Category: personal

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.

this afternoon has been a time of potluck ideas. first, i received the following email from one of our juniors:

Some of us were at cc’s tonight and Coleman asked what a pot luck was and that reminded me about our pot lucks that we have for Sunday school and I thought we haven’t had one of those in a while and maybe we could have one before the seniors leave! Its just an idea, I thought it might be kinda fun! Well im off to the land of studying! See you Sunday!!

then after reading that email (and smiling to myself) i read andrew jones’ post on pot lucks.

i love pot lucks. i think they are one of the greatest examples of community and hospitality within our CHRISTian faith. it’s not just a meal together but a journey together. we not only eat together but we all contribute to the meal. we’re in the whole thing together. that’s why i love pot lucks and one of the things i am most proud of that has happened within the youth ministry this year is the fact that i have introduced a group of 11th & 12th graders to pot lucks.

if all of us believers had a pot luck with other believers once a week our faith would be much stronger.

when i went to church this morning i found a nice surprise in my mail box – the reading packet from “the simple way.” they sent the packet to prepare me for my time with them in october. the packet is composed of various articles that will help me to understand how to interpret what i will experience. here’s what is in the packet:

• “the cost of short-term mission” by jo ann van engen
• “that they may be one” by bob lupton
• “downward mobility” by bob lupton
• “myths” by chris lahr
• “downward mobility in an upscale wiorkd” by shane claiborne

i’ve scanned over it all (and so has pam) and it has made me even more excited about going ti e hang out with the people of “the simple way.”

so i was reading a post of ginkworld that mentioned audioblogging. audioblogging has been around for awhile but it’s always been on a paid service. personally i’m cheap and therefore i don’t want to directly pay for something that is basically a joke – i.e. audioblogging for me. when i listened to the audioblog it said that blogger was doing this. that got me to searching a little and low and behold i found audioblogger.com which will post on your blogger site for free. all you have to do is set up an account and then call the phone number and record your entry. for me it’s a long distance number (1 – 661- 716 – BLOG) but with my church cell phone now going nationwide that’s covered too. it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

i have to confess that i am addicted to the anime cartoon “yugioh“. my kids found the dueling card game a couple of years ago and went from that to watching the television show on saturday mornings. of course, trying to be a good dad i decided to watch it with them. the problem is that i soon became addicted to the show. i know it’s a children’s cartoon but still i like it. i realized how bad it was a little while ago when i was watching the season finale with my kids and started getting irritated because me kids kept talking. how pathetic is that?

darfur: a genocide we can stop

the above link leads to several internet petitions for taking action in darfur. or if you are a u.s. citizen you can write directly to president bush by clicking here.

rwanda is one of the most “CHRISTian” nations in the world (i’m not sure that a country can be “CHRISTian”) and the church didn’t do much good during the rwandain genocide. hopefully by acting for justice the bride of CHRIST can do something of value in darfur.

sometimes you have services that suck and other times you have services that feel good. tonight’s service felt good. i won’t know wether GOD spoke through the service until later when i see if HE has worked in kids lives or not but i have to say that the service definitely felt good. i like services that go like that.

the night will continue to get better and better because i’m presently watching the episode of “24” that i had to video tape because of a garduation ceremony i needed to be at and then at 12:02 a.m. tonight i’m going to see “star wars episode iii: revenge of the sith“.

church marketing sucks: businessweek goes to church

church marketing sucks has a post on it right now from kevin d. hendricks concerning businessweek’s cover article on the business of church. in that article it is pointed out that the willow creek assocaition ranks among tthe top 5% of 250 major brands. since when isCHRIST’s church every be a marketing empire? since when is CHRIST’s bride supposed to be an organization with so much economic power?

the most telling thing to me is the title of the business week article is its title “earthly empires“. to quote the article:

So successful are some evangelicals that they’re opening up branches like so many new Home Depots (HD ) or Subways.

is this what the modern evangelical church looks like to those outside the church? does it look like we who are supposed to be focused on the things of GOD and HIS kingdom are instead building earthly empires? apparently businessweek thinks so. so much for following the meek and mild suffering servant. the whole thing saddens me.

my wife puts it this way – we CHRISTians are stupid people.