Seth Hinrichs

Church Building Update

Thank you to all who came to the informational meeting at the former Pine City Methodist Church on Sunday night! We had a great turnout, and it was great to walk around the facility with folks, see people get different ideas, and try and answer questions.

This is a fantastic opportunity for us as a church – to be only two years old (not even) and have the chance to be in our own facility is a real blessing. Please continue to pray for God's leading and direction as we take steps in moving forward with this project, and His provision as we need it. I'm looking forward to seeing what He does with this step of faith.

Home From California

I made it home from my class at Fuller Seminary on Friday night, and after a busy weekend of church activities, I'm spending most of this week getting back up to speed with life at church and home and unpacked from my trip.

My time in California was a deep blessing to me. There were so many new friends, great experiences and wonderful conversations that I'm sure stories from this trip will be leaking out of me for some time to come. That being said, it's great to be home with Kim and the kids again. Two weeks is a long time to be away from the family.

The picture above is of my class on one of the stairways in the gardens at the retreat center where we stayed. It's funny how after two weeks of spending every waking moment with them you begin to feel like family. I look forward to keeping in touch with them in their various ministries in different parts of the world.

Fuller Class & Church Buildings

I've just finished the first day of lectures at Fuller Seminary where I'm taking the next class in my Doctor of Ministry program, "Spirituality & Ministry" with Dallas Willard, and I'm already excited about the remainder of my time here. The retreat center where this seminar is being held (and where the students stay throughout the class) is beautiful and peaceful, and Dallas Willard is everything everyone has told me he is – brilliant, humble, and sharp as a tack. My fellow students are from all over the country and the world, and as I always do, I'm really enjoying getting to know them and their many stories. I'll be here for the remainder of this week and next for this class, heading home on Friday, June 20th.

It was sure fun to leave with a bang on Sunday! What fun it was to announce the purchase of the former Methodist Church building in Pine City last Sunday in the second service at Evergreen! To literally find out between services that we had agreed to terms on the sale was priceless, and judging from the clapping and enthusiasm level displayed when we announced it, I'm assuming that many of you feel the same way. I look forward to making the facility and the house our own in the months ahead, but more than that I'm just so grateful that God has given us this gift. This was not something that was on our radar screen going into this year and certainly not something I would have ever anticipated at this young stage of our ministry. I'm very excited at the possibilities this opens up for us and the ways that a facility will help us to further minister to our community and one another. God is very gracious.

I'll probably put up a post on the blog here and there throughout my time here in California, so stay tuned! But more than anything, I'm really enjoying this time of refreshment, study and prayer.

Memorial Day Reflections

Memorial Day is now behind us which means that summer has unofficially begun...though it doesn’t really feel like it outside quite yet. I’m beginning to wonder if warmer weather is ever going to show up this year!

Still, the temperature outside doesn’t change the date on the calendar, and that means that summer schedules are beginning to kick in all over the place – especially for those of us with kids in the Pine City Schools as we wind down the last week of classes!

In our house, Memorial Day Weekend was kind of divided up into halves – the first half finishing up prep. for services @ ECC on Sunday, and then Sunday afternoon and Monday, which were much more about relaxing with friends and family. Working weekends just kind of comes with the job as a pastor and you learn to live with it and make it part of your weekly rhythm after a while, but there are times it can certainly complicate a holiday weekend!

On Sunday @ ECC, we continued our series “Don’t Go To Church,” with a message titled “Christians Are Judgmental.” We talked about how often times we make pre-judgments about people without realizing that we do it. We saw videos, we quoted studies, and we talked about a few church-signs that all point to the church as not always being a place of peace, hope, and love. But most of us know that the church can be judgmental from our own experience, don’t we? What are your best suggestions about how we can avoid doing being judgmental toward others?

As an aside regarding Sunday, I apologize to those of you who were victims of our sound explosion in the first service. We’re working hard to correct those kinds of problems these days. The second service came off without a hitch!

This week I’m beginning to prepare for my next Doctor of Ministry class out at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, CA. It’ll run June 9-20, and it’s called Spirituality & Ministry. It’s a 2-week class taught by Dallas Willard at a retreat center in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. That sounds like a beautiful thing right about now! :-) I’m really looking forward to the class, though I have a lot of work to do for it in the next couple of weeks before I go – yet another way that I know that summer is here!

I hope you had a great Memorial Day and that you were able to spend it with friends and family!

Evergreen vs. Evergreen

Here are some pictures from Friday night’s civil war – Evergreen vs. Evergreen in a softball matchup for the ages! Click HERE to see more photos. If only all church conflict were this much fun to work out!

Weekend Update

As I sit down to my desk this morning, this weekend seems like a blur to me. It began on Friday with Pine City Elementary School’s “Field Day” (pictured above). The weather was beautiful and the kids had a great time. Josh competed in several events and was exhausted by the time he arrived home – so were we...and hot...and sun-burned... :-) Thanks for a fun day, Josh – you were awesome!!!

I remember Field Day in my elementary School from when I was a kid, and I love the idea of letting the kids loose outside for a day of fun as the year winds down. As rookies to the event, however, I have to say that Kim and I both felt fortunate that we had the time to be there for the whole day as the format of Pine City’s Field Day is, well...looser than we expected.

From there it was on to the beginning of the Softball season in church league, and what better way to begin than with a matchup of Evergreen vs. Evergreen (see the next blog entry for pictures). I love seeing folks from ECC continue to get to know one another and enjoy spending time together...even when there’s a little friendly trash-talking going on over the game. Okay, I was the one doing most of the talking – but it was still fun!

The weekend’s services @ Evergreen were great, and our new series, “Don’t Go To Church” got off on exactly the foot that I was hoping it would. Yesterday we talked about how what we do in the church is too important for us to do it in a way that’s boring. It’s got to be compelling, it’s got to be done well, and it’s got to be done in a way that communicates with where people are at. If we don’t connect on those fronts, I don’t think we’re going to connect at all. It’s amazing what can happen when the church stands up and decides to be relevant. Click HERE to listen to the message, and HERE to watch the video we made to go with it – one of my personal favorites!

Monday Morning Reflections...

After a busy weekend, there’s lots going on @ ECC this week –

• We had a great worship service yesterday. Child dedications are always fun to do (and appropriate on Mother’s Day) and it’s fun to see the Commons Room so full when we do them. I love that moment when we ask if those who are willing to support the parents and child would stand, and the whole congregation gets up. When a body of people being united in purpose and spirit is on display, it’s an awesome thing to be a part of.

• This week brings with it the beginning of a new series called “Don’t Go To Church: The Reasons I Sleep In On Sundays.” There are going to be moments of this series where I think we’re going to have a chance to laugh together, but we’re going to have some pretty serious moments as well. Thinking through how we be and do church is always an opportunity to exercise something of a sense of humor about yourself. But I’m hoping that we’ll also have a few deeply profound “A-Ha” moments about who we are and why we do things the way we do at Evergreen.

• Marta Lindberg & Michael Lein were married on Friday night at Robinson Park – our first Evergreen wedding. This one was special for a lot of reasons, and I’m grateful to have been the one “tying the knot.” Thanks, guys.

• I caught two fish this weekend on opening day fishing. That hasn’t happened to me in years – I’m usually skunked on the opener (as my 7-year-old often enjoys pointing out!). It was a nice change of fortune for me and, I’m hoping, a sign of how this fishing season will go! Josh and Sam were both in the boat with me on the opener for the first time – and they lasted a little over three hours. Not bad!

Beginning To Breathe

Yesterday @ ECC, we began Breathe, a 2-week conversation about breathing God in and breathing Him out. Specifically, we talked about what it means to breathe God in through the practice of simple prayer.

What are some of the barriers to simple prayer in your life? Is it schedules, a wandering mind, or is it just not realizing the power that’s running through the oven (click HERE to hear the message and understand that reference). I think for me the biggest barriers to a more prayerful life rest in my inability to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my soul. Hurry and business are two of the most potent enemies to a healthy, growing spiritual life.

A friend of mine once told me that if you’re going to preach every Sunday and spend time talking, but you never take the time to listen, you’re going to run out of things to say very quickly, and I’ve found that advice to be true. The times I’m the most dry, the most anxious, and struggling the hardest in my job at the church are in those moments when hurry and business have taken over and time for reflection, pausing, and BREATHING have gone out the window. Nothing comes in, little goes out.

I hope that though this conversation is just a 2-weeker that you will find the time to pause in your own life and ask Jesus the same thing his disciples did: teach us how to plug into the same source of power you do – teach us how to pray.

I'm Back

Okay, so I' haven't posted a new entry to my blog in a little while. Life got busy...it's been crazy since Easter...my dog ate my homework...the point is that after a hiatus from blogging, I hope to be posting more regularly as spring (such as it is here in Minnesota), bleeds into summer and life has slowed down and gotten a bit more regular.

We've had a lot going on behind the scenes at Evergreen in recent days, which is part of the reason for my absence from cyberspace. Life really has been busy and we are in the middle of re-thinking some fairly major pieces of the ministry right now. But as the school and ministry year wind down, I remain excited about where ECC is at as we come into the home-stretch of our second year of ministry.

This week we're going to be starting a 2-week message series called "Breathe: Finding Oxygen For Your Soul Through Prayer." Then beginning on May 18th we're going to do a message series that's been in the hopper for a while called "Don't Go To Church: The Reasons I Sleep In On Sundays". I've been looking forward to diving into the "Don't Go To Church" series for a number of months, and I think we're going to both laugh a lot and be really challenged as we think about what the church has been and what the body can be. Should be fun.

Thanks for your patience with my lack of regularity in my blogging. It's nice to be back.

Congratulations Brandon & Melissa

Congratulations to Brandon & Melissa Lotz as they welcomed Carter James into the world last Thursday evening! Weighing in at 8 pounds 5 ounces, Carter will be challenging his big brother for a seat at the table in no time! I visited with them in the hospital on Friday afternoon, and Melissa looked great, and Brandon was taking it all in stride as usual. Way to go guys – it's great to see you doing your part to grow the church family! :-)