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the sabbath retreat

francis-cookingthis past weekend i took some of our 11th & 12th graders to lake rosemound for an experiment in youth ministry. we had our first ever “sabbath”. in scripture GOD commands that we “sabbath” (or rest) “unto HIM”. we are supposed to stop and rest not just because we need to but also because it is a way of saying that we trust in GOD. resting is hard because we would rather trust our own hands and abilities than trust in a GOD WHO sometimes says “stop working”.

yet american culture is one in which work is worshipped. we love to work. adults and students love to work. so resting, really resting and not just swapping to working on something else, is difficult for us. we feel guilty if we are not doing something. so we ignore our physical, emotional, and spiritual need to rest. if we ever actually do take time off from the “rat race” that is going on around us we turn that time off into a time in which we work on other things. just so we will stay busy.

so the “sabbath” was about resting. we spent allot of time in silence, we spent allot of time doing nothing, we spent allot of time focused on only one passage of scripture and putting ourselves into that scripture. in other words we had a “sabbath”. truthfully it was not easy. it’s really easy to just do something, not really because anything needs to be done, but rather because we feel the need to do something, anything to keep from really being still.

it was a great weekend.

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the good ole days?

i was listening to a local radio station yesterday that was extolling the virtues of the “good ‘ole days”. they were talking about the 50s and early 60s with fond memories. the “good ‘ole days” were days when you could leave your front door unlocked, you didn’t have to worry about your kids being kidnapped or molested, and teen agers never really got into any real trouble.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!

the “good ‘ole days” never really existed. bad things happened even back then. robberies still happened, kids were still kidnapped, and teenagers stilled screwed up. i mean just look at west side story. apparently during the “good ‘ole days” they even fought while singing. who knew snapping could be so dangerous.

yet even if none of those things happened during the “good ‘ole days”, even if you could actually leave your door unlocked, trust your kids being outside, and not worry about your teen’s drinking or doing drugs (all of which i think is actually a “pipe dream” about the past). even if none of those modern evils existed back in the 50s and 60s there was still at least one over riding evil that we no longer have – organized societal racism. remember that the “good ‘ole days” were the days when entire segments of our population were excluded from the “american dream” merely because of their skin color. no that’s not evil is it? our government was prejudice, our towns were prejudice, our society and culture was prejudice, we were prejudice. i believe that JESUS despises racism. i believe that HE is offended when someone, who was made in HIS image, is treated as an inferior.

we still have racism. i’m not trying to say that we have eliminated that evil. i know that we still have problems with treating people different merely because of their skin color. yet in 2005 racism is no longer tolerated in an organized, societal manner within the u.s. that alone, if nothing else, is enough to make these present days the “good ‘ole days.”

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elevation

elevation #2sorry i don’t have any pictures of tonight’s service. the service was really good and i enjoyed it tonight.

earlier today i walked into my study and discovered that someone had placed a u2 elevation tour soccer jersey on my desk. i have a teen in the youth ministry whose dad drives tour busses for various rock groups. one of the groups he has driven for before (and will drive for again on their present tour) is u2. the jersey was one the band gave to him. he found out that i absolutely love u2 and thus the shirt ended up on my desk.

it was fantastic to have them think of me and desire to give me something like that. it made my day and night.

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they better not screw this up

i can’t wait until december 2005 because that is when disney will release the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. c.s. lewis was brillant and i am very excited about this film adaptation of his classic children’s series. they just better not mess it up. the first trailer doesn’t tell much because it is nothing more than customes and such. the film better be good. i’m not sure how i’ll respond if it isn’t. you can’t go messing with a classic unless you do it justice.

anways here’s the trailer for the film.

here’s the trailer for “charlie and the chocolate factory” which is another movie that i really hope the film industry doesn’t mess up. tim burton is doing it and that bodes well for it, but i just can’t imagine johnny depp being able to surpass gene wilder as willy wonka.

some works of fiction are better of not messed with.

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blogathon 2005

sometimes something simple can become something amazing. the tsunami blogathon is simply a guy named darren posting 100 blog entries during a twenty-four hour period (around 1 every fifteen minutes) in hopes of raising some money for the asian tsunami victims. this is really not a huge thing – even though the thought of posting twenty-four original posts is quite daunting in my opinion (at my present rate i post 100 entries every three to four months). yet a large number of people are starting to get behind this small little endeavor. you can be one of the ones who are behind it. go and donate to the cause, watch darren sweat, or even send in a post suggestion. who knows this could become something amazing if we all get behind it.

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blogathon

sometimes something simple can become something amazing. the tsunami blogathon is simply a guy named darren posting 100 blog entries during a twenty-four hour period (around 1 every fifteen minutes) in hopes of raising some money for the asian tsunami victims. this is really not a huge thing – even though the thought of posting twenty-four original posts is quite daunting in my opinion (at my present rate i post 100 entries every three to four months). yet a large number of people are starting to get behind this small little endeavor. you can be one of the ones who are behind it. go and donate to the cause, watch darren sweat, or even send in a post suggestion. who knows this could become something amazing if we all get behind it.

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youth ministry website

i constantly struggle with keeping our youth ministry website current. i’m too cheap (an overriding theme of my life) to actually hire someone else to do the website for me or to pay for one of the “ministry related” website services that you can get through truewell or other organizations that host and design your site for you. nope my cheapness makes me try to do things on my own. the result of this has been that i buy the cheapest web hosting i can find, make a site, and then typically don’t update it for quite sometime.

after a while i feel guilty about the state of the youth ministry website and start a major redesign of the site. i update the site and it looks okay for awhile but then i typically let it get out of date again. it’s a vicious cycle that repeats itself over and over.

but not this time. i think i’ve reached a solution that will last longer than normal. i’ve decided to use the blogger interface to run the youth ministry website. this will make the website look like a blog. i can update it regularly without having to change the code behind it all the time. blogger also let’s change the style of the website simply by changing the style sheet within it. hopefully this thing will work out.

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nailed it

story.xray.kusayou’re not going to believe this!

this article tells the story of patrick lawler a construction worker who went to his dentist complaining of a toothache that has lasted for four days. when the dentist looked into mr. lawler’s mouth he discovered that he had a 4 inch nail embedded in the roof of his mouth. lawler had been working with a nail gun, shooting a nail through a piece of wood. what lawler didn’t know was that while nailing the piece of wood he actually sent out two nails. the spare nail somehow bounced into the palate of his mouth embedding itself into his skull and going 1 1/2 inches into his brain.

he walked around with this nail in his head for six days thinking he had a bad tooth ache. he actually ate ice cream to help lower the swelling of this supposed “tooth ache”. he ended up having to go through a four hour surgery to remove the nail and now seems to be doing well.

my word!

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new website design

i recently figured out how to how to use blogger to continually post updates on the website. this has some incredible advantages, suc as:

  • easy web-based updates from anywhere – i presently really need to be at my church computer in order to update the website or i have to use a test editor which takes me awhile to do.
  • an rss feed for the website – this means that you can use bloglines or another rss fetcher to automatically “fetch” updates from the website.
  • easy c.s.s. updating so i can change the look of the website easily.
  • comments – you can now place your own comments on pages of the website.

so if you haven’t looked at the youth ministry website you might want to do so.

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so proud of my wife

my wife, pam, recently sent in an application to be a part of the game show jeopardy. it’s been a life long goal of hers to be on the show. she received an email today saying that she needs to be in atlanta february 12th for her try out. so of course, she’s going. i’m sure she’ll blog about this later. i’m very proud of her.