louisville weekend

went to louisville on Friday with 15 other directors from our staff. Officially it was a time to get away and check out some other churches (Southeast Christian Church in Louisville and Northside Christian Church in New Albany). Both are large churches that we can learn from so we just planned on hanging out with people on staff who are in our roles and just seeing what God is doing in each place. We left the church at 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning (on a bus so we could all be together). We watched a leadership video and talked about ministry and spent lots of time looking at the new youth facility at Southeast (it's a 15 million dollar deal...very cool). Matt Reagan former youth pastor at Eastview gave us the tour. Well, all that was nice, and we had some things we talked about in relation to what we do at Eastview, but then we checked into the hotel and went to supper. Then the fun began.

We ate at Bucca Di Beppo - great Italian food - and got seated in the Pope room. It's a round table (big enough for 16) with a lazy susan for sharing family style dishes and the bust of a pope in the middle of the table. We had a blast. We laughed so hard we cried and felt sick to our stomach (which also may have been because of the amount of food we ate). We hung out at 4th street in downtown after that, talking, laughing and just being together with fellow workers in the kingdom. It was a very rich time. I'm blessed to be a part of this staff.

On Saturday morning after breakfast we had a great devotional time and prayer together and then did some leadership group discussions. Then is was noon and we went to lunch. If you get the idea that all we did was eat, laugh and talk...then you got an idea of what we did. By 2:00 p.m. we were at the Northside church in New Albany across the river. This is the church where George Ross preaches and we have tons of connections from Eastview. We have three kids from our youth group (who aren't kids any more, but they are to me) who are on staff there (one married to a staff member which is the same thing) and a former staff member (Nate Ross). Anway, our staff had a chance here to see the church building, visit with staff members of this church and go to their Saturday night service at 4:00 p.m. We piled on the bus and got home by 10:00. It was a great time for all of us and I was reminded that there is no place I'd rather work and no group of people I'd rather work with. I know I'm paid to say that; but in this case it just so happens to be true!