This has been an exciting summer in so many ways, but one of the most exciting events is the hiring of a new pastor, Caleb Foss. Caleb and his very talented, capable and charming wife Calista, are well known to many in the Spokane - Sandpoint area. They both grew up in this area and have now come home. Calista is a Physician’s Assistant and Caleb will be working part time with us at the Church. His main focus will be on developing our Service Projects Ministries and Young Adult Ministries. Please stop by and get to know Caleb. He brings a lot of energy, enthusiasm and talent to our team. Welcome aboard, Caleb and Calista.

I can’t believe it. Summer is almost over. Seems like it has hardly begun. The weather has been terrific! Not too hot … nice and warm. … speaking of perfect weather … what a great time we had on the float trip in the Alberton Gorge over in Montana last weekend. Those of us that went had a blast!! We definitely have to do it again.

We are just finishing up a our sermon series on Abraham: The Friend of God. I don’t know about you, but I saw Jesus in a whole new light as I studied this series. Abraham is really all about Jesus: The promise of the child, the rescuing from destruction, the patience, the love, … did I mention the promise? What a promise God gave Abraham. Ultimately the promise isn’t just for Abraham, but for you and me, too.

Our prayer is that you will claim the promise of the child to come, the king to come. Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise … may He be the fulfillment of all your promises, too.

It has been too long since I updated these notes. I apologize for that. But that doesn’t mean exciting things haven’t been happening. For those of you who have been attending church or following along with our sermons online you know we are in the middle of a sermon series based on the Lord’s Prayer. It has been a challenging time for me to spend concentrated time studying about prayer. It is one thing to read about it. It is another thing to preach about it, but it is a completely different thing to actually be involved in prayer. I have to admit I have been blessed.

One of the exciting things that we have undertaken is to develop some prayer meditations. Several members of the congregations and I have written prayers to be shared with the world. We contracted with recording artist George Conrad to provide some music for the background. George is a phenomenal pianist who has the ability to create music on the fly and to paint pictures with that music.

I believe I can speak for all the other participants when I say that just the act of writing the prayers and then recording them was a very spiritual experience. It was amazing for me to realize that something that I planned for turned out to be so personally impacting. What I mean is, I’ve often had this sense that in order for prayer to meaningful they needed to be spontaneous. Planned prayer seemed … well, it seemed to be too planned. How could that be spiritual? It seems canned, or scheduled, that can’t be real. And yet, as I prayed my prayer, each time, though the words were the same, I had a deeper sense of a connection with God. When we finally recorded the prayer I thought, ‘well, this is going to be like performing a grade school play.’ I’d learned my lines and now it was time to deliver it.

Boy, was I in for a surprise. I don’t know what happened, but I swear God showed up. Even now as I listen to the various prayers I keep experiencing new insights about God and myself. I have found a fun way to communicate my heart’s longing with God. It doesn’t seem repetitious or canned, it is definitely prayer. The music complements the words and the words speak from my heart.

I really encourage you to experience it. You can go to the Prayer section of the website and download the prayer meditations and take them with you. I think you will be blessed profoundly. I know that I am more firmly convinced than ever that we need to do more than just talk about prayer, we need to do prayer. My commitment is to pray more. I hope you’ll make the same commitment.