It’s Sunday, our first day of “real” vacation and we’re still in Warsaw.

Laundry (from camp) is all over the place in neatly folded piles by my dear wife. (I helped, too, I promise)

We attended the 11:30AM service at Warsaw Community Church this morning. It was great! This church of a couple thousand each week meets three times on Sunday mornings and this morning, Pastor Denny preached the final sermon in a series on family relationships. It was good stuff!

One of the things I’ve noticed since moving to Warsaw three years ago is that folks from other churches seem to have pretty harsh opinions of Warsaw Community Church. I’ve heard anything from “they don’t have a cross” to “they don’t have any meat” (to which someone replied, “if they served hotdogs would you be happy?”)

I have become friends with WCC’s Student Ministries Pastor in the last year and have quickly gauged Scott as being a man of integrity and as having a heart for God! After attending service this morning, I can say that genuine worship took place at Warsaw Community!

I think the opinion of others outside of WCC’s membership is dangerous when it comes from those who have never attended a service there! I also think that Warsaw’s church-going population is a bit nervous about a “mega-church” in their town and will harbor any “negative opinion” that they can hear or come up with on their own.

One of the on-going comments I hear about WCC is that they have a mentality of people coming to the church for one-hour each week and not being committed or discipled any other time – in a sense, they come in for one hour a week and then are done with their “duty” to God and church by attending that one hour.

My “rebuttle” to that is that MANY, in the Body of Christ, have that same exact mentality. Warsaw church-goers need to be more in-tune to that same “mentality” in their own local church! With the average church of a couple hundred in Warsaw, I know that there is a percentage of those who attend – even Warsaw Wesleyan – who come in for one service a week and never involve themselves in any ministry of the local church. I can almost guarantee that the same percentage of those in the “average” local church would match up with the percentage of those with that mentality of Warsaw Community!

I think it’s about time that we quit trying to TEAR DOWN this “Body of Christ” that we, as Christ-followers say that we are a part of – and begin to accept that there are MANY places of GENUINE WORSHIP – and that each, in it’s individuality, is a piece of this BODY that we represent as churches.

I will continue to stand behind the BODY OF CHRIST – FIRST, rather than just be a cheerleader for the local church “ELBOW” or “KNEE” that I am on staff at. God is so much bigger than that!

Uhm, wow!

After a long afternoon nap to try and recover from a week of not-so-much-sleep at camp, Jess and I grabbed Subway for dinner and headed to the CCAC athletic fields with probably a thousand-or-so others to see Stellar Kart, Mute Math, and Jeremy Camp wind down Warsaw’s Pro-Life Music Festival.

The highlight for me was Mute Math’s set – I took a ton of photos (available here) and got pretty close to the stage for this set. I am embarrassed to say that I have yet to post just how impressed with Mute Math’s music I am until tonight – the live show was one of the best I’ve ever seen! Incredible stuff!

After Mute Math, the crowd waited a few moments for Jeremy Camp’s band to set up – they did some rocking of their own, too! Jeremy’s brother plays guitar in the band and Jeremy’s dad, Tom – a pastor in Lafayette was in the audience and came up and played harmonica on a great rendition of “Jesus Loves Me”. Standing and swaying with my wife in a worship-full atmosphere tonight will definitely leave a permanent memory on my brain. God has blessed me!

We left camp this morning before 10AM – a record for the three years that I’ve been on this district! I did a LOT of the AV-BOOTH cleanup last night, so we had less to do this morning – and our girls were ready when we were this morning to pack up the van and head back to Warsaw.

The week at camp was incredible.

Jess and I both remarked about how much fun this past week has been – and how we’re more excited about next year because of the blast we had this year!

Jeremy Summers will be back next year to speak at our Senior High Camp – that will be a great thing as well!

We’re glad to be back here in Warsaw, and excited about leaving again tomorrow morning for Indianapolis – where we’ll spend the greater part of the week at our buddy Kory’s home. We’re looking forward to spending time with him – when it allows – and time together touring ourselves around Indianapolis.

Tonight – Jeremy Camp plays at the Pro-Life Music Festival at 10PM – we’ll be there. Mute Math plays before him, too! I can’t wait! For now – time to take a NAP!

The “first wave” of camp pictures are available here.