today i received an anonymous letter. it wasn’t about the youth ministry or about me. no it was concerning the school that is a part of the ministry of the church. we’ve been going through a span of rough feelings concerning some changes in the structure of the church’s and school’s relationship with one another. there are people with strong feelings on both sides. apparently a person on one side of the debate decided that the best way to get their view point out was to send an anonymous letter to the parents of kids in the school. what a coward! i hate it when people send anonymous letters – “grow some balls.” only a coward sends a letter without signing it. this letter wasn’t directed at anything that i have to do with and it still infuriates me. coward! if any of you by chance know the person who sent out this anonymous bulk mail letter please tell them that i think they are a COWARD!
the view – may 4, 2004
last night at “the view” jonathan, our minister of belonging, wanted to do a worship station on trusting GOD during difficult times. this seems only appropriate since he lives with type iii gaucher’s disease every day. he has experienced more physical and social suffering than i ever will (imagine having co-workers at old navy throw tennis balls at your hump). jonathan knows a thing or two about walking the hard road and he did a good job of conveying how GOD strengthens those who look at HIM.
jonathan volunteers two to three days a week within the youth ministry. there are somethings that jonathan can’t do because of the gaucher’s (heavy lifting is out, anything involving heights isn’t going to happen, and sometimes small print work screws with his eyes) but he is willing to learn new things, he’ll try all he can to accomplish what he can, and he will be there with you when you do the stuff that he physically can’t. pretty much every tuesday and wednesday he’s my buddy for the day and does everything with me. each day i grow more and more thankful for him being around.
taps
those who were at the view last night know this news already so i write this post for those who couldn’t be there last night. i have sad news … last night “the throne” was accidentally broken. i know you’re probably in shock. i promise it will be okay.
some of the readers of this blog live outside of the baton rouge metro region and thus don’t attend parkview and never have had any experience with “the throne” so let me explain what is so special about it. the beginning of the summer of 2002 we decided within the youth ministry to have a little fun before each week’s “view.” so every week we planned a series of odd games to take place before “the view” actually began. i wanted to keep the games separate form “the view” because they just didn’t fit the character of what we do on wednesdays (though we play quite a bit at other times). i didn’t want to turn the games into a big, major thing so we all decided that the reward for winning the games so be very large. the idea that came up was that whoever won the games each week would be declared the “king” or “queen” of the evening and thus be allowed to sit on a throne. so we went and got a new toilet donated to us which we quickly painted gold. “the throne” then just simply became a part of the youth ministry playing different roles within the youth ministry – it went on trips with us as a mascot, it served as a “candy jar” within the office, and it was an extra seat when ever it was needed. it last four years until last night someone got up from sitting on it and it feel backwards.
now it’s not a total loss though because the only part that broke was the reservoir (the back). thus we still have half of “the throne” that has survived. we’ll buy “the throne” a prosthetic reservoir and it should be almost as good as new. i’m just so thankful that we didn’t lose the whole thing. that would have been a tragedy.
if you have a “throne” story you might want to share it in the “comments”.
p.s. yes, i know that alycia will probably kill me for putting up this picture of her on “the throne” but i can live with that since she hasn’t been practicing guitar. now practice alycia, practice!
fileshare
jonny baker either brims with more creativity than the majority of human beings put together or he steals from the best sources in the world. i usually lean towards him brimming over with creativity (i love reading his blog) but i have to admit allot of the sources he cites are equally amazing. today baker posted concerning the fileshare at triggermontion.com. there some really cool shockwave files on the fileshare. i can’t wait to figure out how to best use them as a part of a worship experience. for those of us who do not brim over with creativity it is nice to be able steal ideas from great sources such as jonny baker and triggermontion.com.
my heros
just a little reminder to the parkview family that two of our own are having an incredible week this week. arnold & susie austin are in richmond, virginia on the last part of the interview process for becoming missionaries to peru (the kids are in town with their grandparents). you can read updates on how things are going by checking out their blog. remember to keep them in your prayers for what will be for them a long emotional week.
besides a freaky obsession with audio adrenaline (i have never known anyone so in love with a band – how many parents of teens do you know that go to 10 to 13 concerts within the same year of the same band? – of course, i love passion so this just makes me like the austins all the more) the austins (parents & kids) are amazing people.
what are you listening to?
i just started using audio scrobbler and i’m intrigued by it. basically it is a plug-in that you add to your media player (real player, itunes, etc. – just don’t use micro$oft’s media player) and it then keeps track of the songs you listen to and will post them on the web for others to view. if you are really into electronic privacy this is not the website for you. anyways, after a while of tracking your musical tastes the website can make educated suggestions of other artists you would like (this could definitely be abused by a music industry desperate to get you to buy their latest stuff but it could also be a cool way of experiencing new artists) and it will recommend other people who have the same musical taste as you. personally i just want to see what i listen to the most. of course, it is going to take a few weeks for it to really get an idea of what music i really like.
you can view my current musical listenings at http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/ratterrell/.
wrong place – right time
i had a real cool experience today. the dad of a youth who graduated two years ago had a heart valve collapse and was rushed to the i.c.u. a local hospital. our senior pastor, bill, and i went to the hospital to visit with him. we went to the icu waiting room looking for family members but couldn’t find any. since it was visiting time we figured the family was probably in the room visiting with the dad and therefore we thought we would hang out for awhile. while waiting we accidentally overhead a doctor telling two women who were not related to the dad we were trying to see that they would need to consider signing a “do not resuscitate” order on their son/brother. it was a rough experience for them. bill and i stayed waiting for visiting time to end hoping that the family from the father we wanted to visit would step out. the doctor’s conversation with the mom & sister of the dnr patient became more difficult and eventually the doctor just point-blank explained what he wanted them to know and left the mom and sister crying in the hall way.
it was at that point that we realized JESUS was standing in front of us waiting to be comforted. i got the chance to walk over, introduce myself, and ask if there was anything we could do. all they needed was a chance to talk through what had just happened and then pray over it. so that’s what we did. we listened, and listened, and when they had said enough we prayed. after we prayed the doctor had come back to walk through everything once again. bill and i decided to try and leave a note for the dad we had come to visit. it turns out he had been moved to another hospital an hour or two before. the whole time we had been at the wrong hospital yet it still felt like the right one to me.
rock beats scissors
pretty much anytime we have to make a choice between two options within the student ministry we resort to “rock, paper, scissors.” i’ve had many of you people criticize this method and make light of it. yet no more. in this article you’ll find out that a japaneze firm used “rock, paper, scissors” to decided who they would sell 20 million dollars worth of art through. they had to decide between christie’s or sotheby’s and apparently figured that using “rock, paper, scissors” was the best way to make the choice between the two options.
christie’s chose scissors and sotheby’s chose paper. scissors beat paper and thus christie’s will be auctioning some the art this wednesday.
i can’t believe you would ever doubt my methods.
SIDE NOTE – can you believe that there is a world championship of rock, paper, scissors?
hero
i watched “hero” last night and was amazed. it seems that asian film making is doing a much better job of making action/hero movies. the asian films that make it over here in the western market have action, beauty, and meaning. consider “hero” and an older movie “crouching tiger, hidden dragon” next to any of the recent western action films and you’ll see what i mean. both of these movies have amazing fight scenes within them, but they also have beauty and depth. i haven’t seen “house of flying daggers” yet but i have heard it is along the same lines. i not real sure where “kung fu hustle” fits into this scheme.
of course, it helps that i cheat and watch these movies on my dvd player with the english language dubbed in over the mandarin. i’m such a wimp.
it’s a hoax
for theological reasons i’m not a big believer in ghosts but i do understand that other people believe in them. so while i might dismiss ghost stories as stupid i do at least recognize that they are genuine fears for some. because of this i love a good horror flick or discovery channel ghost documentary – kind of horror by proxy, i enjoy the fear because others do. that’s why i was disheartened today when i found out from pam that the whole amityville house of horror story is a complete farce. the story was made up rather than someone genuinely believing in something that i don’t think is possible.
you can read about the hoax here