Category: personal

you may have noticed changes happening to the blog (i.e new top design, blogroll on the right hannd side, flickr zietgeist, etc.). i’m finally beginning to understand a little bit of the coding of this css stuff. i still don’t get most of it but i do at least understand a little. i’m presently trying to figure out how to add an automated “reading list” to the blog. i’ve seen this on several other sites. unfortunately i can’t find which ones had the reading list and therefore i can’t ask them how to do it. so if you know how to put an automated reading list and feel like passing a little help my way i would appreciate it.

i’m not a democrat. i’m also not really a republican though i have voted for republican candidates more often than i have other candidates. with that said i am fed up with evangelical CHRISTians agreeing no holds bar with anything that politically conservative politicians say or do. i believe part of the reason for this is that conservative CHRISTians have reduced the gospel to personal spirituality and morality, the mindset is that your faith should lead to you becoming a moral person and therefore the politically active CHRISTian should fight for what seem to be obvious moral concerns. this is why evangelical CHRISTians are so focused on homosexuality and abortion. these stand out as moral issues.

yet i believe taking care of the poor and afflicted are spiritual issues. i believe this why JESUS came preaching the “gospel of the kingdom” rather than just the good news of personal salvation. again and again JESUS preached of the kingdom – a place where life was determined by the rules of GOD. the kingdom of heaven is a place where the followers of CHRIST fight for justice. i’m not sure that we CHRISTians have been fighting for justice. maybe instead of just providing food for the hungry we should fight against the system that would leave them hungry when there is more than enough food for all.

so here’s what has brought up this brief rant. sojouners is a CHRISTian organization that focuses on political involvement. there are definitely of a more liberal CHRISTian mindset. while i would probably be described as a conservative i love sojourners because they remind me to fight for social justice. hey regularly set up actions to email against various social injustices. right now they have set up an open letter to alberto gonzalez, the proposed attorney general, asking him to denounce torture in any fashion. apparently he has a mixed history on this and may have supported torture of foreign p.o.w’s before.

so what i’m wondering is why we never hear conservative CHRISTians standing up and saying “NO” against injustices such as this.

i am firmly convinced that youth ministry as a whole is far to masculine in it’s nature. so much of what youth ministries do (my own included) is naturally more appealing to males than to females. we play active games. we use gross and odd events. so many of the leaders within youth ministries are male. student ministry is definitely a male oriented ministry.

so a while back i decided to do something about it by doing and event where there was absolutely zero male involvement. we call this our “feminar.” we did this for the first time last year and our girls loved it. it is the absolute opposite of any event that i would ever put on if i were in charge. last year’s feminar included a craft time and a fashion show in addition to the bible studies that set the tone for the night. i would never think of doing a fashion show. i still think the concept is stupid. yet it worked incredibly well. our girls loved it and it helped make sure real connections for our girls who had been visiting until then.

we’re doing it again this year february 4th & 5th. once again i won’t have anything to do with it. i can’t wait.

last night at the view we did another “chair worship service”. the “chair worship service” is based on the often quoted description of worship from soren kierkegaard, his description of worship is that it is like a theater and that the danes of his age misunderstood the places of everyone within the theater of worship. soren kierkegaard said the places within the theater of worship at that time were:

• the congregation was in the seats watching the performance
• the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
• GOD was on the stage giving the performance

kierkegaard said that worship was actually like a theater but that the above positions were wrong. the correct positions were:

• the congregation is on the stage doing the performance
• the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
• GOD is the AUDIENCE WHO the performance is for

so when we do our “chair worship” we clear the stage and make it the area of the AUDIENCE. we move our praise band to the side or the back and reverse everything else. we change the pa speakers and monitors. we then place a single chair on the stage as a physical reminder that we are signing to GOD.

i explain the whole process through a powerpoint presentation that describes what is going to happen. the service begins with this and then goes into worship through singing. we’ve done this three times over the past two years. it’s been a great way to remind the teens and adults why we do what we do.

here are pictures from our set up.

i’m trying to add “trackback” capability to the blog now. we’ll see how this works. i’m using Haloscan for commenting and trackback. the real question here is wether i can implement or even understand “trackback”. just because i have it doesn’t mean i actually know how to use it.

i hate church controversy!

i always find that it does nothing but hurts the church itself. i’m not talking about standing up for doctrine and theology. nope, i’m really okay with a fight over that. i’m talking about the type of controversy that’s about people not liking the way a certain thing is done within the church or not liking some of the personalities involved within the church. this is the controversy that i hate.

my church is going through some of this right now. the controversy is about the school board of our school. we are in the process of determining whether or not to have a school board or to move the superintendent of the school to a member of the church staff and have the school directly responsible to the church instead of a board of church members. two sides have formed – one in favor of keeping the school board and one in favor of getting rid of it. the school board itself is divided evenly on the idea. because the idea is so evenly divided things have begun to get pretty heated. things have been said that weren’t real nice on both sides.

i’m really okay with people disagreeing. in fact, i think disagreeing is probably a healthy thing when done right because it means you’re pushing the envelope. what i don’t like is people treating each other in unCHRIST like manners. the person who is disagreeing with you is hopefully a brother or sister in CHRIST. he/she is someone for whom CHRIST went to the cross. therefore, that person or group of people are of extreme value and should be treated with the utmost respect and kindness. when that is not done then i hate the responding controversy.

JESUS said that the world would know that we are HIS disciples by our “love for one another.” i figure the best example of this love is how we treat each other when we strongly disagree with each other.

okay this is a complete rant.

i wish some people would take their “ministry” positions seriously. i firmly believe that every part of the ministry is important – from the smallest to the largest. yesterday, our youth ministry praise band led our 9:30 worship service in the singing portion of worship. i play with them even though i am by no means a youth (the reason is a long story but basically it is to make sure that i don’t throw some teens into a position that will build up “spiritual” pride within themselves – i’ve screwed up one kid before by putting him in charge and i won’t do that again so now i make sure that a spiritually grounded adult is there to keep everyone humble).

anyway, we were supposed to do the music. i had everything set up for that. i had the music ready, the sound set-up ready, and setup the mediashout presentation. the problem was that the person that is supposed to run the service’s “words” for the music apparently decided not to show up. this wasn’t a teen who failed to be there. nope it was an adult who apparently didn’t think the position was important enough to call and have another qualified person ready for it.

of course, i didn’t find this out until after the service. nope i was baptizing two kids at the beginning of the service and therefore they couldn’t get me. so they grabbed a teen who said she could operate powerpoint (saying i hate powerpoint may be too strong of language because i use it for messages – i do strongly dislike microsoft and try as much as possible not to use their programs). of course, mediashout is a different ball game and she didn’t know what was going on with it.

i found out after the service that probably 40% of the words actually made it on the screen. i don’t blame the teen. the reason this is such a big deal is because there were people who were not able to participate within the worship of GOD simply because there were no words on the screen. those words are very important. that truly “gripes” me when someone drops the ball like that.

i’m not even sure that i know who dropped the ball because i’m not in charge of that service. next time, i’ll come with someone to operate the mediashout also.

of course, i’m sure i wouldn’t want to hear what people say about me when i “drop the ball” as i often do.

A SIDE NOTE – i am so proud of our youth praise band (those who shall remain nameless). they get better and better and i love the spirit that is behind their playing. they are a great group of kids.

the “potato cannon” has been glued together and the starter has been installed. tomorrow i will duct tape the joints for added safety and then fulfill the dreams of some russets. it’s a little known fact that the russet potato is the most aerodynamic of all the spud universe. the russet literally longs to fly. tomorrow i will fulfill the dreams of some of these tubers.

SIDE NOTE – albert’s famous salsa is by far the greatest grocery store salsa i have ever encountered. i’m not sure how “famous” it actually is since the only people around here who seem to know about it are those that pam and i have introduced to it BUT i can say that it deserves to be famous because it is great.

there are some amazing pictures of the tsunami damage on flickr.

you can view them by going here.

and here is a different set.

here are pictures of the people who were effected by the tsunami. these are the people who are missing.

here are a few links on the asian tsunami. some of interest and some for purposes of helping.

• an animation of the tsunami’s imjpact – quite scary.
• flash tsunami presentation – includes pictures of the aftermath, details on how it happened, etc.
• international mission board part of your offering at parkview goes to the imb automatically. if you would like to give more specifically to the imb’s effort in helping during the asian tsunami recovery you can do so here.
• virtual prayer room for those effected by the tsunami.
• the salvation army – a great agency for any catastrophe.
• world vision – the same organization that does the 30 hour famine is already helping in asia. you can donate directly to the tsunami relief here.
• the baton rouge chapter of the association for india’s development – a local direct link to india.

consider helping in any way you can.