If you don’t regularly read both of Pam’s blogs (Ept, Couth, and Comobobulated & The Secret Life of a Pastor’s Wife) then you are missing out and should reconsider your life choices. Here’s a wonderful post she wrote concerning the church doing things with the mindset of receiving nothing in return. She discusses the party we threw this past Saturday for the children of migrant workers. I love the way Pam thinks.
sunday night setup
I say this pretty consistently during Sunday nights at Tapestry but I think setup is my favorite part of Sunday nights. This isn’t taking anything away from the actual worship gatherings because they are wonderful. It is just that I love getting to have conversations with a small group of essentially the same people each week as we work together. I generally think that most of us guys talk better when we are doing something together.
The ultimate goal with Tapestry is to split and form another church who will reach new and different people. Most church people I know don’t like the word “split” but I get super excited every time I think about us splitting. I can’t wait to see people come to know Jesus in their lives by methods and expressions that I have never even thought of.
Perhaps one such method could be setup. When we reach the size to divide we could start a church that just setups up and then tears down. Imagine how great the conversations would be. We might try this out one night in Tapestry. “Come to church tonight and we will setup and tear down together.” I like the sound of that. 🙂
Joe the Man
For those of you who weren’t at Tapestry last night you missed out on the church business meeting. Our business meetings are short and wonderful. The only business the church needed to deal with was voting on a new member of the Tapestry Leadership Team. We usually do this in November but Wesley Morris moved to Florida to learn about church planting (a pretty awesome thing) so we had a vacant spot. While all the threads miss the Morris family we are honored that Joe Hasenorhl is now the latest member of the Leadership Team. Joe will do a great job.
Actually it was a pretty great night overall. 1st there is Joe. Joe really is a cool story (actually Kaylin, his wife, is too). Joe went from a new believer to someone mature enough in his faith that all the threads trust him enough to want him to be a part of the leadership of the church. 2nd there were all the stories of Saturday concerning the block party we did for the children of migrant workers in Junction City. 3rd we had chicken fajitas from El Mezcal which is awesome. The fajitas were left over from the party the day before and we had more than enough for everyone. Finally, just because we still have it until Thursday we setup one of the bouncy castles that we used yesterday and I walked outside to find random kids playing in it. Awesome.
The Caps Will Begin
i started this blog nine years ago and for some reason when i started it i decided not to use caps other than for the LORD’s name. i didn’t really have a reason for it. i just thought it would be fun. it has driven some people i know and love crazy (e.g. my parents) but i continued. i did the same thing on facebook and twitter. these two social networks have been causing me problems over the past year because while i have enjoyed going “cap-less” i don’t like the way my statuses look when i place links in them or tag people (which often include caps which i can’t do anything about). i’ve been frustrated by this for about a year now.
well last night while i was talking to some thread college students at IV’s monday night large group a couple of them told me out of the blue that they found my blog interesting but didn’t read it consistently because they found it difficult to read due to the lack of caps. that is a good enough reason for me to change.
The blog will now use capital letters in normal sentence structure. The world may never be the same.
college is paying off
https://twitter.com/AdamTerrell/status/244244336974389248
i have no idea why adam milked a goat but i am already thankful for the new things he will learn and experience in college. talking with him the other day i decided that i am going to try to read one of the books from one of his classes each semester. he is going to recommend one next week after he has a better feel of which class he is connecting with best. i figure this way i’ll know a little of what is floating his boat in school.
exclusion and embrace
thanks to perry polnaszek i am presently reading miroslav volf’s “exclusion and embrace.” in the book volf basically works through the question of how we can follow JESUS’s command to love our enemies. really how do you love someone who might have done amazing evil to and against you? to use the old CHRISTian cliché, how do we love the sinner and hate the sin? it has been very challenging for me in several areas.
loving the sinner while hating the sin involve me “embracing” that person. that “embrace” makes it difficult to “exclude” the person while still not approving of the sin. for example, i love my kids and there is nothing they could do that would change that fact. there are, however, actions they could do that i would find HIGHLY disagreeable. since i love them i wouldn’t view them by their sin. instead i view them as people who i love who have done something terrible. on the other hand, that “embrace” hasn’t happened with people i don’t know and so it is more difficult not merely view them from the view of “exclusion.” there are actions that are so evil that we morally must respond to with “exclusion” but that doesn’t mean we ignore the “embrace” of the individual who committed them.
i’ll share a none sin relate example. it is political season and so in our social media world this means i daily run into a large number of people expressing their political beliefs and some whose main goal seems to be just belittling other people’s political beliefs. there are people i love who disagree with me but i would never ignore them because i know them as loved ones rather than just people i disagree with politically. on the ohter hand, two nights ago i mistakenly got into a political debate with an anonymous person on twitter (it’s a long story that i won’t get into). the conversation was very frustrating because the guy was combative. i didn’t even really mean to get into a conversation with him. i responded to a former youth’s tweet and this guy jumped in and started criticizing me and tapestry even though he doesn’t know ether of us. he would say something and i would try to respond. i quickly reached a point where i was starting to really not like someone that i didn’t even know. that is when i thought of “exclusion and embrace” and i decided i should get to know him. i figured finding out his name would be a good start. it didn’t work out so well because he wasn’t interested in anything more than telling me how wrong i was. at that point the conversation ended because i realized i couldn’t debate a person whose name i didn’t even know. nothing good would come of the twitter conversation until we both new a little about each other.
still it was a good lesson for me.
in the midst of disagreement or worse i am going to try to respond to people with “embrace” even if i am rightly reacting to their actions or beliefs with “exclusion.”
don't feed the trolls
every now and then i just need to remind myself of this fact of life and reality of the internet. “don’t feed the trolls robert. they aren’t interested in a discussion, just a fight.” i am going to try repeating this to myself every so often. hopefully it will work.
bam! the bride of CHRIST
so a quick story.
tonight during my message at tapestry a “thread” brought up that she had some new neighbors that didn’t have enough beds for all of their kids (10 members in the family) and she is looking to find beds for them. well the story actually goes a little deeper than just that. i found most of this out from pam after church because the “thread” had told her a little more while we were tearing down the sunday night setup at washington elementary.
she had new neighbors move in to around her who are hmong. trying to be a good neighbor she went to meet them. unfortunately her neighbors don’t speak a lot of english and she doesn’t speak much hmong. most people would figure that was enough and decide they had done what CHRIST wanted. not her. she tracked down a translator to help her communicate as a good neighbor would. that’s how she found out about the need for the beds.
so she mentioned the need during our worship gathering tonight. she said the family needed bedding for 4 more. by the time we had torn down our equipment beds for 3 of the 4 had been arranged. we left figuring we would work on the remaining bed this week. some of the college kids loaded into pam’s minivan and they started back to school. that is when one of them texted a “thread” who wasn’t there tonight and suddenly another free bed found. that’s when one of the college students shouted “bam! the bride of CHRIST!”
seemed appropriate. need announced and 25 minutes later we knew how the need was going to be met. like the college student said “bam! the bride of CHRIST!”
gone to school
so we dropped adam off at northland college today which was kind of bitter-sweet. really more sweet than bitter. this is what we have been raising him for … for him to go out into the world and with the help of GOD, family, and friends really become the wonderful man that his mother and i see in him already. he is going to do great, learn a ton, challenge many assumptions (both his own and those of others), and continue to become an amazing person.
so here it what i hope college does for him.
- helps him to grow as a man of GOD. as adam recently taught me this involves two things: 1) being a man, and 2) being of GOD. adam is going to face more challenges than he ever has before. people, places, events, difficulties, etc. he is going to be doing more on his own than he has ever had to do. welcome to the world of being an adult. i have no doubt he’ll make it. these challenges will include his faith too. there will be people around to help him (it isn’t like we are disowning him) but the majority of it will be on his shoulders. that’s how growth happens in all areas of life, from academics to faith. should be fun to watch him respond (even though i will be restraining myself from jumping in for him).
- helps him to learn what his passion is and enables him to go after it. i don’t care what he gets his degree in as long as it points him towards something he loves and enables him to do it more effectively. while i would like his degree to be “marketable” i am more concerned about him getting his degree in a manner that doesn’t keep him from being able to follow his passion. right now adam is majoring in outdoor education a degree that i know of several uses for. if that ends up being his passion that is great but it will be difficult following that passion if he racks up $50,000 in debt achieving his degree. instead of following his passion he will have to get a higher paying job to pay off the debt he acquired getting his degree. pam and i are doing everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen but adam has to do his part too. pam and i have acquired 5 degrees between us thus far, with a 6th one coming soon. we have done this without an ounce of debt because of scholarships, help from parents in our bachelor’s degrees, working jobs while in school, and creative timing. i want adam to learn amazing things and do it in such a way that he doesn’t have debt that keeps him from exploring those things further.
helps him to fail in manageable ways and succeed far beyond what he thinks he can do. i know he is going to try new things and sometimes fail. those success and failures are a part of life. what i hope is that when he fails his failure is not so great that he isn’t able to get back up and try again. i hope his failures help him to achieve more than he has ever thought possible.- allows him to learn and experience so much more than i will ever know and have a most excellent time doing it. this means developing lifelong friends, practices, habits, hobbies, and more.
adam, i am continually proud of you. you are one amazing guy.
run, bike unite 2012
busy day so i can’t post much. just want to say how proud i am of pam and the boys. the whole terrell family did the 2012 united way run, bike, unite duathlon. adam and i did the whole thing and pam and noah where a relay team with pam running and noah biking. it was a blast. pam and i then rushed to get something to eat and clean up for brad and katie’s wedding. my wife looks wonderful covered in sweat and grim and cleaned up.
i’ve posted this in the break between the wedding and the reception. it is now time for the reception so i’ll now be leaving with my cute wife and going to attempt to dance. i say attempt because i am not very good at it.