the good news
the bad news
- i’ve now lost all respect for marko and must find someone new to badger into posting a link to one of my posts. perhaps it will be j.t. (blessed be his name). after all, he is a youth ministry god.
neighbors?
i found this yesterday in one of our trees. according to what i have read i need to wait till the first or second hard freeze before removing it. adam wants to take it in to his biology class, which is fine after a freeze kills everything. i would hate to give them a semi-live nest for their classroom. that would make for an interesting story but not one that i really want to personally experience.
busy
i’m pretty busy right now so i can’t post about anything (specifically the 5 remaining reasons why marko should post a link to my blog) but i’ll try to do this tonight or tomorrow. otherwise life has been busy because:
- pam finishes the final draft of her dissertation today – pam is not to be bothered and therefore i’m running interference with the boys.
- yesterday the mall of america took forever – same as every other mall in america (i.e. boring) only bigger (and thus even more boring). still it was a fun day with the family.
- i’m feeling in for another church planter in appleton, wisconsin (an hour away from home) and so i’m busy with prepping for that.
- went to a salvation army church today – it’s not hard to guess who the visitor is when there are 10 people in the room.
i’ll write more later. now i have to continue figuring out what to do with a group of 15 people that i have never had any contact with. it’s hard to be “relational” when there’s no relationship there.
chapel of love?
pam, the boys and i are going to the mall of america tomorrow to meet a few of pam’s e-buddies from around the area. pam is really looking forward to putting faces with the names and personalities of the women she has been talking with over the past few years. the thing is that none of us are very excited about going to the mall itself. i’m sure we’ll have fun, because i have great kids and a wonderful wife, but malls are just not very high on the priority list for us and this one being the biggest mall in north america actually lowers our desire to go there instead of increasing it.
while pam was looking up some information on the mall of america she discovered that it has a wedding chapel within it’s boundaries. it’s called the “chapel of love.” the thought of a wedding taking place within a mall is one of the saddest commentaries ever on the values of western culture. it’s so sad that there is no need for me to talk about it.
love
dreaming of woven paper
anybody know how to weave paper? and if you do is it possible that you also know if you can print on it? i know this sounds odd but i’ve been thinking of doing information flyer’s or cards on woven paper. it might not work at all but you never know until you ask and try.
earlier tonight i was listening to ten shekel shirt’s song “cheer up.” it’s a great song. one part of the song kept nailing me. the song ends saying:
wake up it’s time to dream bigger. wake up it’s time.
i’ve heard people talk in church many times concerning dreaming big but it usually came across as “get more people to come to church and do it within the budget that exists” (it was probably just me thinking that). not a very big dream in my opinion. don’t get me wrong, i’m okay with a church growing in size (after all, at the moment tapestry consists of only four members and all of them are named terrell – it would be nice to have at least a little variety of names) but i don’t usually find GOD-given dreams within scripture being about getting more people to come to church. often GOD-given dreams are about fighting for the freedom of people (which is about salvation but not necessarily church membership) but other times these dreams are about dynamic changes in the way we understand our faith (consider peter), or changes in the direction we are going (consider paul), or challenges that press our faith onward (consider jacob, or lead us to act one way knowing others will disagree (consider jospeh), or many other things. these were dreams that pushed the followers of GOD to do dangerous, risky things. these were things that other people might not always understand. these were things that required GOD’s presence to be accomplished. in fact, if GOD didn’t show up then catastrophic failure was just around the corner. i think dreaming and risk may go hand in hand.
so what are some big dreams?
i hope we all (and i in particular) can dream bigger and risk much. if we did it might be a scary adventure but it would definitely be a great one.
RANDOM QUOTE – to kill a mockingbird
homer simpson
books are useless! i only ever read one book, “to kill a mockingbird,” and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! sure it taught me not to judge a man by the color of his skin…but what good does *that* do me?
determination
if you ever want to learn about determination all you have to do is walk two basset hounds. i love walking my dogs but i hate it when they see a chipmunk. they are a pleasure to walk until they see those small furry vermin. when they see a chipmunk they go after it with all the strength they have, which is quite substantial. since they weigh nearly fifty pounds each they are decent size dogs. unlike a labrador or other dog of similar weight the basset’s center of gravity is about six inches off the ground. it’s like have a small tractor on a “choker” collar and a leash. speaking of “choker” collars i need to point out that once they see a chipmunk my bassets apparently no longer need to breathe and therefore they no longer seem to view the “chocker” collar as a deterrent to running. the only thing my bassets care about in those moments is the chipmunk and they dig into the ground with the determination of a mountain climber about to summit. i weight 185 pounds and these two dogs do a pretty decent job of pulling me along towards any chipmunk they want to chase. my only hope is to i slow my two dogs down long enough for the chipmunks to disappear. it takes all my strength to accomplish this goal. once the little “rat” vanishes my dogs are suddenly more than happy to continue our walk. i’m sure they are secretly doing all of this as a joke on me.
SIDE NOTE – i’m still trying to figure out the phone situation for the church. if anyone has an idea for aquiring a church phone number on a low budget without a physical address i’m all ears. skype won’t work because they don’t have a local number for stevens point. i’ve looked through a couple of internet services tha offer voicemail services but none of them have a local number either. the other options i can think of right now are vonage or a local cell phone but both of these cost a little more than i would prefer for something that will merely be voicemail.
SIDE SIDE NOTE – i am very excited about the movie “into the wild“. jim got me hooked on jon krakauer’s writing. if the movie is true to krakaeur’s story of the life and death of chris mccandless then it will be great.
my word
i have mad respect for lsu coach les miles. i can’t remember the last time i saw a coach so concerned about winning the game that he wasn’t afraid to lose it all. those fourth down plays were extremely gutsy. dang it that was impressive.
spam
how funny is this? the ministers’ meeting i went to today is called “stevens point area ministers” or “SPAM.” yes, i throughly enjoyed spending my lunch hour with a group called “spam”. i went to the other area ministers’ group last week – sorry no cool name for that one but we did pray for an hour solid, which was great.
today “spam” sat through a presentation from justice works – an organization fighting for restorative justice. the presentation was from a portage county judge who said he had been on the bench in portage county for 30 years and now that he was seeing grandchildren of past defendants in court he wanted to do something to stop the cycle. it was excellent presentation and idea. so i’m going through mentor training in the near future to mentor someone who has gone through the criminal justice system as a defendant. i figured it was a great balancing act in case i do get to be a police chaplain.
i’ve been struck today by how often we (as in people in the world) divide situations into two extremes and decide that only one could be true. case in point – if you’re conservative you believe in law & order, while you believe in restorative justice if you’re liberal. why can’t both be true and both worked on? another case to consider – churches seem to either care about evangelism (i.e. telling people of the healing salvific power of CHRIST) or social justice (i.e. being instruments of CHRIST’s healing within society). seems to me that both are a part of the kingdom of JESUS. yet conservatives focus on evangelism almost exclusively and liberal churches focus on social justice. there are tons of other examples – environmentalist vs. capitalist, and others. why does this have to be an “either/or” type of thing?
i wonder if sometimes we (i mean this as “i”) do this because we (again i mean “i”) are too lazy to deal with both sides of the issue.