the Summer heat wave season.  I tried to explain to a friend of mine that 90 degrees in the Illinois humidity is a different kind of heat altogether than the 90 degrees he's familiar with in the dry climate of New Mexico, but he just chuckled.  I can't wait for him to come visit during the Summer sometime and have his mind blown...

I hope that you had a wonderful day with the Lord this week -- even those of you whom I know were out sick (apparently, there was a nasty stomach flu that ravaged at least three of our church family’s households this Sunday morning).  Those of us who were here enjoyed the last comfortable day before all of the Summer heat wave days kick in.  Seriously, it seems like weather-wise, we’re jumping from early Spring directly into mid Summer, with nothing in-between.

Before I forget, I hope that all of you out there had a very Happy Mother’s Day!  As many people pointed out this past Sunday, Mother’s Day is ironically a lot less work for me than Father’s Day is around here, since the Youth Group always takes over the service on Mother’s Day (and does a wonderful job of it, too).  Basically, I just teach Sunday School, then spend the rest of the day sitting around looking pretty.  Or at least just sitting around…

My son was very excited that this year, May 4 fell on a Sunday.  Why?  Because he’s a geek, geeks consider it to be International Star Wars Day and Alex loves running around telling people, “May the Fourth be with you!” (if you don’t get the joke, then go rent and watch Star Wars immediately).

We had the privilege of welcoming retired covenant pastor Rev. Karl E. Johnson who visited this week with Pastor Kevin out for a short break. In Sunday school, Sara Stewart brought to life the impact that art has had on people and theology in history, especially the Middle Ages. 

Before I forget, let me begin this update by wishing all of you a very Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful day this Resurrection Sunday... but it really began with a powerful Good Friday service... which was actually an extension off of what we talked about on Palm Sunday last week... which actually built off of the Passover Seder that we’d eaten the night before...  (see, there is a method to the madness after all).

Before I forget, let me thank all of you who helped out this week with the Passover Seder dinner, whether with set-up, or clean-up, or cooking the (frankly amazing) food.  We had a good turn-out, and our new missionary friend from Chosen People -- named Josh Norman -- was totally blown away.  Seriously, he appeared to be genuinely moved, and he shared that he’d never been at a church that took the Seder so seriously, yet had so much fun with it.  Usually, apparently, it’s either some sort of goofy novelty to the churches, or else they take it so seriously that they miss the point that it’s supposed to be a family meal -- worship of God through genuine community.

For those of you who have been praying for Spring to arrive, congrats!  The sun is getting brighter, air is getting warmer, and we're getting more and more thunderstorms (for those of you reading this on the Pacific coasts, replace that with "more and more earthquakes").

Hello there!  I hope that this Update finds you healthy and happy--but even moreso that it finds you appreciating God's joy.

Before I forget, let me thank everyone who helped out on Saturday with our all-church clean-up day.  We had spacklers and painters, cleaners and re-organizers, and several of us running garbage loads to the dumpster.  If you noticed, everything looks so much better now -- but we had just a few too few workers (and too little paint) to do everything that we’d wanted to do, so we’ll have one more painting day between now and Resurrection Sunday (so watch your emails for a note from the office).  But since people worked so hard on Saturday, that final painting day should go super fast.

Before I forget, let me invite any FCCers who have at least a little time available this Saturday to come join us for our all-church work day at the church building.  This isn’t our annual “Spring Cleaning” day, per se-- this is a time to touch up and work on all the little dings and dents that the building has picked up over time.  As with so many things in life, we kinda get used to the less-than-perfect things that we don’t get a chance to fix right away.  That scratch over here, that dent over there--if we don’t work on it immediately, it soon drifts into the corners of our eyes, and we no longer see it.  Over time, the whole place can look dinged and dented, and though we don’t see it, others do--and though we may not see it consciously, it still affects our basic self-image of our church on a subconscious level.  So please come join us, even if you can only spare an hour or two this Saturday morning.  Just let the church office know that you’ll be there, if you could.

I’m so sorry if you weren’t able to be here this Sunday, because we had a lot of stuff going on that was pretty exciting.

What is it that they say about March coming in like a lion and then going out like a lamb?  I'm guessing that the end of March would have to be pretty lamb-y to make up for this year's lion-ness.  But then again, looking back at last year's Sunday Morning Updates, March started off with a big snowstorm then, too, so maybe we should just get used to it.

I confess a bit of a love/hate relationship with technology.  Oh, I love what new technologies can do--and, more importantly, what they can allow simple churches like ours to do--but I hate how easily something simple can gum up the works.  For instance, AT&T upgraded their systems and gave us a brand, new router for our office.  Our internet access is now lightning-fast, and that’s wonderful.  Of course, that meant that the main office computer could no longer print to the main office printer...

I was out in my shirtsleeves yesterday after the church service, and today, we’ve shoveled twice in the freezing cold and our driveway is again totally covered.  I do have to admit, however, that it’s been a long time since I’ve witnessed lightning and thunder during a snowstorm, so that was fun.