troy austian | blog

Have You Tried the Corn?

This weekend was great.  Great services.  Great response.  And then a phenomenal
all-church picnic at the Rosemount amphitheatre with over 600 in attendance.  We had a great time and good food, including the amazing grilled corn on the cob!

My favorite part of it all was having the water baptisms as part of the all-church picnic.  That was a brilliant idea!  (We brought in two large, portable hot tubs...and yes, the water was great!)  We baptized 28 people after hearing their testimonies of coming to faith in Jesus Christ.  It was powerful.  It was beautiful.  It was fun!  There was no better place to be.  I loved how much this was like water baptisms in the New Testament -- not the hot tubs!...but that it was done out in the community for the world to see, and with such a large crowd of witnesses.  If you were there, you know how powerful it was.  If you weren't, then you should be sure to be there next year!

My New Intern

I'm very excited about my first intern.  His name is Aaron Freeman, and he started August 16.  It's going great, he's a very solid guy, and I love having the help.  I've gotta say that the whole intern concept is genius!  I put him to work helping me and the church with the stuff of ministry, and he gets to learn from the experience and from being around me and the other pastors.  I'll be keeping him busy as well as investing in him -- it's really a win-win.  Aaron is a Pastoral Studies major at North Central University.  If you're involved in Small Groups, in particular, I'm sure you'll have the opportunity to meet Aaron and his wife, Nikki.  Give them a good welcome!

Photo Caller ID, part 1

I love photo caller ID.  It's a cool, fun, and practical technology that enables you to associate a picture with a phone number in your cell phone or smart phone so that the picture displays when you get a call from that number.  (A smart phone is a cell phone + PDA combination like my Palm Treo 650 that I accidentally dropped in water earlier this year.)

I thought it might be fun to share some of my photo caller ID images with you.  Should any of these images disappear in the near future, it would be because the person pictured isn't as fond of the picture as I am!

This is, of course, Pastor Rob... our senior pastor, a phenomenal guy, a great husband, a great dad (with great, really well-behaved kids).  He's an excellent leader, friend, and pastor, and he does an amazingly dead on impression of Neil Diamond.  And he's my boss, so when this picture pops up, I answer!

Online Giving Now Available

By popular demand, online giving is now available at rivervalleychurch.org!  Just go to the web site and click Online Giving under the About RVC menu, or just click here.  And please let us know what you think!