Chris Hubbard

Who is Jesus? from College Park Church on Vimeo.

Opps, I missed that Together for the Gospel 2008 conference which was in April.  I listened to the 2006 messages and I am looking forward to listening to the 2008 messages.

I am in teacher in our church’s nursery. As with many church ministries, there is a struggle to fill the open slots in the schedule. Part of the problem is that the church membership does not view that working in the nursery (or in other areas) as discipleship. We are coming along side these little ones and leading them to God. Instead they see it as just a place to drop off their children so that they can attend the main service and be fed, essentially a baby sitting service.  It is a ministry to parents and children.  Parents do need to be able to attend the worship service, but the children should also begin to worship God during these early years. 

I think part of this misconception is that we have not instilled a culture of discipleship within our community. I am coming to believe that this needs to start among the youngest of our church members, those believers in our children’s ministry.

John MacArthur, speaking at Together for the Gospel 2006, gave a session on Forty Years of Gospel Ministry. At the end of this talk, he gives a description of what I consider a culture of discipleship and the importance of reaching the children in the church.

Every Sunday at your church, there is a collection of non-believers that show up. Ok? Disproportionate to any other group in your church, there is a pile of unregenerate people that show up each Sunday. They are identifiable. They all hang out together. They end up in the same rooms every week. And they are the children in your church. You don’t need to go try and find people around the town who are unbelievers to bring them in and re-invent the church for their sake. You’ve got a phenominal evangelistic field in your children. What are you doing with that? Take your best people, your most gifted communicators, your most finely tuned material, and start there. Start there right on through the youth ministry. And I’ll tell you right now, my children are the product of a passionate, zealous, clear exposure to gospel truth from the start. We even do in our church a ministry, I am always so thrilled my grandchildren get in it. We take 3rd, 4th, 5th grade kids, put then in 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade kids’ classes alongside the teacher so that they can help the teacher and learn how to disciple, teach, and evangelize. We take junior high kids and put them over the juniors. We take high school kids and put them over the junior high. We take college kids and put them in high school or junior high ministry. We have this process going all the time…There is nothing more important. As a father, that is the evangelistic field that I start with in my own home, the salvation of my own children. And as a pastor, that is the most obvious place to do evangelism in the church.

I was using Outlook 2007 and I accidentally had my alt key stuck on my keyboard. When I hit backspace to delete a character, it deleted the last little bit I typed.  It turns out this is a fairly standard feature of the edit box being used there (also used by Notepad).  By using Spy++, I saw that it is sending an EM_CANUNDO and if it is enabled, sends a EM_UNDO.  I tried this in the Wordpress edit window as well.  Unfortunately, the redo button doesn’t enable.  So you are better off using Control+Z anyway.

We arrived at Clarian North this morning at 6 AM for the induction of our 4th child.  Grandma McFall is at home with Alyssa, Mikayla, and Joshua waiting to hear the news of the birth of their new baby sister.  Last night Mikayla excitedly stated, "Tomorrow is Elaina’s Birthday!"  We hope to be seeing her soon.

Michelle is a little nervous but doing well.  This being our 4th child, you would think we would be pros at this by now.  It seems all strangely familiar. 

Our bible verse for today is Philippians 4:6-7:  "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

They started the Pitocin drip at 6:30 AM.  She started contracting pretty regularly (every 2-3 minutes) soon afterwards. 

We found out that her regular OB, Dr Denman, couldn’t be here today due to an issue in her family.  We hope and pray that her family is OK.

Dr Flora came in a little while ago to talk to us.  She broke Michelle’s  water around 7:40 AM.  Michelle’s nurses Sarah (who happens to be 39 weeks pregnant with her first child) and Kim (who is an intern) called the anesthesiologist to administer the Epidural.  They said that about 95% of women delivering are now getting an Epidural. 

We found out that there are about 5 inductions this morning and 1 spontaneous birth this morning.  It seems like inductions are becoming more common.  I know that it has helped us being able to schedule help at home.

At this point, some of you might be wondering why I am blogging the birth of our child.  I got razzed at work from my boss saying something like, "Hey Hubbard, no blog?  This is 2008!  Get with the program."

We went in on January 16th thinking that we were going into labor.  We got to the labor and delivery room (LDR6) and the network connection in the room didn’t work.  They have a touch screen computer in each room on a boom, but it is severely crippled and all I could do is access Yahoo! email.  So I had to send an email out from my yahoo account (which I hadn’t used in many years).  Well, it turned out to be early labor (yes after 3 kids, you can still get fooled) and so we were sent home.  This time, we are in room LDR3 and the network connection is working just fine.  So this time I am able to blog!

9:52 AM  - She is 8 cm, 100% effaced, and 0 station.  Elaina will probably come soon (probably in the next hour).

10:22 AM - She is 10 cm, 100% effaced, and +1 station.  She is ready to push.  The nurse is calling the doctor.

10:46 AM - Elaina Grace Hubbard is born!  7 lb 14 oz, 20 1/2 inches.

Please feel free to leave a comment as part of our memory of this day.