An appropriate thing for me to ponder today–two years after moving to Canada! In many ways this is one of the last places I would have ever thought about living. But now I look forward to the coziness of sweaters and scarves and reading by the fire. I’ve come to greatly enjoy sipping hot tea before a meal with a good friend. Down-hill skiing was a disaster, but I look forward to another go at cross-country skiing. I love the team I serve with and Bridge Church have become my family and my best friends. Experiencing a few weeks of bitter cold has brought its humourous stories (such as my back door being frozen shut or moisture in my nose freezing as I go from my house to car!), but God shows His faithfulness through the seasons of weather, just as the seasons of life. The Winter makes Spring and Summer even more enjoyable, and knowing that Fall and Winter are just around the corner makes those scorching hot July days bearable.

I’ve learned that this is the funny thing about most of my heart’s desires–I may think I know exactly what it is that I want, but like a kid in a candy store asking to eat gumdrops and licorice for lunch, the Lord knows far better than myself!! It is in the thinking of our own wishes that praying, “not my will, but Your will be done,” becomes imperative.  Surrendering to Him results in joy of deep fellowship with Him and great gratitude for His wisdom playing out in your life. Oh, that I may come to know this more in the years ahead!

It’s that time of the year when we sit down and reflect on all that has happened, and pray about all that we would like to do in order to move forward with the King’s business on this earth. We celebrate what God has done, but we are prayerful about all that He has yet to do in us, through us, and with the world around us.

We’ll gather for an early dinner at 4:30 in the Fellowship Hall, followed by the business session afterwards. This year will be radically different from last year’s experiment, and we hope to inform you about happenings, and dream together about our goals for the future. As always, new members will be approved and departing members will be dismissed, but our focus and passion will be on taking the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. Some interesting and exciting developments will be announced and discussed, and of course- a budget will be approved. Child Care will be provided so that all moms and dads can participate undistracted, and our entire meeting will end around 8:30 so that everyone can get kiddos home and into bed.

So be sure to mark your calendars, and if you have any pictures from happenings from the past year then please email them to me at kylagleason@aol.com so that I can include them in the Year-In-Revew video presentation.

(Note: The Annual Great Commission Meeting is an open meeting, and we welcome non-members of the Bridge to attend)

Join us Friday night at 6:30 for a time of friends and food! Enjoy dessert, appies, tea, or a full meal–its your choice. Grab a friend and  come enjoy a night out with some great company! This month we’ll meet at ABC Country Restaurant on the 27th.  Call me if you have any questions: 250-828-2512.

See you there!

Join us for a good time of worshipping God, hanging out, and having a picnic at Prince Charles Park on Columbia Sunday, August 15th at 10:30 AM.

Volunteering on Canada Day is a long-standing tradition for Bridge Church! Although we won’t be passing out water bottles this year, we will still be volunteering in a variety of capacities in Kamloops, and potentially in Logan Lake too.  This will include both the evening before Canada Day, June 30, and Canada Day itself.  We will be partnering with other community organizations.  This is a fantastic way to connect with people, serve our community, and demonstrate the love of Christ to those outside the walls of our church.  Talk to your Life Group leaders for more details about these opportunities, and let us know if you’ll be able to give a few hours of your time during this holiday!

I need your help!  Decorations, name tags, signs, crafts, class rosters & schedules, and probably more items, all need to be prepared before our two July Kid’s Clubs! Will you join me Monday, June 28 at 10:00 to work on these? As we learned from last summer’s water bottle label mix-up, the more hands we have, the quicker it will all go-and the more fun we’ll have as we work on it together!!  We’ll meet in the fellowship hall at 10:00 and break for pizza around noon, then press on to wrap it all up early afternoon. Even if you won’t be able to be around to help with Kid’s Club, this will be a fantastic way to contribute to these two events!

I’m not sure when I first developed my passion for teaching; its seems to have just always been a part of who I am. Playing “school” was my favorite make-believe activity as a little girl. My chalkboard easel got much more use than my Little Tikes kitchen or dollhouse combined. Oddly though, a “teacher” was never even on my list of “what I want to be when I grow up.” Instead, spaces on that list were reserved for the more adventurous careers of a missionary, a church pianist, a baker, or a juggler.

In high school, I bounced between dreams of careers in the medical field or communications/media.  Then, being the academic overachiever that I was, I was invited to a summer camp entitled “Economic for Leaders.”  The teachers of the economic classes throughout the week made what is often a boring or difficult subject come alive!  I previously had no interest in economic concepts, but while under the teaching at this camp, I found myself more engaged in learning than any other point in my previous eleven years of education.

I think the idea was to inspire us to pursue careers in economics or business, and while I certainly considered this briefly in the months following my attendance at the camp, its lasting impact had quite a different effect. Instead, the giftedness of the teachers at this camp awakened my childhood interest in teaching with renewed fervor and  increased depth.  It’s still been quite the journey to bring me to where I am now, as obviously I did not pursue the typical route to a typical teaching profession, and I imagine that I’ve still got quite the journey ahead fulfilling my dream of teaching.  And perhaps elements of this journey are topics for a future post.  But for now, I say all of this to make one point: I recognize that I have what is probably an abnormal interest in and passion for teaching, and really for education in general.

God’s Design

Seeking to determine how to properly “do” school, how to best educate the next generation, and understanding God’s heart for teaching has been the driving force of my studies and ministry for the last five years.  Recently, this lead me to eagerly search the Scriptures to arrive at a Biblical model for education (elements of this too will perhaps be expanded upon in a future post!).  And I thought I had come near to exhausting all the clear verses which discuss teaching, but this morning in my time with the Lord, my devotional book said to read Ezra 7:10 “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statues and rules in Israel.”

This is a wonderful example of how we should approach our teaching! It should always be in this order: STUDY, DO, TEACH.  Other Scriptures affirm this foundational method (such as Dt 6:4-7; Mt 7:3-5); we cannot appropriately teach another something that we ourselves do not know or are not following.

A Call For Us All?

The concept of “study, do, teach” is certainly not new to me, but then it struck me that the particular discipleship book I was reading from was not written only for those interested in teaching, but was actually indicating that all believers should follow Ezra’s example.  I was a bit confused.  Then the Lord brought some more passages to my mind, and I’m becoming increasingly convinced from the Scriptures that God calls each of us to particular teaching assignments.

As I said, I recognize that I have an unusual interest in teaching and I’ve come to the (somewhat sad) realization that things relating to education often don’t interest others as much as me. But, even if you don’t share my intense enthusiasm for teaching, I hope that you can see from the passages below that you share this responsibility in the Body of Christ.

Parental Teaching

If you’re a dad, mom, or grandparent, then your job as teacher is explicitly commanded throughout Scripture.  Deuteronomy 6:7 makes this clear: “You shall teach them diligently to your children.” Pretty clear and straightforward. (Dt 4:9 extends this command to teaching grandchildren as well.) This is to be done through modeling, deliberate times of instruction, and simply weaving God’s truth into everyday life circumstances.  YOU bear ultimate responsibility before the Lord for your child’s upbringing and YOU are called to take the lead in their education.

Great Commission Discipleship

Jesus’ parting words to His disciples was a command to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…”  (Matthew 28:19-20).

The Great Commission is God’s task to the Church, which every believer bears responsibility in fulfilling. We indeed all have a call to teach new believers the ways of the Lord.

Life in the Body

If any doubt remains that as a Christian you are in fact called to teach, here’s a final command from the Lord: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” Colossians 3:16

Do not misunderstand what I am saying: Scripture makes a very clear distinction between the form of teaching that we are all to engage in with one another and the office of pastor/teacher, which carries with it authority and is reserved for godly men (see, for example, 1 Timothy 2:12 & 3:1-7).  It is this office that James warns not many to enter into and which promises to bring greater judgement (James 3:1).

But, understanding the harmony of these Scriptures, we see that God desires us each to take an active role in the growth of our fellow believers.  This edification process is to be deliberate and occur as a vital part of our fellowship.  Titus 2 describes one example of an informal teaching relationship in the church: older women teaching younger ones to “love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands.”  This follows the command for older women to behave in a particular way, and thusly demonstrates the same “study, do, teach” model as employed elsewhere in Scripture.

A Shared Passion

Whether it’s with your children, or with new believers, or with fellow brothers and sisters, I see that Scripture desires us all to take seriously our responsibility to teach.  Sure, I may be wired with a unique passion for the subject, but I hope that you can join me in pondering how to be an active part of the life-long education of those whom Christ has placed in your life.

So one may wonder…what is the value in a room full of as many children as adults singing praises to the Lord?  Glad you asked.

Cross-generational worship follows the Biblical command

Psalm 148:7-13 states:  “Praise the Lord from the Earth…Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the Lord…” How are young men, maidens, old men and children to praise the Lord together without times of intentional cross-generational worship?

Cross-generational worship follows Biblical examples

Several Old Testament accounts record children and adults worshipping together.  For example, 2 Chronicles 20:13 says that all of Judah “stood before the Lord with their little ones, their wives, and their children…” for a word from God which then resulted in all present “worshiping the Lord” (vs. 18). Nehemiah 8 and Nehemiah 12 also records times of children worshipping God alongside their parents.

Cross-generational worship provides a time of teaching for the younger ones

Children undoubtedly learn from modeling. This is observed by all parents and those who work with kids, and teaching through modeling is encouraged in Scripture (see Proverbs 23:26, Titus 2:7 and 1 Peter 5:3).  As children spend 20 or 30 minutes each Sunday observing their parents and other respected adults worshipping the Lord, they learn to do the same.

I can remember attending worship one Sunday morning with my Grandmother as a young girl, and I can still hear her voice joyfully singing “Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God my Savior. Standing, standing, I’m standing on the promises of God!” I remember noticing the joy in her voice as she sang and realizing that the words were not just generic lyrics to a song, but was the testimony of her own life. As a result, this hymn has become a personal favorite as I’m reminded of the example of worship my Grandmother set for me that day.

Whenever I’m blessed to have one our church’s children crawl into my arms or stand beside me during our times of worship, I pray that they sense that same genuineness from me and that it spurs them on to seek a relationship with the Lord themselves. I also pray that all of the children would sense that these times of worship are something special…that they would see their parents and a room full of other adult role-models making the worship of God a priority in their lives. I pray that they would sense God’s presence in our midst and be drawn into their own time of worship.

Sure it may be a bit chaotic at times to have the little ones in the same room worshipping alongside us! But as the body of Christ, we have an obligation to show patience to each other, “bearing with the failings of the weak” (Romans 15:1) and to follow Jesus’ command to welcome the children (Luke 18:16).  May we never have the same attitude as the Pharisees recorded in Matthew 21:15 who became “indignant” at the children worshipping Jesus in the temple. Rather let us welcome the children and model for them the proper attitude of worship, training the child in the way they should go!

NOTE: This has simply been recopied from Joshua’s email, not written by me!

Saturday, May 1@ 9:30 AM, we invite all the men at The Bridge Church to gather together for a time of breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage,  toast, and lots of coffee), fellowship, a brief Bible Study, and discussion. You may be wondering, “What is there to discuss?” Short answer: being a man!

It is our conviction that God’s design and intention for us as men (i.e. how we live our lives, how we lead our families, how we serve in our church, and how we take the Gospel to our communities) is clearly given to us in the Bible. The problem is that we, as men, are not paying attention. A part of the problem is that we are bombarded with a million different messages in modern media and advertising every day. As a result, we are easily distracted.The other part of the problem is that we are spiritually lazy, and we are not devoting ourselves to the study and daily practice of Biblical manhood.

So come and join us for men’s breakfast Saturday, May 1. This is a Men’s breakfast so no women are allowed! All men, ages 13 and up, are required. Don’t be a sissy and not show up!

Sunday, April 18 we are having our regularly scheduled Church Family Business Meeting following the morning worship service. This meeting is only open to members of The Bridge Church. If you are a member then you are invited to attend. As a member you should already have recieved a personal email from Joshua with the business agenda and a request for any additional business that any member may want to see added to the agenda. Get your new business in by the end of this week if you would like to see it added to the agenda.