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Dan Camp's Blog (24)

That was difficult...

I knew it would be difficult, but didn't realize how hard it would hit me. I've sung Blessed Be Your Name dozens, probably hundreds, of times, but I almost couldn't make it through the first verse this morning. This was the first Sunday since our church closed its doors, the first Sunday in more than 25 years that I didn't hold the title of Worship Leader, and that the church we've attended our entire married life (30+ years) was not there for us.

Our church was dissolved…

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Added by Dan Camp on January 15, 2023 at 10:20pm — No Comments

Going to Daddy

We have a young family in our congregation with a couple of toddlers. Mom is away visiting family, so Dad brought the kids to church by himself. We've got a small sanctuary, so they generally are allowed to wander about without issue. As the service was about to start, they noticed one of the ladies who dotes on them up in the choir, so they came rumbling up. She gave them each a quick hug, but then said, in a voice loud enough to get their dad's attention (and that of everyone else in the… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on April 25, 2010 at 7:04pm — 1 Comment

Running Thin, but Running in God's power...

Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD. This morning we might look at adding "not by numbers up in front."

We had 1 vocalist (me) 1 guitarist, and 1 drummer. Our pianist, our other guitarist, and our other vocalist were either sick, unavailable, or out of town. With the last-minute loss of the one guitarist we had to swap one song on our playlist (with the accompanying last-minute PowerPoint change) for something the remaining guitarist knew better.

In… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on November 9, 2009 at 3:24am — 1 Comment

Too many funerals...

We were sitting down at dinner this evening when the phone rang...my father-in-law calling to let us know that our brother-in-law (husband of my wife's older sister) had passed away suddenly this afternoon. This came as my wife was filling me in on the plans for the memorial service this coming Friday for one of the ladies from our congregation. We've also recently had another memorial service for another elder, and it was the same day as the funeral for a Salvation Army officer my wife's… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on October 21, 2009 at 3:22am — 4 Comments

Sunday I'd rather forget...

Maybe I should have been a bit more worried a bit earlier...like when I got the call Saturday evening from my right-hand guy Ted (who happens to be the dad of our drummer and our 2nd guitarist). "Say, did I remember to tell you that we're camping this weekend and won't be there tomorrow? I can't remember if I remembered to let you know..." (he hadn't...a very rare oversight on his part...)

OK...not the end of the world, and everyone needs a vacation from time to… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on August 10, 2009 at 9:00pm — 1 Comment

Mission Trip Recap, Part II

In the first part of this blog post, I described a bit about our mission trip to the Chehalis, WA area. In this post I'd like to share about the people we assisted.

S.J. is a recently retired lady who has been active in missions herself, having gone to Africa on a multi-week mission trip not long before the flooding. She said that one of the hardest things after the flood was… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on July 17, 2009 at 4:11pm — No Comments

Mission Trip Recap, Part I

A bit sunburned, a bit sore, but back home after a wonderful mission outing.

When folks think of a mission trip, they often think of going somewhere overseas or flying across the country. Our outing was much closer to home.… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on July 17, 2009 at 4:00am — No Comments

An Update...

Folks--

I'd like to thank all of you who've been praying for Mark, our guitarist. He was able to join us this morning for worship, albeit wheeling an Oxygen tank along. It was an interesting morning...Mark on O2 part of the time, myself on Ricola (I wonder if they'd do a sponsorship? We go through enough of the stuff on our team...) and the Pastor in a bit of a blue funk because their beloved family dog had to be put down yesterday.

In spite of all the weirdness, God's love was… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on June 22, 2009 at 12:00am — 2 Comments

Skill and Responsibility

This morning as I was reading through the Word, I came to the passage where David and the Levites are bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. (This was attempt #2 after the EpicFail oxcart incident.) They were making quite a worship celebration of this. In the midst of the descriptions of who was blowing trumpets and who was crashing cymbals and so on, on verse caught my eye. In 1 Chronicles 15:22… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on June 10, 2009 at 9:35pm — 3 Comments

Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt

"On January 1, 2000--just 9 months away--we'll take a deep breath and hope our banks, utilities, and government took the right steps to protect us from a potential nightmare. How will your phone system behave that morning?"

These are the opening lines to a letter I unearthed while cleaning out a file cabinet I inherited along with my day job as an IT network admin. One of my predecessors had filed it away more than ten years ago, and it had never been discarded. It's hard to… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on May 23, 2009 at 6:19pm — No Comments

Beggar Who Gives Alms

I have a new favourite song-du-jour. Downhere's The Beggar Who Gives Alms from their "Ending is Beginning" album.

There are no mystic jewels embedded in my prose

No moonlit haloed cherubs perched on my piano

No lyrics laced with pixy dust, no angels sing along

I am just a beggar who gives alms

Gold and silver have I none, but such I have give Thee

Borrowed words from the One who gave the gift to… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on May 7, 2009 at 2:39am — No Comments

Salt and Light

Today's sermon was from Matthew 5: 13-16. I've seen that passage a bazillion times, but something was pointed out today that I'd never noticed before.

We are the "Salt of the Earth." We are the "Light of the World." Not that we ought to think about being the Salt and the Light. Not that someday we will achieve saltiness and lightness. We are the salt, we are the light, right now, today. If we are in Christ,… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on April 27, 2009 at 3:12am — 2 Comments

Some thoughts on Good Friday...

"Time Between Times." Good Friday marks the death of Jesus. Easter marks his resurrection. Between the two is a time between times, neither one nor the other. It is a time of absence, of loss, of longing. As much as we, in this time, may feel that loss, we have the advantage of knowing what happens next. As the Carmen song puts it, "Sunday's on the way!"

We've just come from a moving Good Friday service. At the start of the service, the communion table had been set with a number of… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on April 11, 2009 at 4:14am — No Comments

"Fasting" From Music (Or "The day I went to church and the band was banned.")

This morning, due to a family gathering at the other end of town, we arranged to be absent from our normal congregation. We decided to attend worship at the Seattle Temple Corps of the Salvation Army, as it was fairly close to the family gathering location. My wife grew up as a Salvationist, playing cornet and alto horn in the band, and she was able to renew acquaintances with several people she knew. I was… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on March 30, 2009 at 4:30am — 3 Comments

"We're not THAT desperate!"

A recent discussion over on the Small Church group forum asked "How do you let someone go" who is lacking in talent? It reminded me of a story my father tells from early in his ministry (and perhaps an object lesson in what NOT to do...)

Before going to the mission field, my father was an… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on February 18, 2009 at 9:10pm — 2 Comments

What Goes Into A Worship Service

We recently made the decision to go from two services (a fairly contemporary service and a blended-ish service) into a single service. I thought folks might find our process of determining what our new order of worship would look like.

We started out by listing out the elements of our two current worship services. Included were singing (corporate, choral and special music), preaching, praying (prayers of the people/pastoral prayers, prayers of worship, praises.), Special occasions… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on February 10, 2009 at 5:25am — 2 Comments

An Update...

(Radio announcer voice--On) And now, dear readers, we return to our story. After having been delayed by icy roads, the pastors arrived just in time for the sermon, the only item remaining in the order of worship. And now, on to today's episode of "As the Blog Churns!" (Radio announcer voice--Off).

It has been a while, so here's an update:

The following Saturday it started snowing heavily, causing us to cancel church for the 4th Sunday of Advent. The snow continued through… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on January 29, 2009 at 6:28pm — No Comments

What do you mean, "The Pastors are snowed in!"???

We in the Seattle area, like much of the country, have been having inclement winter weather. Friday evening we got a bit of snow, but roads weren't impacted. The snow held off during the day on Saturday, and finally cut loose overnight Saturday night.

Sunday at 6:45 I called the pastors' house to see how the roads were over by the church..."doesn't look like it's sticking to the road" was the reply. OK...services are good to go for 9:00. We leave the house about 7:30 (normally we… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on December 17, 2008 at 10:12pm — No Comments

Tuning In

"You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish..."

"You can tune a radio, but you can't tuna fish..."

Same joke, different venue [grin]

I'm sure that we'd all agree that a miss tuned radio is annoying, as is a badly tuned musical instrument.

As some of you know, in my (limited) leisure time, I am an amateur (ham) radio operator. There are times when I'm trying to… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on December 11, 2008 at 4:19am — No Comments

My Story...

If you're reading this blog, you may be wondering something along the lines of, "who is this yahoo, anyway?" Well, here's my story, and I'm sticking with it ;-)

I grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK). Among other things that involved moving around quite a bit. (Between kindergarten and graduation I was at 10 different schools plus two years of homeschooling.) My folks (and by extension my sister and I) were in ministry to US military personnel overseas through Overseas Christian… Continue

Added by Dan Camp on December 2, 2008 at 1:00am — No Comments