Month: June 2008

 

i love this. it’s a article on the new york times website concerning an architect (eric clough) who redesigned a client’s apartment and without the client knowing about it placed a scavenger hunt within the contents of the apartment. a year after the redesign the architect sent the owners a poem that was the clue for the beginning of the scavenger hunt. it’s amazing and not particularly easy.

ht (john m via kottke)

for me the scariest part of moving to wisconsin to plant tapestry was how my kids would react. i’ve seen too many ministers move to new areas with little regard for their kids and as a result having their kids grow to hate the bride of CHRIST (i.e. the church). when pam and i prayed about moving we probably prayed the most about our kids adjusting to the new area and making connection with new friends. in fact, if you receive the tapestry prayer email that i send out each month then you probably remember me asking quite often for you to pray for my kids in regard to this matter. anyhow it’s summer vacation and we presently have 7 kids hanging out at our house (2 of which are ours) after a night of 3 additional kids sleeping over at our house. to some of you this may not seem like a good thing but i promise you pam and i are celebrating. it’s a huge answer to prayer and we are celebrating.

if your children spend most of their time in other people’s houses, you’re lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you’re blessed. ~mignon mclaughlin

SIDE NOTE – if you don’t presently receive the monthly prayer email and would like to, just email me (there’s a link in the sidebar) and i will add you to the list for next month.

today is my mom’s birthday. if there was a competition for mom my mother would tie with the mom of my kids (a.k.a pam, my wife). she’s that good of a mom.

just some things that are bouncing around in my life at the moment

today was the last day of school for both my boys. i am now the parent of a high school student (9th grade) and a middle school student (6th grade). i am old.

i really like the flickr video feature. the main reason that i like it is because 90 seconds really is only long enough for a “long photo” (as flickr describes it). i think i am going to start posting such “long photos.” the one above is such an example. it’s was the end of school today and thus the beginning of summer vacation. what better way to begin summer vacation than by eatting some belt’s ice cream?

today i took another step towards tapestry having public worship services. i turned in our reservations for use of washing elementary school for our sunday evening services. now it has to be approved and everything will be finalized.

when jimmy carter was president my family’s finances went through a distinct downturn (thus my dad still cannot stand jimmy carter). since i was a kid at the time i didn’t understand a great deal of ,the impact of that downturn. but one thing i did know was that we suddenly developed a habit of eating meals that connected with each other (i.e. roast one night and roast beef hash the next, ham one night and pinto bean soup with ham hock the next night, etc.). this resulted in a pinto bean soup that i absolutely loved. when our finances took a dramatic upturn, and my brother an i were teens, we started to eat out allot and pinto bean soup went the way of the dodo. that is until yesterday. pam quizzed my mom and replicated pinto bean soup. it was amazing. there is little that is as good as pinto bean soup with cornbread and pepper in it. i ate two more bowls of it today and my stomach is happy. 🙂

i have some really good friends in ministry and i am thankful every time i get to connect with any of them. i got to connect with two of them today and it was quite enjoyable.

there are times when being a minister who really wants to connect with the community can be a little strange. today was one of those days. yes, there is a story. no, i’m not going to tell it to you.

i am getting closer and closer to convincing myself that a canoe is a ministry need in central wisconsin. the intervarsity campus minister at uwsp is the one who is convincing me of this. fishing is a great way to connect with people and the canoe forces you to have a common experience. now i just need to find out if the canoe will be tax deductible or not. of course, if someone had a canoe that they wanted to donate to me that would be okay too. 😉

awhile back i posted briefly concerning video churches. ed stetzer has posted his thoughts on these “franchise”/mcchurches (it was also an article in “outreach“) and then he also posted geoff surratt’s response to his questions. i tend to agree with stezer’s thoughts on the matter more than surratt’s.

i know quite a few people who swear by the mcchurches that they are a part of. they always tell me about all the new believers that are coming about as a result of the their video church. of course, my problem is that i don’t know any of these new believers. all the people i know in these franchise churches are old believers who came to the video church from other established churches. i know it’s not a scientific poll but this experience definitely effects how i view these mcchurches.

i don’t think that most of my friends who are not CHRISTians care who andy stanley is and therefore wouldn’t go to a church just because there was a video of his sermon going on there. i haven’t specifically asked them about this so i’m really just guessing here. of course, i’m also guessing this based on the fact that none of my firneds who are not CHRISTians have ever been interested in going to any big CHRISTian conferences where there are big time CHRISTian speakers. it’s my friends who are CHRISTians that wantto go to those conferences, usually because of the big time CHRISTian speakers. so i still feel like my guess is pretty good.

i don’t have any of this mcchurch thing all figured out. about all i know is that it’s not something that i believe would help me to connect with GOD, though it obviously is for others.