Welcome to New Life

For those of you not familiar with Grant. It is a lovely town located on the top of Gunter Mountain. Their call to fame is the Cathedral Caverns State Park located in the valley below and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) school located on the edge of town. The drive from my house in Northeast Huntsville to Grant is lovely and only slightly longer drive time than the drive to Trinity. However, it is a 60 some old mile round trip and I have to discipline myself not to forget things!

Sunday mornings begin with worship. Prior to that service, our lay leader, Charlie, came and prayed with Craig, the boys and me (Laura was at ICTHUS with the Trinity youth). I love that each morning will start with a prayer! Then near the beginning of the service, the song leader invited us to kneel at the chancel rail and invited everyone who wanted to come forward and lay hands on us and pray for us and our ministry at New Life. It was a wonderful way to start!

Judging by Sunday (and the numbers I’ve seen), the traditional service is the slightly smaller of the two services. Unfortunately, at this point, we don’t have a pianist or a choir, so we sing to CDs. Fortunately, they have very good tech crew and the sound guys did an excellent job with the CDs and it was not as bad as I feared. (However, I am praying for a pianist!) Our song leader, Ricky, is not only a great guy but he is a wonderful song leader. The pulpit is too far away from everyone so I left it and I guess that is what I will do every week.

From 10:15-11 is Sunday School. I didn’t get a chance to visit any of the classes this week, but I look forward to visiting the adult classes soon. I did meet with some of my youth leaders because youth week is next week and we had a few things to go over.

At around 11, the contemporary band and tech crew met in the prayer chapel and Charlie prayed for all of us. The contemporary service, called New Life Alive (which led me to reflect on how many people live the Christian life as if being alive was an option), begins at 11:15. The band is wonderful. Our worship leader, Milanda Taylor, teaches Math at the DAR school but she obviously has a heart for worship. Jim Holcomb, who is our contemporary music director, is also very talented. He did a wonderful bluesy version of Amazing Grace that got me dreaming of a Blues Mass before Lent! Most of the women in the band are tall, so they have a habit of kicking off their shoes during worship. It was so wonderful to see and hear those barefoot, talented musicians singing and playing!

To support me, my sister and her family came as well as one other Trinity family. It was nice to see friendly faces—but they’ll be back home at Trinity next week!

So that was my first Sunday at New Life! It is a wonderful church full of wonderful people. We have some work to do, but I am confident that God will enable us to do what God is calling us to do!

Thanks to everyone for the prayers and support! I was pretty nervous and yet there was a calm that is unusual for me (Thank you God!). And, of course, there was my secret service men guarding me!
(I’ve promised them that they don’t have to dress up this much in the future!)