I mispell things!
a very interesting video from penn gillette concerning a man giving him a gideon bible. i’m fascinated by gillette’s statement that he doesn’t respect people (of belief) who do not proselytize. his statement is “how much do you have to hate someone to not proselytize?”
ht tony jones
it is my cute wife’s birthday today. i think she is pretty awesome. she’s godly, smart, cute, incredibly domestic, adventurous, challenging, and much more.
pam follows a forum for the wives of pastors, which i think is funny because anyone who knows pam knows that she is not like the typical pastor’s wife – how many pastors’ wives do you know that are ph.d professors? ok, so now i have to right a brief sidebar right in the middle of this post (rather a fun statement to make).
as a minister for 20 years i have been around many pastors and their spouses (remember not all pastors are men – but for the rest of this post i am going to generalize to men pastors because that is primarily where this experience comes from). in my interactions with these ministers i have constantly heard them say “my wife is always told that she doesn’t look anything like a pastor’s wife.” i laugh most of the times i hear this because i believe that looks are pretty much meaningless. i’ve been around pastors and pastors’ wives who look cool and hip and yet act just like the general stereotype of pastors – that everyone should heed their words, that everyone should serve them, that they have unearned authority just because of the position that have been placed in by their congregation, that others should instantly take care of their kids for them, etc. it’s really just like all the references in the old testament concerning people putting on the outside looks of piety but never having the inward actions of piety. the only difference is here it’s about putting on the outside looks of not being a typical pastor’s wife (or pastor) and yet in your interactions with people actting out the very worst of the pastor/pastor’s wife stereotype. thus it’s always funny that some people think that not being like a pastoral or pastors’ wife-orial stereotype is just about how someone looks. i would rather be around a pastor or pastor’s wife that looks the stereo type but acts like a humble servant than around someone who looks like ryan seacrest or his female counterpart (who is seacrest’s female counterpart?).
okay – rant ended. oh and mom and dad, don’t worry this rant isn’t from anything that has happened recently. it’s just developed from being at enough ministers’ conferences. you see the best and sometimes the worst at those things.
ok, now back to the pastors’ wives’ forum that pam reads every now and then. pam told me yesterday about at message thread from the forum concerning CHRISTmas bonuses. the thread is discussing whether or not you get a CHRISTmas bonus from your church. that’s when pam looked at me and said “you know what your CHRISTmas bonus is this year?” being a male i could think of several great responses to this question but i held my tongue. so pam replied, “you’re leading a church that is getting it. they’re getting what church should be and they’re getting the whole advent conspiracy thing.”
pam’s right. in the past several weeks pam and i have seen the young adults and college students of tapestry act out CHRISTmas in real ways. gloves and coats were brought to the tapestry hot drink night so that we could turn our time together into a time of taking care of others. some young men of tapestry decorated a neighbor in need’s house because they new he wouldn’t have the chance to do it. we know of gifts that are all about relationship that have been made, produced, etc. money is being raised for a freshwater well for a community. on a personal note i have received several messages from people who already feel that tapestry is a gift from GOD and that they are being able to live out their faith in more meaningful ways because of what GOD is doing through the people of tapestry. that’s the kind of CHRISTmas bonus that i like.
if you are a minister somewhere and you get a CHRISTmas bonus gift this year that’s great. please don’t read this post as if i am trashing on churches giving gifts to their ministers because i am not. i am just saying that for me this year what is happening at tapestry is the best CHRISTmas bonus i’ve received in 20 years of ministry. anything else would probably distract for that great bonus and neither pam nor i want that.
as a youth minister for 18 years and a dad of 14 years i have learned a tried and true trick for making sure that i get something to eat … which has now been screwed up by my church family at tapestry.
when i was doing youth ministry it always turned out that i was busy doing something important when the food was being handing out. maybe i was talking with a teen, volunteer, or parent. maybe i was fixing a last minute detail or problem that had just occurred. whatever the reason i always seemed to be a little busy when the food was being dug into and it was always gone by the time i was free to eat. it never failed. no matter how much or little food i or the staff bought it would be gone by the time i was going to eat. it drove me nuts.
i guess it is more correct to say that is it drove me nuts <em>until</em> i remembered the weird things that my dad liked to eat. i quickly realized that the old fart had purposely developed tastes for things my brother and i didn’t like just so those items would be left for him. i hate to admit that my dad has ever had a good idea and i’m actually pretty sure that he didn’t create this idea but merely stole it from someone else ;). anyhow, i recognized the genius for what it was (whether it was stolen genius or not didn’t much matter to me) and i realized that there was something that i like that adolescents didn’t … pecan sandies.
i’m not sure why it is true but apparently something within the teenaged brain translates the wonderful taste of pecan sandies into a repulsive experience. i’ve verified it from about 17 years of youth ministry food purchasing. i could always depend upon the pecan sandies being left almost untouched from any youth event. all the pizza would disappear, the double stuffed oreos would be gone before i ever got a look at them, and the only diet coke that would be left by the end of the night would be the flat stuff. yet i could always count on my sandies being left pristine for me. it was a great thing.
nobody ever informed me that planting a church would screw up all my paste ideas and methods. i’m not sure why i had never thought of it before but i now know that my sandies are not a safe bet for me anymore. the problem is that by starting a church i now participate within a ministry that has too many adults and too few adolescents for my pecan sandy method to work. i discoverd this when pam bought cookies this sunday night. pam knows the drill so she bought a bag of sandies for me knowing that i would be able to have some at the end of the night to satisfy my craving. instead i ended up seeing young adults walking around the room with my pecan sandies in their hands. they looked like they were dunking the sandies in their coffee and talking with each other but i know what they were really doing. they were spitting in my eye! 🙂
ah, live and learn. now i have to find a different cookie that nobody likes but me.
ok, i’m going to start this by admitting that i know this is a bit off. the above photo is from the lions club building that is on the main stevens point area drag. it is exactly what it looks like. the lions club is seeking to raise funds to take kids to their lions club camps by getting people to donate the hides from the deers that they kill during hunting season. i think it’s brilliant and extremely creative. someone in the lions club realized that they could take something most people throw away or at the most turn into fleet farm for a $10 gift card and use it to raise funds for accomplishing their mission. apparently it is working because the box keeps filling up. this is not your traditional way of accomplishing an organization’s goal and that is what i love about it.
if only the church could be this creative. if only tapestry can be this creative. well maybe as creative as the spirit of the deer hide gathering. i’m not real sure that i want to go about collecting deer hides.
just typing a few random things:
some of you are probably tired of me talking about the gobo sign but i thought for those that were still interested i would post a final photo showing how it worked. i still have to fine tune it a little to get rid of a small amount of blurriness but i was still pleased with it. you can now definitely tell that we are in the building. in fact, you can see the "light" sign from further away than you can see our normal sign when we have daylight.
i think the thing that excited me the most was what pam heard when she was driving a few students in from the uwsp campus. when the students saw the sign they screamed out "we have a tapestry sign" and "i love our sign." of course, they then also said that we need a theme song. do churches have theme songs? what would a church theme song sound like? when would we use a church theme song? these are questions that need an answer.
happy birthday noah!
the above photo is not a wonderful picture of them but pam came up with a great idea for our house tonight. we both love luminaries and she thought we should use the snow to our advantage by poking a hole in the snow and then placing a candle in the hole to act as a luminary for when people came over for the tapestry CHRISTmas hot drink night (which was a lot of fun). it looked great.
when i was a kid i loved riding over to my paternal grandparent’s neighborhood during CHRISTmas because so many of the neighbors put out luminaries along their street. even as an 8 year old boy i thought it was pretty.
now for the fun of it i am going to experiment with some ice luminaries.
so i was wondering if any of you wold share your stream of thought when you here the word “incarnation?” i’m not just looking for church answers here. anything is cool. for those unfamiliar with the word a dictionary definition of the word is:
obviously i’m not looking for a dictiionary definition because i just gave you one. i’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts when they hear or think about the word.
any help here, be it from religious or non-religious sources, would be appreciated.