Category: personal

• pam and i are a couple of weeks behind in watching “lost.” right now i have mixed feelings about how it is going. i am thankful that this will be the last year. i would hate to see it continue going.
• i’ve been doing more cross country skiing over the past week and i am now intrigued with the idea of doing the birkie. the birkie is a 55k (34.1 miles) cross country skiing race. it happened yesterday. i’m not sure that i could be ready for it by next year but i could try for the kortelopet 23K (which happens with the birkie).
• i have loved the winter olympics but i am glad that it is almost over. i’ve hit the max of my winter sports watching limit.
• as one of the stevens point police chaplains i get to go to a seminar on death notification – how’s that for exciting?
• the q conference is two months away and i am pretty pumped about it.
• i started growing a goatee about 4 weeks ago and it is finally reaching a point that i like it. we’ll just have to see if i actually keep it or not.

scott brignac was one of the youth ministry interns at parkview baptist church in baton rouge when i led the youth ministry there. he produces great short films (but ironically rarely ever did such for the youth ministry – yeah, that’s right i’m calling you out scott). right now one of his shorts is among the top fop finalists for a canon competition. his video is great and therefore you should go watch it and then vote for it.

SIDE NOTE – elizabeth & alan thanks for the kind comment you sent pam. i’m not sure why the blog is not allowing you to leave comments but i will look into it. the issue you are having with the blog not allowing you to comment must explain why no one else has been commenting on my blog recently. surely it can’t be because no one is reading it. 😉

SIDE SIDE NOTE – thanks to the generosity of heath erickson (the senior high youth minister at woodlands church) i had the chance to go speak with a bunch of 9th graders about faith. stuff like this makes me miss youth ministry. if any of you paid ministerial type people ever want a speaker/communicator/preacher (or whatever the new term is) from wisconsin who can be had for travel expenses and a bbq sandwich i’m your man. 🙂

for the majority of the time that i have been a minister i have prided myself on focusing on not talking “church language.” what i mean by “church language” are all the internal terms and slang that CHRISTians use that communicate to those “in the know” but are often not understood by those that are not within the church culture. i wasn’t raised in the church world and when i came to faith in CHRIST and eventually started attending a local church i was always frustrated when pastors would refer to slang or stories that i was apparently assumed to already know. when someone would say “you all know the story of yada yada” i wanted to shout “NO I DON’T! TELL ME ABOUT IT!” since i usually didn’t shout that out i was just general confused and frustrated (a state that is pretty normal for my brain).

because of these experiences i have always tried to regularly focused on not using such internal language. before coming to point and starting tapestry i thought i did a pretty good job at this. now i know that at best i was just doing a good job for the bible belt and at worst i thoroughly sucked at it. i am very thankful for those who have helped me discover this.

this discovery has come over the past 5 weeks. during this period i have been leading tapestry through stories form the life of jacob during our sunday night worship gatherings. trying not to assume everyone was familiar with the story of jacob i started each week off with a summary of what we have talked thus far. i thought i was doing a pretty good job with my summaries until several people politely said i wasn’t (this is yet another reason i love the threads). after talking with several people what i discovered was that while i might have been doing an ok job of summarizing the story i wasn’t giving people unfamiliar with the story of jacob anything to attach to the summary to. the names jacob, esau, isaac rebekah, rachel, laban, and leah were unfamiliar to many and therefore i might have been repeating the same name over and over again during my summary.

the above stick people are an example of what came out of these conversations. the stick people serve as references for people to associate with the story and the weekly summary. i put the stick figures in my powerpoint and they come back up again and again. those far it looks like they are working. at least that is what i’ve been told and as stated above the people of tapestry don’t mind telling me when i am not connecting.

this is a brave new world for me. the old world allowed general assumptions concerning what people knew of scripture (or at least i lived like it did). this new world doesn’t fit that assumption. this new world is one that i thought i had already discovered but now i realize that i am much farther off the map than i thought i was. this is exactly where i want to be.

SIDE NOTE – none of this would have come about if it hadn’t of been for several threads telling me that i wasn’t doing a very good job of summarizing in the first place. i hope every pastor in the world is blessed with people who will tell him/her when things aren’t working. i know some pastors don’t view such people as “blessings” (a.k.a. reasons to be happy) and i know some are just mean people. thankfully i haven’t experienced many of the “mean ones.” instead. usually the people who point out when i’m not doing my best have been the people who help me the most.

i like presentations/sermons that use slides well and I HATE WHEN SLIDES ARE USED POORLY. most people can read faster than you can speak so it make no sense for us to sit there and listen to you say everything that is clearly written on your presentation slides while you add nothing else to the bullet points. presentations slides are for passages that you want people to be able to read with you, quotes, and most importantly images that convey what you are speaking about. they are not for an endless list of bullet points.

i feel better now.

beaker was always my favorite part of the muppet show (which i watched religiously). this video is just a little modern bit of the beauty that is beaker. i miss the muppet show.

SIDE NOTE – my dad called me today to ask if he could borrow my snow thrower. turns out that mobile, alabama is supposed to get between 2”-6” of snow tonight and tomorrow. it has been over a decade since mobile has had snow. it should be fun watching the news coverage of my fellow johnny rebs attempt to drive in the white stuff.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – i am very excited that the winter olympics begin tomorrow and thanks to me renegotiating our cable with charter and thereby cutting our price in half and getting hd i am going to get to watch curling in hd. woohoo! in case you are wondering the us team’s first game (part of the initial round robin) is at 9 am february 16th.

so last night tapestry met at the terrell home instead of meeting at washinton elementary school. the excuse was the superbowl but the truth is it was more about spending time with each other and loving on each other (case in point we had group of 6-8 that hid out in the “man cave” and played settlers of catan. we try to take JESUS’s statements concerning loving each other seriously.

anyhow i’m posting this to say two things. first, event though i have been a packers fan since middle school i am still thrilled that naw’leans won. who dat! i can’t believe that the aint’s have finally won the big one. i assume that JESUS will return any second now because this is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse.

secondly, i’m not sure how many people we had over last night. the only count i made was around half time and it was 41 at that time but we had people wondering in and out all night. what i know is that by the time everyone had left and i had finished cleaning up i suddenly realized it was hot. i looked at the thermostat and saw the the temp was 71° in the house even though the thermostat was set for 62°. that’s right 45 minutes after everyone was gone and all the extra body temperature had headed out the door the temp in the house was still roasting in a wisconsin winter. i had to open the front and back doors for 30 minutes just to let some of that wonderful 15° wisconsin winter air in to cool the house down enough for me to sleep.

now you may be saying to yourself “robert, that’s well and good that you had a bunch of people over last night but what does that matter for real world circumstances?” i’m glad you asked. it means that a mass of people watching the superbowl is an excellent source of warmth. i’ve recently been rewatching “eververst: beyond the limit” (pamela will tell you that i have a not so secret desire to climb everest, while she has a not so secret desire to keep me alive no matter how well insured i am). watching the series you see many people suffering from dangerous frostbite. if they were only able to surround themselves with 40 superbowl watching, food consuming, chatter producing people they would stay toasty warm. sure it might be hard to climb the hillary step but you would stay warm. in fact, this could be a new standard for rating the warmth of clothing. for example, this coat has the warmth of 20 people watching the superbowl.

anyhow it sure was a great deal of fun and i was very thankful for heidi’s carmel corn and joe’s sushi. mhmmm! pot lucks!

SIDE NOTE – i discussed with drew, heidi, and adam last night the possibility of tapestry every now and then renting washington for an extra hour or two on sundays so that we could pot luck it together. i think pot lucks are one of the true signs of a church 🙂 we may (hopefully) start doing this. we need to eat together and share our favorite foods.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – devon told me last night that i have won him over to the joys of sweater vests. victory!

we should soon begin the formal process of incorporating tapestry. a while back i asked a group of threads to help me develop a constitution for tapestry and i have since had several people with knowledge in such matters look it over. since it is pretty much complete now we are able to begin the process of incorporating tapestry. since you guys who are threads will eventually have the chance to become a member of tapestry (which will not be as big a deal at tapestry as it is at some other churches) i thought some of you might enjoy the chance of looking at and reading the constitution the group came up with. i think it does a great job of saying who we are without saying things that would limit us in the future.

so here’s a pdf of the constitution.

i’ve mentioned “this american life” a few times before. i love it. ira glass and all those involved with “”life” do an incredible job of telling stories. i save it in my weekly podcast rotation much like i save my favorite part of a meal to eat last. i want the goodness of “life” to be the last thing my ears remember from all the quality podcasts that i listen to.

that’s why i was so pleasantly surprised recently when i found out that i could stream the “this american life” showtime series on my netflix account. as usually happens when pamela is gone i’ve been having a hard time falling asleep. you get used to the sound and feeling of someone in the bed next to you and then when she’s not there it throws off your circadian rhythm. thus absence and sleep deprivation make the heart grow fonder. i’ll sleep sometime after pamela gets back to the states.

anyhow last night while letting adam and noah play on the xbox 360 i thought i would search through the instant queue on our netflix account. that’s when i found two seasons of “this american life.” JACKPOT! during the rest of the night while my eyes may have been glazing over my brain smiled as i watched both seasons. mhmmm! i like surprises like that.

SIDE NOTE – try as i might i can’t get any of the facebook comment plugins for wordpress to work. they never actually bring any of the comments from the notes that form on facebook from my blog posts to come back over here. if anyone has been able to get a facebook comment plugin to work and wouldn’t mind helping a brother out i would be extremely grateful.

i have finally given in to devon.

i’m not a huge fan of headworn mics. they feel pretty poserish to me. i blame this on the the friends that i used to work with in the parkview church youth ministry suite. they always referred to headworn mics as “dirty pop” mics and therefore i have always felt like wearing one of those mics was just an attempt to look like “the cool pastor.” i’m not a “cool pastor.” in fact i’m pretty close to as far from being the “cool pastor” as you can be (is there a such thing as the “uncool pastor” stereotype?) just ask devon. he came to tapestry last week wearing what he called my sunday uniform … a sweater vest and jeans (i do love a sweater vest).

the problem is that that i am regularly told that quality hearing at washington elementary school is determined by the direction you are speaking. so if i’m speaking to the left, then the left can hear fine. unfortunately the right side can’t hear at all. this really became a problem a couple of weeks ago when we held our worship gathering “in the round.” people said my “conspiratorial whisper” (apparently the tone i get when i start talking softer) was impossible to hear unless i was looking straight at them.

now you may be saying “get a lavalier microphone.” i have one and it works ok but not great. of course, i could also just give up my whisper but i love to whisper.

devon (our sound guys) has been telling me to get a headworn mic for a year now. when i told him about my feelings concerning them his response was simple. “well that’s your own stupid thoughts .. they work better and you should get one.” that’s really one of the things i love about tapestry – nobody is afraid to call me out when i am being stupid.

so i just bought a “blemished” (of course) audio technica mic. which means everyone should be able to hear my “conspirorial whisper” next sunday. woohoo!

i’m almost finished with the tangible kingdom by hugh halter and matt smay and i’ve enjoyed it thus far. i may be enjoying it more because the book was recommended to me from two different people who said they were reminded of tapestry while they were reading it (thanks john & trey). the more i read of the book the more thankful i am that people think we are doing something similar. it’s a nice compliment.

i think their lists are pretty accurate. i much prefer the incarnational model, especially the idea of apprenticeship. we need let people try on faith to determine if they really believe or not.