Wednesday was an exciting day as we got to meet with Southeast Christian Church's elders and staff. We also got to go to Southeast. The church campus was awesome! They had just completed a new Student Center called "The Block" and we got to tour it. Absolutely incredible for youth.
The morning sessions were about preaching, church ministry, and protecting yourself spiritually. Great, great learning for me from the best. There were so many valuable lessons in these sessions that I could probably go on about them for hours. There's so much Godly wisdom there that I just wanted to soak it up.
Then we meet with the elders of Southeast. I was very impressed by the elders that we met. These were men of great faith and showed their strong leadership even through the meeting. They talked a lot about the elder to elder role, the elder to staff role, and the elder to congregation role. They pulled no punches with us as they talked to us about biblical eldership and how that had manifested itself at Southeast over the years. It was great learning. At one point, one of the guys said, "I don't know why they have us come meet with you pastors. We need to meet with your elder. They need to bring them in here." Over lunch that day I spent some time talking to a couple of the elders. They told me that they had just gotten back from visiting a church in Virginia and training and developing the eldership there. They told me that if we would cover their expenses, they would love to come to Enid and meet with our elders. They also said that they would meet with us if we flew to Southeast. I'm hoping to do that in the next year or so. I think it would be most valuable to our elders.
After that we went and toured the campus of Southeast. Absolutely amazing!!! As I've mentioned above, it was excellent. While there we got to meet with Dave Stone for an hour. Dave is the Sr. Pastor of Southeast now. Wonderful man. He really let us see some of the hardships he's been through and expressed how hard it is from his position to balance ministry and family. I think that he said he's got 3 kids at home, 15, 13, & 10 or something like that. It was great to see the humility and authenticity of a man who preaches to 18,000 people every week.
After meeting with him we went bowling at one of the nicest bowling alleys I've ever seen. It kept track of your ball speed and all of these pin ratios by what you hit on what ball. Open frames versus closed frame statistics. It was a lot of fun to cut loose with Bob and our group. Plus, we bowled for cash prizes, which was fun! I won overall with the highest score of the day with a 192. I think that's the highest I've ever bowled in my life. We had a good time and great fellowship.
After the bowling, we went to Bob and Judy Russell's house for dinner. Let me repeat. WE WENT TO BOB & JUDY'S FOR DINNER. Can you believe that? They had the whole group over. We got to see where and how they live (Which is not extravagant as one might think. Totally different lifestyle than the Joel Osteen's, Joyce Meyer's, T.D. Jakes of the world.) I even got to taste and enjoy Judy's homemade brownies with ice cream! Talk about speaking my language. That's my weakness when it comes to sweets! Anyway, we got to go downstairs and see Bob's study, where he has written sermons for the past 30 years or so. It was amazing! I asked him if he'd kept them all through the years, and he said that he had since 1967 or so. He opened some file drawers and showed us the files. That was pretty neat. He also showed us all of his memorabilia and autographs and such. He had lots of stories that he told us, especially some neat ones about John Wooden, the basketball coach from UCLA. I guess that he was a great Christian and Bob got to know him a little bit back in the 70's & 80's. Pretty neat stories there.
We spent about 3 hours at Bob & Judy's. It was a great time of fellowship. We had a lot of personal interaction there. It was really something. I could go on and on with stories, but I've got work to do!
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