Dear Readers,
I want to apologize for the extremely light blogging of late. These last two months have been unusually busy. Over the month of November, I was asked to preach at a local church in the Minneapolis area that recently found themselves without a pastor. This was a stretching experience for me, as I had not done much preaching before (just a handful of painful Wednesday nights at Grace Community Church in Gardnerville, NV). The invitation was particularly timely in that I am taking a course in Preaching from Pastor John Piper over this Fall 2006 – Spring 2007 timeframe. I gave one message on Hebrews 12:1-2, another on Titus 1, a third on Titus 2 (particularly verses 11-14), and my last on Psalm 32. I will give a 20-minute version of this Psalm 32 message on February 15, 2007 for Preaching class. And I am turning in a manuscript of my Titus 2 message (with some modifications) for Pastor John’s class by tomorrow night (it is almost done!).
December included some travel (to the IEDM Conference in San Francisco) and some illness. I am now cramming through my final assignments for The Bethlehem Institute as well as helping my students get through their finals.
I am a third of the way through my next article for boundless.org (for whom I previously published this essay). I hope to get it done in the next month. We look forward to catching up with my family in Chicago next week, and some much needed rest.
Thank you for the chance to get to know you by means of this blog. May God bless you and yours with a Christ-centered Christmas season.
Alex Chediak