• Yo, yo… happy Tuesday!

• I missed seeing my Gateway family on Sunday.

• I was up in Flagstaff, officially introducing and praying for Anthony Gee, the new Lead Pastor of R/Flagstaff.

• Anthony has been there since it started in 2012, has been leading at a high level, and now is providing the point leadership.

• It was a sweet privilege to be able to be there on behalf of the extended Redemption Church family to pray for him and share that moment.

• I drove up with Sandy Mason, the newest Redemption Church staff member.

• Sandy is a 68 year-old who pastored for about 40 years, most recently at Desert View Bible Church, a church he planted nearly 20 years ago off of Carefree Highway.

• He’s joined our team part-time to be a pastor and mentor to our lead pastors.

• I preached for Sandy years ago at a men’s retreat and have always enjoyed him.

• I think he’s going to be a huge blessing and resource to our pastors, many of whom are around middle-age and need good input from experienced brothers like Sandy.

• We had a fun drive up and back to Flagstaff and it was good to introduce him to some of the leaders up there.

• When I got home, I asked Molly about church at Gateway and about how it went with Aaron Dailey preaching from R/Alhambra.

• She told me what I’ve now heard from a bunch of folks, which was that Aaron was fired up and that it was a lot of fun.

• Also sounds like the crowd at 9:30am was pretty fired up too!

• A few folks told me that and then when I watched the sermon I could hear all the people responding in the sermon.

• It was more than just Brandon Compton, Andrew Manche, and Dani Indie — my favorite “amen-ers” 😁

• I watched some of the music too and it seemed like people were super-engaged — made sense for the 9:30am service

• The 8:00am is always the quietest — not sure if it’s because of masks, because it’s early, because it’s the smallest, or all of the above.

• The 9:30am is definitely the most fired up most weeks.

• Then the 11:00am is somewhere in the middle.

• Funny how the different services take on a pretty distinctive feel.

• I talked with Aaron and he was so encouraging about the love he received and the connection he felt with folks from Gateway.

• Y’all made me proud.

• This week I’m spending a good bit of time with Bobb Biehl, who has done leadership coaching and executive mentoring for about 40 years.

• Hoping to glean some insights that can help me keep leading faithfully and effectively at Gateway and beyond.

• I first experienced Bobb a few years ago when he spoke to our pastors about what he’s seen in leaders and how they change in each decade of life.

• Here’s a version of a similar talk he did.

• I found it fascinating and resonated with a ton of it so far.

• Should be a good week of learning.

• Some years ago, I came across a pastor who wrote about 100 things he learned the hard way.

• One of them was, “A woodcutter never wasted time sharpening his axe.”

• That always stuck with me — the time you take to invest in making yourself sharper is never a waste of time.

• What a blessing to be part of a church that values — in word, action, and with resources — creating opportunities for people at every level to keep growing.

• Man, speaking of that, the Scribes and Scriptures conference on Saturday was amazing.

• There were 180 people there on a Saturday to learn more about the reliability of the Scriptures and why we can trust them.

• That kind of hunger is massively encouraging.

• Excited to hang with my RC tonight — such a fun group of people and life-giving to be with them.

• Whatever you’re up to this week, invite Jesus to walk closely with you through it.

• He loves you.

• And he likes you.

• That’s good news.

• All of life is all for Jesus.