i have to admit a dirty little secret. i love the reality t.v. show my big, fat boss. i haven’t seen all of the shows so i can’t speak for all their content but the two episodes i have seen have been hilarious. i love the fact that the show’s producers constantly try to throw “curve balls” at the pseudo-contestants within the show. it’s great to see them try to make sense of things and then have the producers change directions on them again and again.
i haven’t given up blogging!
i just figured that i would make sure all of you know that i have not given up blogging. we’ve been (jessica, alan, and i) hard on the JESUS project retreat that starts tomorrow and that has taken up most of my energy and time over the past three weeks. i will begin posting again after the retreat.
i would like to report that tonight my family and i saw a red hat society at the city cafe. if you are new to the concept of a red hat society then i’ll explain. these societies are basically groups of older women who like to wear clothes that don’t match (i.e red hats with purple clothes) and then parade around in public. i’m not real sure what the joy of being mismatched is but i hope it is a large joy because these women truly seem to enjoy being in front of others with clothes that don’t make any sense. more power to them.
the JESUS project – plain white t-shirt
i don’t really ever use this blog as a promotional tool for the youth ministry but i figure that there is nothing to stop from doing it and no rule against it so i’m going to promote something right now. november 19-21 is our annual fall retreat – the JESUS project. this year’s theme is “plain white t shirt” and we are going to focus on living simpler lives. randy riggins from clearpoint church in pasadena, texas will be speaking and coby rosson from our henderson, kentucky world changers project will be leading us in singing. it is always a great weekend.
incredible
my family and i went to see “the incredibles” today and it was great. i love pixar. their movies are consistently great. “the incredibles” lived up to this standard.
as if one movie wasn’t enough pam and i then went to see “friday night lights“. it was a very good movie though the cinematography is so shaky that i thought i would get car sick. it was meant to be shaky and i liked the effect for a little while but it kept going through out the whole movie. i felt like i was on a two hour long roller-coaster.
if you haven’t seen friday night lights it is a movie that’s not so much about football as it is about commitment to sport going awry. all the adults involved in the movie push these 17 year old kids to the point that the kids lose their chance to be teenagers. the adults are all completely wacko. they treat the sport as though it is the only thing in life that matters. personally, i love passionate people. i am constantly amazed by people who commit their lives and energies to reaching a goal. i love college and pro sports because of this. it is a pleasure to see people work incredibly hard and overcome physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual obstacles to achieve their desires. i’m fine with people being fanatical about college and pro sports. in fact i admire some of this.
of course, high school sports are an entirely different thing. it always seems like the fanatics within high school sports are adults who are just trying to push teens to accomplish goals for them. i can not understand parents and adults chewing out coaches simply because the coach didn’t play their son enough or because they didn’t like the plays that were called. i’ve seen it happen. some people take high school sports far too seriously.
GOD told me to do this
i hate it when people blame GOD for them backing out of their agreements. every now and then i will have a chaperon or volunteer that will tell me that they need to back out of a commitment they had made to the ministry because GOD has told them to. usually, this means that they are quitting a retreat, bible study, or mission trip or maybe they are bailing on a some teaching they had said they would do. the problem i have is that if you dig a little deeper it’s not real hard to find the real reason that they “have to” back out of their promise. maybe it’s a ball game that they were given tickets to, or it’s an event with friends that they would miss if they went to the retreat, or it some other great opportunity that they really want to do.
actually, i don’t have a problem with any of these reasons. i understand that sometimes things are just going to “pop” up and you have to adjust your commitments based on what happens. i just hate it when people blame GOD for their desire to back out of promise. come on, grow a back bone! don’t make GOD look bad by making it appear that HE changes HIS mind all the time. If GOD was the one WHO lead you to say “yes” (because i never take “yes” answers without at least a week of prayer on both my part and the part of the person i have asked) then GOD isn’t going to cause you to bail on that commitment later. i just hate it when people blame GOD for their own decisions.
the election
i am so ready for the presidential election to be over. the reason for this is not because of the constant press coverage of it. instead, it is because of CHRISTians who continually tell others how GOD has picked their candidate. most of these CHRISTians have been conservative and have told me that it is my CHRISTian responsibility to vote for george bush. i’ve heard CHRISTians say that if you are a bible believing CHRISTian then you have to vote for bush and i’ve heard others say that they have no idea what will happen to the world if john kerry wins the election. this is ludicrous! CHRISTians on both sides (conservative and liberal) have picked their issues and decided that only those issues matter to GOD.
sojouners, a website dealing with faith, politics, and culture has an interesting advertisement based on that. here’s the advertisement.
no matter who wins the election for president of the united states of america GOD will still be on HIS throne. GOD is the only governing authority that i trust and i will place my faith in no one else.