JimBo Stewart: [00:00:00] Merry Christmas to the bootcamp. It’s a, you’re just a few days away. So it’s not free when this comes out. It’s not Christmas Eve. It’s not Christmas Adam. It’s what Christmas

Bob Bickford: Christmas in the beginning.

JimBo Stewart: in the beginning,

guys, we’ve got just a short episode for you today because we know that you’ve got a lot going on, but here’s the deal. If you catch it, we’ve got a Christmas. Or you, if you’ll stick around this episode, we’re going to tell you how you could win a Christmas gift from the Bickford’s a echo dot.

Bob Bickford: Yeah.

so I’m excited about it. let’s tease it now and we won’t give the details until the end. So you gotta listen to this short rest of this bootcamp episode. So Jimbo Christmas is a time of joy and a time of celebration and a time of hopefully a family gathering and lot of laughter.

So. Man, I’m looking forward to, all of that coming up this Christmas season. And I hope that for our bootcamp listeners, and [00:01:00] sometimes churches do stuff that’s crazy, at Christmas time and creates a lot of, craziness. So the other day I posted on my social media, The S video from YouTube.

And I think this was from Jimmy Scroggins church in Florida, where they had a beautiful Christmas pageant. The choir was singing, and this was like a procession into the sanctuary. they were leading, this guy was leading this camel and a guy was riding the camel. And, just as the song.

It’s talked about, the westward leading star, the camel pitched over into the pews like it just as cute westward leading. And it’s not westward leaning, which most of us thought it might be. But the camel must’ve heard that and decided to pitch over into the pews. And hopefully grandma’s, weren’t hurting and children weren’t hurt.

I don’t know. Hopefully it wasn’t a lawsuit, but. Sometimes churches do crazy stuff at Christmas time and you just need to laugh about it.

JimBo Stewart: I see how that can happen in Florida. We have all these random weird, redneck zoos [00:02:00] like tiger king and. You can get, I mean, you can, you can get a Wrangler to, to get you anything in Florida. And so I can see the temptation of why you would want to use live animals. That I, my family just did a fun thing.

west side Baptist church, a larger church on the west side of Jacksonville does a drive through nativity. They did it.

last year and this year. and they had a live camel there and they have a fun like through the city and you can ride through the city of Bethlehem and people talk to you and Bob, we were riding through the city in our Honda mini minivan.

And, this guy, they’re all dressed in, you know, period stuff like they’re from Bible times and this guy goes, Hey, what’s your name? I said Jimbo. And he goes, I was just listening to your podcast this morning. And so we had. definitely. Um,

Bob Bickford: Jimbo. You’re a big deal, man. You are a big freaking.

JimBo Stewart: and so we had a really good time with them, mean there’s a lot of fun [00:03:00]stuff. My favorite story I’ve told it on this podcast before, a while back, but, my favorite Christmas moment as a pastor just cracked me up was a senior. I was disappointed that we did not have Sunday school on Christmas day, one year when Christmas fell on a Sunday, a few years ago.

And so she walks up to me right? As the service is about to start hands me a gift bag. That’s a gift that she had for me. And she says, Merry Christmas. And then real dryly. She just says, even though I’m ashamed of. the way that she said that I, it was still dry, but I thought she was joking.

And so I just started laughing and she did not laugh. And I said, oh, okay. Why are, why are you ashamed of me? And she said, you can’t spare one hour on the day that the Lord was born to study his word together. And I was like, [00:04:00] oh, okay. And so I tried to get my reasons for why we didn’t have Sunday school on Christmas morning and she was very upset.

And so, th what’s fun is that was not the end of her shenanigans that morning, as I am making my way to the platform to begin my. I look, and my wife was up there helping lead worship, and I look back there and this lady is in the back with her arms flailing. I mean, just, just go and just try and get my attention.

And so I whisper in my wife’s ear cause she’s about to head off the platform. Hey, go see what she needs to go see what’s going on. on my wife. Didn’t have time to get back there. Right. As somebody said, amen. And the prayer, this lady just starts screaming my name at the top of her lungs. I mean, I can’t ignore. And there’s only, there’s only like 50 or 60 people in the room. And so it’s not like I call her name. I said, yes. And she said, can we sing happy birthday to Jesus? And my wife had already left the stage and [00:05:00] there was no one left on the stage they could sing. Cause I’m the only one up there at this point and I’m not leading us in singing anything.

Bob Bickford: We’ve established that we’ve established that you can’t sing.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah. So I just said, no, no, I will maybe after the ceremony and she goes, okay. And I just had to recenter myself and think, all right, I’m we’re going to pray again.

Bob Bickford: Oh man. So we, our family. We have this running joke that, at Christmas time, if something happens, that’s like unfortunate or bad, or somebody gets a ugly sweater or something, they don’t like, if the food doesn’t turn out right. All that kind of stuff. Anyone from our family can shout this out.

Christmas is ruined, right? So we.

JimBo Stewart: Okay.

Bob Bickford: So everybody comes to Christmas, gathering, looking for an opportunity to say Christmas is ruined, right? So we just have such a good time with that. So a couple of years ago, it was a Thanksgiving time. And [00:06:00] so, we just purchased a live tree and we were bringing in the live tree and, my oldest daughter.

Boyfriend now husband Joe at the time was with us. And so, my son was here and, our youngest was here, so he had a household like my son and his family and their two dogs. Everybody who’s there. So we’re setting up the tree and, Barbara always wants me to put like the topper on there. It’s an angel, you know, so I, I grabbed one of the dining room chairs and all how we don’t have a step ladder upstairs.

So I, grabbed one of the dining room chairs and, um, my pocket of my jeans got snagged on the dining room chair. And Jimbo, it was like that chair was made of balsa wood. It just like immediately just exploded and I almost fell and it was like, you know, and here’s what I’m saying, you know, you’re young Jimbo, but when you get over 40, 45, if you fall.

On the ground, that could be a serious moment. Right? So, so I stumble that my pants catch the chair, the chair explodes into bits and pieces. I stumble across the real living room floor and [00:07:00] Joe very calmly and dryly says, Christmas is ruined.

Every year we get together. It’s, you know, it’s just something we try to figure that out. And, uh, it’s, it’s kind of one of those fun traditions that we do that just, uh, something we all laugh about. We’re all looking for an opportunity to shout that at our, you know, at some kind of misfortunate Christmas event.

JimBo Stewart: Well, I love it. love it. we don’t want to ruin our listeners Christmas. And so we’re going to make this a particularly short episode as you listen. just a moment. We’ll tell you how you could win an echo dot, from straight from the Bickford house will be mailed to you from Missouri. but before we do that, uh, we want to just go ahead and promote next week.

we’ve already recorded an episode and decided to bump it for next week on how to, or not really how [00:08:00] to, but as much as why you should develop a rule of life, which is really just a, a spiritual rhythm, a way to set some parameters in your life and rhythms in your life to help you. Abide in Jesus and continue to grow a great quote that we mentioned in that episode from Dr.

Jim Shavis mentor to Bob bungalow. Is the best gift a pastor can give his church is the gift of a healthy self. And as you get ready for the new year, so we’re going to put some links in the show notes to some resources you can look at already and already be thinking about that. As we dive into that discussion next week, on the 29th, the episode will come out that we’ll talk about rule of life, rhythm of life.

The other thing we want you to do. Before we tell you how to win an echo.is we want you to register. If you fall into one of the right categories for am ire planter in February, you [00:09:00] and your spouse, we will be, uh, Bob and I will be in new Orleans with double doc, Josh dryer. All of our wives will be. We’ll also have Fred, Luder doing a great message and we’ll have George Ross and Ryan Rice and others.

It’s going to be a great event. And so here, who is AMI replant or for anybody who is considering replanting or revitalization, maybe you’re going through a residency for that or something, or you are a rookie novice, you’re kind of brand new and you’re. Some help establishing some things as you begin that process, or you just have questions, you want to know more about it.

So we’ve had some who are at churches that want to help replant churches that have said they might might attend this event. so they can get a better grasp on what they’re looking for in a re planter. To that event.

in the show notes, but that’s, uh, that’s something we’d love to see you. February 18th and 19th get registered by mid January.

And we’d love to see you be a part of that, Bob, how can we give away an [00:10:00] echo?

Bob Bickford: Jimbo. Thanks for asking. we have this echo dot and it isn’t official. It’s not from the Bickford’s necessarily it’s from the north American mission board. And, it is an echo dot that has been pre-programmed with. Hopeful, and in helpful stories. And so you can set this little echo doc up and you can say, Alexa enable stories of hope.

And then you can say to Alexa, tell me a story of hope. And then she’ll tell you a story, an exciting story about mission and the work of the north American mission board and all sorts of things like that. And so, I am happy to provide this to a bootcamp listener who will do the following. Like the bootcamp on social media retweet or craft a tweet on Twitter or Facebook and post your favorite episode and why you love the bootcamp.

And then we will do a drawing and we will send you this echo. And we would be super excited for you to have it. And we’d even love for you to take a picture and post that on social media as the [00:11:00] winner. And so, that will be coming to you live from the Northern headquarters of the replant bootcamp, the satellite office in Webster groves, Missouri.

The headquarters is in Jacksonville, Missouri, or Jacksonville, Florida, but, uh, the satellite office, which is much smaller and colder and, less fabulous here in St. Louis area. We’ll send you that. So like it on social media, like us on social media, create a post. Tell us about your favorite bootcamp episode and why you love the bootcamp and that we’ll enter you in the drawing for the.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, you got a tag. I said that so that we know that you made the post. and so if we’re, if it’s on Twitter, then mention us if it’s on Facebook or Instagram. Then tag, our social media accounts, so that we’ll be notified that you made the post and then we will pick, at random a post, or maybe we’ll pick our favorite one.

I don’t know what we’ll do. we’ll figure out a way that you will pick a winner and we’ll send you a free echo dot

Bob Bickford: Merry Christmas from the [00:12:00] bootcamp.

JimBo Stewart: Merry Christmas from the bootcamp. even though I’m ashamed of you.