Dear Friends,

We had a very full and fun weekend with the first Diocesan Men's Retreat at Canterbury.   Dr. John Tolson was challenging, enlightening and presented the call to discipleship in fresh and wonderful ways.   You can listen to his wonderful sermon from Sunday ( Click Here )   Services were longer than usual and I apologize for the adjustments that were made out of necessity to accommodate the extended sermon time - From everyone that spoke to me they said it was well worth it.  

I firmly believe there are lots of things that fuel us in our faith.  The Holy Spirit will use a variety of ingredients to keep us moving.  The usual suspects prayer, bible study, fellowship, serving and more energize us day by day as we follow Christ.  I would speak to another one that I find an essential as well.   We need to retreat.  Jesus did this as he would regularly withdraw from the crowds and his public ministry to pray and be with the Father.  Those that know me, know I take two personal retreats a year to renew and recharge my spiritual life.  

This is the ministry of Canterbury.  To be a place of retreat, a place where people can unplug from their daily routines, a place to be still and know the Lord this is the purpose and why Canterbury was built nearly thirty years ago.   There are some developments regarding Canterbury and I commend to you the link to a document that speaks to Canterbury's restructuring. (look below my signature) 

In all this whether Incarnation, Canterbury or our personal faith we all want to grow deeper into Christ and become "Christ-like" in how we live our lives.  This is the call to follow Jesus to invest all we are in Him.  I spoke a little bit last week about this.  On Friday night at the Men's retreat we were playing some Texas Hold-Em Poker (just with chips - no gambling :-)  and a few times I went "all-in" - that is I put all my chips on a bet. (the last time to intentionally lose so I could go home and go to bed - the game continued til 3am!)  That being said my prayer this week is that we may we go all in with our faith, not holding back, putting all we are and all we have on Jesus.