Last week was a GREAT week! First, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I love the concept of the Thanksgiving Holiday. No expectations … other than just giving THANKS!
But it was also a great week because I was given the privelge to deliver the weekend message for all the services at Good Shepherd Church in Naperville IL. Last summer, I was invited to deliver a message on the concept of Silent Alarm to their Contemporary Service. Shortly after, they decided they wanted their whole church to hear a version of the same message. Each of their four services, on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, had its own genre of worship and it was fun to experience each of them. The Message of Silent Alarms (John Blumberg 11-18-07) was designed to be a challenge to wake-up to the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) alarms that are ringing in our lives. Good Shepherd Church’s motto is Welcome-Grow-Serve. I certainly got a huge dose of the first part of that motto and appreciated them welcoming me into their community with such a warm sense of hospitality.
I never dreamed when I wrote Silent Alarm I would have the opportunity to speak at weekend church services! After all, I spend all week speaking to corporations, professional associations and universities across America. And Silent Alarm is a business book written as a parable of hope for busy professionals. My great buddies Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson, co-founding pastors of Community Christian Church in Naperville IL, were the first to take the Silent Alarm concept and build it into a full-length 5-week series this past Spring. They too gave me the privelege to speak in-person at their Yellow-Box Naperville Campus and through videocast at several of their other locations on the opening weekend of the series. My friend Dan Carlton, Senior Pastor of Springhill Baptist Church in Ruckersville VA, was really the first to even suggest the idea of using my book, Silent Alarm, as the inspiration to develop a series of weekend messages. His church just completed their own version of a "Silent Alarm" series last month. Thank you Dan … for opening up a whole new dimension to this adventure. You are one of my newest heroes! I look forward to sharing the Silent Alarm message as the featured speaker for the Annual Parish Mission at St. John the Baptist Church in Winfield IL this next February 2008.
I continue to be amazed at what happens along this journey. And I am very thankful … on Thanksgiving and each and every day of the year!
