Over the last 12 weeks, I’ve lead a small group at my church where we studied the “four spokes” of Christianity and our growth in them.

Because of how our church changed things around this year, I was leading a new group that signed up and committed to a single 12 week semester. I found it to be intimidating, but also very motivational to have a clear beginning and end of a time together.

And there was so much growth! Several of the couples took significant spiritual steps and really stepped out in their faith. It was incredible to see. As a result of their example, I felt so encouraged to grow myself–and did! I looked forward to every single Tuesday night and feel like these people are certainly close friends now.

It’s interesting. As we go through these times in our lives, having people along side us just makes a difference. They prop us up when we don’t know the answer. They comfort us when we just need to let out some grief. They encourage us when we’re down. They celebrate with us when we’re excited. It makes me realize why the church is important at all–it’s not because the church is always “right”–but because Christian community is an incredible context in which to grow. When we step out of that context, we often flounder. Sometimes we get to the point that we get stable again, but without real Christian community, we wither. I’ve seen it in friends. I’ve seen it in myself. The awesome thing is that we don’t have to stay withered.

These last twelve weeks have been awesome and I am thoroughly looking forward to leading this group in the summer semester as well. Here’s to more spiritual growth.

To Pop and Nana’s house we go.

We had a great (but short) weekend trip to my parents on Friday and Saturday.   Besides getting to have home-made cinnamon rolls, home-made burgers, and home-made chicken-fried-steak (YUM), the kids had an awesome time running around the back yard and doing Pop and Nana-style things.

The best part was when we were driving up.   Timothy would ask how much further it was and we would always answer “10 more miles!”   A little while later, when we were only a few minutes away from my parents house, we said “2 more miles” and his face lit up.   He was SO excited to see his grandparents and SO sad to have to leave the next day.  I don’t remember having that experience when going to see my grandparents because they didn’t have big yards and they didn’t play with me much… it makes me so happy to know my kids get to experience that with all THREE sets of grandparents they have.

Now, if only the grandparents were a bit CLOSER

Last weekend, my dad came with Timothy and me to the Father-Son campout, making it a Father-Son² campout

We had a blast shooting pellet guns, climbing rock walls, going off zip lines, paddling canoes, balancing 5 men and 4 boys on a small platform, hiking and throwing rocks in the lake.  It was certainly a busy day.  But the best part was hanging out with my dad and his cooking.  He cooked a cherry pie (I don’t even like cherry pie!) on Friday night and it was GREAT.  Something about cooking on campouts that’s just better.  And on Saturday, we made homemade Butterfinger and Oreo ice cream in a hand-crank freezer.   It was awesome.  We walked around the camp dishing out as much as we could to volunteer staff and other campers.  Easily the highlight of the weekend for me.

The highlight for Timothy, though, was catching 2 fish.  He walked around the lake with Pop and asked another camper who was fishing if he could try.  In 5 minutes, he caught 2 of them, reeled them in and “touched their eyeball!” (he was excited about that part).   I missed it, but saw the pictures.   I’m sure he’ll be talking about fishing for the next year like he talked about zip lines for the last 12 months.

It’s great to spend time as guys together.   Even as an adult, I love spending time with my dad–I hope my son can say the same thing in 25 years.