on just a great day with my church men

Today was one of those highlight reel days of the ministry. We had a work day at the church, attended by most of our men. The only ones that missed were those who are too feeble or those who had other unavoidable commitments.

We had two projects today: cleaning the gutters and removing a chain link fence on two sides of our property. The gutters are just maintenance, but the fence came up because of a new development behind us. In the property next to ours, we have been watching 14 townhouses go up over the last year or so. They are just finishing up now, and put up a new fence behind the townhouses. The fence was 10-20 feet away from our fence, so I asked the developers what was up with it. He said the fence was on the property line! I was surprised that so much property back there actually belonged to our lot. Of course, before the developers came along, there was a gully back there which carried a winter stream. So our fence was built on the ridge of the gully instead of on the property line.

Well, I could just see that area between the two fences becoming a tangle of weeds if we lef the fence up, so we decided to take it down. That meant contending with blackberries, broom, and other brushy types of plants that had invaded from the former gully and had intertwined themselves with our fence. What a job!

After the chain links and connecting poles were removed, it was time for the posts. Jack-hammer time, my first experience with such a machine. The guys who built our church building way back when were excellent builders. They did everything top notch, which is to say, very, very, very solid. The corner posts were encased in two pours of concrete. The rest of them had a pretty skookum amount as well. [The top picture is me using the jack hammer on a corner post - notice the name of the machine - I called the pic 'brute on Brute'. My wife and daughter are supervising in the background.]

Well, we all took turns on the hammer, and managed to get all the posts out. Some of them are even still intact. Our property now looks strangely open and inviting. We probably should have done this a long time ago!

My wife brought over lunch for us all. She's a good girl, I guess we'll keep her! After we finished the job, we sat around in the fellowship room and just talked. What a great time. These guys are the highlight of pastoral ministry. I wrote recently about some of the challenges, but this kind of day is filled with God's good grace and his blessedness in working in the hearts of men.

And tomorrow is the day of worship! I think we are ready this week!

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3