Preacher Blake!

On Sunday my church gave Blake the opportunity to preach. He did great. Defintely a great reminder of the stuff that we are supposed to be following. The beattitudes are often talked about, read about, but very rarely applied, or thought about, "how does this affect my life." Blake did a great job at it. So to all who were not at Bakerstown Alliance Church, you missed it. It was legendary!

I got the job done!

One of the things I like most about myself is my ability to get the job done. Yesterday I installed (for the first time might I add) laminate flooring in my son's new room. With the help of Heather, we finished it! My goal for yesterday was to finish the floor, and I did it (at 11:30 p.m. including the 1/4 round). Of course this morning, I am sore as can be. It really does look nice. But the part that I am happy about is finishing what I set out to do. That makes me feel good. I think so many times we start off well and then we just don't finish. I know I am not alone in this. How many uncompleted projects do you have going on? Now when the project is not important, you know in the grand scheme of life, who cares! But so many things in our lives that we should be doing are just unfinished. After getting my floor down yesterday, boy does that feel good to get the job done. Let me encourage you, on a more than just doing "projects" around the house level, to get the job done. Do the type of jobs that God has been calling you to do. I have a feeling you know what they are. So go and do it. Maybe you too will feel sore in the morning, but man does it feel good.

My Bad

I realized that I have not posted anything for a week. My bad. Last week I was at Mahaffey Camp. You see that on Monday and Tuesday I posted, but then I went silent. I will tell you why that is. On Weddesday Heather and Isaiah joined me at Mahaffey. So my dilemma was to take get my computer walk down to the to the wi-fi zone and post something or have fun with my wife and son. Obviously you know which one I picked. It is really hard sometimes to keep my priorities straight. But in the very hectic month of July I learned something that is very important. Ready for this deep lesson? I like spending time with my wife and my kid (soon to be kids).

Naps

Today I actually got two naps. Boy were they nice naps. Granted they were only like fifteen minutes each but boy did they feel good. It is not often that I get to take those naps, so when I do I get excited. I think naps are a gift from God. It is Jesus who tells us to rest in Him. Holy Naps! Can we incorporate naps time in corporate worship? :)

My Legendary Trip To Lowes

Today was a very exciting day for me. The new Lowe's in my hometown opened. Of course I was there. Do you even need to ask? Now I am a big Lowe's fan (not so much a fan of the driver that they sponsor in Nascar). It was exciting for reasons other than the fact that I am always thinking about the next project on my never ending list for my house. It was exciting because it was new. There was just something exciting about that. That got me thinking...my wife's grandfather always said that there should be some building/remodeling project going on at church. It gets people excited. I have developed that further and now believe that you should always make sure the "change quotient" is up. Get people excited even if they don't think they want to be. Hmm...wonder what is the next project :)

Sunday Mornings

OK, so it is a Sunday morning right now. I got to admit, after seven years or so, I still get nervously excited. I work all week long to get ready for Sunday, and here it is. I usually get to the church around 6:45 or so, just so I can go over thing and get everything ready. I do my best to avoid the attitude of "it's just another Sunday." If it is just another Sunday then we are doubting God's ability to do something legendary. I do not ever want to get to that point. If I start thinking that, well then maybe it is time for me to look for something else to do. Right now, I'm excited, I'm ready, and I am waiting for God to some great things today! It is going to be legendary!

Roots

As I mentioned the other week I was able to direct a week of Edinboro Camp. Now this coming week I will be at Mahaffey Camp. Now you are sitting there thinking that is a lot of camps. One of the greatest things about those places is that they have deep roots for me. A lot of my spiritual formation can be traced back to those places. God called me to do what I am doing now on August 4, 1992 at Edinboro Family Camp while I was sitting in the front row third from the center. Let me encourage you all to visit those places that have been significant to your spiritual formation. It is a great reminder of all that God has done in your life. When I was at Toccoa Falls College we had a college president who would always say, "Never forget in the dark what God has told you in the light." One of the best ways to do that is to go and visit those places were God did a significant work in your life.

I Have To Be..Myself

Something I think about every so often is "different ministry models." You have to be a coach, or a mentor, a shepherd, or part of the heard, or a disciple maker, a soul winner, or this thing or that thing, or whatever is the newest, or oldest fad.
Now before I sound too negative let me say this in all sincerity. A lot of those methods have a lot of good things to offer. There are things to learn from all of them.
But you want to know what I have learned that works the best? Be Dan Borchert! I can't be like anyone else. I have tried, and it always ends up frustrating me and those who I am trying to work with. Are my ways perfect? NO! Do I end up making people upset even when I am myself? You betcha. But that is who I am. God did not call me to be Billy Graham, or Rick Warren, or my dad Vern Borchert. God called me. I have to be faithful in being the one who God called.
With that said I am going to continue to learn techniques, principles, and lessons from wherever I can. But never let those things get in the way of the person who God called. Study the various people of the Bible. They are different. God likes variety. God called you. Be yourself. It makes ministry a whole lot more enjoyable.

Vanilla Coke

I must admit. I am so happy that they brought back Vanilla Coke. I find it to be the most refreshing drink ever made. It was really hard to go without it last year. Just thought I would share.

All the guys

I promised you the picture, so here it is. Aren't those guys legendary?
Hey BOGO day, here is another one.

More Time To Pray!

Our Church just signed up with notify quick message system. The idea is really simple. You call a 1-800 number, enter your account number and stuff, press a couple of buttons, record your message, and it calls everybody on the list.
So last night I used it for the first time. It is incredible! First of all it is real easy to use. Second (and this is mighty impressive), I called and recorded my message at 9:05. At 9:06 it started calling everyone (including myself), and at 9:10 it was done! How great is that?
Right around 9:15 or so I checked my email and it had a summary of the call that was just completed. Incredible!
The funny part to me was at the end of the email this is what it said:

We made 29 attempts, re-dialing busy and no-answers, to get 24 message deliveries to
your group.
At 1 minute per call attempt, Notify Quick service has saved you 0 hours 29 minutes so far.

My favorite part "at 1 minute per call" Ok lets be honest. No way can we make a call in 1 minute. Typically for me it takes 5 to 15 minutes. You know you get talking and stuff so 1 minute is just not accurate.
Now what does this mean? It means that there will hopefully be more time to do what we are calling people to do. Pray!
Great system, easy to use, friendly, flexible (they have like 2343243 plans), affordable, convenient. Check it out. notify quick

Things that I learned at Edinboro (Part 2)

This one I learned from the campers. Working with 14 and 15 years olds is a blast. These kids were amazing. I watched them worship God. That was great. They would be doing some of the goofiest things. But they did not care. They were worshiping God. I got to be Mr. Powerpoint operator, well I was doing that I could look around and see them worshiping God. I admit a lot of times I laughed. It was too funny not to laugh.
That got me thinking. When did we lose laughter and joy in the church? Now I have to be careful here. I know the "holy laughter movement" and stuff is out there. But I am not talking about that. I am just talking about serving God, worshiping God, with a smile on your face. I am talking about taking the time to just enjoy life.
Having been around enough pastors in my life, I feel we are missing this level of fun. Now being a pastor, I can tell you there are many things that happen that can cause that joy, that love of life, that laughter, to disappear in a heart beat. So I certainly do understand that part of things too.
But if we could just get a hold of that joy, laughter, dare I say fun; how great would that be? Serving God is not easy, I will never say it is. But serving God should bring a smile to your face at least some of the time.

What I Learned at Edinboro

The most impressive part of the week for me was the amount of laughter and smiling. As Mark Batterson is so fond of saying "Ministry is so much better with like minded people". That is what I had. With Rob Thrasher (great Worship leader), Jeff Smith (super youth guy), and Erin Sabol (the friendliest Missionary you will ever meet) you can not help but have fun. Working with them just made it so easy. We would be seeing each other and laughing. However this is the amazing part. Our goofiness never got in the way of God working through us. There are times we all probably had that happen to us. But this week, God used our goofiness, and man was it fun. I was working with people whose lives are totally devoted to God. Does it get any better than that?

Update on the 50 Tickets

I told you about how I got 50 free tickets for the Erie Sea Wolves which was great. By the way I owe it all to Beth Grubbs . Check out her blog. Now here is the update on that. We had 70 people going, leaving us 20 short by twenty tickets. So I get to the will call ticket booth, pick up my 50 tickets, and then told them I need 20 more. They looked at me a little funny, the lady asked someone else, came back in about 3 minutes with 20 more tickets. Guess the price? FREE!!! Isn't God good?
Now the game, it was legendary! Everyone had a blast. Now probably only 20 of the 70 people could have told you that the Sea Wolves won 9 to 1. But that didn't matter. It was great fun. Minor league baseball. That is just good stuff. So much going on, and so many promotions. I will post a picture of all the guys (yes only 9 total) that painted "Sea Wolves" on their chest. It was great. Everyone was smiling!

Edinboro 20 Hours later

My plans were to update you all on my week at Edinboro as soon as I got home. I could not function well enough to do that on Saturday. Now it is Sunday morning. I'm feeling a little more human. But I am not ready to put into words everything that happened. Maybe a little bit later today depending on my "nap schedule," but soon. I will say this. It was a legendary week. It was amazing. Great things happened. Great things happened because of God. I am looking forward to sharing more with all of you, and it will be soon. But man thanks for all of you who prayed for the camp and for me!

How God Got Me Out Of Bed This Morning

I was sleeping peacefully, not causing anyone any problems when that alarm of mine went off. I was not happy about this. After a week of barely sleeping and sleeping on an awful mattress, I was in my own most comfortable bed in the whole world. Man I did not want to get out. So I dragged myself out of bed and looked out the window. As I look I see about twelve turkeys walking by the front of my car (about 10 feet from my house) just having a good time. I looked to the rear of my car and there was a deer just walking along. All of this was at about 6:10 am. So peaceful, so calm. Thanks God for sending that my way this morning. It was a real boost!

Lucky or God?

So a couple of intersting things have happened already this week:
1. We were able to secure 50 free tickets to the Erie Sea Wolves game
2. The state "layoffs" that threatened our trip to the beach are over
So I ask you are we lucky or is it God? It's way too legendary to be luck, it must be God. It is God

This Will Trully Become Legendary

It is Tuesday. It is the first time that I had a second to check in and keep you all informed of what is going on. Sundays are never my favorite day at camp. It takes a lot of work to get people "settled" in. With that being said, we started off camp with the excessive use of the word "legendary". I don't regret that one bit. The word legendary has taken over. You can't go more then 30 minutes without hearing the word legendary. I have people actively looking for legendary moments. How great is that?
Things really kicked into gear on Monday, right around 11am-noon. Since then we've had nothing but pure legendary fun. I was really impressed on Monday. Both the campers and my staff played their hearts out, sang their hearts out, poured their hearts out and it was 97 degrees outside! That's the stuff of legends. That is the stuff that makes it all worth it.
I wish you could all experience the Edinboro Camp I know and love. So powerful, So...so...so God!
We are super blessed to have such a great staff this year, and a great bunch of campers. The weird thing is that out of the 42 campers only 6 are guys. But that is lending itself to some legendary guy bonding.
Let me give you a quick example of the quality of campers we have this week. We were riding on a bus, and I got to talk to one of the girls. We started talking about the guy/girl ratio and I said "tough to find a guy huh?" Her response was legendary! She told me she wanted this summer to be about God. She is fifteen years old and realizes that she needs to make sure she and God are tight now, before she drifts away. That is the stuff of legends. That is the stuff that makes me feel so inadequate. That is the stuff that makes me want to hire someone seven years in advance. Trully legendary!

The amazing places to find WiFi

Ok. So right now I am connected in a unique place. I am at Waldamere Amusment Park in Erie PA, just sitting on one of the benches. It is a great time to be alive, huh?

Tomorrow

I hate to do this, but it happens to all of us sometimes. I am looking so forward to tomorrow. Of course tomorrow is Sunday. So there is church. I am really looking forward to looking at how David made his decisions. Good stuff there. We get to find out about Urmin and Thummin. Look it up if you want to know what it is, or come to Bakerstown Alliance tomorrow at 10:00.
Also tomorrow I am off to Edinboro. I can't wait. I talked to Jerry (the top dog) today. He told me that there are 41 campers signed up. Interestingly 35 of them are girls. Where are all the guys?
But I don't always like looking forward to tomorrow. I like to live for today. So I try not do it. I'm still going to enjoy the rest of the day. I am still going to try to make the most of it. But boy, tomorrow should be fun!

The Greatest 2 Year Old On Earth

It is Thursday morning, and because of the whole 4th of July thing we are having worship team practice in a couple of minutes. Due to the fact that it is in the morning, my wife will be bringing our son, Isaiah, to practice. Now here is the weird part for me. I'm really looking forward to seeing my son. In fact I hear them just pulling in the parking lot now. Yeah! Now that got me thinking, I wonder how much our Heavenly Father looks forward to seeing/hearing from us? I would imagine more. That is an amazing concept to me. I'm off to hug my wife and son!

Edinboro Camp -- 4 days to go

I am trying to get ready for Edinboro Camp. I made a deal with God about fifteen years ago. Because of everything that God had done in my life at Edinboro Camp, I decided I would try to repay Him. Well that was a mistake. Anytime I think that I could actually repay Him, God turns around and does something even more amazing. So I guess that means I will have to continue to go and go and go and go......
Words of wisdom: Never promise to try to "repay" God. It is never going to happen. However, it sure is fun trying!
edinborocamp.org

The Beginning of Something Legendary

I have been thinking a lot lately about the word legendary. I have to admit it is a fun word to say, a fun word to throw into a conversation. Something like, "Hey that sounds like fun tonight. It will be legendary." Now when I start reading the stories in the Bible, I realize they are legendary. So that got me thinking. I want to become legendary. But I do not desire that just for myself. I want it for my family, my church, my friends, and for my whole community. So here we are at the beginning of something legendary. Hope you enjoy.