I mispell things!
someone stole kinetic church’s trailer with 75% of their equipment. they’ve posted stuff all over the internet and on bulletin boards to get the thieves to see the above video. quite a cool response.
here’s a link to one of the billboards they produced to get the theif’s attention.
this was not a fun day in regards to my interaction with certain industries’ user friendliness. first, i spent a decent part of my morning visiting a new vet (oh how i miss our vet in baton rouge). our oldest cat has high blood pressure and our oldest dog needed some vaccinations. it wasn’t a very cool visit. the pain didn’t come from either one of the pets being sick, but instead the pain came from the dealing with a vet tech whose job is apparently to try and “up sale” everybody you walks in the door. i actually spent more time talking with the tech trying to sell me additional and more expensive services, than i did with the vet explaining how my pets are doing. the vet tech wanted me to get a more expensive heart worm test than the one that is usually done. why? because it picks up an additional disease. when i asked what the treatment would be if one of my dogs was found with the disease her response was that the vast majority of time they don’t do anything. why would i want to get a test that would show me something that we then aren’t going to do anything about? when i asked for a prescription script for my dogs’ heartworm medicine she tried to convince me out of that because the drug companies warranty doesn’t work when the drugs are bought online. i told her that every real product produced had < ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty#Fitness_for_a_particular_purpose">an implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose and that’s all i would need. that’s when she responded with “well we’ll price match their price.” great, why didn’t you tell me that sooner rather than just trying to scare me with a lame treat? anyhow, it wasn’t a fun trip to the vet.
in the afternoon had my second non-user friendly experience. the coolant crossover hose on my mazda sprung a leak. the cross over house is a 5″ long hose that connects two metal fitting that are approximately 1″ apart from each other. it’s not a big deal to replace other than it was placed in a position that is nigh impossible to reach. since, i know that about half of a car’s design is making sure that a good number of it’s parts will have to be replaced at appropriate times you would think that cars would be a little easier for the non mechanic to work on. of course, the goal is for non-mechanics not to be able to work on the cars. instead, they want everyone to have to come in and pay for a dealer mechanic to replace the 5″ hose and other various parts. maintenance on our vehicles is a great source of income only if people aren’t able to work on their cars by themselves. so the car manufactures make the cars impossible to work on. it drives me nuts.
anyhow, these two experiences got me to thinking (in addition to just getting me mad). i wonder how often within church we inadvertently try to force people to have to rely on us? i would look at the vet and the car manufacture as allies if i felt like they were trying to help me rather than just get me to have to depend upon them more and more. shouldn’t the church work on helping people to live out the faith outside the walls of the church? it seems like we sometimes teaching people that our job is to provide the worship opportunities and their job is just to come to them. shouldn’t we be teaching people how to worship not only in the church but to worship in all of life? shouldn’t we be teaching people how to serve within our communities and neighborhoods instead of just how to serve within the church? sometimes it seems like we are teaching people that we’ll provide the mission trips and then they can serve.
we should be helping people to live out the faith when their within the church building and even more importantly outside of it. i believe the term for this is holistic – faith in JESUS effects everything we do and are. the church should be a sending and training area. we should be helping people to be dependent upon JESUS rather than more and more dependent upon an institution. then we would be people’s allies in their walk with CHRIST.
we have great neighbors. we had great neighbors in baton rouge and we were afraid when we moved to the point area that we might lose that and have neighbors that we didn’t really connect with. thankfully that didn’t happen. while no one can ever replace the wonderful neighbors we had in baton rouge it’s nice to know that we have wonderful friends in our new home too.
we just finished eat steaks and talking for a very long time with a couple of our neighbors. it was a wonderful evening.
SIDE NOTE – i listen to a great seminar on missiology from ed stetzer today. he brought up an interesting point of the main question that CHRISTianity attempts to ask the world … “if you were to die tonight do you know for sure where you would spend eternity.” he made a good point in pointing out that this question has been the main question that CHRISTians have tried to ask and answer for non-CHRISTians for the past 30 years while the big questions that people have been searching for answers for have changed. i wonder what the “big” questions are around all of us. if we don’t know the questions it is very difficult for us to show how JESUS can be the answer.
the discussion of faith within desperate housewives just got better. of course, we’re flipping channels because there are other parts happening that we don’t really want to watch and definitely don’t want our kids watching. yet the scenes of the two characters discussing faith are so good that i may have to download the episode and use it for discussion sunday night at tapestry’s launch team meeting.
i have never seen an episode of desperate housewives before. i know it’s pretty popular bu it just hasn’t been on my list of shows to watch. so i was greatly surprised when pam and i were flipping through the channels and we ran across a television conversation on someone going to church. i didn’t realize until the end of the scene that it was desperate housewives.
apparently one character had gone to another character’s church and accidentally caused a little embarrassment. the character who has visited the church was preparing to go to another church service that evening and was excited about it. she was preparing more questions. that’s when the the hosting character said “church isn’t a place for questions, it’s a place for answers. that’s why we don’t ask the pastor questions during his sermon.” the visitor responded with “but what if i need a place where i can ask questions?” i’m not really sure how the host character responded because pam started shouting “THEN YOU NEED TO COME TO TAPESTRY!”
of course, i would agree with my wife and we are presently watching the end of the episode to see what happens. i would never have thought that i would be excited about watching desperate housewives. i probably should turn in my man card.
i’m beginning to learn how thankful i should have been for the infrastructure that was already established within the churches that i have previously worked at. i had just assumed a great number of things. at the established churches that i had worked at making copies was never an issue. i might have to choose between black and white or color copies but i never had to worry about the cost of copies. it was just an assumed thing. or ink. i never had to think about “how much ink will this take and how much will it cost me” every year when i plan the budget for the youth ministry i never had to account for ink. of course, that’s no longer true. the same goes for a great deal of other things such as, staples, envelopes, note cards, pens, etc. it’s amazing all the small thing that you start to miss when you no longer have access to them. last week i would have given up an arm or one of my sons for a paper cutter.
this is one of those things that makes me laugh when some pastors i meet say that while they have never planting a church from scratch they basically know what it’s like because they had to restart a church from having almost died. when i hear that i laugh a little.
anyway, does anyone have a paper cutter that they don’t need anymore? i would gladly pay for shipping. it beats losing an arm or a child (i need the children for raking the yard).
from what i’ve been told by people i love in baton rouge parkview has a new youth minister. i don’t know the guy but i love and respect the people on the youth minister search committee and therefore i’m sure that he must be a great guy for them to have settled on him. anyhow, back in november i posted concerning how i would greet the new youth minister and just in case there is anyone from parkview who still reads this blog (i usually bore people away from the blog within a few weeks so i doubt that anyone has stuck with it) i thought i would repost a link to it. good times are ahead for the youth ministry of parkview. join the new youth minister in realizing how the kingdom of GOD can be lived out in baton rouge.
This is great. It’s a confession from the cookie monster concerning his problem with cookies and with people calling him a monster. It begins with:
Me know. Me have problem.
Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn’t normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.
It makes me laugh. You can read the entire post here at McSweeney’s.
i’m sure most people know this but i figure i’ll say it anyway … if you are older than 29 then you are no longer cool unless you are a rock star or an actor (and all of them are pretty much lame and pathetic so who would want to be one). the reason i say this is because ever now and then i run into one of those people who thinks they are still cool and tries to play the part. for example, a 35 year old man refusing to shake your hand because he insists on dabs instead. now it’s all okay because i’m by no means cool.
it’s official now, i’m a d.min student at nobts. i start my first trimester august of this year. i’ll go down for a business week and do my classes and then come back home and do all my papers. this will happen three times a year or so until i graduate.
