Rob Ketterling

DINNER AND A CRUISE

I'm using my blog to get the word out that we are having a Boat Cruise with a dinner on Sunday night in Stillwater and you can still join us! It's a great date night and the total cost per couple is $44 all inclusive. So far we have 340 people going and we have room for 100 more as the boat company has dedicated the entire boat for River Valley people! Make it a date night and join us, meet some people from church and enjoy the food and scenery. Here are the details: Boat leaves from downtown Stillwater at 4:30 so be early, it will NOT wait! Cost per couple $44 includes the meal. To register call 651-430-1234 and get in on the last available spots! *** Reminder, the boat will NOT wait and it's Lumberjack days in Stillwater this weekend. There will be a parade at 1:00PM and festivals all day as well as fireworks that night so plan accordingly! Hope to see you there!

HOW BAD IS YOUR "WANT TO"

On Monday of this past week I had the privilege of golfing in a charity event for Every Man's Battle for Purity and had a blast! I love it when I can golf on my day off, raise money for charity and win the tournament! (We shot -23 with the help of some string for our putts.) It's also a great day if I out-drive my brother Rick for the first time in years! (See the picture to see how far I out-drove him!)

The only thing that wasn't perfect on Monday was the high temperatures and the high humidity. During the day I drank 8 bottles of water or Gatorade and still felt like I needed more fluids but I never stopped golfing! That's when it hit me, I was golfing in terrible conditions, this extreme heat and yet I wanted to be out there because my "want to" was bigger than any obstacle in my way. Now what if this were something I didn't like doing, would I come up with a convenient excuse to stay home? What if it was for the church, would we still have done the event or would we have called it on account of hot weather? I really think if your "want to" is strong enough, you will do the things you love so if you ever wonder what you love, just see what you'll sacrifice for and that's what you love. After all, if your "want to" is strong enough, you can golf in the heat, ski in the cold and do just about anything you really want to.

LIVING GOD GETS TO #30

Thanks to some aggressive twittering, blogging and Facebook work, our new song "Living God" made it to #30 on the Christian/Gospel category on iTunes on the very first day! It was ourhope that it would make it into the top 100 (It's our first time using iTunes so we didn't know.) and then it became evident that we set our sites way too low when we hit #77 right away. So we hoped for a top 50 showing and then went all the way to #30 which made my day! Thanks to all of you that took the time to download it and show your support for the song, It was so much fun to watch it climb. Now that we've done it once, who's to say our next release won't get into the top 20?! I'm setting our sites higher so let's see! 

I'm so glad that such an amazing song can be heard by so many people and sung in churches all around the world because of iTunes. Now I'm hoping it will go viral and reach into places we never thought possible! Once again thank you to all of you that downloaded the song, if you haven't done it and would like to join in on the fun, go to iTunes and search River Valley Church Living God, and for .99 cents you can get an amazing song!

"LIVING GOD" ON ITUNES HAS BEEN RELEASED!

I'm so excited today as we have just released our single "LIVING GOD" on iTunes! I just went there and downloaded it and I hope you will too! It's a great combo of a "Radio Version" in the first half and then it kicks in to give a glimpse of how a church could sing it as a worship song. Well done team, you're making it happen and I love what I'm seeing and hearing!

So all of you that are reading this, please forward it, post it, comment about it and let's make this launch of this new single a really strong launch! Oh, and don't forget to search for "River Valley Church Living God" and download it!

CHURCH GROWTH

While at the Hillsong Conference I was able to hear so many amazing preachers and speakers and so many things hit me as I tried to soak it all in. Nicky Gumble was amazing, John Maxwell was in top form, Brian Houston was strong and Priscilla Schrirer was excellent. The entire time we were hearing great message after great message but the one hitting that hit me as far as our church goes was a statement by Bobbie Houston.

She was talking about the need to reach more people and the fact that the job is still so far from completed and made this statement about celebrating our growth, "We have churches of hundreds and thousands in cities of millions." That just hit me so hard it hurt! We have so much to do and yet so many times we can sit back and receive the praise of others that our churches are big enough, doing enough and we should settle in and rest. People will ask me what it feels like to have a big church and if I get prideful and honestly, the answer is no. We personally have a church of thousands in a city of multiple millions and I'm not resting!

We can celebrate that we're reaching more people, we can enjoy the fruit of our labor but we can't settle and stop. THere's another campus to start, more leaders to train, more people to minister to and more people to reach. We need to keep on making a difference and thinking of new ways to do more for Christ! Churches of millions in cities of millions, that would be great!

AMAZING FINALE AT HILLSONG!

Wow, it was an amazing conference and the Grand Finale was amazing! In addition to the scheduled worship, we went through 25 years of high-lites from all of theirCD's while switching in between two live venues. Joel Houston along with the United band lead at one location while Darlene, Reuben and Israel Houghton lead at the other. I was amazed with the technology, the talent and the presence of the Holy Spirit throughout the entire night. Wow, I am challenged on so many levels and I'm so glad I was here to witness this and participate in all that has happened in Sydney. After all of this, I'm thinking we may need to do a group excursion to Hillsong Conference 2012 and charter a plane! (OK, maybe not charter one but get a block of tickets!)

Here's a really impressive thing too. It started with only 150 people at the first conference and has grown to over 38,000 people this year and over 700,000 over 25 years. As I contemplate what's next for us I get excited seeing how things grow from days of small beginnings and know that anything is possible!

LOVING HILLSONG CONFERENCE

Becca and I are loving our time down in Australia at the Hillsong conference, it's a conference that is so much more than a conference! We really don't like to miss it because the worship is incredible, the teaching is amazing and the time with friends and other pastors and world changers from around the world is priceless!

This year we brought Pastor Ryan and Alli with us and they are soaking it in and enjoying every minute of it! It's a great investment in our music pastors and I'm so glad they were able to go with us this year, I'm sure we will be reaping the rewards of this as a church for years to come! Hopefully in future years they can come back and bring some of the music staff with them. (That was a hope not a promise to all of those that work on our worship staff!)

This weekend we conclude the Philippians series at church and I'm so glad that Pastor Darin is able to preach the conclusion! He's been a great addition to our team and has been doing so much behind the scenes that I really appreciate so much! So go hear him unless you're in Australia and you can make it to Shire LIve Church where I'll be preaching all weekend before we come home Monday! Good day mate, let me put another shrimp on the barbey! (They never say that by the way!)

MARRIAGE NIGHT

This may sound like a commercial but I want to make sure you know that we have a Marriage Night scheduled for July 24th from 4 to 7PM and it will be a blast! (Sign up here.) Becca and I love the Marriage Nights and this one promises to be a lot of fun as we take a cruise along the St. Croix River and enjoy dinner and time to just get to know other couples from River Valley. It's really reasonable and costs $43.50 a couple and that includes and all you can eat meal and the cruise. Sign up and join us and get to know other families.

I know that a lot of times you feel like you don't have the time to get to know others at church (You should be in Life Groups, they really work for that!) but this is one of those opportunities to meet, greet and see what new friends you can make! Clear the schedule and join us for a great night! After the cruise, the rest of the night is yours to make the most of!

MY KIDS GROW, THE CHURCH GETS ROOTS

One of the things that surprises me is that it seems like my two boys grow like crazy during the summer. I'm not sure why but at the end of summer they need new clothes as the old ones don't fit, the shoes wear out and seriously, they're taller! Connor is taller than his mother and closing in on me and Logan is chomping at the bit to be taller than his mother!

Contrary to the growth my boys do during the summer, the church seems to develop roots and good depth during the summer but there's not much in the way of numerical growth and I think that's a good thing. We see really aggressive growth in September, and January and then by the time June hits, the fast growth is over for a while. That's when I feel as a pastor, that depth in our congregation starts to take place as we settle in, have our summer Life Groups and Global Teams do really well and of course, the summer series promotes depth as well. It's a time to get depth into the breadth and make the most of the season. Some times you grow, some times you get deeper and hopefully at all times, you become more like Jesus!