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casey strikes out

i am by no means the babe ruth of youth ministry or the hank aaron of youth messages and i in no way ever want to indicate that i think i’m even close. i mess and screw up a great deal. i don’t understand enough to be in control of much of anything. i was reminded of this today.

you see the past 4 weeks of lessons have gone great. the four messages i did for the view have gone tremendous. the sunday school lessons that i have done during this four week time frame have been great. even the chapels, church sermons, and various other “extra” speaking opportunities have been quite good. i’ve had youth and adults telling me this and i personally have had a sense that these messages were really connecting and challenging the people with whom i was talking. i was beginning to “believe my own press” and think that i am actually a good speaker on my own. my GOD likes to keep me from such thoughts and to keep me from thinking it HE let my pride catch up with me. today’s sunday school lesson bombed badly. worst than just bomding it was about my favorite passage of scripture (which should have been a “gimme”) and it stunk.

this morning’s sunday school lesson flopped misserably. it was aweful and everyone there, including myself, knew it. i was brought back to earth in a big, loud, crash. if you heard an incredibly large “thud” this morning that was the sound of my lesson hitting the ground as it crashed and burned. i’m sure the crash could be heard for thousands of miles.

i hate it when GOD keeps me humble.

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shark tale

okay the last entry was wrong – i actually did do something today that i want to post about.

this afternoon i went with my family to see the movie shark tale. i love going to movies with my family but that’s not what i want to talk about in this post. no i want to talk about the fact that the movie was just mediocre. this is a movie that was produced by the same people who brought us shrek and shrek 2 and it has a cast full of top quality actors. yet that doesn’t necessarily equal success and this fact was proven by this movie. it wasn’t a terrible movie but it just wasn’t great. i was expecting “great” and i’m disappointed because what i was given was merely “mediocre.” i guess you can’t hit a homer run every time you get up to bat.

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and waiting some more

i don’t have anything really to post about today but i figured i would let you know that i’m still waiting for the apple powerbook. of course, apple doesn’t work on saturdays and thus there was no real hope that it would be shipped today. still i could pretend that it would be shipped today. but it wasn’t shipped today so i figured that i would report to you that it wasn’t shipped today. basically, to summarize the powerbook is still not here because it hasn’t been shipped yet.

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i’ve been linked!

kevin, a friend of mine, has linked to an entry in my blog today and that’s wonderful.

now people have listed the blog on their links before and i appreciate it when they do. it’s great that anyone would think that someone else might want to read this stuff (either because they like what they read or they think it is so stupid that they find humor in it’s idiocy) and therefore post a link to it. this actually confuses me because i would think that most people, including the homeless, would have better things to do than to waste 15 minutes or so a day reading my blog. still i do appreciate my little audience (basically my parents and a guy in belarus who doesn’t really understand english – hi mom! hi dad! hi boris!).

yet, that’s not what i’m talking about here. kevin, posted a link in his blog to a specific entry that i had made previously in my blog.

this is tremendous!

the reason it is so great is that by posting a link to a specific entry within my blog kevin is saying that i have made a point! I HAVE MADE A POINT! now it might not be a good point, in fact, kevin could have posted the link to my blog for the sole reason of disagreeing with what i had said. yet nonetheless, by posting a link to a specific entry on my blog the linker has said that i have made a statement worthy of responding to. agreement or disagreement doesn’t really matter. all that matters is that my statement was worth responding to. think of all the things you hear throughout your day that you consider unworthy of your attention. there are alot of those things. we ignore a great deal of what we hear. yet at least one statement that i made on september 24th was worth responding back to and that’s good to know.

of course, now i have to try and live up to this new standard. now i have to write something else worth linking to directly. i’m not really sure i can handle all that pressure. oh, the weight is bearing in on my soul. it’s simply too much responsibility. i don’t think i can bear it. why did you do this to me kevin? why did you throw this heavy load on my shoulders? curse you kevin. curse you and your link! aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh!

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youth parents are me

i am beginning to reach a new and frightening stage in my life as a parent and as a minister. i’m about to be the parent of a teen – well actually a 6th grader because he won’t be thirteen for 2 ½ more years. still teen aged or not my oldest son will be moving into the 6th grade this summer and thus into the youth ministry. this scares me to death. i’m terrified just by the simple things that are already happening. i had forgotten how moody i was when i went through puberty. i had forgotten that i would cry, pout, get angry, laugh, and shout over things that aren’t really that important. now i get to watch it happen in my oldest son. in fact, it’s already happening.

intellectually i understand what’s happening and i know that there isn’t much i can do about it other than be understanding. yet emotionally i want to take care of all this for him and make everything alright. of course, i don’t have the ability to do this, but i would if i could. i’m not even experiencing some of the pre-teen

and teen issues that some parents are and it’s still bad. adam and i still have a great relationship with adam. he still talks to me and wants me around. i’m not going through anything really rough yet, except for a few new emotions. how am i ever going to make it through adam actually being a teen when i’m having such difficulty with him being a pre-teen.

as a minister a benefit has come out of this because i have new found emphaty and respect for the parents of teens. i understand some of the fear now and having to wonder which child i will see today – will it be the joyful child that takes everything in stride or will it be the child that thinks the world is out to get him? that helps me as a minister but it does absolutely nothing for me as a parent. really, as a youth minister how do i minister to the parent of a teen when that parent is me?

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and waiting!

yet another day without the apple powerbook arriving. however, my micro$oft office for mac did arrive today. a friendly fedex delivery person brought the software to my door. overall it was a nice experience. i hope the powerbook experience will be as nice. of course, it has to get here first for me to have a pleasant or unpleasant experience.

oh why do you taunt me powerbook? why do you give me hope by sending me the “office” software and then snatch it away again by remaining listed as pending on the apple.com “order status” page? you evil temptress powerbook. what have i done to cause you to act this way? oh woe is me.

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down with the bell

i’m not much of a protester. i do stand up for what i believe in and even try to make my views known to the powers that be on those matters – i write letters, send emails, and more on pretty much anything that cheapens human life (i.e death penalty, abortion, certain types of research, etc.) yet, i’m not the type of person who goes out looking for the next organization to boycott or next protest to be a part of.

with that said, i think i’ve run across an organization that i will begin to boycott until they begin to value humanity more. the business is taco bell. the reason i’m starting to boycott them is the coallaition of immokalee workers. the coalition of immokalee workers (ciw) is the organization that represents the tomato pickers for taco bell. the ciw is looking for a 1 penny raise from taco bell – they are still making the 1980 rate for picking tomatoes. that’s absurd! it wouldn’t cost taco bell much, if anything, to give this small raise.

in scripture the book of amos is all about justice. justice does not just mean the administration of law. no in the book of justice we find out that GOD defines justice as treating fairly those who have less power than you. justice means to protect the weak. therefore, i have to respond to taco bell. i’m not very powerful. i don’t have a mighty voice that corporations will listen to and be swayed by. all i have is a family, a ministry, a my own pigheadedness. but i will use what i have. i won’t eat at taco bell and my family has agreed to do the same thing. the only other thing i have is leadership within our youth ministry and using that i will not bring my teens to eat at a taco bell again until the ciw gets a raise. i have emailed taco bell and told them this.

even if it isn’t enough to make them change their minds right now, i will still not give my money or encourage my teens to give their money to an unjust company.

protect the weak!

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still waiting

some of you are probably wondering whether i have received the apple powerbook yet (see the entry on september 28th for an explanation of the powerbook). sadly, i have to report that even though i only order the laptop two full days ago it still has not yet arrived. right now the status for shipment of the powerbook is listed as october 6, 2004. of course, the micro$oft office for mac software bundle that i also purchased from apple.com shipped yesterday. so one part of the order has been shipped and the other part is still being processed. i’ll keep you updated because i know that some of you may have trouble sleeping until i receive the powerbook. yet rest assured it will come soon.

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pounding

last night, september 29th, was our “pounding” for our two newlywed couples – jessica & matt and alan & rebecca. a pounding is an early american tradition of getting newlyweds started with their houses. everybody who comes to the “pounding” brings a pound of household necessities – flour, sugar, toliet paper, etc. the idea behind this is that you help them out with the necessities and then they can spend their actual money on other things.

the most difficult part of the whole thing was keeping people from mistakenly telling alan, rebeccea, jessica, or matt. we’ve been setting this thing up for about three weeks – announcing it when neither alan nor jessica or their spouses were around. this means that around 150 people knew about this thing (not including parents which would have made it even more). ever time i announced the “pounding” i tried to stress that we had to keep this on the “down low.” afterall, “lose lips sink ships.” i was sure that someone was going to make a mistake and mentioned to the wrong person. last night finally came and i truly believe that they were surprised. i could not believe that we were able to convince that many people to keep their mouths shut for 2 1/2 weeks.

just for the fun of it i would like to list what some of our teens thought “necessities” were (remember you are supposed to bring things to the “pounding” that are necessary for daily living):

  • a pint of charcoal lighter fluid
  • 18 rolls of toliet paper
  • a 1 gallon can of van camp’s beans
  • exactly one pound of tabasco sauce
  • 8 boxes of macaroni & cheese
  • more romin noodles than you can shake a stick at
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love / hate relationship

i love wednesdays – i hate wednesday nights.

i love wednesdays and preparing for our youth worship service, the view. i love the constant work of getting everything ready. it’s a constant rush to make sure that everything is set for when we start the service. computer work has to be done, programs have to be printed, sound system equipment has to be put up and tested. there is always something else to do. i never have to wonder on wednesdays what i’m going to do next because there is always something else to do. even though we plan many parts of the service weeks ahead of time there is always something else that needs to be done.

i hate wednesday night because it’s over and now i begin to wonder. did GOD speak tonight, did i get in the way, did the kids “get it”, did i “get it, where we prepared enough? wednesday nights are when the questions begin to pour into my head. u start feeling pretty insecure concerning what we’ve done. i begin to ask why more people didn’t say something about the service or why so many people did say something. i start to wonder and there don’t seem to be any immediate answers to the questions that keep running through my head. the answers won’t come until later in the week.

i kind of wish that i could always just keep preparing for the view and never actually finish it. then i wouldn’t have to go through wednesday nights.