Month: September 2007

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october prayer email

here’s the tapestry monthly prayer email for october. if you are not receiving these through email and would like to please email me (robert {dot} terrell {at} gmail.com) or leave a comment and i will add you to it.

SIDE NOTE – does anyone who reads this blog (besides brad because he’s already helping) know anything about environmentally friendly printing (don’t worry dad i’m going to quiz you on this when you get up here)? the stevens point area is a very green focused area. this is great with pam and i because we have been going this way for quite some time. i thought it would be fun to considering printing tapestry stuff on recyclable paper from local grocery bags. i’m thinking about trying a little silk screening with this but i’m open to anything. anyone out there have any ideas?

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living the bible

pagitt posted a link to an interview of a. j. jacobs and his one year book writing experiment to live all the rules found within the bible (“the year of living biblically“). the interview was great and the book looks interesting. i particularly liked jacobs answer to the question of which was the greater learning tool, the bible or the encyclopedia.

that’s a tough question. the bible project was a lot more difficult than the encyclopedia project. the bible affected every single part of my life, it affected the way i walked, the way i dressed, the way i hugged my wife, the way i ate. the year was the most extreme makeover of my life. in terms of which is the better learning tool, the encyclopedia does contain a lot of biblical passages in the different books, so it might contain most of the bible in it.

wouldn’t it be nice if our faith (based on GOD’s revelation through JESUS found in the bible) would affect every single part of our lives?

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somtimes i smile to myself

first, let me say “thanks” to those of you who told me that the blog is working and viewable for you. the blog apparently works for everyone except the austins. i believe that this is my blog protecting me from some evil that the austins are trying to perpetrate against me. so be warned austins my loyal blog has seen through your evil plans and will continue to prevent you from working against me. turn from your evil ways my peruvian friends.

second, it’s probably strange but as i walk my dogs i find myself daydreaming about what tapestry might be. i do this alot. i walk the dogs and think about what a service produced by the whole community of faith could be like or how we could be involved within the community or seeing people come to CHRIST and have their lives changed or finding new ways to fight for GOD’s justice within our community and the world. it always makes me smile. the problem with this is that as i am daydreaming i don’t do the greatest job of paying attention to what is happening around me. this is why tonight while wearing a dopey smile on my face i nearly walked into another person heading the opposite direction. still, i was happy with my little dream of being a progressive, evangelical church.

SIDE NOTE – pam and i have fallen in love with ingrid michaelson’s song “the way i am.” thank you old navy commercial.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – “the office” is about to come on. woohoo.

  • guess what i have flaws … occasionally i hit someone with my car.
  • “she looks awful.” “she always looks like that. it’s not my fault.”
  • i have to be liked, but it’s not a compulsive thing like my need to be praised.
  • she’s in a better place. … actually the place that she’s in is the freezer.
  • it’s up to me to get rid of the curse. i’m not superstitious but i am a little stitious.
  • with the electricity we are using to keep meredith alive we could power a small fan for two days. you tell me what is most ethical.
  • maybe there’s some type of monster. like a creature with the body of a walrus and the head of a sea lion.
  • is there a GOD? if not then what are all these churches for? and WHO is JESUS’s DAD?
  • a woman shouldn’t have to be hit by a car to find out she may have rabies, but that is where we are and it frustrates me.
  • i’m petrified of nipple chaffing. once it starts it becomes a vicious circle. – pam has decided that at the next road race i participate in i will be wearing a t-shirt with this quote on it
  • european offices are naked all the time.
  • i know a great taxidermists. we could have her stuffed. well actually he’s not great but he’s pretty good.

SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – montana, our female basset, is snoring at this moment like an 80 year 400 pound man.

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changing agendas

since it’s been awhile since i’ve preached a message i recorded what i was preaching at the uwsp intervarsity large group meeting this past monday night. it’s a little hard to listen to, 1) because the quality of the recording isn’t that great – i simply had a recorder in my pocket, and 2) since i was out of practice i have a large number of verbal pauses in it – ouch, that’s hard to hear “um” over and over again.

anyway here it is if you want to listen to it.

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problems with the blog?

hey guys & girls. our great friends the austins emailed today to say that they were still able to read this blog through bloglines they have not been able to actually visit the blog (I’m thinking this should be read as “comment”) for about a week. i can visit and view the blog so i’m not sure what’s wrong. i was wondering if anyone else had been having a problem viewing the blog. obviously, if you have a problem viewing the blog you will not be able to comment so you could just email me instead (robert[dot]terrell [at] gmail[dot]com).

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spam

how funny is this? the ministers’ meeting i went to today is called “stevens point area ministers” or “SPAM.” yes, i throughly enjoyed spending my lunch hour with a group called “spam”. i went to the other area ministers’ group last week – sorry no cool name for that one but we did pray for an hour solid, which was great.

today “spam” sat through a presentation from justice works – an organization fighting for restorative justice. the presentation was from a portage county judge who said he had been on the bench in portage county for 30 years and now that he was seeing grandchildren of past defendants in court he wanted to do something to stop the cycle. it was excellent presentation and idea. so i’m going through mentor training in the near future to mentor someone who has gone through the criminal justice system as a defendant. i figured it was a great balancing act in case i do get to be a police chaplain.

i’ve been struck today by how often we (as in people in the world) divide situations into two extremes and decide that only one could be true. case in point – if you’re conservative you believe in law & order, while you believe in restorative justice if you’re liberal. why can’t both be true and both worked on? another case to consider – churches seem to either care about evangelism (i.e. telling people of the healing salvific power of CHRIST) or social justice (i.e. being instruments of CHRIST’s healing within society). seems to me that both are a part of the kingdom of JESUS. yet conservatives focus on evangelism almost exclusively and liberal churches focus on social justice. there are tons of other examples – environmentalist vs. capitalist, and others. why does this have to be an “either/or” type of thing?

i wonder if sometimes we (i mean this as “i”) do this because we (again i mean “i”) are too lazy to deal with both sides of the issue.

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stupid is as stupid does

thanks to andy lickel i was able to preach at the intervarsity large group meeting tonight. it was a great group of college students that i really enjoyed being around. at the beginning of the message i tried to invite participation within it and even went so far as to give out by cell phone number and tell everyone that if they were too shy to speak in front of everyone they could simply text it to me and i would say it. this statement came from an idea i’ve been bouncing around concerning doing a message that has questions and comments sent in from the congregation through out it. anyway, i thought it was a good idea and i really stressed that i was serious that they could text me during the message and i would respond.

the problem with this is that at the beginning of the service i did the polite thing and turned my ringer down. i did not use my brain and turn my ringer up once i told everyone they could text me in the middle of the message. so when the messages came in i had absolutely no idea that it was happening.

stupid, robert! stupid!

thankfully there were only a couple messages sent and their senders were very understanding when i texted them back after the service.

my run for the day
distance – 1 mile
time – 10:45
pace – 10:45/mile