Musings on wildfires, church growth & whatever.

Fire near Meyer Ranch - 3 miles from our home

Interesting fact about living in the mountains:  anytime you're out and about, or eating in a restaurant, or grocery shopping and you hear a siren - everyone turns to look.  I suppose this is normal in any context, but what everyone is turning to see is if the siren is coming from an ambulance or police car (in which case they go back about their business), or if it is a firetruck.  If the latter, the first thing you want to know is where the fire is, because everyone thinks about the risk of wildfires all the time - particularly between April and the first snow in the Fall.  We've had a much lower than normal level of snowfall here in Conifer this past winter, which does not bode well for the fire season.  We've already had six wildfires in Confer/Evergreen in the past two weeks, and most people believe this summer could be extremely dangerous due to the dry conditions that prevail.  Just the end of last week there were three fires that were ignited along Hwy 285 in the span of a few minutes, and it now appears that a truck dragging a catalytic converter started all three.  One of those fires (see photos to right) burned over 40 acres and threatened some nearby homes.  The craziest part is that it had snowed about an inch just that morning, and yet a few sparks were still enough to light three fires.

I've been cutting down trees around our house to mitigate the fire risk, plus it will give me some firewood for next winter.  Trees on the ground are not the problem in a wildfire; it's the standing trees that are a cause for concern because a big fire jumps across the tree crowns and doesn't even come down to the ground.

We set a new attendance record yesterday at our three Easter services - 618 people!  In a community of only 9,000 that's approaching 10% of the total population.  What's even more amazing is that we've only been in existence up here on the mountain for 2 years.  God is clearly doing something in this mountain community and He is drawing people to Himself in a dramatic way.  We've also just purchased 46 acres of land smack dab in the middle of Conifer, and half of the Journey staff have moved into the big "Bonanza" house that's already on the property.   To allow us to buy the land God raised over $100,000 in only two weeks - an incredible accomplishment by anyone's standards.  Yesterday as Michael and I stood at the back of the auditorium watching the third service fill up to capacity, he turned and said to me, "When we first moved up here two years ago someone told me that we'd never get a church off the ground in the mountains.  I guess they were wrong!"

This next Wednesday I'll be teaching from 1 Corinthians 5, which deals with the question of church discipline and how to handle immorality in the body.  This is a tricky passage to deal with, as Paul talks about handing someone over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh - not a common theme for sermons these days!