Daylight Savings Time begins this Sunday, March 14. Remember to set your clock ahead one hour on Saturday night.

We just put up a new book recommendation page on the website.  This page includes an extensive list of what we consider to be the best books available in such categories as:

• Biblical Interpretation
• New and Old Testament
• Christian Life and Growth
• Prayer
• Spiritual Disciplines
• Suffering
• Evangelism
• Church History,
• Biographies
• Men’s Issues
• Women’s Issues
• Bibles and Books for Kids
• And many more

Some of the categories are marked with an asterisk, which means that those lists have been categorized beginning with more accessible and popular-level books and working down to more academic and technical books.

If you click on a link through our book recommendation page and purchase that book, DSC will get a percentage of the sale.  If you want a book that is not listed on our page, you can search for it by using the search box at the top of the book recommendation page and DSC will also get credit for purchases made this way.

Tomorrow morning a handful of DSC leaders will, Lord willing, leave for The Gospel Coalition‘s national pastors’ conference in IL. The speakers include Don Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Bryan Chapell, Phil Ryken, and Ligon Duncan. The messages will expositionally work through the whole text of 2 Timothy, in addition to the smaller break out sessions on more practical topics.

Please pray for us while we’re there. Pray for refreshment, growth, and fellowship in Christ and in his Word.

Let me add a few comments more financially related, while I’m at it.

Normally, we would take almost all of our staff and elders to an event like this (20+ people). It’s in our budget to do one big conference together a year. Or at least it was. With the giving being what it has been, and budget cuts being unavoidable, conferences were one of the first places we started “trimming.” We’ve cut the overall number of conferences we attend, and cut how many will attend. I don’t know the numbers, but I know it’s a significant change from a year or two ago. This may be the only conference any of us attend this year.

Why do I tell you that? Well, not at all so that you’ll feel sad or guilty for our conference hardships! It’s not even a subtle reminder that “parentheses are bad” …and the parentheses are growing. I tell you that so that we remain above board with you about your giving and our spending – especially in these fiscally-tight times. Your giving will send a handful of us away for a conference this week. Yet, with that in mind, please know that we are constantly trying to wisely make cuts toward a budget that more closely reflects our present state of giving.

On the one hand, we want to be wise and careful stewards of what the Lord gives us through you, and not presumptuous that the Lord will do tomorrow what he has done yesterday. But, on the other hand, we’re not doing the church-equivilent of cashing in your bonds and burying the cash in the backyard. We’re in a recession — as a country and as a church — but, praise God, the gears are still turning, and oil on those gears is still needed. This conference is the equivalent of some oil applied to the gears of our church leadership. That benefits you; it is ultimately (under God’s glory) for you, the church at DSC.

We go with that firmly in mind. You sent us (even if you didn’t know it until now!). We go to hear, talk, grow, and learn so that we’re better equipped and more refreshed to serve you in and through Jesus Christ. We take none of that for granted. Please know that. And thanks for sending us.

Over the past few years a significant piece of feedback we’ve heard is that there needs to be better communication. As an example, we might bring a missions team to the front of church to pray as we send them out, and hear someone later say, “I didn’t know we were doing a missions trip for medical purposes in Guatemala, if I had known I would have wanted to go.”

So to this end we’ve done a number of things to improve this area in the past year or two. Some of the more visible examples are: (1) you’ll know the minute you walk through the foyer that things looks different than they did 18 months ago‚ instead of a large number of tables, often with the same display week after week, there are four kiosk stations now, each with a flat screen that can, if the ministry wants, rotate announcements and pictures; (2) we’ve begun an email newsletter, which comes out the first week of each month; (3) we’ve printed, on one card, the calendar events for the whole year (the 2009 calendar card is available at the welcome center)‚ so that with the calendar tacked up on a refrigerator or handy near a desk or dresser at home, we shouldn’t have to wonder any more about when the men’s retreat or VBS or summer camp is; (4) this new web site will allow for better navigation, updates, links, and control of archived audios; and (5) in early 2008 we came out with ministry cards (they are at the welcome center), where the basics about each ministry such as purpose and contact information are outlined.

We’re always open to new ideas for communication, so if you have any please email me at ron@desertspringschurch.org.

In future blogs I’ll communicate more about finances here at DSC: how our budget is doing, what projects we are considering for the future, etc.

But to give you one quick note in passing about finances, you’ll notice some Christmas decorations outside the church in the evenings and, especially, some new ones for the Christmas Eve services. We had looked at the option of spending a good amount of money on outside decorations, and that certainly would be a neat way of helping to welcome and invite people in the neighboring housing developments to join us for Christmas, but we really felt like in tight financial times we couldn’t do that.

Priorities like preaching, group studies, local outreach, and overseas missions come way before the facility. Therefore we decided to spend what will end up being just a few hundred dollars on the lights you see at the entrance, as well as some special decorations put together by some DSC groups that will welcome us as we arrive on Christmas Eve!