i don’t really understand why the artist of the above image put the date in january since shark week is this week!
this was what mobile was like
we have been having some pretty bad storms around the point area recently. it actually has been kind of reminiscent of when pam and i lived in mobile, alabama where major storms happen every summer afternoon. i have never seen roads flood as often around here. over the past four years in central wisconsin our experience with rain has been that it tends to drizzle for two to four days and then become sunny again. so these storms have been abnormal for our wisconsin weather experience. the above picture is from thursday night when some threads from tapestry fed at the place of peace.
just in case you are wondering the place of peace is a thursday night meal that was originally a part of the local catholic workers movement/chapter (i will probably discuss my thoughts on “movements” versus “organizations” and the “organizations” that call themselves “movements” later but not right now). about a year ago the point area catholic workers chapter went defunct and asked evergreeen church to take over the place of peace weekly feed. evergreen is a great church and their pastor al kinnunen is someone that i really enjoy being in ministry with. anyhow the place of peace invites locals groups to do a weekly thursday night meal for anyone who needs one. it’s an interesting and fun group that comes for the meal. a while back tapestry started doing a meal every three months. talking to genesis, the evergreen member who coordinates the thursday night meal, everyone there see a lot of spaghetti and lasagna brought in by groups. therefore, tapestry has become the “jambalaya church.” while i make the jambalaya all the other threads make other homemade things to bring – such as fresh bread from adam h (a few slices of which made it back to my house and i have been thankful for each one i have eaten). it is always a good night.
back to the storms.
after the meal at place of peace i jumped on church street to head back home to plover. this is a 6.5 mile drive that normally takes no more than 20 minutes (and that is stretching it). unfortunately i ran in the underpass pictured above. so i turned around to use division street to get to the interstate. the problem was that division was flooding bad enough around the ymca that only trucks were making it through the road. so i turned around again to try water street. i should have realized that with a name like water street there was no way it wasn’t going to be flooded. it was flooded.
in a rather anti-climatic way i finally made it 
home by weaving around streets with less water on them. instead of the twenty minutes maximum time that it usually takes me to get home i ended up traveling for around an hour trying to make it 6.5 miles.
i need to end this post now because we are being hit by another storm. seriously. 60 mph winds, rain, and hail. i’m not used to experiencing this up here.
disciple making
this is discipling from the foursquare church on vimeo.
adam h showed this video to me. i love it. i think it describes so many things that are right about what it means to lead people to be disciples of JESUS CHRIST. it is so easy to forget that being a disciple is about following CHRIST and not about doing religious activities. even in a relatively young church like tapestry it become very easy to forget this. the church needs to be more concerned with helping people to become follower of CHRIST who do the things of JESUS than we are concerned with producing people who come to what we do, speak the right religious language, or send out the right religious signals for all to see.
i believe tapestry is involved in making real disciples. i pray that we continue to do so.
its a unicorn
i love it when people do incredibly creative things with very simple components. in this case it is the script. this is from the phillips “tell it your way” film competition. the competition was to see who could make the best film with only the following script.
What’s That?
It’s a Unicorn
Never seen one up close before
Beautiful
Get away, get away
I’m sorry.
who would have thought that such a moving short film would involve only those words?
when missions hurt the local church
a friend of mine who i have mad respect for asked the following question tonight:
how do you think kids see their church after one week of playing, eating candies, doing crafts and receiving gifts from americans in a VBS…???
my friend is nicaraguan and he works with a ton of CHRISTians from the united states who want to see GOD do great things in nicaragua. his point is that there “has to be an alternative way to spread the message and help the people without harming local churches.” my friend believes in missions. i know this because i have had the privilege of working along side him for a decade in diriamba. i’ve seen how much he cares and i have learned a great deal from him.
i believe we are supposed to be a part of spreading the joy of CHRIST throughout the world. we need to be involved in sharing the good news of the kingdom of GOD in other countries. we just HAVE to make sure that we do this in a manner that helps the local church rather than hurting it.
drives me nuts
it drives me nuts when someone says “they don’t have time” for something that they really want to do. i’m not talking about someone saying it during certain busy periods of time … we all have periods where life is busier than normal. those are usually the exceptions rather than the rule.
here’s an example of what drives me nuts. i love to read, both fiction and non-fiction. as a pastor i believe that reading fiction is incredibly important for me. why? well because fiction helps me to see the questions and values that are a part of our culture (while i don’t agree with much that paul tillich discussed i do thing his method of correlation has some great value). it is pretty often when talking with other pastors, especially when i am at nobts,while discussing a work of fiction that i am reading that someone responds with the phrase “i wish i had time to read fiction but i am too busy.” i hear it with other things too. i wish i had time to run, or i wish i had time to fish, or any number of other things.
it drives me nuts!
why? well because they have the same amount of time that i have. in fact, we all have the same amount of time.
the difference is that reading fiction, running, photography, fishing, etc is important to me and therefore i make time for them. when something is important to you you make time for it.