I grew up in a home with five kids - five kids all given birth within seven years of each other. Let's just say that there was never a dull moment in our home during my 'wonder years.' My parents most assuredly deserve saint hood at the earliest eligibility.

My parents excelled greatly
in the practice of teaching
their children that
when we all pitched in,
difficult tasks became the far less difficult.

Take for example the daily task of doing dishes. In our family of five children, there were three girls and two boys. My mother, in her brilliance, created a system of 'boys night' and 'girls night' when it came to doing dishes. As a child, I always did dishes along side of my younger brother. On the off nights, I sat back delighting in the sight of my three sisters performing the after-dinner clean up.

In my home today, our evening routine fairs differently. My three children are still too young to contribute to the after dinner clean up. Nowadays, I do dishes all by myself most nights. Jenn, my bride of nineteen years, most wonderfully prepares the dinners for our family and then I simply do the clean up. It's a proven system that works well for us, and calls for far less from me than from my bride. We all embrace this system with gratefulness because of my horrific cooking skills.

I look forward to the days when my children are old enough to assist with dishes, because difficult tasks become far less difficult when all pitch in.

At North Way Sewickley Valley, we are about to settle into a weekly difficult task that will become far less difficult as 'ALL' pitch in.

Mostly likely, you have heard that our church will be a setup/teardown church. For our worship community, the benefits of this current system, in lieu of hastily building or purchasing a facility, are far too many to mention here. Each week, we will unload our trailers and setup the spaces that our community will worship in. Then, hours later, we will proceed to tear down those spaces and load them back into our trailers. This process will go well and will certainly not overwhelm as we pitch in together.

I am asking that you will commit to pitching in once a month, either in the early morning hours before church, or in the early afternoon hours after church. And I am calling on you to learn and practice day this process next Saturday, August 28th. We will meet at 8am in Osborne Elementary and practice setting up and tearing down the spaces until around 3pm that afternoon. If you are able to be there for that entire time, it would be greatly appreciated. However, if you are able to drop by for a few hours that Saturday, you would also be awarded your button that entitles you to all the perks that will come with being a part of the Setup/Tear Down Team. :)

Now a days, my brother lives in Florida with his wife and four boys. We rarely get to do dishes together anymore. I always look forward to those times at holidays and family gatherings where we stand in the kitchen doing our difficult task side-by-side. Someday, the North Way worshipers in Sewickley Valley will no longer find themselves in the practice of doing the difficult task in our 'kitchen.' I look forward to those days in the far future, but for now, I'm committed to savoring the magic of our 'wonder years.'