Category: personal

i am spending the next two days at a local retreat center for a school class retreat. the place is in the woods in between two small cities of about 1,800 and 4,000 people. each of those big, thriving metropolises are 15 to 20 miles away. basically we are in the boondocks. this translates to no cell phone coverage which is not really a bad thing except for the fact that i’m supposed to be on call this week. of course, the irony of this to me is that while i can’t be reached on my cell phone the retreat center campus is covered by wifi. thus i can surf the net in a place that i can’t even use my cell phone in. i think that’s pretty cool.

anyhow here’s the video from the first day of the retreat.

every graduation i have ever been to has been the exact same. being a youth minister i go to quite a few commencement ceremonies each year. i love being there for the people who are graduating but i pretty much hate all the ceremonies that i’ve been to. it’s that time again – time for the boring ceremonies that i write notes while sitting through.

the video equipment we have within the student ministry has opened up some connections with students via homework. for the second time i have been able to spend time with a teen because they needed help making a video for class homework. it has worked out great.

pam and i have been remodeling our kitchen for awhile and today we took another step closer to being finished. tonight i installed our glass doors. these doors didn’t used to have glass in them – nope they had boring panels. we took them into to a local glass company and asked if they had any cool glass we could put in them. the owner said if we had a little time he could gather glass from the old windows they replace and insert that glass in our doors. it took over a month but we finally were given doors that have glass in them from the early 1900s. how cool is that?

okay, maybe this is boring to most of you but i love it. i think they look great and i enjoy the fact that we are recycling the glass from older homes.

tomorrow (tuesday, may 10, 2005) the senate is scheduled to vote on the “real id act“. here’s what sojourners had to say about the “real id” act within their april 13th issue of sojomaill.

The United States’ long-standing history as a beacon of hope to people around the world fleeing political, religious, and other forms of persecution is under assault in Congress. A bill, soon to be considered in the Senate, contains provisions that will make it impossibly difficult for refugees fleeing persecution to seek safety in the United States by obtaining asylum.

Under the bill, known as the REAL ID Act, trivial details – like a woman’s failure to recall her date of high school graduation – could be used to deny her asylum, even though she has fled from genocide, rape, forced abortion, severe domestic violence, or the threat of honor killing. Another provision of the bill would allow a torture survivor to be delivered back into the hands of his persecutors; the bill prohibits a U.S. federal court from preventing his deportation back to his oppressive home country while his case is still pending.

The REAL ID Act is based on the false argument that asylum laws in the United States are open to exploitation by terrorists. Current law already bars people who present a security risk from getting asylum – asylum seekers already undergo rigorous security and background checks from the time they apply until their cases are resolved.

basically, aside from quite possibly messing around with the civil liberties of american citizens, the act will make it much more difficult for political refugees to find asylum within the united states. so much for the “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

you can let your voice be heard by going to this link.

CITIZEN-TIMES.com: East Waynesville Baptist Church pastor says nobody ousted for political beliefs
this is absurd – just in case you haven’t heard about this click the link and read the article. there seems to be some dispute concerning whether or not the pastor of this church kicked members out of the church because they voted democratic. yet to me it is blatantly obvious that there was a republican agenda was pushed within the church.

first statement – why do they always have to be baptist?

every time i hear a news report concerning CHRISTians doing something stupid all i can think is “please don’t let them be baptists!” i don’t really want any CHRISTians getting bad press (or more particular doing anything stupid in the first place) but it just seems like my denomination has more than it’s share of bonehead moments.

second statement – when are we evangelicals going to be more concerned with doing what GOD wants within politics rather than just being pawns of a political party – republican or democrat?

it simply blows my mind to think of how we american CHRISTians have sold ourselves to political parties instead of standing up and speaking prophetically to all involved within the political process.

stop the insanity!

today i got the chance to go worship at the church i went to in college. i loved that church and still do. it was an incredible church of people who loved each other and it still is. it is a fantastic church and i am incredibly thankful that i’m not there. about four years ago i seriously talked with the pastor about interviewing with the church to become their youth minister. i really liked the pastor. he was a great guy to talk with and i knew that i liked the church. yet, pam and i felt that it wasn’t what GOD wanted for us and therefore we ended the conversations with the pastor (the youth minister there now is a great guy who came over and did our disciplenow for us at parkview).

when i went to the church today all i could think of was how thankful i am to be at parkview instead of the church from my past. i have been in baton rouge for four and a year years and pam and i have grown in some new directions since being here. my ideas on social justice and worship have changed dramatically during my time in baton rouge. these were both concepts that i had been dealing with before coming to parkview and in fact i would not say that the staff or church have been major influences within the shifts in my thinking. yet it has been here in baton rouge that my view of what worship is and a growing emphasis on social justice as an important part of CHRISTian faith have developed.

while i was visiting the church from my past i just kept on thinking what i would be like if i had ended up there.

today i received an anonymous letter. it wasn’t about the youth ministry or about me. no it was concerning the school that is a part of the ministry of the church. we’ve been going through a span of rough feelings concerning some changes in the structure of the church’s and school’s relationship with one another. there are people with strong feelings on both sides. apparently a person on one side of the debate decided that the best way to get their view point out was to send an anonymous letter to the parents of kids in the school. what a coward! i hate it when people send anonymous letters – “grow some balls.” only a coward sends a letter without signing it. this letter wasn’t directed at anything that i have to do with and it still infuriates me. coward! if any of you by chance know the person who sent out this anonymous bulk mail letter please tell them that i think they are a COWARD!

last night at “the view” jonathan, our minister of belonging, wanted to do a worship station on trusting GOD during difficult times. this seems only appropriate since he lives with type iii gaucher’s disease every day. he has experienced more physical and social suffering than i ever will (imagine having co-workers at old navy throw tennis balls at your hump). jonathan knows a thing or two about walking the hard road and he did a good job of conveying how GOD strengthens those who look at HIM.

jonathan volunteers two to three days a week within the youth ministry. there are somethings that jonathan can’t do because of the gaucher’s (heavy lifting is out, anything involving heights isn’t going to happen, and sometimes small print work screws with his eyes) but he is willing to learn new things, he’ll try all he can to accomplish what he can, and he will be there with you when you do the stuff that he physically can’t. pretty much every tuesday and wednesday he’s my buddy for the day and does everything with me. each day i grow more and more thankful for him being around.

jonny baker either brims with more creativity than the majority of human beings put together or he steals from the best sources in the world. i usually lean towards him brimming over with creativity (i love reading his blog) but i have to admit allot of the sources he cites are equally amazing. today baker posted concerning the fileshare at triggermontion.com. there some really cool shockwave files on the fileshare. i can’t wait to figure out how to best use them as a part of a worship experience. for those of us who do not brim over with creativity it is nice to be able steal ideas from great sources such as jonny baker and triggermontion.com.