How could this NOT brighten your day??

A DAY FOR THANKS…

I could probably sit and make a list of hundreds of things that I’m thankful for. I’m sure even on that long a list, there would be some things that were unintentionally deleted due to the chest congestion I’m experiencing this week (one thing that would NOT make my thanksgiving list). Today, for the sake of you (the reader) and myself (the guy who almost failed keyboarding at Crane High School), I’ll just simply leave a few of my deepest offerings of gratitude.

1. Over the past few months, my understanding of my depravity has grown considerably. I think my lack of theological understanding in my youth, allowed me to minimize my desperate need for redemption. I’m grateful today, that even though I diminished His grace for so long, it never ceased to bring life and salvation. My eternity was purchased, when Christ stood in my place to experience the wrath of God. I’m humbled and moved in my soul, that I’m even granted the ability to give thanks that God saw fit to choose such a sinner as me.
2. I’ve always known that my wife was amazing. I’m consistently blessed by her strength, and enriched by her wisdom. I have however, experienced this more richly than ever before over the past 3 and half months. The arrival of Jessie Rose has shown me a much more colorful beauty within my precious wife. She’s a super-mom, and displays a grace with my daughter than can not be explained. Her love for me is strong and forgiving, in a way I will never deserve. I can’t imagine how I would do life without her. I’m thankful she picked me. I’m thankful that she allowed me to be the father to a beautiful little girl named Jessie Rose, who I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of knowing.
3. Every Thanksgiving Day of my life, the Hatton family (my mom’s side) has gathered together to pig out and celebrate family. I would say that we “break bread and fellowship” but that has a deeper spiritual connotation that definitely isn’t on the minds of the majority here. While I am VERY thankful for my family and the heritage I’m blessed to be a part of, my thanks this year is much more specific. Though I’ve been with this group every year of my life, this is the very first year that my Memaw hasn’t been here. Oddly enough, I’m thankful for her absence this time. Memaw went to her eternal home a few months ago, so today, she’s enjoying a much greater feast and family. My Papaw is undoubtedly “showing her their place” with Jesus. Her chair here is empty, but her legacy is strong.
4. Sunday will also be a unique day of celebration and thanksgiving for me. For a little over a year now, we’ve been working in ministry with Temple Bible Church. Sunday will be my last day with TBC. This chapter of our ministry has been fun and exciting. We have been loved in a way that we’ve never known from a church family. In the way that He does, the Lord has been stirring within our hearts for the past few years about doing a new work. I’m thankful today, that He saw the road ahead, and allowed me to walk this far. As beaten and depraved as I continue to be, I’m still allowed to serve in the Kingdom. Our time with TBC is closing, as an entirely new story is beginning. I’m thankful for The Vista Community for allowing us to experience Church with you. I can’t wait to see where we are this time next year, and to give thanks for things I can’t even dream of today.

For those of you who don’t know, I am now officially a “real” pastor…whatever that means. I’ve been doing ministry for a long time, but I’ve never really felt like a pastor. I’ve even been given various titles that contained the word pastor, but most of the time I really just felt like a glorified intern at best. This time it’s different. This time I’m doing pastor “things”. This time I feel like a pastor. This time I really love the folks I’m doing church with in a way that makes me want to lead them. Monday will be my 2 week anniversary as the real thing.
My official title is Connection / Worship Pastor. You’re impressed aren’t you????

I’ve been secretly praying about church planting for about 2 years. Little did I know that all along the Lord was hearing my secret request. It always felt like a strange thing for me to feel led to do. I was already on staff at a church most music guys dream of. But the most bizarre thing in all my feelings was honestly, how many of you know music guys who plant churches? I know a lot of music guys, some of whom even do music at a church plant. Most of them weren’t actually in on the planting part though. The most surprising thing about what I was feeling was that I was more interested in actually seeing the Church take Biblical shape, than I was in doing music. I was really feeling a tug to be in on a fresh journey to be a Jesus church. Over the past 8 years, I’ve been in a lot of churches doing various ministry activities. During this time, I acquired a few pretty deep convictions about what should, and should not be taking place in the Church. This just kept driving me to seek the Lords guidance on how to walk this dark path I was feeling led towards.
Even after 2 years of praying, the phone call caught me pretty off guard. My friend Dave Jeffreys, who I’ve known for years but had never really gotten close to, called to ask how I would feel about planting a church. (In addition to spending a few years in college with Dave, I’d had the opportunity to do a few ministry events with him. Dave is a very gifted speaker, with a heart for the Truth and the Kingdom. The kind of guy anyone with a true heart for ministry would want to do Church with.) Our friend Jeff Mangum had planted a church about 4 months prior to our discussion, and his church had already received a request to help plant another church here in Bell County. Here we go! After a few extensive discussions with Dave, I really began to feel the Lord’s assurance that this was the road I’d been praying about.
We started meeting with a few families here in Bell County within a month of our first discussion, and yet again the Lord began to speak very clearly to me. I knew from the jump that these people were on the same road that I’d been trying to follow for 2 years. They just wanted to be a part of something real; something authentic that just chased hard after the heart of God. We’ve been meeting together for about 2 months now, sharing the vision of The Vista Community Church, over pizza or queso. We don’t pretend to have everything figured out, but we know the Lord has called us to a new work for the Kingdom. It’s exciting…REALLY exciting.
Tonight we had our 2nd of 3 “Come and See” meetings. These meetings are simply a chance for people interested in The Vista, to come and see what it’s all about. Novel idea isn’t it? We share the vision, values, and mission of the Church, as well as sharing some more food. (Food is always good!) Tonight we filled the Studinka’s home with about 40 people or so. Most of whom were new faces, and many of whom, have now become family. I came home tonight in a state of excitation that I’ve never felt about ministry. This thing is WAY beyond me, or my silent wishes. It’s even way beyond anything I’ve ever done, or been a part of before. This is Church in a way I’ve not yet known.

For those of you who have become our Vista family, thank you. We love you guys, and are honored to be able to lock arms with you in this journey. Thank you for allowing me to be your pastor. I look forward to many days of joy and blessing as The Vista Community Church!

I’m not sure if there is anything more important to a kid than toys. Sometimes I wish life was still that simple. I’m still very much obsessed with toys to this day, but none quite compare to the “treasures” I had as a child.

There are a few specific toys from my childhood, that I still spend a considerable amount of time “playing” with in my mind. One of those toys I’m ashamed to admit was one of those stupid pens that had multiple colors of ink to choose from. I’m not talking about one of those dorky green/red/blue/black jobs. I’m talking like MULTI colors! Who doesn’t need yellow ink? Who cares if the pen was so fat that you could hardly hold it? I remember insisting that Santa HAD to get me this pen (I pretended to believe in the fat jolly-man, because I was convinced that my participation in the big Christmas lie would greater increase the possibility that the Santa-rents would get me what I wanted). My memory of using this pen though, is not nearly as extensive as my memory of the anticipation. Don’t get me wrong. It was a great pen! Loads of fun, but it could NEVER live up to it’s expectation.

My second favorite toy differs greatly from the first. First of all, my eager spirit for this toy, paled in comparison to actually owning this priceless treasure. Second, I’m thoroughly convinced, that if I could find this toy again, I’d still play with it today. You have to understand. This was NO ordinary toy. This was every young boys dream! This was the MOST amazing toy GUN ever made! It was probably 10 guns in all, that all pieced together to make one giant killing machine. It served every purpose a kid “soldier” could need. Complete with grenade-darts (which could be launched!) and fake bullets, it was all a boy could ever want. Can you feel the excitement??? I’ll be totally honest and let you know, that I still spend time on the internet looking for this gun! Though I may never find it again...you can trust me on this…IT WILL NEVER DIE!!!

Now that I’ve become a father, my appreciation of toys has reached an entirely new level. I’ve re-discovered “toy-joy”. Here’s an example. A few weeks ago, my friend in brown dropped off a gi-normous package at our house. Even with the understanding that this particular package was NOT addressed to me, I still found myself overcome with childlike excitement. Once we got it all opened up, we found the baby-swing that we had registered for, but had decided we weren’t getting. I was overwhelmed and completely excited. You have to understand, Jessie Rose LOVES to swing. Some days, that’s the only way to make her happy. We’ll just stick her in the swing and let her go for hours…literally. If that makes us bad parents…oh well. Screaming baby + stay at home dad = desperate measures. You also have to understand, that the original swing we had, was a piece of crap. It was dirty, and partially broken, and had a magical ability to kill batteries within minutes. Needless to say, this new shiny swing, was a welcome addition to the Norvell house.

Discovering my daughters love for a few of her favorite toys, has me VERY excited about a life full of spoiling my beautiful little girl.

Yesterday was a pretty amazing day for me. For a little over 10 years now (long before our time here), our church (Temple Bible Church) has been partnered with a fellow church in the Ukraine. Over these years, our sister congregation in Belaya Tserkov has grown to be the one of the largest gatherings of Christian believers in the Ukraine.
(I have to confess that I’ve never really been a guy who felt called to mission work in a foreign country. I have many friends, and family members who have spent time doing Kingdom work on foreign soil, but it’s just never really been something I felt drawn towards. Perhaps my struggles with being a missionary in my own hometown have caused me to have a tunnel vision when it comes to my missional calling. While I’m seeking a change to my shallow mission-mindedness, I feel it’s important to make note of, in order to set the stage for my thoughts today.)
We had the privilege in our “corporate worship gathering” yesterday, to hear from both the youth pastor, as well as the main pastor of our distant sister church. It was such a huge blessing to hear what the Lord is doing all across His creation. This was the youth pastors very first trip to America, and the only words he speaks of English are “Very nice to meet you!”. Both of these men are doing an amazing work in their homeland to shepherd the flock they’ve been entrusted with. Both have amazing stories of Abba’s faithfulness to believers in the Ukraine. Both had to have a translator in order for me to know what they were saying. Both touched my heart in an amazing way.

I’m sure I’ve heard 5 or 6 dozen missionaries speak over the course of my days in the church, but none seemed to have as much of an impact on me. Perhaps it was just the day that the Lord chose to open my eyes a little wider to the fact that His Gospel reaches far beyond changes in language. Perhaps this time was different in light of the fact that my dear friends Chad and Erin Gerlt are now the proud parents of Max, who they adopted from the very land these 2 gentlemen are serving. Max seems to bubble with a joy of the Lord that I’m not quite sure I’ve ever experienced. Either way, my heart feels very full today in a place that I never even realized was empty. The Gospel is a powerful and amazing truth, and it’s changing people all over the globe. How amazing is it that we all get to share in the same mission. It reaches far beyond my comfortable historic district little house. It reaches far beyond my local church. It even reaches far beyond my ability to communicate. It’s unstoppable.

Thank you my Ukrainian friends, though you’ll never read this, for telling me the story of HOPE that calls you to work in a land I’ll probably never set foot on. Thank you Erin and Chad, for demonstrating the LOVE of Christ, which saves and restores people from dark and lonely places. Thank you Max, for showing me the true JOY of redemption.