Pastor JD here, checking in from the Shoreline campus. The Shoreline campus where you just never know what is going to happen. As it turns out we love to live by the seat of our pants. The young thrill seekers in Ballard have nothing on us SUV driving families of ten. What am I talking about? What prompts me to raise my sword and taunt in the general direction of Ballard? It is my friend Pastor Steve Tompkins. The man has nerves of steel, his blood runs ice cold, and nothing can shake him. I think his underwear is red and blue, and there is either a big “S’ on it or a bunch of spider webs. Not only that it turns out he is a finely tuned instrument that the Holy Spirit likes to play every once in a while. Oops, I’ve done it again I’ve started at the end of the story. I am going to have to get you up to speed.

As a lot of you know at Shoreline we watch video of Pastor Mark, you are probably thinking about that as you drive down to Ballard, passing us, to see Mark “live’. The way it is set up now we have a fifteen minute delay before we start the video. For a year and a handful of months we never have had a problem. Okay there is the phantasm Mark that happens every once in a while, but we always make it to the end of the sermon. In all that time Pastor Steve has prepared to probably not preach on Sunday. It is like a back up quarterback in football, but Steve’s odds of getting in the game have been rotten so far. until this Sunday.

Soon as the sermon started Mark’s voice was coming in like a bad AM radio. We all shifted nervously in our seats. I started looking around. Were the video guys on it? How long until they fix it I thought? Pretty soon it was clear Steve needed to say something. Steve asked us all to be patient. I thought about taking off my name tag, just in case there was a riot. Then the bad news came. The audio we were getting was what they were sending us from Ballard (I guess Mark went through a few microphones that service). It was Steve time. What was he going to do? He had 200+ people sitting there expecting a sermon. My heart went out for him; I started praying in a big, bad way. Steve made his way up to the stage and got comfortable. What was he going to do? I prayed some more. I’ll tell you what this super-human did. He gave us 2 options! Do you want sermon A or sermon B? He let us vote on what he would preach on! He then proceeded to preach a lengthy sermon. Was it the best planned sermon in the world? Probably not. Was the Holy Spirit working through Steve, you bet he was! It was an amazing experience to be a part of.

I think a lot of people were moved by the Spirit, but I’ll tell you how Jesus reached out to me. In Mark’s sermon a couple of weeks ago he talked about being faithful and fruitful. He talked about how God asks us to be faithful, just because someone is showing fruit doesn’t mean that they are being faithful. That really hit home with me. I get frustrated sometimes that I cannot produce as much fruit as I would like. I accepted the fact that I just needed to be faithful. That message felt like it was tailor made for me. I meant to post a blog entry just on that, I even wrote it up, but I decided it just did not come across well. As it turns out it was incomplete. Here is where God used Steve’s message for me. He talked about the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Each servant was given a portion of talents; the ones that risked or invested their talents and had more when the master returned were praised. The one that held on tightly and just returned what was given was basically sent to Hell. In this is the completion of my “being faithful’. It isn’t just enough to say this is my lot in life; this is what God has given me, oh well. The point is that God has given to you, and he expects a return on His investment. I may be given little compared to others, but God still expects me to go out and fight. I cannot sit back and say, “Well God gave me a small sword so he doesn’t want me to go out with the big guys.” I’m glad David didn’t say that when Goliath was around. God has given me a sword and he expects me to use it no matter what. And I will.

We did make it through Sunday. Steve preached the 11:15 service too. I’m sure it was just as good. I was eating Krispy Kreme donuts in the green room during that service, don’t tell Andrea. I haven’t talked to Steve since then, but I’m sure he slept well on Sunday night. The coach called his name on Sunday and put him in the game. But the coach would not let him play alone. Jesus was right there the whole time, I felt it and it was awesome.

Pastor JD