Posts

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in need of prozac?

i haven’t posted in a few days because i have had a mini-depression in regards to ministry.

every now and then i go through periods of depression in regards to the work of CHRIST. during these times i sometimes feel like i’m not doing anything worth squat or i’m not making a difference at all or it just feels like nothing i do goes the way it is supposed to. i can’t always tell you why these times happen and there never seems to be much that is predictable about them. sometimes they are related to a specific event that has happened or did not happen but sometimes they are related to events at all. sometimes they last for three to four months, while other times that are over very quickly. sometimes they are times that i can later look back on and see significant progress and growth that took place during them, both in my own life and within the ministry. other times it is just a bland time that i was going through. they never really seem to make sense.

for the past week i’ve gone through a brief one. i say “brief” because for one it was only a week and second i believe it is actually ending. i don’t know why it happened but i do know that i didn’t enjoy being around myself and therefore i am fairly sure that no one else enjoyed being around me either. i sure do hope it is over.

i don’t like these times but because of past experience i am always able to tell myself that “it will pass” and i will enjoy ministry again.

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how stupid are we

mood cross jewlrey

how stupid can we CHRISTians get? have we really been reduced to making “mood” cross pendants? the sad thing is that some of us will spend money on buying these things and will like we are honoring GOD by doing so. good, GOD fearing parents will buy these things for their kids and by doing so think that they are helping their kids to stay close to GOD.

    I hate, I despise your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. even if you offer ME your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept [them]; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. take away from ME the noise of your songs!I will not listen to the music of your harps. but let justice flow like water,

    and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.

why couldn’t we spend our time on justice rather than inventing “mood” cross pendants?

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vengence is miine saith the santa

i just ran across this article concerning santas brawling after the annual santa run in newton, england. every year in newton around 4,000 sanntas run through the streets to raise money for charity. at the end of this year’s race 30 santas started fighting in the street. it became so bad that officers had to use cs spray and batons to beat the disturbance into peace. even though i wasn’t there to see this whole thing the mental picture just makes me laugh.

i wonder if they’re on the “naughty list” now?

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all i want for CHRISTmas is ….

santa visited noah’s class today and did what santa does best – he asked the boys and girls what they would like him to bring them for CHRISTmas. my seven year old son could only think of one thing to say when asked this question. what did he ask for? what was the only thing on his mind? when noah opened his mouth the words that came out were, “i want a really cool keychain for CHRISTmas.”

why does a seven year old need a “really cool keychain”? even if he really needed a keychain what would make this item rate so high that it would be the only thing that he would mention?

i don’t have the slightest idea.

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an unwed, pregant teenage girl

i just ran across ben bell’s CHRISTmas card for his church’s congregation and i think it is amazing. in my opinion it really conveys what CHRISTmas must have been like. mary would have been view by the powerful people of her time as just another insignificant statistic and an indicator of why the hebrew race was below them. they would not have viewed her pregnancy as anything of importance. they would not have cared at all what was happening with her, joseph, or her unborn child.

you know that joseph and mary would have had to have been scared to death and confused by GOD’s plan. of course, the incarnation freaks all of us out so it should have done the same thing to the first two humans to experience. “GOD with us” is a scary concept. “GOD for us” would be so much easier for us to handle. then we would just have a power that was helping us do the things we wanted to do. “GOD with us”, the incarnation, means relating with GOD, HE becomes a part of our lives and we become a part of HIS.

the incarnation scares the crap out of me. truthfully GOD scares the crap out of me. HE is so completely “other” and mysterious. HE is someone that i can not define and i can not control. yet, i am constantly drawn to HIS “otherness”. i long to be engulfed by HIS mystery and experience the fear that “otherness” produces. this is why HE is the answer to life.

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vacation

as i told you yesterday i have taken some vacation time in order to finish some work around the house – specifically finishing our kitchen. thus far i have

  • painted three ceiling (more touch up than full coverage)
  • taken the kitchen cabinets apart
  • sanded the kitchen cabinets
  • primed the kitchen cabinets
  • put the first coat of paint on the kitchen cabinets (but not the doors yet)
  • cut out spots in two doors for punched tin to go into

by the time all of this ends i am going to need a vacation from my vacation.

i have discovered one thing already while doing all of this work. what i have discovered is that the part of the cabinet that will be most difficult to paint will also be the part that is most easily seen if you miss it. i have never actually noticed the baseboard of my cabinets. they have never semedn that important to me before. when i was priming the cabinets today i decided that since it is so difficult to get to the baseboards of the cabinet (they drop back 2 1/2 inches behind the actual cabinets) i would just give them just a basic no frills priming job. after i finished priming the cabinets i stopped to eat some lunch. of course, it was right in the middle of my meal while i was walking into the kitchen to get something to drink that i noticed these blaring missed spots shouting out at me “hey look at us! you did a lousy job on us!” it was the baseboard glaring at me, making me feel guilty for a poor job. so, i had to go back and prime the baseboards again. nobody will ever notice these thigns but if i had left them alone everyone would have commented on the crudy job i did on the baseboards.

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sanding

i hate sanding. the main reason i hate it right now is because today i sanded one half of the cabinets in our kitchen to prepare them for being painted tomorrow. i have taken off tuesday through thursday of this week to do work around the house. i’ve been painting the ceilings and working on the kitchen to finish it. of course, in order to do the fun stuff like painting you have to first do the miserable stuff like sanding the things you are about to paint. the whole process would be so much more fun if i could just paint the whole thing and never do any prep work.

now i could pretend to have a spiritual reason or moral for this little rant against prep work. i could tell you that you usually need to put time into doing the hard stuff before the good things you want to happen will occur. or i could mentioned that sometimes we need a good scraping from GOD to get us really clean. or i could come up with some other statement to make the above rant seem like it had a real purpose but that would be untrue. the real reason i wrote the paragraph above is because I HATE SANDING!

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violent acts & our church

for some unknown reason my church has been linked to a fair number of violent acts over the past three years. we have several church members who have suffered from or been the victims of murder recently. over the past three years one of my teen’s father (who was separated from the family) killed her two half-sisters and is now on death row in another state, then one of our church members and the mom of one of my youth was killed by a local serial killer, and then tonight the body of a teen church member was found murdered after being missing for three months. the teen and his family are church members though he was never involved within the youth ministry. my pastor and i went out to the church members’ house tonight just to let them know that we care and will be there for them.

being at the home of parents who just found out that child was murdered is an experience that nobody really tells you about at seminary. i never had a professor at southwestern seminary tell me how to handle circumstances like this. not knowing what else to do my pastor and i just went to the house and stayed for a little while. we really didn’t have any great words to say but there aren’t really any words that would make this situation better. when we got there we found out that members form the church had already been making contact with the family and letting them know of our care and concern – it’s nice to see the church work the way it is supposed to.

i hate that our members have to suffer through this things. yet, i love that our church is responding as the church is supposed to.

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THIS IS NOT MY STORY – but i have to tell it anyway

alan, the assistant youth minister at parkview, had a wreck today. or maybe i should say that his truck had a wreck today. you see alan wasn’t in his truck at the time of the accident.

alan parked his car in front of the student center and then got out to take some stuff inside. after taking things into the building he had to take some other items into the church office. this was going to keep him busy for awhile.

apparently alan forgot to pull out his emergency brake.

after about 20 minutes of being parked in the same place alan’s truck seems to have decided to go for a little drive. of course, trucks don’t usually realize that they can’t drive themselves and thus when alan’s truck decided to go for a ride it didn’t do very well with steering. instead of a small drive with turns and excitement all his truck was actually able to do was go straight backwards with no control towards the road and ditch that were behind it.

i’m sure this scared alan’s truck to death. of course, it couldn’t have scared the truck near as bad as it did the poor young lady whose car was behind alan’s rampaging truck. you see there were cars waiting at the stop sign that was directly behind alan’s moving truck. one young lady was in line for this stop sign with a car ahead of her and a car behind her and she was right in the route that alan’s truck had decided to take. she honked, and honked, but it is a little known fact that trucks generally have really bad hearing. apparently alan’s truck was unable to hear her honking and thus did not stop until it backed right into her driver’s side door. thankfully her car stopped alan’s truck from running into the ditch.

nobody was hurt from this little adventure and very little damage was done to the vehicles. it’s just too bad that alan’s truck had to learn to stay in one place in this awful manner.

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you rang?

for the past year i have kept the exact same message on my cell phone voice messaging system. here’s what it says:

    hi, you’ve reached the voice mail of robert terrell, associate pastor of student ministries at parkview baptist church and the emergency minister on call for the week beginning sunday, december 28, 2003. if you have an emergency please leave your name and number and i will call back immediately. i am most likely just distracted at this moment and couldn’t pick up the phone. otherwise leave your name and number and i’ll return your call and i’ll return your call just as soon as possible. if it is an emergency please state that it is an emergency.

as you can see by the date that i say in the message it is way out of date. i was the emergency minister on call for the week that i recorded that message and after it was done i just decided to see how many people would say “hey, you need to update your message.” my goal has worked because i get that allot people telling me that i need to update my message. it’s sad but it makes me laugh every time. it’s a cheap laugh but still al laugh none the less. the absolute best part has been when i get the same person to tell me over and over again that my message needs to be changed. that’s the greatest.

the problem is that my message seems to have lost some of its punch. i guess people begin to realize you are not going to change your message after they listen to it for a year. the only people who ever say anything about changing my message now are those who call me for the first time. i guess it’s time for a change. so i’ll change the message when the 28th rolls around. that way it will have been on my phone for a year. for now, hopefully i get a few other people to say “you need to change your message.”