Category: personal

i meant to post the above photo about a month ago but i kind of forgot. it is from the last time that tapestry provided the weekly meal for place of peace. we provide a meal and more importantly eat with everyone that comes for the thursday night meal once every three months. the shirt above is the result of being in the kitchen on july 5th. it was miserably hot. pam said that i should take a photo because this is probably the most she has ever seen me sweat in my life when i wasn’t doing something physical. i don’t usually sweat a great deal. actually i sweat a little but it is almost all on my eyebrow. its weird but how it works. anyhow, i have been sweating a good bit this summer.

wisconsin summers are not supposed to be like this. it is one of the things that we love about being in the mid west. i’m not sure what happened this summer.

SIDE NOTE – the goatee was pretty long on this day. i like it.

the second of five thread weddings took place this past weekend. jesse & amanda were married this past saturday. it was a great time. they had obviously put a great deal of work into the day and i personally thought it showed. of course, it was also pam and my wedding anniversary so i am a little partial to the day. we have been married 22 years. pam and i have now been officially married half our lives. it has worked out pretty well for me and i think it will work out great for jesse & amanda too.

pam and i made a weekend of it and ate at a couple of wonderful local restaurants (the mona lisa restaurant & the nucleus cafe). both had excellent food (though the service at the mona lisa lacked a little). the photo to the right is of pam’s nutella crepe at the nucleus. mhmmm. part of the fun of the weekend was that we had gorgeous weather and thus we were able to ride our bikes around.

it was a wonderful weekend. the photo at the top of this post is from the “advice string” that jesse & amanda had setup. my dad gave me one bit of advice before i married pamela. he told me that we should never wallpaper a room together. either i should do it by myself, she should do it by herself, or we should hire someone. it seems to have worked for us so i thought i would pass along the same advice to jesse & amanda. let’s pray they listen. 🙂

 

i received my amazon associates report today and as you can see i am bringing in some major money from my blogging. 😉 the amazon associates thing is basically works this way. if someone ends up buying a book or resources from amazon via a link from my blog then i get a few pennies. for example, i am currently reading miroslav volf’s “exclusion and embrace.” if you decided to buy this wonderful book (which you should because it has been amazing thus far and i am only a third of the way through it) and you went through a link on my blog then i would get a little “thank you” from amazon. as you can tell from the report above you guys and girls like to buy things from my blog. 😉 based on my math i am making almost $0.11 a month from blogging. oh yeah.

this should help with adam’s college expenses. 🙂 “hey adam, look my blogging just bought you two cups of coffee.” that will win me some respect from my oldest child.

SIDE NOTE – the problem with loving theology is that most teens don’t want to hear anything about it (i.e my kids don’t usually care to have an in depth discussion concerning it). while waiting for noah to finish with the dentist this morning i was reading volf’s discussion concerning immanence and transcendence in paul’s new creation mentioned in 2 corinthians 5:17. i was so blown away by the implications of what volf said that i needed to share it with someone (this is usually how i wrap my brain around something). pam usually fills this role but she wasn’t at the dentist office so i decided to share and discuss it with adam. “mhem” was not exactly the response that i was looking for.

adam, noah, and i saw the dark knight rises this afternoon and it was great. it probably was not as good as the dark knight but heath ledger was incredible as the joker so i didn’t really expect rises to be better. the three christopher nolan batman movies have been excellent. anyhow it was a great movie and a lot of fun o watch with my sons.

there is very little in the world that compares with the fun of catching smallmouth bass on a fly rod. i didn’t catch any monsters this evening but it was still a blast catching 12-16” smallies on a 4 weight fly rod.

sunday night i used a photo of some backpacking i did in 2001 and for all the threads whose last name isn’t terrell it was the first time they had seen me before i started running. i start running in 2005 because i had gained some weight and i wanted to loose it. actually i started playing a lot of racquetball in 2003 to loose this weight but then my racquetball partner went and started another church. this led to him being too busy to play in our bi-weekly challenges and i was left needing to participate in some form of solitary form of exercise or find another partner. all the racquetball partners i tried playing against were better than me so i opted for running instead. 🙂

anyhow, i used the photo below as part of an illustration for my message on sunday night and the response was not what i expected. there were several snickers, which i did expect, but one person said “whoa” loud enough for everyone in the washington elementary school gym to hear. i guess i look a little different, which is really a good thing.

here’s the photo. i am the one on the left. enjoy.

i posted this link on my facebook profile the other day but i thought i would add it to the blog because i kind of like bragging on my amazing wife. pamela is presently on the tail end stretch of the biennial study abroad course she leads to brazil. she started the course and the university tends to brag on it every now and then because (to my knowledge) it is the only communicative disorders study aboard course in the entire UW system. like i said pam is pretty impressive.

anyhow you read all the posts she has made concerning the course for the uwsp college of professional studies blog here and here are the specific posts she has made thus far:

• arriving
• first day
• second day
• third day
• fourth day

there are a great number of things that i have done wrong when i was planting tapestry or now do wrong as the pastor. for example:

• i tend not to be the best “salesperson” for the church. instead of giving people a simple answer concerning what tapestry is like i end up getting involved in a long discussion concerning their experiences with spiritual maters.
• because tapestry is so relational at its nature i tend to never do just general invites to the community (what everyone else would call marketing). this is great for the people who know someone but i probably need to do more to extend the invite to people who don’t know a thread.
• i tend to say stupid things. this happens a good bit.
• i don’t do a good job of following rules.
• there are many other ways that i mess up that i am sure pam, my boys, the leadership team of tapestry, or any random number of threads could tell you about.

BUT …

one thing i know that i have done right as pastor of tapestry is leading the church to provide an end of the year jambalaya lunch for the teachers and staff of washington elementary school. this meal is a blast and pays off great dividends with the church’s relationship with the school every year. today various threads provided salad and desserts to go with the jambalaya and it was all enjoyed greatly. i cannot count how many teachers told me “i look forward to this lunch all year.” there are great teachers and staff at washington and i am very thankful for the relationship that we as a church have with them.

for those of you who have been following the development of my d.min project/dissertation i thought i would give you a little update. at this point i need to find an expert/authority to review the bibliography that forms the base of my research. once i do this and get him/her to approve it i will work through dr. lemke’s, my faculty mentor at nobts, changes and i will be able to present it for approval. once it is approved the fun will start because i will be able to begin my evil experiment on collaborative sermon preparation. mu ha ha!

anyhow these are all the people that i have asked thus far (and their responses if applicable).

dr. john stott	as i’ve discussed before the late dr. stott’s organization was VERY helpful and it makes me like dr. stott all the more. the man lived out what he preached and so did (and continues to) the organization that he founded. he is the biggest name that i corresponded with yet his organization has been incredibly helpful.
dr. david platt	lots of emails to lots of different email addresses (one that was his personal email address some years ago when he was doing DisipleNOW events for me at parkview baptist church) before i finally received a “sorry but dr. platt  it too busy” from his assistant.
dr. james shaddix	several emails over the past six months with no response as of yet.
paul windsor	assistant director of the langham partnership in new zealand. i’ve corresponded with rev windsor some but i have been unable to get in touch with him for the past couple of months. since i know that he is working on his own d.min project i am pretty sure that is keeping him busy.
dr. john mcclure	dr. mcclure has been very helpful and communication with him has been wonderful but he is too busy at present to help any more. i really appreciate the help he has already give me.
dr. chuck kelly	dr. kelly is president of nobts so i really don’t expect him to be able to do this but i thought “what the hey” and emailed him yesterday. no response yet but i honestly don’t expect him to be able to do it.
dr. rick mckinley	just emailed him yesterday. i think the world of imago dei and advent conspiracy so i figured i would ask. no response yet but it has only been one day.
chris seay	just emailed him yesterday. i think the world of ecclesia and advent conspiracy so once again i thought i would ask. no response yet but it has only been one day.
dr. wes allen	dr. mcclure recommended that i contact dr. allen. i am not familiar with dr. allen but dr. mcclure said that dr. allen is on top of the literature related to my d.min and he should be of great help. that is good enough for me. of course, i am also intrigued by the books that he has published so that also made me desire to ask him. i just emailed him today. we’ll see what happens.

i promise to start writing about the d.min less in the future.

UPDATE – 6/6/2012 @ 3pm

dr. allen emailed last night saying that he would be able to do it! this means i have an expert and once i finish my annotated bibliography (hopefully tonight/tomorrow morning) i can start on the next step. dr. mckinley’s secretary also emailed last night saying that he was presently out of the office but would look over my request once he was back in the office.