Jessica Owens just caught a ball that was thrown in the crowd. 

However, I must say that she only caught it after it went through Chris Clark’s hands. 

Of course, Chris had a good excuse for not catching the ball, and I quote, ”I was texting.” 

Anyway, here’s Jessica with her new dodgeball.

On Monday, I was given the opportunity to go to the Augusta National Golf Course, the most prestigious golf course in all the world.  It’s where “The Masters” is played every year.   

While I was there, I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful the landscaping was, how organized the event was, and how excited everyone was to just be there.

And although I don’t necessarily want to do a post on “What the Church can Learn from The Masters”, there were several times throughout the day when it was plainly obvious that the people who run “The Masters” and take care of Augusta National, are committed to excellence and could teach those of us in the local church a thing or two about giving our best. 

With that said, I thought I would take the next few posts and talk about why we as a church we need to be consumed with doing things with excellence.

Although the course is definitely the ”star” at Augusta National (aka “The Masters”), there is little doubt that everyone wants to see Tiger Woods at some point.  Here he is with Mark O’Meara.

My three year old, Brody, obviously doesn’t understand golf and certainly doesn’t know any golfers by name, but I told him that I was going to go see Tiger Woods.  

When I came home he remembered that name, but asked, “Dad, did you have fun in the ‘Tiger Woods’?” 

Yesterday, I talked about how great Sunday was for us as a church. 

What I didn’t tell you was that Sunday was a special day for me personally as well.  It was special to me because my son, Micah, got baptized during one of our Easter services.

And being the proud father that I am, I thought I would post a couple of pictures today. 

But before I do, I thought I’d give you a little context. 

On Easter Sunday, the water in the baptistery was freezing cold.  And by freezing, I mean “white water rapids” cold.  It was unbelievable.  We had some sort of malfunction during the week and as a result, the water was nowhere near its usual, warm temperature. 

And not only that, somehow during the second service, the water was accidentally drained from the baptistery and we had to fill it up again at the last minute, which made it even colder.

So, all week I’d been telling him that the water would be warm and I would take care of him, only to find out that very morning that the water would actually be freezing cold.

We actually told Micah that the water was cold and that if he wanted to wait another week, then that would be fine with us, but he was ready to do it, and we obviously had no objections.

So Easter Sunday, my eight year old boy go baptized and all of Heaven and Southside celebrated. 

“Dad, the water is freezing!”

My buddy and me

“Mom, quit taking pictures!   I need a towel!”

I thought some of you would enjoy this really cool picture from one of our Easter services yesterday.  This is the 9:30 service, and as you can tell, the place was absolutely packed!