Author: Robert

my church is going through some rough times right now. the whole thing started out with a legitimate disagreement on how the school and church should work together. one group of people had one view and another group held another view which our pastor holds. personally, i don’t have a problem with members of the church disagreeing with each other. actually i usually think that dialogue over disagreements is a good thing – it helps us to figure out what to do and how to do it.

the problem with this disagreement is that it became personal very quickly. we now have people who are willing to do whatever is necessary for their side to “win.” anonymous emails and letters are being mailed to church members, rumors are being spread about my pastor’s family, the newspaper and television stations have been called, and various other dumb things are now going on. it’s all very stupid. just the sort of things that members of CHRIST’s bride should be involved in. right?

my pastor and his family are the ones being hurt now. he is a genuine servant (unfortuneately a rarity in the world of pastors) and a very honest, transparent, open guy. i love him and can’t stand seeing him hurt. i really don’t think the original disagreement has anything to do with what people are doing to him now. i believe that now it’s all about hurting him and winning. it’s all pretty evil.

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 81% Postmodernist 69% Fundamentalist 56% Idealist 50% Romanticist 38% Existentialist 31% Modernist 19% Materialist 6% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

it’s rather funny to me that i “tend to shy away from organized religion.” either i have a odd way of “shying away from organized religion” or i’m simply so shy that i can’t yet express my shyness concerning organized religion.

i did something right today (which is not always true). most anytime we are doing something around the student center (setting up for something, adding something, changing something, etc.) i try to get kids involved in doing it. we painted our little cafe and there were five kids and one adult doing it. we tore the carpet up from the student center and there were teens involved. it’s not that we want the kids as free labor (though that’s nice), or that we want them to have ownership of the ministry by being a part of making it happen (though we do). nope, we get kids involved in doing things because good conversations seem to happen when we do physical work with teens. so today i wanted to get a few kids involved in helping us put our new light bar up in our student center. because of the physical nature of the work we were going to be doing i decided to call guys to help us (stupid sexist pig that i am). unfortunately the guys i called last night didn’t work out and thus it looked like it would merely be me and alan working on the light bar.

that was true until lunch. at lunch julie and laura came by to say “hi.” besides saying hello they asked the fateful question “what are y’all doing today?” when i went on to describe what we were doing they asked to see my diagram of it and then started asking questions about it. after seeing the diagram i asked if they wanted to see what we had done thus far. julie went ballistic. turns out she wants to be a aeronautical engineer and is fascinated by fabricating things (i’ve known her for four years and this was new to me because she usually the one of the people we turn to for photography and creative work). we went over to the student center and i showed them the work we had done thus far. then i asked if they would like to help. they stayed for the next two hours helping with the man/woman-lift, placing bolts on the supports, and then drilling holes in the bar itself. it was great. in the end they even signed their names on the top of the bar as a physical marker of their involvement in the project.

who would have known they would have been so fascinated by a man/woman-lift? i didn’t and thus the only thing i did right in this was actually asking if they wanted to help when they showed up of their own volition.

i usually try to avoid posting the same entries on this blog and my other blog but something happened today that makes me laugh just thinking about it. so i decided to post it here also. here goes.

my youngest son, noah, had a “caddyshack” moment earlier today. his second grade class at parkview went swimming at the bocage racquet club today. the day was fun for a little while but then something happened. pam was talking with another mom at the event and suddenly noticed that a lifeguard was reaching with a long pole into the swimming pool and all the kids were forming a very wide circle around whatever the lifeguard was trying to capture with the pole. it would appear that one of the kids had really decided to “drop the kids off at the pool.” oh yes someone had “dropped a load” right in the middle of the bocage racquet club’s swimming pool. the employees chased out all the kids who had actually stayed in the pool and then super-shocked the pool. i sure hope someone shouted “DOODY!” when they found it.

i would have paid money for it to have merely been a baby ruth candy bar and for the pool guy to reach over and take a bite of it.

i love “hand me downs.” i know some youth ministers complain about getting the “big church’s” left overs because they feel like it belittles or degrades their ministry but that’s not me. nope i love getting older stuff for free. today i received four ellipsoidal lights to replace four of our par64 cans. we use 9 par64 cans to illuminate our stage (and circle when we worship “in the round” – which is pretty frequent). these had been “hand me downs” from “big church” about two years ago. they have worked decent and their price was perfect – free. today i got the 4 ellipsoidal lights that our music minister had just lying around. the lights are in perfect condition they had merely been replaced because our church auditorium “needed” newer better lighting fixtures. the ellipsoidal lights are much more focusable than par cans and thus more controllable. putting these in means i have the opportunity to place better lighting and and use the older lights to illuminate “worship stations” in the back (now we have to improvise lighting for those stations).

all this for the greatest price ever – free. i would much rather use budget money for ministry and i don’t consider lights ministry.

the diagram above is my cat scratch from my journal of what we are going to do.

SIDE NOTE – the last hour of “24” is on right now. woo hoo!

i’m not sure what i have done to offend my garbage and recycling men but i know that i have done something. you see they hate me. i can tell that they hate me because they are constantly messing around with me. if i take my garbage and recycling out sunday night for our typical monday pick up (which i usually do) then they wait until around 8 p.m. to actually pick up the trash and recycling. of course, if i decide to take the trash out in the morning those evil garbage collectors come to our neighborhood at 4:30 a.m. when they come in the morning and i don’t have my garbage cans out they make a huge amount of noise just so that i know that they are outside and my garbage and recycling aren’t. i know they do it on purpose.

their evil plans are even more obvious when i only take half of my garbage/recycling load out. if the garbage is out early then only the recycling guy comes by in the morning and if the recycling is the only part i’ve put out at dawn then it’s merely the garbage guys who drive by my house while the sun is rising. the other guy always waits until late at night to come by and pick up their load. i’m sure that they are laughing when they drive by my house. they’re evil i tell you. evil!

i’m not sure what the purpose of their evil plan of ignoring my garbage and recycling is but that’s the genius of their plan – you’re not real sure what they are trying to accomplish. only an evil mastermind would come up with a plan so devious that you can’t tell what its goal is. that’s how evil they are.

i took the garbage out a little while ago so i guess i should move the recycling out now. i’m such a wimp for giving into their manipulation.