Hello and greetings from Pastor Colombo! I am very excited to begin my first post about…food! For those of you who know my Italian roots, and my love for food, you will especially enjoy this post.

This past Saturday our church did our annual fundraiser, a chicken barbecue. We have been doing this for over fifteen years, and people have expressed it’s the best they ever tasted. We always get the question, “When will the next chicken barbecue be?” We have even had people try and figure out our secret recipe!

So why a blog about chicken? Please follow along. In order for this event to be successful you must start off with the best chicken. We always purchase our chicken from a country store named Ed and Jeans. Their chicken is the best, and comes at a great price too. We should not cheat people by giving them something inferior. God gave His best to us by giving us Jesus.

The men of the church cooked our chicken, as they have for so many years, starting with an early wake-up call to get the fire going. As Christians we need to seek God early and show our dedication to Jesus. The fire on the hot coals reminds us of the fellowship Jesus had with His disciples after His resurrection on the shore. Our men fellowship outside while our ladies do the same inside waiting for eager people to come and get their meals.

The men know the Pastor’s rule for cooking chicken, and the ladies of the church make their recipe barbecue sauce for the chickens to be basted. Now some people just dip their chickens once and cook them (this is not the Italian way). The Pastor’s rule is continual basting of the chicken as they are being cooked. Like the chicken, we must continually allow God to baste us in His Holy Spirit so that we become completely saturated with the Holy Oil from heaven. If we don’t allow God to do this, then we will become stagnant in our walk with God and not be appealing to others. Not only do we continually baste the chicken, we turn and flip it on the grill. We too must continually turn to God and show Him we love Him and desire Him more and more each day. As we turn to Him God will turn His face toward us and give us His best. We will hear His voice and feel His Spirit upon us.

What delight when people pick up their order. Some stay and eat in our fellowship hall and by their vocal and facial expressions you can tell it’s the best chicken in town. That is how the Lord wants us to feel about church on Sunday morning – it’s the best “meal” we had all week. Let’s face it, we all love food but does anything “taste” better than sitting down at Our Father’s Table and breaking bread and fellowshipping with Him? Finding a good meal and a good restaurant is nice, but finding a good church alive with Jesus is something else!

God Bless you!

Pastor Frederick Colombo