Pastor Scott has a higher gear!

Of several things I've greatly appreciated about Pastor Scott are his love of The Word and his love for lost people. Since joining our ministry, his passion for those two subjects has motivated me time after time during Sunday messages; each at a level that was higher than I'd ever experienced before. I remember during the candidating process the buzz about how driven Pastor Scott was and how we needed to be ready to run once he came on board. And believe me, we've been running ever since. But to my utter amazement, the staff discovered this past Tuesday that he has an even higher gear!

In my post-staff meeting assessment, I think we witnessed three forces colliding to form not the perfect storm, but an entire weather phenomena. As he lead us through a scripture passage, he was excited about all that it contained that his passion reached even high levels; it was so unbelievable, it was comical. At several points, in an euphoria of explaining the passage, he found one point only to put that aside because he remembered a second point he wanted to share, only to recall yet a third point he wanted to make first. Like the runway at O'Hare, he had three points lined up in succession that if he could, he would've shared simultaneously. It was, as he would say, AMAZING! His passion for the passage, the truths it contained and the direct application to our lives inspired and motivated me to seek Christ even more. So watch out, like any other motor, Pastor Scott's got an even higher gear than what we've seen to date. I wonder what got the RPM's up high enough for him to be able to shift?

I see three things (and I'm just conjecturing here) that possibly collided to put him into the next gear.

1. His love of scripture and lost people. Because the passage dealt directly with the topic of lost people, I think it resonated with him in a deep way.

2. His trip to Israel. I think the trip opened his eyes to the cultural background in a new way which in turn has given him a fresh perspective on the stories of the Bible.

3. I think he's had more time to study and with the pending addition of another Pastor to our staff, I think he'll have more time to study.