Tuesday, July 15, 2003

10:00 PM Before I forget, here’s the Legacy Campaign prayer request for today: “Pray for the safety of the work crews during construction.”

Brian Bill, pastor of Pontiac Bible Church, will be our guest preacher this Sunday. Brian and Beth attended Calvary during their student days at Moody and Brian later joined the staff and served as an Assistant Pastor. He is fondly remembered for pioneering the Crossroads Service on Saturday nights, a lively experiment that became the incubator for the leadership of our contemporary worship service that was launched ten years ago. It is a joy to welcome Brian and Beth and their children back to Calvary this Sunday.

4:55 PM Had a wonderful time at the Campground. Wayne Lewis does a fantastic job leading the group in worship. Just before the service, saw Mike and Betsi Calhoun and John Nelson. Also met a Moody student from Chicago who knows Mark. In fact, he laughed when he said he knows Mark. That’s not the first time that has happened. We also met someone from Columbus, Ohio who knows Andrew and Christina Irvin. And Stu Page (Dean of the Word of Life Bible Institute) said that he ran into someone who saw his name on the weblog from yesterday. That’s the amazing power of the Internet. On our way back to our room at the Inn, we stopped at the ice cream place and shared a banana split together. First time we’ve done that in maybe 25 years.

9:05 AM This is the lightest day of the week in terms of my speaking schedule. I only speak twice—at 9:30 AM at the Inn and at 11:15 at the Campground. Last night we had a very good service at the Campground. I preached on The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant from Matthew 18, and even though it was hot, the people listened intently. On our way back to our room at the Inn, we stopped for ice cream cones at the Lakeside Restaurant. Then we chatted with Nick back in Oak Park.

On a completely different note, several weeks ago I mentioned that we were reprinting 150,000 copies of “An Anchor for the Soul,” with 100,000 copies going to the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry warehouse in Richmond, Virginia. They will distribute the books through their chaplains to prisoners across America. We plan to store the remaining 50,000 copies (that equals seven skids of books—for those who know what that means) somewhere in the Chicago area so we can send them out directly to various ministries that contact us. Steve Meyer has been working to locate some warehouse space. It looks like the printer has moved faster than we expected, so we need to find a suitable location this week.