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I’m home alone tonight. My wife and daughter are in Houston celebrating a family birthday. I’m here because I have to preach at all of our services this weekend. I’m working on the sermon tonight, and thought I would get my brain up and running by sharing. A few weeks ago, I rushed out of our 11:00 a.m. worship service because my Dad was preaching at his home church on the occasion of their 70th anniversary. It was quite a big deal for my family as my Grandfather is one of the few living charter members of that church. My Dad’s newsletter article last week was about that experience. He wrote:

I have a personal word to share with you today but it is a word that pertains to all of us who seek to live the Christian life. I had the honor to preach in my home church where i was raised, River Oaks UMC, in Ft. Worth last Sunday on the occasion of their 70th anniversary. My father is one of the few living charter members of that church which holds great significance for me. I also discovered in my research of their history there was an original group of nine Methodists that wanted to form a Sunday School in River Oaks which included my grandparents, John G. and Oca Cola Alexander, whom I never knew.

The service last Sunday was an amazing service of worship and deeply personal for my family. Both my brothers, Randy and Jim and their wives, Pat and Pat, were in attendance along with my father, Jack Alexander, Kathy, and our children, Susan, Brad, David, Stephanie, and Anna. My father has been living with Alzheimer’s Disease for probably 15 years. The disease has taken away so much of my father’s memory, but as he walked into that sanctuary he had tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. Many people wanted to greet him and, although he did not seem to know them, he hugged them with tears of joy. Even with his disease, he knew where he was and how much this place and these people meant to him.

My brothers told me after the service that my father said the words of Scripture along with me as I read them, and he sang the words to the hymns. His eyesight is not clear enough to read the words but somewhere deep inside of him he has not lost his love of God’s Word and the music that remains in his soul. My father was the oldest person present along with having the largest family present. In terms of his family and his church it has always been that way. There was never a discussion in my home growing up about what we did on Sunday. We were in Sunday School and worship every Sunday of the year and most every Sunday night as well. IT has always been a way of life that we learned from my father. My father taught the same Sunday School class for 60 years. My father lived out his Christian commitment by serving in his church in many capacities. My father always supported his pastor. Surely there were some that tested this commitment, but he always stood firm. He did not always agree with the decisions of his church but he never withdrew his support from his church in any way; prayers, presence, gifts and service were a vow he took seriously. Without question, when my father meets his lord, Jesus will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

I share this with you for two reasons. The first is to give you an excellent example of Christian living. The second is to tell you who I am and why I preach as I do. I preach often about church attendance and commitment to the ministry of your church. I feel I am one of the most fortunate people in the world to have been raised in the Christian family who lived it on Sunday and throughout the week. I want others to know that blessing. We all deserved to be nurtured in the Christian life, to know the love of Christ down deep inside our souls, to know what really counts in life, and “to know the power of His resurrection.” (Phil 3:10) I know one of the best ways is to live in relationship with Jesus Christ, to love his church, and to be a witness of Jesus’ love.

As you can tell from his words, my Dad’s pretty proud of his father. I hope you can sense from this post, I have a lot of pride in my Dad as well.

The following quotes are from Jim Collins book. Good to Great which is available for purchase here.

The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good-and that is their main problem. 1

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats-and then they figured out where to drive it. 13

You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end. regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. 13

(more…)

Not only does my daughter excel at playing around on noggin.com. she also recently bowled a 156 on our friend’s Nintendo Wii. I think we have found a great gift idea for Santa this year.

Well, I finally got the horizontal navigation working… and I’ve added a few features that I’ve wanted to do for quite a while. I’ve finally gotten around to removing the booklist from the sidebar which tends to take up a lot of space, and I now have a link up top to books which actually takes you to an Amazon Astore. This feature is available to all Amazon associates if you want to set one up for yourself.

You can also contact me anytime via the “contact” tab now as well if you have any questions.

Ok, now I’m going to stop fiddling with the blog.

This is the only problem with changing your blog design. You can waste a lot of time tweaking… which is what I have done a bit the past few days.

Currently, I am trying to add a horizontal navigation bar right under the banner at the top. It looks real nice right now. It just doesn’t work. Click any box you like, you’ll end up right back at the main page. Oh well, I guess I’m going to have to ask an expert.

It’s a work in progress, but aren’t we all.

Redirecting to Bucket store…

Coming soon…

My name is David Alexander and I currently serve as one of the Associate Pastors at First United Methodist Church in Mansfield, Texas. I moved to Mansfield in February 2005 after working for four years as the Youth Pastor at First UMC in Cleburne, Texas. In my role at the church I work with our First Connections Ministry which seeks to help visitors and new members establish a strong connection to our church, and I also preach regularly at our Saturday night worship service.

My family is a group of three, my beautiful wife Stephanie, who works as a school teacher in Mansfield, and my daughter, Anna who was born on January 8th, 2004. That’s the whole crew… for now. My wife and I were married June 23, 2001. Steph and I met while working at the Wesley Foundation at Texas A&M University. We love watching sports (yes, my wife rules!) and spending time at home watching Anna and our dog Murray try to get along. It’s great theater!

I long to be a more creative person, and although I’m not the most artistic person, I do love web design and have really enjoyed the practice of blogging which I have been doing since May of ‘05. Keeping up with a blog has really helped me deal with my own inability to remember and catalog my thoughts. As I’ve gotten better at that process, I have found that it’s really helped me reach my goal to be a more creative and engaged person. I very much recommend blogging as a new discipline to develop.

I am also a student at Brite Divinity School (still!) at Texas Christian University seeking my Masters of Divinity, and ordination as a Pastor in the United Methodist Church.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to connect with you again in the future.

If you want to get in touch with me, feel free to send me an email.

As I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering if I was going to continue this whole blogging thing, I decided it was time for a new look. Since transitioning into a new position at the church, I have been very unfaithful in my blogging practice. As far as the reason for my silence, I think what I have come up with is that my life is changing and in some ways I am closing a chapter of my life in order to start another one. Much of what I have shared over the past two years is from that chapter.

I know I still need this practice. It’s good for my soul. I thought about a brand new blog. I even fiddled around with wordpress this morning, but in the end, I decided a new look would do. A little more blue… my favorite… and a lot simplier.

Like my life in my new chapter.