one of the books i just finished reading is george barna’s book “revolution.” it’s pretty interesting. i’m not sure i agree with all of his main points but i do what what he has to say very interesting. if nothing else i completely agree with him that the modern church has been way to focused on itself. we have focused our money on building bigger and nicer buildings and arenas, concentrating our efforts on getting more people into our programs and activities, spending more time and money just trying to get as many people as possible into a one hour service while calling that church, and we haven’t really been about living out the kingdom of heaven. in “jim and casper go to church” casper, and avowed aethist, asks jim “is this what JESUS told you guys to do?” i think it’s a great question to ask and one that i believe we should consider. i wonder how different many of our decisions would be if we seriously asked that questions before anything we did.
br
we’re back in mobilbe now after spending the weekend in baton rouge. pam graduated (woohoo), we saw people we love, and we hung out at a few places we love (mainly eating establishments). it was a great weekend and pam and i are both so thankful for our friends that we got to spend time with and wish we had been able to spend time with many others that we love.
i was able to finish “under the banner of heaven” and it was pretty cool.
i’m watching an hbo documentary called “hard as nails.” it’s … ummmm … interesting. i guess.
btw, happy CHRISTmas adam.
driving straight
there was a time in my life when i could drive straight through the night on a 17 hour journey without any effect upon myself. that time has passed me by.
last night the fam and i drove straight through the night from plover, wisconsin to saraland, alabama. it was 17 hours and therefore quite long. lots of sunflower seeds and audiobooks are the only way i am able to stay awake. the good side is that we are now at my parents house and we have the day to rest before heading over to baton rouge for pam’s graduation. we’ll spend a few days over in baton rouge seeing friends and then head back to saraland/mobile/daphne, alabama for CHRISTmas.
ah, the fun of holiday travel. one of the things that made last night’s journey more bearable was an audio book that i downloaded off itunes. it’s john krakauer’s “under heaven’s banner.” i really like krakauer’s writing style and i have enjoyed the audiobook thus far. it’s basically a detailing of a vicious double muder in utah and how mormon plural marriage lead to it. i have disagreed with a few of his assumptions of concerning faith. krakauer has made several statements to the fact that he apparently believe that faith is the suspension of reason. i would strongly disagree with this. while, i would never say that reason can prove faith, because faith always implies trust and trust implies a lack of visible finitude, i do believe with anslem in a mindset of “faith seeking understanding.” this does not imply a suspension of reason but admits that ultimately we come down to a “leap of faith” or an “act of trust.” still krakauer’s book is very entertaining though not very positive of any of the over 200 branches of the lds faith.
unfortunately i’m almost through with krakauer’s audio book (1/5 left to listen to). the positive side is that after i finish “under the banner of heaven” i have an abridged version of stephen colbert’s “i am america (and so can you).” pam and i can’t wait to listen to that. i just wish it was unabridged.
curling report & how not to plant a church
i curled tonight and once again we won. our record is 6 – 1. woohoo!
i wasn’t the greatest church planter today at walmart. i was trying to find a parking spot when these too “thugish” guys came walking down the middle of the lane. i drove up the lane a little bit and they kept walking up the middle of the lane. they walked right in the middle of the lane all the way of to my car. i have to tell you that i absolutely hate it when someone acts in such away that everyone else must accommodate them. it drives me crazy. so i said out loud in my car, “get off of the road”, where they could see it. that’s when they flipped me off.
i’ve always thought the appropriate response to someone shooting the bird at you was the blow a kiss at them. in my experience it just ticks people off. so i blew a kiss at the guys.
i was right it ticked the guys off.
one of them hit my car with his hand. i’m not real cool with that. i stopped my car, rolled down my window, and shouted “you better not have hurt my car” (which is pretty funny because my car is 1998 626 with 160,000 miles on it – there’s not much you could do to hurt it). his response was “pedestrians have the right of way ***hole.” i shouted back, “not when you walk down the middle of the road but i am impressed that you know a 4 syllable word.”
i guess that caught them off guard because they paused shouted “merry ******* CHRISTmas” and left.
probably not the best way to win friends and influence people but it drives me crazy when people acts like the whole world revolves around them.
she just gets better and better
my wonderful wife turned 40 today. she is amazing.
home is where the robert is
i’m back from my weekend in chicago. it was a good weekend on a whole. i enjoyed spending time with the pierces and seeing matt’s show. other than that i pretty much just spent the weekend traveling back and forth on the “L“. the “blue line” was under reconstruction and that slowed everything down.
the surprise when i got home was that noah had been able to get his wii. my youngest son started saving up awhile back to buy a wii. a few weeks ago he finally had enough money but since the wii is now the “must have” CHRISTmas gift it was impossible for us to find a wii that noah could buy with his own money. i don’t really go for the whole driving around and stalking the “must have” CHRISTmas gift thing. I kind of think the whole thing is absurd. the difference here was that noah had been saving money for 6 months to get this thing. my boy had done his work and pam and i wanted to help him get it. while i was gone one of our neighbors who was in a similar situation called pam and said target had some wii’s come in. pam and noah rushed over to target and the child was rewards for his saving. it’s been a ton of fun. i can’t wait to take it to alabama with us and get the rest of the family to play.
chicago churches?
i’m going to be in chicago this weekend. does anyone have any suggestions for where i should go to church? it would be cool to go to some place where they are doing something different.
snape, snape, severus snape
my oldest son showed me this puppet show of harry potter characters. it’s quite funny and sadly a little catchy.
minneapolis
yesterday was my whirlwind trip to minneapolis. the purpose was to buy the dinner table from ikea that pam has been wanting since our last trip over there. since i was going i thought i could visit a couple of churches that i was familiar with but had never really experienced. i went with the purpose of visiting hope community church and solomon’s porch but some where along the day i found out that i also had the opportunity to visit another church, jacob’s well, whose website looked interesting, and was only two blocks away from solomon’s porch (apparently there are several different churches in minneapolis named “jacob’s well”). it was a wonderful day of very diverse and yet very similar worship of our CREATOR.
so here are my thoughts on the churches:
hope community church
- tons of college students which hopefully will be similar to what the make up of tapestry will be. it was a wonderful vibe.
- there was a real excitement in the room – people were glad to be there.
- the music was incredible – i felt very connected to the group when we were singing
- the church was about more than a service – things the church was doing were brought up many times within the service (not in a marketing manner but in a “let’s be a part of the kingdom” type of thing) – i particularly loved the “older” members wanting to take care of the college students during their study time before finals.
- lots of involvement from the community of faith – i already knew steve, the lead pastor, from my assessment, so i knew that he’s a guy who doesn’t have to be the center of attention. still i was impressed when i didn’t see him “in front” of the church at all until the sermon came about. everything else was done by different people. i didn’t count how many people acted as leaders during the service but i know it was over five different people. it was definitely a service that came from the community of hope.
solomon’s porch
- tons of art that i am assuming came from the community of solomon’s porch – it was all good stuff but it didn’t feel like they had just randomly brought in people to do art for art’s sake. instead, all the art felt as though it was people from within the community trying to express their faith. there was a 7′ to 8′ model goose hanging from the ceiling – i’m not sure what it was expressing but i thought it best not to sit under it just in case it was equiped with the ability to “bomb” those beneath it.
- no announcements – the only thing i would have considered even close to an announcement was young lady at the end of the service who told the gathering of CHRISTmas lights being made by prison labor in china and our need to no support that with our finances – not really anything like an announcement. it was really nice to worship without being interrupted by what is usually just marketing. the announcements were in other forms throughout the building.
- i loved the couches that filled the room – the whole thing felt like a living room.
- it was stranger friendly – i wasn’t raised in church and therefore i get a little picky about churches doing “churchy things” and not even attempting to explain what’s going on. solomon’s porch explained everything. it was great.
- there are a lot of “power structures” set up within normal church buildings (pulpits separate the speaker from the people, microphones make one voice louder, etc.)- solomon’s porch didn’t have any of these and seemed to enjoy doing the opposite of what these power structures demand (for example, there were apparently two members of the community who are the “pronounce guys” for difficult words who would tell doug pagitt how he should pronounce those words – i don’t know many pastors that would be cool with that). it ws awesome.
jacob’s well
- i went to an evening service that they had apparently just begun and i missed the first 20 minutes of the service. i think i caught them on a bad night and so i won’t say anything other than the leadership team seemed to really love each other and i think that’s important.
there are actually many more wonderful things that i could say about hope community & solomon’s porch but i’m pretty tired from putting pam’s table together and therefore i am stopping for the night.
money
for the last few weeks i’ve been posting emails that i am sending to some young friends of mine for whom i am officiating their wedding ceremony. they are getting premarital counseling from a great guy who is geographically closer than i am but i still felt like i would be remiss if i didn’t make sure a few things were covered. i’m actually 99% sure that the counselor will cover this stuff but i would rather send a useless email than not have some things covered.
anyhow, here’s the fourth email.
hello again guys. i write this to you from a warm coffee shop with 10″ of snow outside the door. wow, life is tough! i hope things are going great for both of you and that the ceremony plans are going well but aren’t completely taking over the your holiday season. just think next year you will celebrate our SAVIOR’s birth as a new family.
anyway thus far i have emailed you concerning what i view as the purpose of marriage, relational defaults, and how to fight. now let’s talk about money.
according to many marriage counselors and studies money is reason numero uno for divorce. it’s a big deal and therefore, as a soon to be married young couple you really need to deal with it. i’m going to just hit on a couple of issues (the first being the most important) and encourage you to read some books on personal finance for more in depth advice. there are some excellent sources out there. just like my belief that the couple that works hard at their marriage will have a successful marriage, i also believe that the individual/couple who works at controlling their finances will be successful at it.
1. you should determine your lifestyle rather than your money determining it
the majority of people live the way they do because of the amount of income they have. that’s why there is not a great deal of difference between the savings rate of the highest and lowest earners in america. in my opinion it’s pretty easy to determine who your god is if your lifestyle is determined by how much much you make. i.e. you should control your money rather than it controlling you. what this means is that you should determine how much it will cost you to live (i.e. a budget – insurance, school, food, transportation, clothing, housing, entertainment, etc.) and then live off that rather than just spending based however much you have in your checking account. if you control your money you will soon find that you will have saved money that you can then use to do whatever GOD directs you to do. this is actually why i believe the tithe is so important – not because GOD needs our money, because HE doesn’t – rather it is because it helps us to always determine who we put our trust in – the amount of money we have or the LORD WHO longs for us to acknowledge HIS LORDship.2. know how each other operates monetarily
it is exceptionally important that you both sit down and talk about each of your attitudes toward money, spending, debt, and savings. the chances that you will both naturally agree on everything is basically nil. you have both gone through families that had their own unique views and understandings of money. you are both coming into your marriage with those views (either ones that you saw in your parents and decided you liked or ones that you saw in your parents and you decided you wanted to avoid). having different views is actually a good thing because it will help to balance out your marriage rather than allowing it to swing to one side or the other (hoarding and gluttony are both things that a CHRISTian should avoid). you need to understand where each of you is coming from. the worst thing that can happen is that you don’t talk about these things and then assume that the other person agrees. one of you may have a tendency to penny and dime money away much more than the other. one of you may have an inherent fear of debt while the other has no problem with it. one of you may prefer generic items while the other has a psychological need for brands (and this could just be on certain items). know each other and then correct what you both believe needs to be corrected and understand the rest. communication is key here. talk it all out.3. begin saving now
i’ll mention retirement in a moment. what i’m talking about right now is just developing the habit of regularly saving money. this doesn’t necessarily mean money that you never touch (consider that retirement money). rather, what i mean is consistently placing money aside for when needs arise (and they will) or opportunities arise (i believe you will be more open to seeing the needs around that GOD wants you to met when you have been consistently saying “no” to random luxuries and wastes within your own life). establish a savings account and start placing money from every check into this account. this will be your first option when an emergency arises.4. credit is not evil – but it’s close.
credit is a very easy way to get the things that your parents spent years gathering (i.e. matching furniture, etc). it is also an easy way to get into a great deal of trouble. i’m sure as college students you have already experienced how easy it is to get credit. that’s not necessarily a bad thing. credit has it’s place, but please approach the use of it with fear and trembling. the credit card companies are not out to help you. if anything they want to reduce you to the status of indentured servants. use credit as a very last resort and use “i don’t need that” as your first resort if at all possible. don’t believe the “same as cash” and “no interest” statements because these are merely lures and we all know what happens to a fish when it bites at a passing “lure.” if you are entering your marriage with debt (on either side) bring it out into the open and establish a plan now for getting rid of that debt.5. start retirement as early as you possibly can.
at your age compounding interest is your friend. if at all possible you both should start setting aside a little money for retirement. if you do this at your age you will be amazed at how quickly it will grow. the reason for this is compounding interest. it will make a huge difference if you start early and very little difference if you start late. so start early.it’s homework time! since we have just spent time talking about controlling money within our lives (actually i’m the only one talking but we can pretend) i’m going to recommend brown bagging it this time. make a meal (almost always much cheaper than buying one). make it a good meal (still usually cheaper) and go some where scenic and talk about how you each approach money.
- talk about what fears and assumptions you have concerning money and how you approach it.
- talk about what expenses and income you will have.
- together develop a budget. you won’t really know if you can live on this budget until you’ve tracked expenses for a couple of money but start off with it anyway. then when you’ve been married for a couple of months, and you’ve tracked your expenses, redo your budget and really look into how you are spending the income you have.
my run for the day
- distance – 3.0 miles
time – 27:43
pace – 9:15/mile
weather – 18°/snow