a couple of adam’s friends made this video while bored. it made me laugh mainly because i’ve seen my kids and their neighborhood friends doing the same thing around here.
I mispell things!
a couple of adam’s friends made this video while bored. it made me laugh mainly because i’ve seen my kids and their neighborhood friends doing the same thing around here.
this is so spot on.
i’m in the louis armstrong new orleans airport waiting for my plane to start the trip home. i have a few minutes to waste and therefore i am writing this and thereby wasting your time. see, this works for both of us. 🙂
well we’re board in a few minutes so i’ll go ahead and post this. PAMELA & BOYS I’M COMING HOME!!!!
for those of you who are wondering, which basically means pam and my parents, the seminar on jeremiah that i have attended this week has been wonderful. i think i have actually gone from thinking that jeremiah was a cry baby to liking jeremiah. it ends today and i’ll be glad to be back home but also a little sorry the classes are over. of course, the joy continues because i have a 20 page exegetical study of a passage from jeremiah due in two weeks,
speaking of papers i thought i would post the two i have written thus far for the course. i’m not posting these because of them being any good, they haven’t been graded yet so they could turn out to be complete crap. instead i’m posting them so someone else will at least have an example to bounce ideas of form off of. when i began prepping for the seminar i tried finding some samples of what others had done for similar seminars so that i would have some idea if i was on target or not. i couldn’t find any. therefore i thought i would post mine so during the next semester when someone googles nobts biblical, exegetical d.min seminar they would at least have an example of what has been done.
here they are
one of my favorite churches in the nation is the ring community church in baton rouge. they won’t like that i am blogging about how awesome they are, but that’s okay because they will get over it.
i love these guys and girls and every time i get to spend time with them i am more and more amazed by all that they are doing with CHRIST. this week while i’m studying at nobts i’ve gotten the chance to spend a good it of time with some of the ringers (basically the ring’s pastor, josh, has been nice enough to give me a place to stay for the week and this has meant that i get to spend a good bit of time with josh and meg). while talking with them this week i accidentally learned that they spent 25% of last year’s giving on taking care of people’s needs within their community. they’ve been buying cars for people in need, fixing up houses, buying groceries, etc. this is above and beyond their missions giving. 25% of the budget is HUGE. they still have salaries, rent, printing, and more to pay but they believe in matthew 25 so much that they give generously. i don’t know of another church giving that much. if you counted all the extra money they are giving for missions (which i know is at least another 10% probably more) that 25% would jump much higher.
to give you an idea of how big this is most churches spend about 70-80% of the money they have on buildings and salaries. having a place to worship and people to lead it is expensive. some churches spend much more than 80% on these two items. that doesn’t include the programs that go on at a church, the copying and office needs, the equipment needs, toys for kids in the nursery, sunday school or small group literature, and the many other things that are a part of doing things in a church. most churches are lucky to give 10% to missions and a little something extra to help those who come to them in need. now do you see how impressive 25% plus a minimum of another 10% for missions is?
the coolest part is that they didn’t tell me this in a manner of bragging or even on purpose. we were talking about giving and their budget and josh said “yeah, we kind of spent more than our budget was supposed to be, but that’s okay because $40,000 of that was because of spending $34,000 over and above our people in need fund.” that’s when i asked how big their budget was just so i would understand what that $34,000 overage meant. they hadn’t even thought of it being 25% of their budget (in other words $40,000 of a $160,000 budget). it was no big deal for them, which, of course, makes this all the cooler. i’m sitting next to josh right now, he doesn’t know that i’m blogging about how cool i think they are and probably wouldn’t like it if he did know i was doing it, and he just said, “yeah it’s kind of cool that we actually gave more to meet these needs than i get in salary.” he’s right.
i hope more of us can be like this church. i hope tapestry will show them up. 😉
today was national human trafficking awareness day. we spent time tonight at tapestry talking about it and a few ways we can fight against it in the name of CHRIST. personally i would suggest getting involved with the international justice mission but there are other ways also.
here is the article i mentioned during tonight’s sermon. the writer attempt to buy a young haitian boy. it takes 24 hours and $50. please do what you can to fight against this evil.
bright and early tomorrow morning i will leave for new orleans for my class for this trimester. i will go from a beautiful snow covered land of 15° to a swamp of 44° (present temp on both). don’t get me wrong, i like louisiana and i love the poeple there, but I LOVE WISCONSIN and of course i love the people here too.
anyhow, i promise you that during my stay in NOLA i will be jokingly asked several times, “aren’t you glad to be down here where it’s warm?” i’ll smile back, be nice to them, and probably even nod a little but the real answer is that i love the winter here in wisconsin. yes it gets cold but that’s small price to pay for ice fishing, curling, sledding, and snow skiing. for example, this afternoon pam and i had an hour before we needed to leave for tapestry so we decided to go cross country skiing in the woods behind our house. that’s right! we didn’t have to travel, there was no cost, and it really wasn’t a big todo. we just grabbed our stuff and walked out our back door.
so while i am going to be pumped about seeing some people that i love (i get to stay at josh’s, which is always a blast), i am definitely not going to be excited about being in the warm, humid weather. instead i will probably be thinking, “if this was in wisconsin i could go skiing after class.”
here are a few photos from this afternoon. jealous?
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i’ve mentioned before that all of you should listen to “the american life” but i want to give you yet another reason to listen to it. in this past week’s podcast, “numbers“, they played two songs that have been developed by polls of typical musical taste of americans. they have a song that should in theory be made of the musical elements that the most americans like and a song that is made of elements that the most americans hate. here’s the worst possible song. it is hillarious. you should download it right now and place it on your ipod.
here’s the link.