Hi! Are you strapped in?

Welcome to my blog. It will go where I go, as I go- so if it gets too fast, just read slower!
My name is Joe Bell. My personal web page (with family, history, etc.) is at www.JoeBell.org . Suffice to say, I have been married to a wonderful woman, Teresa Ann Smith Bell, for 19 years, and have a neat almost 11 year-old son and a surprising almost 3 year-old daughter. The three of them are my first job and biggest blessing.
I am a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene, and currently am serving in my 12th year at Eastside Church of the Nazarenein Gastonia, NC. We are a small 23 year-old church that has not grown in a great location in a growing community. We are a wide mix of people by personality, race, education, social graces and Christian experience. God and our church is for many our only contact- and it’s my job to improve on that.
Our church is at a crossroads (we might have been sitting on it for a few years, but didn’t see it through what we had at the time). We need to revitalize our church and ministry if we are to continue to exist. So that is what I am about.
We will be spending September in prayer. I am suggesting that everyone read With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray for September, and we will be delving into E. M. Bound’s works on prayer on Wednesday evenings. Sometime in October or November, we will have an Encounter weekend to begin our people on the journey of being disciplemakers who build disciples of Christ. That is what we will rise or fall doing- for that is what Jesus commanded those who would follow him.
Right now I also spend about 20 hours a week serving as a chaplain at Gaston Memorial Hospitalin Gastonia (it will go up about 10 when I begin Clinical Pastoral Education in September). I starting my second unit of Clinical Pastoral Education in September. It will be Thursday and Friday afternoons at GMH, which will save about 3 hours (plus clinical time) over my last unit, which was at CMC.
And in November, we have fall YMCA Flag football, which I coach my son in.
Add to all that my very serious interest in many different things in life, from politics to sports to books, movies, TV and people, and you are likely to find just about anything here. So hang on and enjoy!