A Pastor of one of the fastest growing churches, a mega church resigned recently because of burnout. Another former pastor of a super fast growing mega church announced that he is out of rehab for alcohol addiction which he turned to, to deal  with the pressure of ministry. One Christian magazine declared that burnout amoung pastors of all size churches is epidemic.  I came close to leaving ministry and going back into the dairy business in 1989 because of burnout. Many things changed in my life that year and have continued to change, as I attempt to run the race with endurance that God has set before me. I wouldn’t say I am the world’s foremost expert on the topic, but I have figured out how to read my own gauges and know when my emotional gas tank is getting down below half a tank, and I know how to fill it up full quickly. The foundation of good self management for me is keeping very accurate records of how I use my time, and setting very clear goals of basic spiritual disciplines that tend to get compromised when we get busy. One of those basic disciplines is a minimum of one hour of prayer every day by myself. Most of my praying is for others, but I still feel the blessing of God’s strength, His joy, and His peace that fills me because of this discipline. One would think that by this time in my life and ministry prayer would be easy, but if I don’t make goals, keep good records, and have others holding me accountable I will slip into a “on the fly” prayer person that is giving God convenient,  left over time. My flesh hates to pray, and pride, self sufficiency, business, contribute to the struggle. Ministry is fun when I am full of fire, passion, vision, joy, and faith. Those don’t come from willing them into our life, they come from God as a gift for giving Him time.

We leave Fairbanks tomorrow morning at 7:30 am and I will be sleeping in my own bed tomorrow evening, and then back to “The Grind”. I use that word facetiously,  because I really love my life, my job, my routine, and responsibilities, and am very anxious to get back to “The Grind”. On October 22nd, Saturday evening Jefferson Baptist Church is going to have a celebration honoring Patty and I for our 40 years of serving at the church as Pastor. The last 40 years have been an amazing blessing of being able to serve in a church as great as JBC. No church is without some problems as no family is, but God has done some really great things through the people in our church because of our love for Him and for each other. It truly has been a fun, exciting life as Pastor of JBC. I am looking forward to even more adventure and accomplishments that bless people in the years ahead. Who knows, maybe God will give me another 20 years serving. I would like that.

we were out in the wilderness of Alaska for a week and had no cell service, mail, newspapers, or any contact with the world. We did have a Satelite Phone for emergency use which we didn’t use, thank You Lord. Then as we were loaded up and driving back to Fairbanks, about 10 miles from Philip and Shelly’s home my cell phone started beeping as text messages starting coming in. I guess the reason I did it was because I was curious, but I went to the news to see what had happened in the world while we were gone. It doesn’t possible, but things seemed to have gotten worse than they were just a week earlier. From my observation and perspective, which is obviously not scientific, it appears as if the world is in a definite and rapid decline of peace, joy, hope, kindness, love, forgiveness, wisdom, and self control. In contrast the level of hate, bitterness, retaliation, anger, cruelty, accusing, blaming, and fighting has accelerated to a point that one wonders how much longer it can go on before a total implosion takes place. It would be easy to get depressed, and turn around and head back to the Yukon River wilderness, but I have a strong faith and hope in Jesus Christ, and that He said this is what would happen and that He would come and rule as King on the earth, and then  the lion will get along fine with a lamb. An event that will occur along with His coming is “Judgment”.  The Bible describes this event in many places, one of them is in 2 Corinthians 5:10  “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” I wonder what the excuses, defenses, blaming will sound like at that moment. Mine will be, “I love You Jesus”.

this is a track of the grizzly bear that was around our camp on the Yukon River, while we were moose hunting this past week. We all saw new tracks each day when we went out to hunt, and several times was walking where we had walked earlier. That prompted me to turn around and look behind me while I was hunting, often. Philip had one walk up behind him while he was sitting on a log in the evening. He heard it walking  up behind him but when he turned around with his gun ready it stayed in the brush and ran off. I would have loved to have put his hide on my living room wall, though Patty said we didn’t have room for it.

We went moose hunting on the Yukon River in the wilderness of Alaska this past week. We went with our daughter Shelly, her husband Philip, and their 5 kids, our grandkids, the oldest being 8. Philip was our hunting guide, being experienced in that he has hunted  this area with his Dad and family for years and has killed a number of moose over the years. We didn’t bag a moose, but I had a wonderful time. There is something very bonding when you are in the wilderness camping together. One of the kids was chopping limbs in two so that we could put them in the little stove we had in the wall tent and one of the others tripped going out of the wall tent door and fell right in the path of the descending axe and got a whack on the back of the head, which resulted in a two inch cut that went to the scull. We had a first aid kit so using a hunting knife Philip shaved the hair around the wound and put a couple of butterfly bandages, disinfectant, and then gauze and tape around the head, and the procedure was over and regular camp life returned to normal.  Everyone was involved in some way in the procedure, cutting tape, offering advice, comforting a little boy, and praying. It is a great time to teach character to kids during these events.  Even  though I didn’t see a moose or bear or wolf, I did see lots of beaver, muskrats, ducks, geese, swans, and lots of different birds. But the high light of the weeks camping was spending amazing time with my grandkids getting to know them a lot., I saw some huge grizzly bear tracks everyday in the mud next to the river, and it appeared like he was walking along behind me as his tracks were over mine from the day before. That made things exciting. It was a hugely successful hunting trip, one that I Will remember all of my life. Next year I will kill a moose, maybe!

This will be my last blog for a week because in the morning we are driving North from Fairbanks about 4 hours putting Philips Jet Sled in the Yukon River and going up the river about an hour and camping on the river for one week where we will be hunting for moose. It will take two trips because we have five kids and five adults plus tents and gear and food for a week. It is going to be a lot of fun camping with my five grandkids, and Patty , Seth, Philip, and Shelly. We have 4 moose tags, and two grizzly bear tags, and with the moose tags we can shoot a black bear, caribou,  or wolf instead if we see one before the moose. If we get at least one moose it will take 3 trips out or more. We are bringing 130 gallons of gasoline in plastic barrels so we will have enough to make all the shuttles with the sled. We are also bringing a 16 foot canoe to paddle up the sloughs that run off of the river where the moose like to feed. I enjoy hunting trips like this more for the adventure than for the potential meat to eat, though moose meat is some of the best. I especially like having a great adventure with family, there isn’t much that is more bonding and creating of great memories. We did a lot of hunting and fishing trips with camping as we raised our kids, and in fact declared it to be our best tool for raising tough kids who could manage life well when they became adults because everything that can go wrong, goes wrong when you are camping and then we would teach them how to manage it and solve problems without going crazy. It is funny, when the kids were young we did all the fixing and problem solving and planning, and now they do and take care of us. I get my male, Macho,  hunter, fisher, camper pride hurt periodically as they take charge, but I guess that is the way it is supposed to be.

we landed in Fairbanks this morning at 8 am and we have been just hanging around with Shelly, Philip,and 5 grandkids today. They all came down to Jefferson a year ago and in the last year it is amazing how fast the grandkids have grown. It is fun to see them all, but I get a bit melancholy thinking how little I get to see them and how much they do grow between visits. Time does march on and everybody grows up and older, and everybody changes.  I often wonder and think about eternity. What will I look like? There is a picture on our wall at home of me when I was 20 years old, in great shape, with lots of hair, and pretty good looking, at least Patty says that. I wouldn’t mind looking like that for eternity. If I do will I change? What about babies that die, and really old people? Over the years I have met a lot of people that I have no memory of now. Will I remember them in eternity? How many people will I know? Will I make new friends? Will we play poker? So many questions and so few answers, but I will know one of these days. But one thing I do know is that in this life we are supposed to grow. Kids grow up physically and we are supposed to grow up in character. Everything God orchestrates in our life is supposed to produce growth in us. It appears to be very important to God that we grow, He works at it relentlessly in our lives. The admonition of the Bible is “press on to maturity”. God does His part, and we need to do ours. So I  will press on to maturity.

Patty, Seth and I are sitting in the Anchorage airport for a six hour layover waiting for our flight to Fairbanks where our daughter Shelly, her husband and five children live, and it is now 2:45 am with 4 more hours to go.  I have traveled a lot on airplanes in the last 20 years, and have sat a lot of hours in airports watching people. The larger, international airports have people from all over the world walking down the same hall together with people talking different languages, with different dress, and different skin color and features. Airports have their own, unique culture and certain words are the key  ones describing that culture. Except at 2:45 am the main word is “Schedule”, everyone is headed to a gate with a deadline or miss their flight. It is not uncommon to see people running frantically all the while looking at their watch and rechecking the departure time on their ticket. Another major word is “Security” as standing in lines waiting to get “scanned” for bombs or whatever is a major part of the airport experience,  and regular loudspeaker announcements about not leaving your luggage unattended so a terrorist doesn’t plant a bomb in it while you are not looking. My IPad had a big, bright yellow warning announcement that some security lines at the Anchorage airport were taking 4 hours to get through because of some “information” that bad guys were coming through the airport headed someplace to do some bad things. With the “schedule” word, the “security” word, and then you add the “stranger” word, in that everybody is in a sea of humanity and they don’t know anybody and all these strangers are walking together, sitting together, standing in line together and only occasionally does anybody talk to anybody else. An airport is like a hay baler where dried grass gets shoved, squeezed, and compacted together, but with people, and as you watch you realize that you are watching a condensed view of our world and life. So the result of those three  key words is “frantic”, “worry”, “fear”, “loneliness”, “stress”, and on the list goes. Rather than getting sucked into the world of the “airport” I can choose to pray for people as they walk by, I can ask God for an opening to talk and possibly share, I can read my Bible, I can smile a lot and maybe even sing “Jesus loves me”.

when I was 20 and farming my brother, and brother-in-law, and I formed a three man tug-of-war team and competed against other teams at the Klickatat County Fair in Trout Lake, Washington. It was a single elimination  competition, and there were 16 teams so in order to be the champion “Puller” we had to “Pull” four times. The rope was quite long so the distance that we had to pull the other team to get them across the line was about 20 feet, and most of the teams were tough, so  it took a long time, almost 20 minutes on the championship pull. Pulling on a rope with every once of strength you have for upwards of 20 minutes four times was encredibly exhausting, but we won. The prize was a six pack of warm Nesbitts Orange Soda, but of course the glory of being the toughest guys in Trout Lake was worth it all. The key to winning was digging in and holding our ground until the other team got tired. We didn’t do any jerking, and lunging like the other teams, we just dug holes with our heals and hung on, and then when we felt them letting up we went back one foot hole and then another until we won. Life feels a lot like that tug-of-war, just a constant struggle. In the book of Ephesians in the New Testament in the Bible it says that our struggle in life is really not against people it’s against the devil and his demons who are pulling the strings behind the scenes. We can’t see them so we don’t think about them, but they are as real as the “signals” that come into our cell phones. They are very real, very powerful, very clever, and very evil. The key to winning is to not grow weary or discouraged, to run the race with endurance, to develop relationships with others who are “pulling” and encourage one another to not give up, and to keep your eye on the prize of the crown of life that the Lord will give to those who finish well,