Me and You and God Makes...Five.

TTFN

2005-12-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

This will be the last post at this location. I have taken up residence at this spot, and I sincerely hope you'll join me there.

On Value Systems, Part 1: or, I was expecting my abyss experience to come with a sucking sound

2005-11-23T01:11:00.000-08:00

When someone becomes a follower of Jesus Christ, their internal system of values begins to morph into a value system reflecting the values of Jesus. As a person becomes more aware of the life-encompassing message of God, as given to us in the Bible and through the work of God's Holy Spirit, the follower of Jesus often alters various aspects of his lifestyle so that they reflect this changing inner value system.

Often, they will make choices about such things as clothing, music, social life, etc. (among a myriad of possible areas) so that their lifestyle will reflect the values of God.

In my circle of churches, these choices are known as standards. They are given a great deal of weight, and are often viewed as a rough indicator of a person's depth of spirituality/commitment to Christ/etc.

I bring this up because I've had several conversations recently on the general subject of these choices, with people my age and from my circle of churches. These conversations have prompted some thoughts about lifestyle decisions in the journey of followers of Christ.

My general observation from these conversations is that many of the factors involved in the decision-making process are headed in wrong directions. A composite might include the following scenario:

Lifestyle decisions are not taught in the context of relationship: they’re preached from a pulpit. So, when the time comes for a person to deal with the issue, there’s no indication that the matter is up for further explanation, or explanation in the context of an individual’s life, or anything like that. Just do it, already.

Lifestyle decisions are made for members by their leadership. For some, this is their pastor; for others, it starts with their parents and continues with their pastor.

These decisions are made, in general, with what is at best the flimsiest of explanations. This is not unexpected, given that these decisions are generally expressed as five-to-ten minute components of fourty-five minute sermons that are generally on another topic.

So the above circumstances result in this virtual vacuum in which a person is left to come to their own decision. Void of a relationship in which to work out the details of the decision, and with the aforementioned flimsy explanations in hand, the person is often left to interpret someone else's explanations on their own. In this vacuum, when someone else's interpretation of a Biblical principle doesn't make sense to them, it can be simply discarded as a disagreement that has no bearing on their own process.

Often, the result of these environmental factors is that a person's own lifestyle decision will be, to varying degrees, different from the decision made for them by parents or church leadership. In those cases, more often than not, the reaction on the part of leadership often is disappointment in them. Many times this disappointment, though palpable, is not actually articulated; rather, it remains just under the surface, and becomes part of the lens through which leadership views the person. Sometimes it manifests itself in subsequent sermons, or in conversations with others. All of this happens without any substantive interaction with the actual individual. At all.

And then the person, having made this decision that goes against precedent, discovers that the floor doesn't drop out from under them and they don't get sucked into the abyss and...they don't even feel bad about it. And because the whole process has happened in this vacuum, they assume that it never was wrong, and that there are entire segments of their lives that they want back, and now they wonder what other stuff they could be doing without getting sucked into the abyss...

I have not mentioned particular decisions at all in this piece. I won't: that's not the point. The point is, the above composite description is a bad, unhealthy way to come to any decision. But it is a frighteningly common one. And, in my view, it's producing confused, irritated, grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side followers of Christ.

In a future post, I'll share my thoughts on how this process could be more reflective of the way of Christ. In the meantime, I'd like to hear if you identify with any part of this story.

Undone

2005-11-21T01:11:00.000-08:00

I have come face to face with how messed up people can be, and I'm freaking out.

I have read an anonymous first-person account of abuse. Sustained abuse. Matter-of-fact descriptions that made me want to throw up.

I'm scared. Of what people are capable of - what I'm capable of - when God's values aren't in place.

I'm scared of what we might become when we're not moving toward holiness.

I'm scared of what life's been like for this person. Of the horror, the burden, the gnawing...

I'm scared that healing can't take place because no one knows anything's broken.

I'm scared that I will be the pastor of a church where people could come and go and I might never even have a clue of what someone might need, because I did not create environments condusive to finding out, to asking people hard questions with enough love that they understood they could be honest and start to confront the hard answers.

I'm scared that I might get so caught up in something else, I wouldn't see these people coming. Or that I wouldn't have any real desire for them to come.

Would someone remind me again how we got to this place? And what we have to do to set a different trajectory for life in Christ?

'Cause right now, I'm scared out of my mind.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
- The Bible, Matthew 23:23

twenty minutes ago i would have been...oh, never mind

2005-11-14T01:11:00.000-08:00

So here's a question...

You're set to attend the first morning worship service at the church who, by a 100% vote, extended to you the call to be their pastor. You've accepted their invitation, and the current pastor has asked you to come be part of the church's Thanksgiving gathering, then officially accept their call when you preach for them in the service.

Which of the following would leave the best impression on the people you're going to pastor?

A) Show up at 9:30 am for the 10:00 am gathering
B) Show up at 10:00 am for the 10:00 am gathering
C) Show up at 10:20 am for what you inexplicably knew was a 10:30 am gathering, but was in fact a 10:00 am gathering

If you guessed A or B, you'd be predictable, boring, and...correct. If you guessed C, you're not predictable and boring, but you're not correct, either. If you guessed A but did C, well, that'd make you me.

Fortunately, the people were very gracious, and the Lord used the sermon to speak to hearts. (Three different people mentioned afterwards that I seemed less nervous than the last time I'd preached. Which was certainly true, but I was also numb from the embarrassment, which...helped, I think.)

We ate lunch with the people at the church, and I got the chance to interact with more of the people. We were also the partial recipients of a sparkling apple cider toast, which was memorable also because Gracie kept taking the plastic wine-glass-looking thingy and swinging it around, re-enacting the "Scamps, scamps, a toast to this night" scene from Sleeping Beauty.

The outlook is rosy, indeed.

Live and On Location

2005-11-12T13:11:00.000-08:00

For this post, I am reporting to you live from the lobby of the Holiday Inn on the east side of Indianapolis.

Our new church, Oaklandon Baptist, graciously invited us to come over for this weekend, to join with them for their Thanksgiving gathering on Saturday evening, and for worship on Sunday morning.

There were about 40 in attendance, a pleasant-surprisingly large number. Kristy and I got the chance to meet many of the extended family and friends of church members. Red came in late: he and his friend came straight to the church from Notre Dame's blowout win over Navy, which had Red in good spirits.

Before the dinner, we got to spend a little time at the home of the current pastor, Bro. Smith, and his wife. Kristy enjoyed chatting as Mrs. Smith prepared mashed potatoes, and I kept Derek from breaking stuff as Bro. Smith and I talked.

I'm struck by the diversity of people in the area where God has called us. In my short time here, I've come across people from more different places in life than I could have expected. I pray that God allows us to be intentional about showing people from all these different life places what life together in the way of Christ can look like.

Kristy, as usual, has been amazing through today: the four-hour trip, feeding lunch to three kids in the car on the way, getting everyone ready for the dinner, interacting with the children and the ladies, all while being eight months along - and all with the grace and inner beauty of a soulmate who knows she is doing exactly what she was made to do. It's a thing of divine beauty, to be sure.

We're pretty stoked to be part of what God's doing in this stage of our lives.

Where exactly does my money go?

2005-11-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

As of 3:00 PM Sunday, Nov. 6, I am the next pastor of the Oaklandon Baptist Church of Indianapolis, IN. (I'll start in the end of January.)

I got the call. The vote was 100%, the retiring pastor said. People who'd never seen me before voted for me to be their pastor.

I thanked Pastor Smith and hung up the phone. I gave Kristy the news, and she responded with a joyful attempt at something resembling a fist pump.

I, on the other hand, just sat there. For an hour and a half, I let it soak in.

Several other emotions/thoughts managed to get in on the soaking, as well.

Time to put your money where your mouth has been.

After waiting seven months, I think I feel more relieved than anything else.

Wow...I'm a pastor now. It's not a dream. There's a place, and some people, and a building, and everything!

- - -

So I'm snooping around the Brand Autopsy blog, and I watch the video sample of the presentation that Brand Autopsy dude gets paid to give. And at the end, he says something that hits me like a ton of bricks.

"The only reason to take on a new product, or business, is to change the world. Nothing else is worth the effort."

And it reminded me of where the apostles were accused of turning the world upside down. And it made me really intense about something:

I can't measure success purely by having 50, or 100, or any other number in attendance. Not by addition or mulitiplication of programs, either.

I desire nothing less than to bring the Kingdom of God to Oaklandon, Indianapolis, and the world.

And now - God's giving me the chance.

One Man's Take on Blogging

2005-11-04T01:11:00.000-08:00

"When I see news stories about people all over the world who are experiencing hardships, I worry about them, and I rack my brain wondering how I can make a difference. So I decided to start my own blog. That way I won’t have time to think about other people.

"People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

1. The world sure needs more of ME.
2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
4. I know – I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there!

"The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this:

Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head.

"The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo."

- Scott Adams, in his Dilbert newsletter

You can find the Dilbert Blog here.

Linking to the whole story

2005-11-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

Wow, has it been this long? My sincere apologies to my legions of adoring fans. Statcounter tells me there are 4 of you.

So I'm talking to one of my sons in the faith, Chris, today. The guy is a talented poet, and he has a burden for articulating to young people in places in life similar to his. Here's an example of his stuff.

religion planted barriers
claimed morality and lied
religion killed the innocent
just like Christ they died

confess your sins
for you are bad
confess your sins
you made God mad

what a horrid faith your living
to have no reflection in the mirror
you hide and live in ignorance
the world outside you fear

you put on that artificial smile
and fold your hands up in a prayer
let the non-believers burn in hell
your God is just and fair

confess your sins
for you are bad
confess your sins
you made God mad

religion killed humanity
religion started war
religion lied to you
religion is a whore

Now, the dude has obvious talent. And he's speaking the language of his peers.

But in the story of his life, this poem is about a small part. In the scope of the Christian faith, this is a small part. In the scope of human existence...well, you get the idea.

So I encouraged him, and I reminded myself:

We are part of an amazing story of redemption that God is pulling off all around us. To say that "religion stinks" is a valid part of many people's stories, but it's not the only part. And to articulate that religion stinks to someone who already instinctively knows that, without using it as a link to the parts of the story that they're not familiar with...well, that's falling short of God's calling and Christ's example.

We need to use things - obvious things like preaching, less obvious things like poetry, music, art, etc. - as links to connect people with this amazing story that we get to be part of.

There's more to it than "life/religion/etc. stinks." Much more.

Host a poetry reading, followed by discussion. Blog, and interact online. Singing, painting, conversation, life...all are potential links. We must use them, and not stunt the telling of the Story.

(Read more of Chris's work here.)

Shoutouts

2005-10-18T01:11:00.000-07:00

Two of my teens, Brian and Chris, preached Sunday night. They did awesomely, and I'm uberproud. They laid their hearts on the line, which is risky, but the only way to do it.

Blair turns 17 today. She's an amazing young lady who's journey in Christ comes through everything she is and does. All this, while being really real, which certainly isn't a given with 17-year-olds.

Leah turned 14 last Thursday. I was going to stop by to wish her a Happy Birthday, but I got too busy. Happy birthday, Leah.

Dustin got me out of a potentially huge jam Friday evening. Muchas gracias.

Seed Spreader started a really intriguing, and I'm pretty sure important, train of thought in this post. Then he left us all hanging.

He's a youth pastor who's keeping it real, even in his blogosphere, which is most certainly not a given. I've enjoyed his stuff, and he's been in my thoughts and prayers.

C'mon, man - keep going with your thought. You're killing me here.

- - - -

Oh, and the baptistfunkrevolution has begun.

I'll have a tall skinny boycott

2005-10-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

I read this Time cover story last week in the airport on the way to Atlanta. Around the same time, I was hearing and having conversations about some Christians' decisions to boycott Starbucks because of their support of gay pride events.

Some personal observations:

- Being a homosexual teenager in 2005 America is worlds apart from being homosexual in (place your favorite time period here) America. It just is.

But do Christians do the hard work of approaching the two differently?

- The article mentions that many of the teenagers coming out as homosexual in today's world have no desire to adopt overtly homosexual lifestyle indicators. The image of the "flaming" homosexual is of no interest to them. They're disappointed that there aren't camps where gay teenagers can do the same recreational sports and traditional camp activities of other camps.
It's possible now - and will be more so - to interact on an accquaintance level with someone who's gay, and not recognize it.

Is that reality compatible with the rhetoric/ministry approaches we've used so far?

- To boycott means not just that I stop consuming some product: it also means that, to one degree or another, I make it known that I am not consuming a product, and why. So, how do I, on one hand, be vocal about avoiding a place of business because they support gay pride events, and then on the other hand, love a homosexual the way that Christ loves them? Doesn't the attitude necessary to pull off the former spill into the attitude of the latter?

- If I'm going to draw attention, at any level, to my avoiding a place of business because of their connections to the homosexual community, then doesn't my pursuit of integrity dictate that I do an inventory of my life and remove every single other element that has similar connections? And if, for instance, I find out that my couch was made by a company with such connections, am I not obligated, not just to take the couch down to Goodwill or something, but to put it out on my front lawn and burn it?

Just wondering.

And I'm wondering as someone who really has a burden for this subject and this area of culture. I don't even know why - I've documented the only conversation I've had where someone was open about their homosexuality and I haven't had one since. But I can't get it out of my head.

It was a good day to be 30

2005-10-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

October 11, 2005

5:30 am
The alarm clock goes off, reminding me that the guys are playing basketball at 6:30. Normally, this is enough to get me out of bed: today, however, is not a normal day. It's my thirtieth birthday.

So I roll over and go back to sleep.

6:45 am
Kristy kisses me on the cheek and says, "Happy Birthday." I'm pretty sure I can get 10 more minutes of snoozes in here, I think to myself.

7:45 am
I get out of bed. I have ten minutes to get ready before Rob picks me up for work. At this moment, my momentous day is shaping up thus: work, rush home to get ready for services at church, services at church, supper if we haven't squeezed it in somewhere else, bed.

8:30ish am
I arrive at work to a week's worth of unanswered emails, this being my first day back after a week at a conference in Atlanta. Trying to get through them all, I have no chance at all for my normal online routine: usatoday.com, espn.com, check my livejournal friends, apple movie trailers, more blogs. I make it to usatoday.com for two minutes, then it's back to the grindstone. Oh yeah, and Malcolm Gladwell's site - I heard him speak last week (really cool stuff, by the way).

12:02 pm
This is the exact moment in 1975 when I was born into this world. Thirty years from that moment, I am showing my dad and Evangelist Bill Behrens around the offices of Samaritan Ministries, preparing to be taken to Famous Dave's for a birthday lunch.

Didn't see that one in the ol' crystal ball, lemme tell you.

2:00ish pm
I get back from my birthday lunch, and within five minutes, Joel (my team leader) asks me what I'm doing. This means a) we have a time-sensitive task that needs to be done right away, and b) I'm not getting stuff done quickly enough.

It's not really b), but it feels like it sometimes. The new cubicle configuration, with its openness and proximity to other members of the team, has unleashed in me a low-level paranoia in this regard.

4:30ish pm
I'm supposed to get through a list of need keys to change the status, but the phone keeps ringing. Arrrgh! This list is huge! It's gonna look like I haven't done a thing! It's looking like I'll have the chance to contemplate being 30 when I'm 32.

5:15 pm
Kristy and the kids have picked me up. We were going to have double stuffed tacos (my request) for supper tonight, but between 5:35 and 6:45ish, we need to: 1) get three kids cleaned up and ready for church, 2) get ourselves ready for church, and 3) practice a few songs, since Kristy and I have been asked to sing tonight. The menu quickly gets downsized to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

5:45 pm
I make the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They're really good, as PB&J's go, because I tend not to skimp on the ingredients.

Which, in some cosmic culinary parallel universe, means that turning thirty has not made me old. Everybody knows that old people don't put nearly enough peanut butter and jelly on their sandwiches - at least not the ones they pawned off on me.

6:20ish pm
I get a phone call from my friend Dave. He has no idea it's my birthday: it's just been a couple weeks since I posted or had been in touch with him, and he wanted to check on how we were doing. How mind-blowingly like Jesus is that?

6:50 pm
Getting the kids and ourselves ready and wolfing down sandwiches has reduced our practice time to deciding which three songs we can do without practicing. And so we roll into church: Kristy's pregnant and just bushed, Gracie's cranky and wants to be held, Derek's just cranky, Trey's mostly oblivious, and I'm...here. Turning 30 is feeling less and less momentous by the second.

7:10 pm
Kristy and I go to the platform to sing. I mention to the congregation that I turned thirty today, and that I think that moments like the one in which someone turns 30 are not momentous in and of themselves: they're momentous because they make you stop and recognize the transitions that have been occurring more slowly over the previous - what, months? Years?

I still think this is true, but my saying it at this moment causes everyone to laugh, which is not an uncommon response to most of what I say before singing. So I continue the conversation in a humorous direction for a few more moments, and then we sing.

8:35 pm
The service is just over, and Dad calls me into his office. He wants to talk to me about something.

8:45 pm
Dad's done talking to me, and he wants to show me something downstairs in the basement of the church. So I follow him down the stairs, where we're greeted by all the church people, and some of my extended family, yelling "Surprise!"

Kristy's put together a surprise party for me and Dad!

9:15 pm
I'm eating cake and opening cards. My brother Matt is next to me, and Blair (whose reference to me as "old" is the first by a teenager that I can remember) and Morgan and Chris and Brian and Andrea (more of my teenagers) are in a glob around the other side. Down the table a little ways is my cousin Nate and his family, my Grandpa Hammock and his wife Polly. Opey and Renee are serving things and chatting. I get a very special "full circle" gift, and several cards with special, heartfelt greetings.

Yep, I'm one blessed dude.

10:40 pm
We've cleaned up and headed home, and we have four helium-filled balloons that will be the object of our kids' delight for the next, oh, 12 hours at least. Suddenly I get an idea: there's one more thing I want to do.

I take one of the balloons, and I tell Trey and Derek they can come out into the yard with me. Kristy follows at a distance.

"I want to tell God thank you, so I'm going to send Him this balloon," I tell Trey.

I let it go, and we watch it drift into the night sky. The reflective material makes it visible for much longer than I'd expected.

As it drifts away, I contemplate my journey - where I am, where I've been, where it's going - and I realize that it's all Him. It's all God, all the time. The balloon was my spur-of-the-moment way to say thank You, to have a moment of connection with the One who is my life. For a moment, it really feels like it's going to get to God.

I looked down at Trey, who was still watching. Derek was grabbing my leg, Kristy needed help carrying in leftover cake, and Gracie was more cranky and more wanting to be held.

Ahh, life. Sweet, sweet life.

A breath of...air

2005-09-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

First day back at work after a week spent representing Samaritan Ministries at the National Youth Workers Conference, held at the Gospel Light Baptist Church of Hot Springs, AR.

It was awesome.

More than anything, I came away with the realization that I'm not the only one experiencing some of the conflicted emotions that have come with being in the circle of churches I've grown up in. That there are others (host pastor Eric Capaci and host youth pastor Bob Ritter, in particular) realizing the need to think outside the box, to address some of the inward-focus issues that have led churches away from being God's voice in our world.

In particular, a session by Pastor Kurt Skelly was almost down-the-line in expressing some of my thoughts/frustrations with how things have been done. I've ordered the audio, and I'll post transcripts of some excerpts from his session. I walked away from his one session realizing that Pastor Skelly is one to listen to.

And I got to hear David Gibbs, who has been accurately described as one of America's greatest Christian orators. He has a way of conveying profound thoughts with a concise, easygoing yet earnest style that you find yourself just drinking in.

Dr. Gibbs gave a session on leadership types, and the last type he addressed was the Visionary. He observed that among our circles (independent fundamental Baptists), the numbers of these leaders had dwindled. He remarked with visible sadness: "Sometimes we forget that the practices we hold to so dearly were considered revolutionary thirty years ago."

A sentence so laden with meaning, I can hardly sit still. I almost shouted out loud the moment he said it.

God, please allow me to be a Visionary.

They've got my number

2005-09-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an account, as described to me, of an actual conversation between two pastors.

Pastor 1: Brother, I don't know what to do. Our attendance keeps going down, offerings are down, there's no excitement, I don't know what to do...

Pastor 2: I know what you mean, Brother. Same here. Hang on - Jesus is coming.

That's almost verbatim.

I'm not quite thirty years old. If all I have to look forward to in a lifetime of ministry is hanging on until Jesus comes, well...I've got other things to do.

With every fiber of my being, I do not - can not - believe that the sentiment expressed above indicates the attitude Jesus wants me to carry into my ministry, or my family, or my life.

And He's the one that's coming.

- - - -

I bring up the above account because I mentioned it as part of a message I preached Sunday night. It was a message I preached to a congregation in need of a pastor, in an area that needs to see the Gospel lived out in the worst way. The church has a building in a location central to reaching an area that isn't currently being reached, and it has people who, despite being few in number, want to keep the church going.

It's the kind of place I was pretty sure I was looking for. And it's way closer to the stomping grounds than I ever thought God might let me be.

So I'd mentioned that I was interested in being their pastor. And they seemed receptive, loved Kristy and the kids, had us back on three separate occasions. Doors seemed to be opening, and Kristy and I began to get excited about the possibilities.

So this past Sunday evening, I gave the message everything I had. I prayed, and God had given me a message appropriate for the moment the church found itself in. I had visual aids for the main thought of the message, and I allowed all my personality to come through. I hid nothing of myself, and I shared as much of my heart for what God has for me - and for them - as I could in the context of the message. The people laughed, they concentrated, they grooved with me for most of the message.

A man with no connection to the church at all walked in off the street. He was the first black man I'd seen there in the five different times I'd attended services there. He enjoyed the service immensely, and I prayed with him during the invitation.

I closed the service, and the people were very gracious in expressing their appreciation for the message.

After everyone else had left, the treasurer handed me an envelope and said, "We've got your number."

You've got my number? That wasn't going to cut it. Not after this long. So I asked if there was any movement in the search for a pastor.

No, none at all, he said.

Another man standing nearby, another member of the recently formed pulpit committee, overheard my question. He mentioned that they were considering asking an area pastor to serve as interim pastor of their church. The treasurer replied that they hadn't decided, including a look that indicated he'd just as soon that hadn't come up.

- - - -

So, it seems, we've reached another fork in the road. In discussing the possibilities of this church with my family and personal friends, I always said that a lot of things were in place, and a lot of doors seemed to be opening: but the one thing I didn't know was if the people were ready. As it turns out, the ones who needed to be ready, weren't. The one thing that might keep a seemingly great opportunity from working out, turns out to be the one thing that shuts it all down.

We loaded the kids in the van and drove away. "So...?" After the service, Kristy's voice was hopeful.

"Nope." I just let the word fall out of my mouth, too weary to put any emotion behind it. I'd just noticed that, in the process of preaching, I'd soaked my shirt with perspiration. I couldn't remember doing that before.

"I'm sorry," she said, putting her hand on my arm. As we drove away, we passed people I'd let myself dream of reaching, neighborhoods that were going to be impacted, the beautiful downtown and waterfront.

And we drove toward what God has for us. Right now, it looks a lot like what He's had for us the past six months (six months!). But I know that what He's got doesn't look like hanging on 'til Jesus comes. It looks more like taking the message of God's love and salvation, and building a community of Christ followers that makes an impact in their world.

That much I know.

Two Precious Girls

2005-09-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was a big day. A big, fill-me-up-inside kind of day.

I took Kristy to the OB for a sonogram of the baby. This being our fourth, we had decided to find out the gender of the baby. We'd teased for several weeks: did we want a second girl, or did we want a third boy? Trey wanted a brother, Gracie a sister, until Trey wanted a sister, in which case Gracie wanted a brother.

I thought either one would be good, but a second daughter would be nice. I'm pretty sure I'm a better, more socially and emotionally well-rounded, more-like-Jesus person because I'm the father of a girl.

Kristy said she wanted a girl, but seemed resigned to having another boy. She'd convinced herself there was a guy inside her.

So we're in the office, then we're in the sono room, and then the tech starts waving the magic wand over the magic sticky gel stuff, and...poof!

"It's a girl," said the tech. She said it with a great deal of confidence, I thought. And my observation of the picture on the screen was that, yes, it was a girl.

"Are you sure?" Kristy wasn't buying it.

I looked down at Kristy. This lady's done five sonograms today, and 3,000 in her career or something, and you're asking her if she's sure? It seemed like a move that took some nerve.

So for Kristy's sake, the tech made sure. And then Kristy started to cry.

"We're having a girl!" She looked up at me, her eyes giving expression to the joy of an answer to prayer that she hadn't allowed herself to believe she could have.

It was at this moment that I announced my decision to go public with my campaign. To bring public pressure to bear on a subject I believe in strongly.

I want to name her Audrey Joan Rowell.

The Rowell part is settled. The Joan part (Kristy's mother's name) is settled. The Audrey part? Far from settled.

I campaigned for this name up until we found out Derek was a dude, and I've campaigned for it since we found out we were having another one. Now I have a real opportunity to have a female child named Audrey, and Kristy still doesn't like the name.

Kristy says she needs to see what the name means. Unless "Audrey" is Gaelic for "eats toejam and boogers," I'm still pushing for it.

Anyway, we left the office and went to Papa and Meme's. Told them the good news, spent a little time hanging out and enjoying the weather. Watered the goldfish in the washtub in the flower bed, watched Trey and Gracie get motorcycle rides with Papa.

Then we left, and headed back into town to catch up with Ashley. She wasn't home, and we were headed home when I realized that we were going by Christen's house. And I knew we had to stop.

Christen is one of our daughters in the faith, an incredible young lady whose faith has been proven through some really rough life experiences. She came to our church with her two sisters for many years, and was an important member of our youth group. Her desire to walk with Christ has always been an inspiration to me, and I know God has huge things He wants to do with her life.

Circumstances have made it that we haven't seen much of her for several months, and, to be honest, it's eaten me up inside. Mrs. Kristy and I miss her so much.

So we stopped by the house, and her stepdad was standing in the driveway. He greeted me warmly, congratulated me on the baby, and told me Christen was inside. So I went inside, and she came to the doorway.

"Come outside. Mrs. Kristy has something to tell you."

So she and her sister came out, and gave Kristy a huge hug. Christen hugged the kids, and Kristy told them about our girl. They were excited for us; and I even got Casey to agree that Audrey was a good name, although not with the greatest amount of excitement.

And then, for the next half hour or so, we got to catch up with Christen's life. She spent a couple weeks on a missions trip with the youth group of her family's church, and her eyes lit up as she described the experience. She told us about her job, her classes, her rusty brown truck that she loves to drive, her families...her life.

And as I listened to her talk (and watched her talk, which, if you know her, you know is possible), I saw that...she's okay. Her spirit, her heart for Christ, are alive. She seems at peace with things.

Which, in the end, is the best thing I could pray for.

See, I haven't had kids old enough to leave the house yet. I don't even have kids old enough to do boneheaded things that don't come off as at least a little cute. But after the years that Kristy and I spent with our teens, leaving them to pursue a pastorate had this leaving-the-nest dynamic to it, except in reverse: we, the "parents," were the ones leaving.

And, in true freaked-out parent fashion, I've worried about them. Most of them, I've been able to stay in contact with, at least time to time, some quite a bit. And I've found that, while their journeys are not the same as they would be if we were still in each other's lives the way we were, they're finding their way, and headed in good directions.

God's taking care of them. That is, after all, His job. Yesterday, I got to see that He was doing that for Christen.

And He's taking care of us. Yesterday, I got to see that, too.

Yep, I'm full.

My weekend in Iowa, Part I

2005-08-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

So it was a busy weekend. It began with a visit to Cedar River Baptist Camp one last time, for the wedding of Mike Harty (who was a benevolent senior when I was a freewheeling freshman) and Carie von Hagen (whose first summer on staff at the camp was my first summer, too).

It was a beautiful wedding, and I couldn't be happier for the two of them. They both have hearts to serve God, and they're just fun to be around. Having met them when I did, it's amazing to see God bring them together.

The reception was held in the Dining Hall, which has always kind of been the social center of the camp for these many years, at least in my opinion. With lots of things happening in other places (tabernacle, playing field, mud hike, etc.), the dining hall is where a lot of my connections with people happened.

When I was on summer staff, it was where Bro. Dave Smith poured out his heart to us every morning in devotions. It was where, when there was a problem among us guys, Bro. Dave would confront us. We ate there together, fed campers there...

So it was really cool to see the dining hall filled with people one last time, eating, sharing, filling to the high ceilings with an atmosphere of joy. I'm glad I was there for it.

And I got to see Bro. Dave, who is taking quite a bit of heat for his decision to do what God has led him to do. He seemed, in the middle of all the joy, a little weary. Even more so than one might expect in the time of transition.

So I have this sentiment for those who would criticize: get off his back, already. Let the man do what he believes God wants him to do. Stop sitting in your environments far, far away from any understanding of the actual issues and decision, badmouthing a man with whom you have no relationship warranting the credibility of your opinion.

Just stop it, already. Don't just stop the rhetoric: stop the attitude. Do you really think that kind of judgmental self-righteousness doesn't spill over into other expressions of leadership/life in Christ/etc.?

I'm just saying...it's disappointing, is all.

No thank you. No thank you very much.

2005-08-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I've got some things running around in my head, and I've tried to work them out on paper a little, but nothing finished so far.

A possible opportunity to pastor a church has arisen, and I'm waiting for further word. I ask for your prayers.

That said, I now move to the subject of my post: my first crack at social commentary. Kind of.

- - - -

Let me begin by making the following background statements:

I was not alive when Elvis was. At least, I don't think so. If I look up the actual date of his death, it would probably be on the same page as other historical/background data that could alter my current point of view on the subject.

So, anyway, I am not familiar with Elvis Presley, the living person. Being a red-blooded American who made it out from under my rock, I am familiar with various aspects of Elvis, the performer: Elvis, the owner of outfits where the sequins outnumbered the thread count 30 to 1: Elvis, the legend and figurehead/center of worship/root cause for a sector of our GDP equal in size to that of several third-world countries.

Since I have grown up listening to Southern Gospel music, I am also vaguely familiar with the fact that the Stamps Quartet used to sing and record with Elvis sometimes. (Which just strikes me as...weird. I mean, if Bono stopped in the middle of a U2 concert and had Steve Green come on stage to do "Sing Praise To God Who Reigns Above," as The Edge stood still with his head bowed and contemplated, wouldn't that be just a little... weird? In my mind, same kind of thing.)

So, it was with this grasp of context that I spotted an ad for a concert that's happening in my town in a couple of weeks.

"He Touched Me", a tribute to Elvis. The Stamps, who traveled and recorded with Elvis from 1971-77 will perform Saturday August 20th in the Dome. Dave Stovall will appear as Elvis.

The pictures accompanying the ad included a small picture of the current version of the quartet, and a picture of the Elvis impersonator that stretched the entire height of the ad. At least three times as big as the picture of the entire quartet.

And not the 50's Elvis, either. No, sir. This is an impersonation - a central Illinois impersonation, no less (not exactly "Straight from the Mandalay Bay") - of the early 70's, big-sleeves, huge-sideburns, goofy-sunglasses Elvis. The incarnation of Elvis that pegs out my Cheeseometer.

And that's not even the best part:

For the low, low price of just $25, you, too, can be part of this...event.

Now, I've paid more than that for tickets, so don't get me wrong. But the average ticket price for a Southern Gospel group in this area is $10 or so. If there are several groups, maybe $15.

For $25, they should be advertising Elvis making an apperance from the hereafter. Himself.

All of this leads me to some questions:

- Can you spell "Stamps Quartet" without "s-e-l-l-o-u-t"?

- Do concert promoters expect any paying customers under the age of 72?

- No, seriously, do they?

- Could people who sing - and listen to - music that is supposed to articulate the journey of life in Christ stop hitching their bandwagon (perhaps "gravy train" is more appropriate here) to the first popular secular figure who shows any interest? What does it say about the sufficiency of our relationship to Christ when we do that?

Elvis has, indeed, left the building. In dragging him back in, perhaps the reflection of the glory of God is what's been forced to leave.

But I liked this pile of rocks

2005-08-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

The call came last Wednesday morning. I was at my desk at work, minding my own business, when the phone rang.

It was my friend Doug. A pastor, he was with the teenagers of his church at camp. Cedar River Baptist Camp, in Letts, Iowa, to be exact.

"You ready for a shocker?" It wasn't a giddy tone of voice, the kind you'd use when you saw someone eat a grasshopper for the first time or something. This tone of voice was more serious.

"They're shutting down the camp. This is the last Senior (teen age) camp, they're doing Take the Challenge next week, and that's it."

A full five seconds passes before I respond. An icky feeling takes up residence in the pit of my stomach.

We talked for a few more minutes, then Doug had to go. As soon as I hung up, I picked the phone back up and called Kristy.

"We're going to camp tomorrow."

- - - -

Doug asked me once how long I'd been going to Cedar River Baptist Camp, and I couldn't even remember. After a little mental exercise, I settled on 16 years. Every summer.

I was a camper for several years. Camper of the Week once.

I worked on the summer staff for two summers, sandwiching my senior year of high school.

As Mr. Mike, I've taken the teens of my youth group there for several years. Seven or eight, at least.

And the years that I wasn't doing any of those things, I just showed up. This year was one of those years, for the first time in a while.

The camp has become, for me, a sacred place. To use the biblical parlance of Jacob at Bethel, this place has been my pile of rocks. Especially particular spots, places where I experienced God's presence in really intense ways, places where I saw God do things and change lives, places where I saw the direction of my life being tweaked by God. I have always loved to be there. The place challenges me, is a place where I almost instinctively take stock of where I am in my relationship with God.

Bro. Dave Smith, the director of the camp, is a personal friend of my family and of mine. I consider him a mentor, someone from whom I have learned a great deal. I love to be around him. Same with Mrs. Smith, and their adult children and spouses.

Not to mention that God has done some great things in the lives of my children in the faith during weeks of camp. Some have accepted Christ; many have grown and become more like Christ during their time there.

So when I heard that last Thursday was going to be the last Thursday evening service (always the highlight of a week camp at Cedar River), I knew I had to go.

- - - -

I made the trip in a borrowed convertible, which did nothing to dampen the coolness of making a three-hour trip on a beautiful day in a convertible. Pulling in and hearing teenagers say, "Hey, cool car!" took me back to...never. As it turns out, this was my first time to ride in a car cool enough to elicit audible comments.

Kristy rode with me. She wasn't sure she wanted to go, being pregnant and all, but when she heard I'd borrowed a convertible, she wanted to go.

Twenty minutes from camp, I stopped and picked up my friend to go with us. He has a lot of personal connection to the place, as well. And he'd taken a lot of flack for the directions in which God was taking his life and walk, some of it from people who were at camp, so I wanted him to come and be there with me. He doesn't need my vote of support or anything, but I thought I'd offer the chance, and he took me up on it, and I'm really glad he did. As it turns out, he'd never ridden in a convertible either, so the bonuses were flying on several levels.

So we pull into camp, and Kristy goes to find Doug's wife, and I'm hanging out with Doug and my friend. Pretty quickly, I establish that I need to go to the amphitheater. Doug wanted to come along, which I wasn't keen on initally, but I said okay, and it was cool.

The amphitheater is a place at the back of the camp property, a natural amphitheater-shaped piece of clearing in the middle of the forest next to the Cedar River. Back in the day, a long path was cleared, and several times a week, young men would traipse down the winding path to the clearing. There were benches there, and a pulpit. These were times that Bro. Dave would share with us his heart: to see us become men of God. Bro. Dave would have us yell across the river, seeing if we were loud enough to cause an echo.

Cedar River! Cedar River!

I will be a man of God!

We were always just loud enough.

So Doug and I are coming to the entrance of the path, and the first thing we notice is that there isn't really a path anymore. No one's gone this way in quite a while. So we pick our way through, along where I roughly remembered the path being, and we finally made it to the clearing.

And this is what we found.

It's grown up in weeds. Rain and various other forces of nature have washed away much of the ground that was there. The benches and pulpit are gone.

This pile of rocks, this most special of places...well, it wasn't the way I remembered it. At all.

And now I knew that I was going to be here for the last time. Because this would be the last time that a teen camp was conducted on this property, as Cedar River Baptist Camp.

All I could think was, "What the...?"

- - - -

I come from a spiritual lineage that, on the whole, prides itself on never changing. It kind of looks down its nose at change. It splits off, separates itself, distances itself from change. It places a positive moral value on things that are old-fashioned. It champions things that haven't changed. Songs, preaching styles, ministry methods, ministries themselves, you name it.

If the Lord never changes, as the fashions of men,
If He's always the same, why, He's old fashioned, then!

And for the whole time that I'd been coming to Cedar River, it had been championed by others - and itself - as a place that would never change. But here I was, looking at an overgrown clump of weeds that had been a sacred place, at a camp that was preparing to close its doors and reincarnate three states away.

And then it hit me:

It's all up for grabs.

See, God never changes. (As a side note, that makes Him timeless, not old-fashioned.) His Word, as an extension of Himself, never changes, either. But everything else does.

People? Check.
Places? Check.
Culture? Check.
Relationships? Double check.
Etc.? Check.

As I looked at that plot of ground, it hit me that it wasn't the same place it was, say fifteen years ago. But why would I expect it to be? I'm not the person I was before I started writing this, let alone fifteen years ago.

I was overtaken by this really intense idea:

I must hold on to God, and I must hold everything else pretty loosely.

God wants me to continue to be conformed to the image of His Son. That means I can't not change. And it would be wrong - it is wrong - for me to be so selfish that I would not want for a place, or another person, to continue on the journey that God has given to them.

Security comes, not from being able to return to sentimentally warm and fuzzy locales, but in the constant presence of The One Who Never Changes.

So right there, on the spot, I sang to Him.

I love you, Lord,
And I lift my voice
To worship You. Oh my soul, rejoice.
Take joy, my King,
In what You hear:
Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ears.

And for one last time, the ground was holy.

I turned to face the river, and yelled across to catch the echo one last time. Part of me hopes I was the very last one.

Cedar River!

My heart full, I walked away, and never looked back.

The Steps of a Daughter in the Faith

2005-07-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I do what I do.

Thoughts from an evening out

2005-07-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

So Kristy and I went out for the evening. Together. Just the two of us, and Theoneinsidekristy. (We were trying to think of the last date we had where a child wasn't present in some form, and we gave up after a few minutes.)

Two things jumped out at me from our date:

Big Thing #1: Man, do I love Olive Garden's breadsticks and alfredo dipping sauce.

We went to Olive Garden for dinner, as we seem to always do when we get the chance. And every time, I order a little bowl of alfredo dipping sauce, and every time I do, my mouth starts to water. They bring the sauce and the breadsticks, and the entire rest of the meal is almost inconsequential. Until I discovered their Tuscan TBone, which I didn't have last night, but which is the best prepared piece of meat I've ever had.

So I'm just totally enjoying the taste of this sauce with the bread, and I'm trying to think of another taste that I like this much. And my mind goes back to when I was seven. I was a second-grader at Blessed Hope Christian Academy, and the school was having a fundraiser event (I think it was an alumni basketball game or something). Anyway, my mom made this pan of carrot cake, with this thick layer of cream cheese frosting on the top, and they served pieces of it at the concession stand. For some reason, they didn't even charge anything.

So I had a piece, and, oh my word, it was awesome. It was everything that cake aspires to be, but rarely ever is, you know? So I had another piece. My seven-year-old mind quickly realized that I could sneak up to the counter between adults, grab a little plate with a piece of the cake, and be gone before anyone even noticed.

I distinctly remember eating ten pieces of carrot cake that night. And I also distinctly remember sitting on the stage, watching the game, and thinking two dichotemous (is that a word?) thoughts: 1) I'm pretty sure I'd feel a lot better if I could throw up right now, and 2) I wonder if there's any carrot cake left.

Eating the breadsticks and alfredo dipping sauce last night was kind of like that. Except for my not being seven anymore. And being with my wife. And my fourth child.

Other than that - just like it.

So after we finished dinner, we went to the Peoria Riverfront, and strolled through the district and along the river. It was a gorgeous night, with a clear sky and a bright, full moon. The temperature had gone down enough that it wasn't a burden to be outside. We leaned against the railing and watched boats and barges and moonbeams float by.

And suddenly, I'm struck with the need to say something. To have a conversation. Say something romantic, something substantive. Talk about our dreams, our life, something. I tried a thing or two, and it just wasn't happening.

And then, Big Thing #2 dawned on me:

Right now is a time that I can just Be.

I don't have to talk. I don't have to do. I don't have to discuss, explain, rationalize, defend. I don't have to encourage, discourage, sound poignant, be funny.

I can just sit next to her, feel the breeze on my face, hold her hand for a few moments here and there, and just be with her.

And so I did.

This is God. Over and out.

2005-07-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: the following account is going to come off to some as a sappy attempt at a pity party, and some who know me/us may be upset that they didn't know what was going on and weren't able to do anything. This entry is intended only to articulate what has been going through my head on my journey, and is not intended to be anything other than that. Please try to read it in that light.)

"What's God trying to tell us?"

Kristy posed the question at the end of a challenging series of events.

After we got home from a challenging weekend car-repairwise, we examined our financial position and realized that, basically, we didn't have one. The repair costs had set us back, and our food arrangements have been more costly since Kristy has been unable to cook recently.

So we sat at the table, and we talked to God. We told Him that we needed help; we told Him that we didn't understand why we were still here when we knew what He wanted us to do; we told Him that Kristy was really struggling with this pregnancy, physically and emotionally; we told Him that I was trying to keep up with the housework, with varying levels of mostly non-success, and I was gettting tired.

We told Him these things, because we believe He listens, and with Him being God and all, He's in a position to, well, do something about it. We assured God that we weren't expecting Ed McMahon on our doorstep or anything, just give us what we need. And Him being God, we assumed He knew what was best for us. 'Cause that's the kind of God He is.

So, wouldn't you know it: the next afternoon, Derek goes into the hospital with an asthma attack.

-----

"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

"Neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee."

Whenever these quotes from the Bible are referenced in sermons or whatnot, the immense faith of these men (Job in the former instance, Jehoshaphat in the latter) often is the emphasis. But as I was sitting next to Derek's bed in the hospital, I thought about those statements, and I thought about the contexts for them, and it hit me like a ton of bricks:

Those are a couple of dudes that didn't have a clue.

Job went from Rich, Successful, Fulfilled Guy to zero in a day or so, and he had no idea why. His spirituality was above reproach, his relationship with God a source of cosmic trash talk (God: Hey Satan, have you checked out Job? Boo-yah!). Yet there he was, oxenless and covered in boils.

Jehoshaphat skipped the boils part, but an entire nation turned to him when it was discovered that three larger nations had ganged up for the purpose of making sure they no longer existed. No plan, no contingency, no weapon, was going to make up for how lopsided this fight was before it had even started. And Jehoshaphat had his relationship with God squared around, too. Yet there he was: responsible for the apparent impending doom of millions of people.

If these guys had just read their Bibles, they would have known that Job was going to get all his stuff back and more, Jehoshaphat was going to lead his nation out to start singing as their enemies started killing each other, and everything was gonna work out. But they didn't read their Bibles, and they couldn't read the back of the book, and they still made these statements.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Our eyes are upon thee.

Even though I don't have a clue.

-----

So I'm measuring my spirituality up against these guys, and I'm thinking, These guys were on the up-and-up with God, and they went through tough stuff. And what they went through wasn't tied to some wake-up call: it turns out God is God, and stuff just happens. To us, even. For a reason, because all things work together for good, but it's still in the "just happens" category.

Do I deserve an explanation? Not anymore than Job or Jehoshaphat did in the middle of their situations. Perhaps less so.

So as I pondered what God was saying, it ocurred to me that I knew what He was saying:

Be still, and know that I am God.

-----

Derek had an asthma attack, and was treated for 24 hours because he'd been getting little oxygen for some time. He felt much better afterward, and now that we know he's an asthmatic, we're able to give him breathing treatments and occasional medication that is helping greatly. He's more active and energetic than He's been in some time.

After we returned from the hospital, we called Kristy's parents to let them know what happened, and they decided on the spot that they were coming to help out. They loaded their SUV full of food and pulled in late last night, buying groceries for us, catching up the housework, helping with the kids, allowing Kristy and I some rest.

I'm pretty sure we're not to the sing-as-our-enemies-slaughter-each-other part of our story of faith, but I've been still, and I know He's God.

And for now, that's enough.

I dislike the smell of Babel in the morning, Part III: in their own words

2005-07-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

The following is copied and pasted from the blog of a dear friend, who is 17. He gave me permission to link to it, but I decided to copy and paste, removing some of the names.

"I feel inadequate. In church. I feel out of place and unwanted. I'm not good enough. James 2:1-10 no longer gives me peace. It no longer makes me feel like I can be the bigger man, and push on past my insecurity. It's worn and useless to me.

"Here ya go vultures. I have never been a part of a Christian home. Why did I have long hair? Not because I'm a fag, and not because I'm a hippie. Because my friends liked it. Many of them knew me by it- the way I could hide my eyes behind it and look like a psycho killer seemed to be the only charisma I had- it seemed to thrill them. I was once told that I had the serial killer look going on, and it was awesome. I person told me it looked awesome. So, why not have longer hair? It got me the attention that my fat body and ugly face pushed away from the people os the world.

"And now there are preachers out there who say all boys with long hair are queers. Not as in, unusual. As in, homosexual. As in, flakes. As in, fags.

"Recently, I changed my hairstyle. Apparently, I now have a more manlike haircut. Meaning, my old was more feminine. Did I get my hairstyle out of a queer magazine? No. I got it from my older brother, you pompous piece of jerkface.

"Tonight, my church laughed at me. The guest preacher mocked me. They laughed. He was on a roll about people being excited in church (kicked off by M_____) and he was talking about people who don't get excited enough. He walked over by me, leaned down, and said 'You look enthusiastic.' in that oh-so-sarcastic way. Everyone laughed. Then he proceeded to inform me someday the Holy Spirit will grab hold of me and I'll get excited.

"Congratulations, I think I'm in the process of selling this bitter piece of coal that is my heart to Satan. Hope you sleep well.

"I have never been in a Christian home. Do you know how inadequate you feel when you don't know how to set a table right? You have to be instructed, at the age of 17, how to do some simple task? And how dumb you feel for crying because you didn't know? And it cuts deeper because nobody understands how you don't know to do these simple tasks, like doing the dishes, or vacuuming. It's like I'm a freak.

"I have been told that a man needs to be a real man. Rugged, but sensitive to the Lord's commands. Ahem. 'A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city...' Well, preachers who are in-your-face and mean back themselves up with Psalm 119:165. Well, by assuming everyone you talk to loves God's law, then you also assume that none of them need to be preached at. You cannot preach that a male isn't a man and back it up with this verse, all you're doing is saying they aren't a man, but love God's law?

"Take the better road and don't say offensive things.

"Dear IFB preachers of America, I'm growing weary of the pain and insecurity. I grow weary of your "Bible-based" preaching, and I'm sick of felling like an outcast in my own church.

"Want me to shut up about it? I will. Just keep pushing, and I'll never speak a word inside an IFB church again. I'll pinky promise ya."

Every time I try to put this issue behind me, something else happens.

From the middle of nowhere: or, the kindness of lesbians

2005-07-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Try this one-sentence statement on for size:

My first open conversation with a lesbian occurred as she was giving me a ride to a parts store to pick up an engine belt, after she had stopped to help us when my family and I were stranded next to the highway out in the middle of nowhere.

And I'm almost thirty years old.

So the story begins on the road from Pekin to Kristy's relatives in Winigan, MO. We're on Route 136, about a half hour outside of Keokuk, Iowa, when I hear the sound of the serpentine belt shredding. It sounded like a bird was being chewed up in the fan or something.

I pulled over in a driveway, and from where we were, I couldn't see a house in either direction. I started to walk up the driveway toward the house, when an SUV pulls up, and a woman, and a younger man get out.

"No sense walking up there. She doesn't answer the door," the woman says. "You need help?"

Yes, actually, I do. I explain that something's wrong with the belt, and am not really sure what to do next.

"I have a brother who works on cars," the woman says. "I'll go get 'im."

She gets back into the SUV and pulls away, leaving us with the young man, who turns out to be the woman's son. He takes a look at the belt, talks about heading out for Jeff City in a few hours, talks about who could possibly work on our van on the Saturday before July 4th - he never really stops talking, actually.

In a few minutes, the woman is back with her brother, who takes one look and decides that he can put another belt on, if his sister will run me to the next town, ten miles away, where another sister runs the local parts store.

So I get in the SUV with the woman, who has introduced herself as S____. The whole ten-mileish way, she's pointing out houses: her parents', her brother's, hers and her partner's. We get to town, purchase the belt, and she keeps talking all the way back: out as a lesbian for fifteen years, shunned by people in town until three of their daughters came out, decided to come out after hearing about and visiting a gay bar in Quincy (there's a gay bar in Quincy? It's less than 50,000 people stuck in the middle of a corn field!), and so on. She asks if we can stop at the convenience store, to pick up drinks for the kids and Kristy. Um, sure.

We return to the van, and S____'s brother and son start putting on the belt. It's going fine, until they get to the part where the belt's supposed to be tight, and it's six inches too long. Turns out, the belt had been returned, and the wrong belt was in the right package. So S____ takes Kristy and the kids to her brother's house, where they can play on the trampoline and stuff, while her brother and son and I run back to town to replace the belt. We get back, they put the belt on, it's the right one, we go to the brother's place to pick up everybody, we're back on the road.

For two minutes. Then the belt starts shredding again. Ughh.

We quickly turn around and head back to the brother's house, and then the most amazing thing happens. The brother asks, "Where'd you say you were headed?"

I told him. It was about a ninety-minute drive.

"Well, I got a car trailer. Let me hook it up, and I'll just haul you guys down to a shop."

So the brother loads up my van on his trailer, and now Trey and I are riding with him in his truck, hauling our van to our destination. The brother decides he wants to spend the evening in the big city while he's headed that direction, so he asks S____ to drive his van, which now contains Kristy, Gracie, Derek, the brother's wife and other kids, and follow us to the shop, and then drive the truck back to his house while his family enjoys the evening.

So Kristy's in the van for an hour and a half with S____, her sister-in-law, and a bunch of kids. The conversation turns to God pretty quickly: it starts with "do you guys go to church or something?", and then this moment of I-knew-it-all-along satisfaction when Kristy says that yes, we're Christians, and Mike is a pastor.

So S____ starts talking. She doesn't understand the Bible versions issue. She hasn't been to church since she was ten. She needs to read the Bible more. She's afraid that she and her partner "are doomed before we even open the door" of a church.

And Kristy was able to listen. To point out some places where she should start in reading the Bible. To present the notion that God might actually love her. To present the notion that each person is going to be accountable to God for their behavior. To begin to present a Christ that was not like the one that had formed in her mind. In the words of the Apostle Paul, To sow, perhaps water, trusting God for the increase.

It was an amazing experience. As we pulled in to the shop, I asked S____'s brother what I owed him. "Oh, I might've used twenty bucks worth of gas coming down here. If you could send that along later, that'd help."

I came away thankful. To S____'s brother and family, for going completely out of their way to help a family they'd never seen before. To S____, for giving me the chance to talk to - and listen to - a lesbian. As it turns out, she was a real person too: in need of God's love, looking for something and not even really sure what it is she's looking for, willing to help a complete stranger. I was truly enriched by the experience.

And I was thankful to God, who shredded my belt in the middle of nowhere in the first place.

It doesn't feel like riding a bike: Post 1 A.C.

2005-06-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long: my world's been rocked a little recently, and I've been tweaking...

So I'm thinking about stuff, and I'm thinking about lists, 'cause I'm a fan of them for some reason, and I'm thinking about my dad. And it occurs to me...

From my dad, I learned that when you're cleaning off the table, you always put the stuff that has to go back in the refrigerator, back in to the refrigerator, first.

From my dad, I learned that taking care of Mom is Job #1.

From my dad, I learned that pulling weeds while walking through mile-long rows of soybeans in scorching heat for $2 an hour is totally worth it because Grandpa's going to take you to get a double cheeseburger and Coke at noon.

From my dad, I learned that you don't push it and order a milkshake when Grandpa is buying the aforementioned burger.

From my dad, I learned that Christian isn't something you do. It's who you are.

From my dad, I learned that when we return to earth with Christ for the Millenium, we will do so on white Honda motorcycles or International tractors, depending mostly on the conversation.

From my dad, I learned that love - and family - means that the computer geek/city boy brother is as much a part of things as the country fried/farm lovin' brothers. And just 'cause he's cityfied doesn't mean he can't do chores.

From my dad, I learned that it's ok to cry.

From my dad, I learned that the wash water to do dishes needs to be as hot as your hands can stand. And the rinse water should be hotter than that.

From my dad, I learned that Christmas is awesome, on all kinds of different levels.

From my dad, I learned not to say the first thing that pops into my head. I never actually knew most of the first things that popped into his head, but I could tell that they rarely made it out.

From my dad, I learned to hate sweet potatoes with a righteous hatred.

From my dad, I learned to value family that has come before me.

From my dad, I learned that loving people is where it's at.

From my dad, I learned to dig books. And having them around.

From my dad, I learned that there are very few realizations that hold a candle to knowing that you're the son of a man who loves God and loves his family.

This is not a complete list, but it's my list.

Dad, I love you.

Check this out

2005-06-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

A helpful piece, from the blog of a friend/poobah at Samaritan Ministries

Relational Snapshots from a long weekend

2005-06-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 16

1:00 PM: We (Kristy, the kids, and me) stop at Galesburg to eat lunch. I manage to manipulate Kristy's intense need for a restroom into a meal at Applebee's.

I spend the next 45ish minutes just wondering at my children: the expressions on their faces, their attempts at speaking and showing me things, the sheer delight of things like barbecue sauce.

It's amazing what you'll notice when you've got nothing else to do, and you're not constantly looking around for people you recognize.

3:30 PM: We make it to our destination, the home of some dear friends. The next five hours are a pleasant blur: earnest, enjoyable conversation, grilled bratwurst burgers (a first for me), and my children's unintentional attempts at trashing their beautiful home.

Kristy genuinely enjoyed the time she spent with the lady of the house, and my connection with my friend deepened.

My friend continues to be castigated by lifelong mentors/friends for the very thing that the Bereans were referred to in the Scriptures as noble. I'll never understand that.

10:20 PM: After finally tearing ourselves from my friends' house, we continue on to Cedar River Baptist Camp, where the teens of our church were finishing up a week of camp.

Kristy thought everyone would be in bed, but I knew differently, and sure enough, Pastor Dice was only 2/3 of the way through his message when we showed up.

The staff of the camp include many dear friends, and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with them. I talked to my friend D___ for what ended up being a couple of hours, about our dreams and where God was taking us. I pray God gives him his heart's desire.

I also got to see my teens. They were tired, as everyone is after a full week of camp, but they were excited about decisions they'd made for God. They were totally stoked to see us, too, which is very cool. 'Cause I was stoked to see them: this is my first year I haven't been there with them, and I missed it a lot.

I also got to see Chris, one of my teens who is a member of the Summer Staff at camp. He looked skinnier, somehow, and burnt to a crisp. But he seemed at peace with what God is doing in His life, and I know that God is using this experience to shape him.

I also got to see my sister and my father, counselors for a full week of camp for the first time in a while. They held up swimmingly: I'm proud of them.

And I found out that, the first summer I miss, they reinstitute the Mud Hike, and Brian loses his shoes in the mud. I'm totally jealous.

----

Friday, June 17

5:30 AM: We finally pull in to home after a trip home made more adventurous by my sleep deprivation. After three hours of driving, a fourty-five minute nap, three Krispy Kreme donuts, two Frappacinos, and a Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso & Cream, we make it.

My family consists of total troopers. I doubt any other wife/chidren would have put up with the kind of running around we did. But it's our life, and it's awesome. It's very cool when they can be with me for it.

5:53 AM: I call the office and leave a voice mail that I won't be in to work. After three hours of sleep Wed. night, and no sleep so far Thursday night, I'm of no use to anyone.

5:00 PM: I wake up.

----

Saturday, June 18

9:00 AM: Between "The Backyardigans" and "Dora the Explorer," Kristy and I decide that it's too much to travel again to my friend Doug's reception for earning his Doctorate. We'd called them the night before, but I was still trying to pull it off. Kristy just wasn't up for it.

12:00 PM: We go to my parents' house for a shindig with my family. Phil and Emily are back from London and back in town, and we're all grilling stuff and just being together.

Both of my grandfathers are here. It's really special that they get to see my children running around them, the way we did back in the day. Both my grandmothers have been with Jesus for years, but I'm blessed to have two grandfathers in good health. I make another mental note that I need to get over to see them more: I'm not sure why it's so hard, but I don't seem to get it done.

1:32 PM: We're celebrating Naomi's birthday, Father's Day, and... oh, yeah, we're pregnant. Shrieks and squeals of delight from the female contingent, gently sarcastic questions, then sincere good wishes from the male contingent.

5:20 PM: Everyone else is loading up to go to the baseball game, and we're packing up to head home. We're saying goodbyes, when my brother Matt gets my attention and looks me in the eye for just a second before saying "I'll see you later." The look says a thousand words, and is worth...well, a lot.

Meemee asks if Trey can go with them to the baseball game. I agree, and Trey gets all excited. I'm thankful for parents who seize on opportunities like that to be with the ones they love.

10:30 PM: Trey gets home from the game. Breathlessly, he tells about the fireworks, about playing with cousins Nick and Ryan and Trevor, about Meemee and Papaw. His eyes just dance with excitement.

----

Sunday, June 19

12:00 PM: I go out on a limb and suggest that we go to a Chinese buffet to eat. It's Kristy's birthday, as well as Father's Day, and I deferred to her desires.

Man, I hate Chinese food.

And the only Chinese buffets I like are the ones that aren't strictly Chinese: you know, ribs next to the egg drop soup, and stuff like that. Which this place said it had, but as it turns out, not so much.

Kristy loved it. Went on and on about how good the shrimp was, how good everything was tasting to her.

Me? Seven - count 'em, seven - sugar biscuits, four pieces of sweet & sour chicken minus the sauce, and two cups of Mountain Dew.

3:00 PM: We're watching the US Open, and Kristy is transfixed. She can't pull herself away.

Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?

7:30ish PM: We attend Bethel tonight: Phil preached, and he and Emily prepared goodies from London for everyone after the service.

I was digging the milk and warm tea stuff. It was good.

I watched Phil and Emily prepare this stuff for everyone, and I thanked God for giving them hearts to minister, to share, to try to give others a taste of what they experienced serving God in a foreign country.

And I was very proud of them.

11:00 PM: The Spurs finally pull out a win at Detroit, and for a moment, all is at peace. :)

12:00 AM: Oh, yeah. We're pregnant.

I dislike the smell of Babel in the morning, Part II: Poof

2005-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

So I have a friend, M____. A serious blogger. Had two blogs, updated at least daily. Used his blogs as places to articulate what was going through his head. Sometimes it was joy; sometimes it was frustration: with family, with themself, with their experiences as a member of a church. Sometimes it was both joy and frustration.

Joystration, as it were.

I check out his blogs, because he's a friend, and I find it helpful to have an idea of what's going through his head. The same reason I started checking out blogs in the first place: I couldn't afford not to know what was really going through my teenagers' heads, and livejournal was where they were talking.

So Monday, I see that he's closed up shop at his blog. This doesn't surprise me much, because I thought it coincided with a trip he might possibly be taking. Then I check his other blog, and he's checked out of there, too.

With a finality that I found disturbing.

No explanation: it felt like the kind of thing someone would write just before killing themselves, or something. I went to find him, because it was final enough, and out of the ordinary enough, that I thought something might be wrong.

Turns out, he'd had a conversation in which the thoughts expressed in his blog were interpreted as disrespect, personal attack, and attack of a ministry.

The conversation was with his pastor.

As I thought through M____'s account of the conversation, I thought of Colossians 4:6: Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. I know M____, and I know that what he wrote was not written with the above mentioned motives in mind. But could he have articulated with more grace? Yes. Could he have seasoned it a little, took some of the edge off? Yes. Should he have worked toward that? Well, according to the above verse, God's pretty clear about the answer to that.

And I hope he will work toward that, because he had some worthwhile things to say. The perspective of anyone is worthwhile, especially one who's trying to follow the way of Christ, however that looks at a particular moment. How can someone move forward if they don't know where they are? How can a brother in Christ help another brother if he isn't talking, at least attempting to articulate what he's going through?

Which leads me to M____'s response to the conversation. He decided that, at least for the time being, if his blog was going to be used against him, he wasn't blogging. Given what happened, the response is at least understandable.

But does that help?

I was reminded of another verse: Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25) If a person is hiding the truth of his life and his heart, is that lying? If a person is hiding the truth of his life and his heart because of our potential backlash, are we facilitating his life becoming a lie?

How many Christians are living life with a shiny veneer that is lying on the top of some real pain, some real questions, some real...who knows what?, because they don't know - or they're pretty sure they do know - what kind of response they'll get?

Shouldn't we balance our desire for salt-seasoned conversation with the realization that sometimes, people are going to say things in ways that we don't understand? Shouldn't we allow those people to speak truth, and help them from there? If we react in ways that discourage further dialogue, aren't we part of their refusal to put away lying?

One thing I do know: if we don't let them talk, they will stop talking.

Stuff I just can't make up

2005-06-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

So I have an account on LiveJournal (another blogging site). I don't generally post there, I just keep up with some of my teenagers and others and comment on their posts.

Today, after commenting, I noticed that I could click on "Random," and it would take me to a random LiveJournal account. That sounded interesting enough, and I hadn't really roamed around on LiveJournal beyond the people I know. So I clicked it.

This was the current entry.

October 1st, 2004
10:31 am - Переход на безлимитный тариф.Как же-шь хорошо! За трафиком я больше не слежу. Фоном качается музычка с бесплатного для меня сервака мп3-шек. Сайтики я теперь скачивать не буду. А зачем? Пусть господа веб-дизайнеры обновляют информацию. А я буду ею пользоваться. (Лишь бы мозги не вскипели - вмещать такое количество информации.) Времени сразу освободилось от лишних действий, что я производил раньше. Ка-а-айф.Говорили, что скорость меня может не устроить. Ха! Очень даже устраивает, даже при постоянном фоновом скачивании. Смешно. Я и так всегда считал, что у компьютера, как и у автомобиля на дороге, самое слабое место - это прокладка между креслом и клавиатурой (мышкой, монитором, рулём). Информация выводилась и будет выводится на экран всё равно намного быстрее, чем даже самый быстрый пользователь сможет её прочесть. И моё утверждение только подтверждается этим.

That's my fortune: the first time I venture out into Blogland, I get a guy who posts in - what is this, Greek? - and hasn't updated in eight months.

----

So the brakes on my car have reached a new level of squeakiness.

By "my car," I refer to the '94 Grand Am that has known my wife longer than I have. She had just bought it when I met her, and I've been jealous ever since.

Anyway, we're basically waiting for the payments on our minivan to get over with already so we can unload my car. It has, literally, 185,000 miles on it or something, and I put a gallon of water in the radiator every other day because it continues to disappear, despite very helpful people in my life replacing the thermostat and the radiator.

The problem is, the thing won't stop running. It just keeps going.

But in the meantime, things are starting to wear out. Of particular note at this moment are the front brakes. Anyone who knows cars knows that the front brake pads are set up to have a sharp metal thing start grating on the rotor so that you'll know it's time to change them. Or something like that.

So this grating thing has been going on for some time. Months, or so. And the normal progression is that when this squeaking sound starts, it's annoying at low speeds, but generally isn't noticeable at highway speeds. It's just noisy once in a while, just enough to let you know to get it done already.

Mine has ascended to the next level of squeakiness: a grating sound that never actually stops. Seriously, I was noticing on my way in to work that, even at 65+ mph on the interstate, I could hear this ice-pick-on-chalkboard sound. Granted, the window was down because I've long since given up on the AC, but still, this was a first.

So I may be forced to actually deal with this situation before I unload the car. I fully expect that, when I do, the following will happen: as I take the front wheels off, my entire brake system will break into "The Hallelujah Chorus," and on the last refrain, disintegrate into dust.

Or something like that.

I dislike the smell of Babel in the morning

2005-06-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

So, what was it really like to be part of the whole tower of Babel thing?

What, you've never heard of the whole Babel thing? Here are my Clif Notes:

One of the major parts of the story of God, as recounted in the Bible, is of the great flood that destroyed every person and animal on the earth, except for Noah, his family, and the animals they brought onto the ark with them. So after the flood, people start making a comeback, and their numbers are increasing, and they're getting a little full of themselves.

Being full of themselves, they decide to take on the building of a tower that would reach to God. God comes down to check it out, and realizes that the main reason they can take on this audacious task is because they're united, especially by language. God realizes that, as long as they stick together and are able to communicate, they're not going to populate the whole world, as He wanted: they'll just stick together and do whatever they want.

So, right in the middle of the construction project, God "confounds their language," and suddenly huge chunks of people can't talk to huge chunks of other people.

What was that like?

Can you imagine what it was like to be looking at someone, saying, "I love you," or "You're going to hurt yourself," or "Why are you standing on my prize petunias?" and the person to whom you're talking just not get it?

I can. 'Cause I get a little sense of it in my conversations with pastor types and young people types.

See, I've had lots of conversations lately. I've had conversations with pastor types (more than one, so don't anyone think it's just you, or someone you know) and I've had conversations with young people types (I've only had one, and it's you). By young people types, I am, of course, referring to anyone between, say, 15 and, oh, 29. For the sake of this conversation.

Seriously, I've talked to lots of both, and each group, in general terms, seems frustrated with the other. Pastor types don't get young people types. Most of their conversations about them start with "They just don't understand that..." or "I would have thought they'd known better..." They don't understand why young people types don't just accept the way things have always been done. They don't understand why young people types seemingly overstate things, and seem to always be operating from some degree of depression.

Young people types don't get pastor types. They're frustrated that what pastor types say and do doesn't have any bearing on their lives. Pastor types seem disconnected, uncaring, and unable to provide any direction outside of the omnipresent three-point sermon. Young people types are frustrated that when they don't understand the reason for something, the pastor type's explanation makes it plain that if they don't understand, it's because of their own problems.

Is this a broad brush? You bet, and feel free to elaborate/refute me in the comments. I'm pulling out the broad brush here 'cause I want to get to what's eating at me:

Pastor types and young people types will spend loads of time talking about each other to themselves. But they're not talking to each other - beyond surface level - at all. There is this huge disconnect, and it's a problem - below the surface. They handle pleasantries and the obligatory potluck dinner just fine, but deeper than that, there's a Babel vibe going on.

Now, in evangelical circles, the answer to this issue is to aim a service at young people types, create ministry just for young people types, yada, yada, yada. In independent Baptist circles, that's not usually done, outside of youth group ministry, but even there the youth group is considered part of the body of the church.

And I don't think that should be done. But pastor types and young people types are going to have to learn to communicate with each other at the heart level. Pastor types are going to have to stretch their view of the world, to assume nothing, to get inside young people types' heads and connect with them from the point at which they find themselves. Young people types are going to have to forgive, take care of bitterness that has resulted from past disconnections, and take a chance and be open about what they're really going through.

In the case of Babel, the effect was that the huge chunks of people scattered around the earth. If we don't do something, we're going to have a Babel effect: young people types will scatter from pastor types. Not from God, not from His Word, just from pastor types. In spirit, it's happening - has happened - already. For some, it's happened physically, too.

As it stands, pastor types will continue to be disappointed, and chalk it up to a world getting more wicked. Young people types will find an expression of life in Christ which allows them to walk in His way, or they won't, and they'll be another casualty.

It's time to move toward getting on the same page.

Oh, now I remember...

2005-06-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

In the Bible, there are stories where an important event happens, and God wants people to remember what happened. Or they want to remember what happened. So they place an object, and the object is placed for the specific purpose of jogging the memory, if you will.

After God spoke to Jacob in a dream, Jacob erected a pillar of stones at Bethel. After God held back the Jordan River so the nation of Israel could cross, God told them to erect a pile of stones next to the Jordan River. These were for the purpose of remembering.

In the books of the Bible that tell of the earthly life of Jesus, we find that He had a conversation with His disciple, Peter, in which He foretold that Peter would deny knowing Him. When Peter bristled at the thought, Jesus told Peter that before the rooster crowed three times, Peter would deny Him. When the moment of Peter's denial happened, the rooster crowed. And Peter remembered.

In each case, these people remembered, but the memory is more than just a recollection: in a moment, senses relive what it was like to be there, what it felt like, what it looked like, the smells, the emotions, all of it comes racing back in a single moment.

And at the very same time, a very distinct realization of where the present is in relation to that moment comes washing over. The Bible recounts that upon hearing the rooster, Peter wept bitterly, realizing where his present was in relation to where he had been. He was doing the very thing that, in that heady moment with Jesus, he had promised he'd never do.

Herein lies the value of such placements, such objects. In a moment, they snap you back to that moment in time, and give you a sense of what has changed, or not changed.

I thought of this about 3:00 this morning.

I couldn't sleep. I gave up trying about 1, and went into the basement to the room that I designated as my place to study. It had become mostly a storage room for books and other things, but I was determined to reclaim this space. And, like I said, I couldn't sleep.

So I'm sorting papers, throwing away things, stacking, organizing, dusting, and so on. I don't like to hold on to a lot of things I don't need, but sermon notes, and notes of every variety, have been things I've always held on to. I always figure that I'll look through the sermon notes and get ideas for my own sermons. That has never worked, but I keep trying.

So I'm sorting stuff, and I come upon this:

I read this, and in a moment, I was transported to a secluded river bank at a camp in Iowa, where five years ago, I confronted God. I felt the sun filtering through the leaves and reflecting off the water, the urgency in my voice as I pleaded with God for the hearts of my teenagers. I remembered the helplessness I felt as I told God that if He didn't do something, directions of young lives were going to be altered toward apathy, toward their flesh, toward being messed up.

And on that river bank, as I pleaded for the hearts of my teens, I pleaded with God for my heart, too. I told Him I was tired of mediocre relationship, of being a follower of Christ who hadn't bought in entirely. I confessed areas where I had left God out of the picture, where I had committed sin.

And I made promises.

Promises which I had totally forgotten until 3:00 this morning.

I vowed to stop reading the Life section of USA Today? It's been at least a year since I haven't not read the Life section of USA Today. Stop purchasing magazines without Kristy looking through them first? I haven't purchased many magazines, but I'd forgotten about that, too. Unplug the antenna from my TV? Did it for a while, but not recently. First hour of my day to God? It's been a struggle sometimes, sticking God with the leftovers of my day.

Wow. And I can't even explain them away: I wrote them down.

I had to read it twice, just to let it soak in properly. A nice memory of God working in lives turned into a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized where I was at 3:00 this morning in relation to where I had been on July 20 five years ago.

I'm not proud of where I've ended up with these vows, but I'm thankful that God gave me an object that jolted my memory, and that He forgives me when I confess my sins. I'm thankful that I have the chance to remember, the chance to reorient my direction, and the chance to pursue Him with my life.

I remember, God. Thanks for the reminder.

Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man:
And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel:
That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?
Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.
-The Bible, Joshua 4:4-7

OOOh! - intro: Jellyman, offspring. Offspring, Jellyman.

2005-06-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

So this is my family:

My wife Kristy. She is amazing. We've been married over eight years, and every day I realize in a different way that she is exactly the person, not only that God had for me, but that God knew I needed. She loves playing the piano and PlayStation and scrapbooking and me!

My oldest, Steven Michael Rowell III, or Trey. He's four. He loves to ride his bike and play basketball with Daddy. He's pretty tall for his age, like Daddy was. He loves to talk, but large chunks of it still don't make sense, which concerns us a little, but I'm confident that part will come along. He's really smart, too.

My middle child is Gracie, my princess. She's three, and she has signed a confidentiality agreement stating she'll be in big trouble if she tells anyone I'm wrapped around her little finger. She loves princessy things, long dresses that poof when she twirls, tiaras, and Oreos. Actually, just the filling of Oreos.

Derek is my youngest. I wrote some about him in my previous entry. His first birthday was in March, and he's a big dude for his age, also. He struggles with excema, which has deprived him of the joy of dairy products for the time being, and relegates all of us to wearing clothes washed in Dreft. Doctors say he could grow out of it in a year or so, and we're praying to that end. He loves to taunt us by taking three steps and falling down, and it's been eight days since his last binky.

These are the most important people in my life. I work at being what God wants me to be for them, because I know if I can't be the husband and father that He wants me to be, I'm not going to be any good as a pastor/shepherd, either.

As you can now see, God's been extremely good in bringing these lives into mine.

So that's what love looks like: for Derek

2005-06-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

If the church is supposed to work under many of the same relational dynamics as those of the family (I Timothy 5:1,2 would be an obvious example of the biblical imperative), perhaps part of the breakdown in the relational dynamics of our churches - and our lives as Christians - stems from the breakdown of family relational dynamics around us.

I mean, if you're supposed to intreat an elder as a father, what happens when your father wasn't there? Or he was there, but he belittled you? Or abused you? What if my mother put her desires ahead of her children, and then I become a follower of Christ, and God tells me to intreat older women in the church as mothers?

When some people read that God loves them as a Father, or that they have a Friend that sticks closer than a brother, well...

It helps explain a lot, come to think of it.

And that makes it all the more precious when you get to see, in real life, an example of what the love of family can be. And how it can be a glimpse into what our relationship with God in Christ, and with our spiritual family, can be like.

I thought of all this in the shower.

It was late morning, and the kids and I had shooed Kristy/Mama out of the house to go do scrapbookish stuff or something. We had watched Pooh's Heffalump Movie for the second time that morning.

(Side note: one of the best movie lines of all times comes in this movie. Rabbit tells Roo that he can't go on the heffalump hunting expedition because the whole mission is fraught with danger. After Roo says he can handle it, Tigger reaches down and says, "You just can't argue with a word like 'fraught'." Classic.)

Anyway, my day officially starts when I've showered, dressed, and had breakfast. I've been known to turn down tacos at half past noon, in favor of donuts, because I haven't had breakfast yet. So I sneak away from where Trey, Gracie, Derek and I were watching the movie, thinking I could shower, get dressed, and be around before the movie ended. Bad things of every variety happen when the kids realize that the only parent in the house is indisposed.

As I'm shaving, I hear rumbling along the ground, and I realize that Derek has lost interest in Poohs and heffalumps and is scooting through the house, looking for me. See, it's a known fact that Derek is my boy, not just in the genetic sense of the term, but in the I-don't-want-you-'cause-you're-not-my-dad sense of the term.

So I hear him rumbling toward the bathroom door, and I think to myself, Okay, now if I can get into the shower and turn it on before he gets to the door, he'll realize I'm indisposed and the ensuing kitchen carnage will be light because I'll have taken a quick shower. I thought this, and tried to pull it off, but as I stepped into the shower, I heard the door slam open, and I could hear Derek mentally analyzing the situation. Then he started crying as he realized that I was carrying on a however miniscule part of my life without him.

So, me being the brilliant tactician, I decided to act as if I had heard nothing, and start my shower.

I had a head full of shampoo when I suddenly heard the shower curtain rip back. There was Derek, who now feels better because he knows where I am, but was not expecting water to be part of the equation. This'll work out, I thought. He'll be terrified of the shower water, close the curtain, and that'll be that.

But he didn't. He couldn't even see me, because every time he looked up, his eyes would get pelted with water. It didn't matter: he just stood there, not even crying, just recoiling and gasping a little every time he'd get water in his eyes. His head was soaked, his sweatshirt was soaked, and he just stood there. The whole time it took me to get my shower done, he just stood there.

Because he knew that was where I was.

I turned off the water, dried and dressed, and took Derek to change his sweatshirt (somehow, his pants were completely dry). The whole time, he just looked at me with this light in his eyes, and smiled. And I just looked back at him, and smiled, and thought to myself:

God, I just want to be where you are. I'll do whatever it takes - just let me be where you are.

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
- The Bible, Psalm 42:1,2

...and I'm not a huge fan of long walks on the beach, either

2005-05-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

When I first fired up my blog, one of the things it asked me in my personal profile was my gender and birthdate. Because everything except my blood sugar level is online anyway, I filled them in and thought no more of it.

Turns out that Blogger displays that information, not in the actual format that I gave it to them, but as a set of astrological data.

So, without my really registering it, I was displaying to the world that I believed in that stuff. Which I don't.

Someone who cares about me and my calling to ministry a great deal shot me an email, asking about it. I am grateful to them for doing so. They said in part the following:

"...Do you know that astrology is a pseudoscience? Should a preacher and prospective pastor be affirming a pseudosceince? Is it exemplary?

"Astronomy we can abide and glorify God with. (Institute for Creation Research has excellent resource material on this, just see ICR on the web.) I don't know anybody who knows anybody godly associated with astrology unless it is genuine ignorance. You are touching things that have their roots in the soothsayers, progosticators, magicians, and Chaldeans of Daniel's and even Moses' day, not to mention the Palm Readers and others around town in our day."

I'd like to state once again that I had no intention of aligning myself with, or legitimizing in any way, the practices/teachings of astrology. I couldn't figure out how to stop it, so I pulled my gender and birthdate from my personal profile, and it went away.

Thanks again. The wake-up call has been registered.

Neither give place to the devil.
- The Bible, Ephesisans 4:27

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Abstain from all appearance of evil.
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
- The Bible, I Thessalonians 5:21-23

On Preparation For Dying

2005-05-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've recently - as in, say, ten minutes ago - come to the following conclusion:

There are people with whom it is not safe to make use of public restrooms.

Not for any reasons personal, mineral or bacterial: just for the sake of my sanity.

A____ has just become the first member of that list.

So we walked into the restroom at the same time, and, as is my ritual, I washed my hands before leaving. Normally it's a pretty simple process: make use of the restroom, wash hands, dry hands, leave. But today was not a normal day, and A____ is not a normal restroom user.

"You know what I hate?" It's a rhetorical question, of course, because 1) he knows I haven't coughed up $29.95 to download The Complete List of Things I Hate, and 2) (I would come to realize) the question is merely a bridge to what can only be categorized as the neurotic rantings of a paranoid freak.

"I hate when people use the restroom, and then use their hands to turn on the faucet, and then wash their hands, and then turn off the faucet and walk away, without thinking about what they just left on the faucet handle."

Suddenly, images of favorite moments from my nearly thirty years of life begin flashing before my eyes. There's my mom and dad, the cowboy boots I got for my sixth birthday, the basketball sneakers I got for my seventh birthday, Brian Birdsell, Doug Cassel, camp, Kristy, more camp, Trey, Gracie, camp, Derek... why am I seeing this?

And then it hits me:

Untold hundreds of thousands of people have used the faucet and walked away, leaving entire ecosystems of bacteria, and I have used the faucet after them, and I am going to die. And not in the Bible-refrenced three score and ten years, either.

How have I made it this long? My body is nothing more than a holding cell, a transport for zillions of mutant marauding microscopic mitochondriae. I'm fortunate that I lived to see my first zit.

All this was weighing pretty heavily on my mind, as you can well imagine, although you don't really have to imagine, because I've pretty much just laid it out for you. I solemnly dried my hands and turned to head back to my desk, my job, my life - what's left of it.

As I walked out, the Grim Reaper held the door open for me. Whew: one less disease-riddled surface to deal with.

A New Desk

2005-05-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

So for the last four years, I've worked at Samaritan Ministries International, dreaming of the day that I wouldn't have to do it anymore so I could be in ministry full time.

But something happened about a year in. They gave me a chance in Communications, and I realized I had a knack. For writing, editing, layout, things like that.

So I've done it the last three years, and it's been a blast. I liked it so much, there were times that different people questioned if I'd lost my drive for full-time ministry because of it. I never thought I had, and in fact, I'm sure that the skills I've developed at SMI, and the opportunities I've been given, have made me a better pastor.

So when I told my boss, Ray King, that I would be leaving as soon as I found a church, it was with excitement and anticipation. I was going to take everything I'd learned and use it doing what I knew I was supposed to do with my life. I'll be out of here in a month or so, I told Ray. And I believed it.

But God had other plans. That church hasn't opened up yet. And my replacement had been brought into the department and shown the ropes. So last week, Ray told me that they'd be asking me to help out in another department where I was needed. The department where I had started, actually.

Now, everyone at SMI has been awesome about this. Let's make that very clear.

But that doesn't keep it from feeling really weird.

Yesterday, I moved my stuff out of my Communications desk, and moved it into my Member Services desk. This move wasn't supposed to happen. At first, I felt really out of sorts, with this weird vibe in the pit of my stomach. Telling people to refer their questions to Aaron/Jed, made sure the feeling wouldn't go away.

Kristy says this'll give me more motivation, keep me restless. I suppose so: but I'd have to add another emotion to those. I can't think of one word for it, but it feels something like: Is this it? Did I make a mistake? What's going on? Why am I here? Why am I still here? Let me think - yes, I knew that was God's will, and that was God's will, but maybe...

I'll be fine. But right now, I feel all funky inside.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
- The Bible, Psalm 56:3,4

It was goofy, but man, it was cool

2005-05-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

So I got the chance to preach at my home church last (Wed.) night for the midweek service.

God has been speaking to me through these conversations I'm having, about just how much hurt is floating around, and how it's killing people from the inside out. So I decided I was going to just lay it on the line with the people, and show them some of my heart in this regard.

I worked through how that connection is at the essence of God's identity; how that, because we're made in His image, connection is part of what makes us click; how that the Trinity knew that it wasn't good for us to be alone; and how that, almost from the very moment that sin entered the world, people have used their connections (read: relationships) to hurt other people. (Eve, after all, was the one who gave the fruit to Adam, and so on.)

I then began to share my heart about how many people were walking around hurt, and how they were being ignored. I kind of hit hard on the fact that older generations come from life stories full of relational underpinnings, and thus don't identify with the struggles of newer generations, whose life experiences are more closely recognized by division, dysfunction, divorce, abuse, et al.

I further explained that the average response of older generations to younger generations is one of disappointment and something bordering on disgust, because they base their view of them on where they think they should be in terms of maturity and Christian walk, not on where they actually are. I explained that it's not helping things to ask someone who's never had a father why they don't get a haircut, or to look down on a girl who's encountered abuse for coming into church with a snippy attitude.

We don't know where people are coming from, because we don't ask. We don't even attempt to identify where someone's coming from, starting a relationship from there.

So I'm saying this stuff that God's laying on my heart, and the audience is pretty evenly divided between old people and younger people. For the most part, the older people are just staring at me; meanwhile, some of the youngers are starting to cry.

I wrapped it up by identifying in the Lord's prayer the attitude that God wants us to have toward those who hurt us, and then pointing toward where James tells us to confess our faults to one another, and pray one for another, so you can be healed. Then I said, "We're going to do this."

No piano playing, just people going to other people, confessing their faults, praying for each other. It was awesome.

But when I did it, there was an entire section of old people who didn't move at all. They just sat there, looked around a little, didn't move. Inside, it kind of ticked me off. But I figured, I did what God told me to do. If they don't get it, I can't do anything more than what God wants me to do.

And then I saw a really small glimpse of one of the old guys getting it. And it was, at the very same time, hugely significant and kind of goofy.

After church, I'm standing back in the vestibule, shaking hands and whatnot, when up walks M___ and M___. M___ looks at me and says, "Thanks! We needed that!" - and proceeds to give me this huge bear hug-ish thing. He then looks at M___ and says, "C'mon! Group hug!" and jerks him into this huge hug pile.

So we're in the middle of the vestibule hug piling, when up walks D___, the prototype old guy. Always had this vibe about him where the teens/younger people were kept at a distance 'cause he didn't understand them. Why don't they keep their hair short, yada, yada, yada.

D___ walks up to the hug pile, and I watch him eye the pile with something approaching detached amusement. All of a sudden, M___ yells, "C'mon, D___, join the hug!"

Now, M___ and I both know that this invitation is purely rhetorical. There's no way D___ is actually joining the hug pile. And for about two seconds, he knew he wasn't, too.

Then, without warning, he walks up and puts his arms around the whole hug pile. And for 5.4 seconds, D___ burst out of his comfort zone so he could show that he cared.

M___'s shock started to give way to sarcasm, but I quickly cut him off, pointing out that, indeed, the reason D___ joined our hug pile was to try to show he cared.

In the big scheme of things, it wasn't a huge gesture, and I'm pretty sure it looked goofy. But for me, and for M___, and maybe for our church, it was significant.

And very cool.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. - The Bible, James 5:16

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. - The Bible, Ephesians 4:25

God and I are going to - wait, no...

2005-05-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was hugely interesting...

Tuesday morning began Monday night. That's because I had to leave home about 3:00 am to travel to the Rockford, IL area for my mom's bariatric surgery. Once 11:30 Monday evening came, I was afraid to fall asleep, 'cause I knew I probably wouldn't wake up. So I just didn't go to sleep. I passed the time reading part of a book that had been given to me, called The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges.

Anyway, I got cleaned up and left for the hospital (about a 2 1/2 hour trip), guzzling Frappacinos for caffeine, and got to the hospital about 6:30, about ten minutes after Mom arrived to get ready. They prepped her, and then we prayed with her and she went off to the surgery room. She didn't get nervous until right before she left. Dad, having been through it before, was tearing up quite a bit most of the way through.

She came through the surgery just fine, and we went in to see her when she got done. She was groggy, and in some pain from having her arms held up during the surgery, but she was coming out of it ok. I told Dad I needed to take off, and he asked the four of us kids to sing a couple songs for her before we left. I'm pretty sure I heard Em singing along, too.

So I left to drive back about noon. I had $7 to put gas in the car, and I thought that'd be plenty. I'm driving back, enjoying the beautiful day and talking to God and whatnot. As I got closer to home, I consulted the gas gauge and saw that it was going to be cutting it close. I had no money, and no cards or checks or anyghing like that. I thought about what I was going to do, and I decided that I was going to ask God to make it last until I got home.

It felt good to do this. God and I were going to get home, and he was going to have Elisha come do his cruse-of-oil trick on my gas tank, and I was going to see God do something for me. The sun's shining, and God and I are cruising down the highway, and my car's gonna run on air until I get in the driveway, and man, I'm gonna have a story.

I drove for over an hour with the gauge in the "E" area, and over a half-hour in the part where I'm normally putting getting gas at the very top of my to do list. I got past Bloomington, which is a half-hour from home, and I thought to myself, This is really happening.

And then something I'd read from the book the previous night hit me. If I ran out of gas right at that moment, did that make God any less good to me? If I got home, did that make Him somehow more worthy of worship then He was at that very moment?

I knew the answer, and I told Him so. God, I said, You're wonderful. You're wonderful, no matter what happens. If I run out of gas right here, I'm still going to believe that You're wonderful. I worship you.

Thirty seconds later, fifteen miles from home, the car died.

Oh, crud, I thought to myself. This isn't quite the story I had in mind. But it turns out God really was still wonderful. I got out of the car and started hoofing it to the closest farmhouse I could find. I walked across new fields of corn on a beautiful, windy day, and I couldn't get these words out of my head:

Forever You are faithful,
Forever You are strong,
Forever You are with us,
Forever.

So I walked and worshipped, and worshipped and walked. It was forty-five minutes of walking before I found a farm where someone was home. They gave me some fuel in a plastic container that they didn't need back. They were kind, but the container wasn't equipped to pour fuel into my car. So after fourty-five minutes of hoofing the gas back to my car, I had to craft a makeshift funnel out of a Nestle Quik bottle and try to pour the gas in as semis went whizzing by, blowing gas all over the car and all over me. My good jeans now had ample amounts of spilled gas to complement the grass stains and barbed-wire holes I had accquired on my walk.

Was He still good? Was He still faithful? Was He still with me? As I rode back, the sun setting, experiencing the early stages of something akin to being high from the gas fumes, it sounded like a rhetorical question.

I mean, of course He is all those things. That's what I've always said. That's what most everyone around me has said. But it didn't necessarily look like the kind of situation where God spends a lot of time hanging out.

So was He with me, or not? Was He good, or not? He didn't do what I'd asked. I didn't have an Elisha-in-the-gas-tank story to share. All I had was sunburn, grass stains, barbed-wire holes, and enough gas to get home.

Oh, yeah. And a couple of hours spent walking through cornfields thinking about Him.

Turns out He was there, after all. And He knew what I needed.

Forever You are faithful,
Forever You are strong;
Forever You are with us,
Forever.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. - The Bible, Psalm 139:7-10

A Little Numb

2005-05-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

First, some links:

Just when you thought every single direction for a Star Wars parody had been discovered...

A personal - and worth considering - perspective on holiday (in this case, Mother's Day) church events

--- --- ---

My weekend has left me a little numb.

Friday, I took Kristy to see the Peoria Players Theatre's production of "Crazy For You," the Gershwin musical. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the time to spend alone with my wife. The play felt like ten songs with a plot haphazardly attempting to tie them together, but still fun nonetheless. As a follower of Christ (who is a man), I wished the burlesque elements could have been toned down or something.

Saturday, I took my family to a Saturday morning revival service at our home church. Kristy and I sang two songs as part of the proceedings, and we learned new songs this time, which was fun. The one song I'd heard before, but the other one had words that really spoke to the cry of my heart:

To be used of God, to sing, to preach, to pray;
To be used of God to show someone the way:
I want so much to feel the touch of His consuming fire -
To be used of God is my desire.

The guest preacher preached a good message about how revival in the church takes work. The guest preacher is a personal friend of mine from my days working at Cedar River Baptist Camp, and it was good to see him.

In the afternoon, I drove an hour to an undisclosed location and met a personal friend to hear more of his story. D___ has had to leave the independent Baptist church in which he grew up, which formed a significant part of his identity, and the parting and subsequent rhetoric hasn't been pretty. I talked with him for nearly eight hours about his experience, his subsequent re-evaluation of everything of significance in his life, and where he finds himself at this juncture of his journey. What follows are one-sentence conclusions I came to, based on our conversation:

- As a fellow independent Baptist, I am ashamed of the way that D___ and others have been treated by their former church.

- As a fellow independent Baptist, I am even more ashamed - I don't think apalled is too strong - at the way that D___'s personal relationships fell off the face of the planet in the time following his decision.

- If independent Baptists are so convinced that single-person pastoral leadership is the appropriate Biblical structure, then we've got to stop providing such strong anecdotal evidence against it.

- The experience of some people in independent Baptist churches is causing them to question the validity of relationship with God.

- Given that, it should come as no surprise that, for people in this state, there is no issue that is beyond scrutiny, with their baseline position being somewhere on the opposite side of the spectrum from where the offending independent Baptist church stands.

- D___ is - and will be - a stronger, better follower of Christ for having encountered this experience.

- I'd put the odds at 50/50 that it'll be in a church outside of independent Baptist circles.

- Which kills me. Not because D___'s expression of his walk with Christ will be less than authentic - I am so beyond that - but because independent Baptist churches need men like D___ in the worst way.

- One imminent danger (among several) for D___ is that the qualities of a single pompous, self-centered, incompetent leader, and the brain-dead ignorance of his followers, will be imposed on other bodies of Christ followers whose most glaring misfortune is being in the same social circle.

- D___ has been ostracized, and the image of his relationship with Christ has been shredded, by the pastor and the people of the church which he prayerfully, and with no small amount of turmoil, decided to leave.

- This direction of treatment by independent Baptists as a whole of questioners within their bodies absolutely must stop.

So, as you can imagine, I had quite a bit on my mind going into Sunday worship services. We attended our home church, where the guest preacher preached both services. We ate lunch with him, and the quartet we're part of sang in both services. It was fun to sing with the quartet again.

But the guest preacher couldn't stop talking about the great spirit of the services, and how blessed the audience was to be part of this church. He was absolutely right about the spirit of the services, but my observation, from knowing the lives of many of these people, is that the good spirit of the services doesn't extend into their daily lives. There is a lot of pain just under the surface, perhaps concentrated in a few people but present nonetheless, that isn't being dealt with in ways that honor Christ.

It scares me, and it's painful to observe.

So, hopefully you'll understand if I'm a little numb at the moment. I'm weary of analyzing the misdirections of the ones who are supposed to be showing me the way. I'm more anxious than ever for the opportunity to craft an expression of life together which is true to what God is showing me and some of my friends.

It'll be an independent Baptist church, but in the ways that are of significance, it won't look much like what they've come to be. As much as it pains me to say that, it's the truth, because I will die from the inside out otherwise.

I cried to thee, O LORD; and unto the LORD I made supplication.
What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?
Hear, O LORD, and have mercy upon me: LORD, be thou my helper.
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever. - The Bible, Psalm 30:8-12

A Few Disconnected Things, Except That They Happened To Me

2005-05-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

I've had some trouble recovering restwise from our weekend in Missouri and subsequent travelling. So I'm posting some random stuff and preparing to collect my thoughts.

--- --- ---

Monday evening, I attended a Fingerstyle Guitar workshop at Guitar Center in Peoria. It was put on by Chris Proctor, who is one of the best at what he does. I do not know how to play guitar, but I enjoy listening to it very much, and I also wanted to add to my mental catalog of possibilities for music in the life of the church.

It was a very enjoyable experience. Mr. Proctor is a tall man, and when he plays his songs, his eyes are closed. The times when he was giving instruction and was playing a riff or something, he would have to work at keeping his eyes open. He seemed very approachable and genuinely concerned with helping guitar players in the audience improve. He seemed honest, with a wry sense of humor. He gave little glimpses into his creative process, which were very interesting. And being able to watch a master at that distance - I couldn't have been more than ten feet away from him - was just engrossing.

Most of his instruction went over my head, because I don't know any of that stuff, but it was still fascinating to be there. And his music is just incredible. If you get the chance to catch a concert or a workshop, I highly recommend it.

--- --- ---

Mother's Day was this past Sunday. I got Kristy a PlayStation 2. Am I awesome or what?

Seriously, don't be afraid to go outside the box to show someone that you appreciate them. Cards? Flowers? Chocolate? Please. The line at WalMart to buy those things is still winding down.

Put some thought into it. Or don't put some thought into it, and go off an impulse. Or something.

Gift cards are one of the worst things that ever happened to celebrations. No one thinks anymore. They're afraid of disappointing them, or something, so they get them the plastic equivalent of money. Which is useful, but not enriching at all.

Kristy spent a couple hours yesterday, she and Trey chasing an animated bandicoot around a fantasy world, Gracie and Derek cheering them on.

I'll take that over your plastic money any day.

It's Heeeeere

2005-05-06T23:15:00.000-07:00

Just watched a Nightline story about Jessica, a 35-year-old single woman who is having a preemptive double mastectomy after testing positive for a gene mutation that is known to result in breast and ovarian cancers. She's considering having her ovaries removed preemptively, as well, but she's holding off on that decision for five years so she can have children. If she has not married in that time, she will consider other means to have children.

The future of medical ethics is here. Counseling is about to get a lot...different.

Are we ready?

Welcome to Greencastle

2005-05-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

So we packed up and headed out for northeastern Missouri, to spend the weekend with Kristy's family. We just got in. Kristy's dad was supposed to have his gallbladder removed today, but complications prohibited it for the time being.

Most of Kristy's family lives in the metropolis of Greencastle, Missouri. On the way in tonight, I saw that the population was up to 308, up from 276 when I was dating Kristy.

From 300 on, it's all downhill. Or so they tell me.

--- --- ---

When I was dating Kristy, I used to be able to make it from Pekin to Greencastle in 4 1/2 hours. 4:15, if I really, really pushed it. I had three or four tickets to show for really, really pushing it.

This time, with a wife and three young ones, we left somewhere around 4:30 pm and arrived somewhere around 11ish. There's a part of me that's stopped keeping accurate track because it's just embarrassing.

But then, when I was dating Kristy, I was in a rush to see her and get to talk to her in person. Now, I get to do it all the way there and back. Except when she's helping Gracie put the cap back on her Strawberry Crush, while Trey and Derek doze the miles away.

All in all, a pretty even trade, I'd say. I might have even came out ahead.

I've Been Provoked, Part II: or, I Wasn't Really Provoked

2005-05-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

So I'll continue here with another point from my friend's email, but I must begin by clarifying that I wasn't really provoked, and the whole shotgun metaphor was overstatement for the purpose of amusement. Mostly my own, as it turns out.

My blog subtitle states that I am "comfortable with being slightly out-of-place 69.3% of the time." Yesterday's entry got into one reason for being out of place in the religious community in which I was raised.

So, in my search for alternatives, I have observed and read up on other ministry leaders and churches. Ones that fall outside the independent Baptist associations and fellowships that I have been part of.

I have learned much from them. I won't take time here to articulate everything, but I've learned much.

And yet, I am out of place in those settings, as well. There are practices and progressions of logic that do not sit well in my spirit. Now is not the time to articulate those things, either.

Where I've come to is that all truth comes from God, and some truth is present in every person, because people are made in God's image. I must learn what I can from everyone I come in contact with, examine what I learn in light of my relationship with God and His Word, and craft an expression of my life in Christ that is unique to me and the world in which I live.

This is my dream: for my life, the life of my family, the life of the body of Christ followers that God allows me to lead on this fantastic journey.

So I'm slightly out of place 69.3% of the time (another figure thrown out there mostly for my amusement), and I'm getting comfortable with that, because it's what my life in Christ looks like.

I'm good with that.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. - The Bible, 2 Corinthians 10:12

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: - The Bible, I Peter 2:21

I've Been Provoked, Part I

2005-05-03T03:10:00.000-07:00

I received an email from a friend who feels that my recent posts haven't been incendiary enough. He tries to push several of my buttons - most successfully, I must admit - and it will take more than one entry to address every piece of bird shot that came from his single shotgun blast. :)

...in your blog, you state that you are comfortable with being slightly out of place 69.3% of the time. I assume, and maybe incorrectly, that this is compared to the
religious community in which we were raised. Even if this is not the case, it sounds as if you have many differences with the current mode of operation for most Baptist churches. Why fight the status quo? Generally speaking, if Baptist don't want to change, why put yourself through the agony of a battle which cannot be won?

For the sake of background:

The religious community in which I was raised (we were raised, in the case of my friend) is the circle of churches that refer to themselves as independent fundamental Baptist churches. Though there is no official federation or governing body over these churches, there seems to be a propensity for organizing these churches into loose confederations, depending on all manner of various criteria. (These loose confederations are often officially referred to as associations, or fellowships, or some such title.)

Once these loose confederations are established, a sort of unspoken peer pressure is put in place. Since many of these association/fellowship groupings are in direct response to what is perceived as the wrong direction of a previous association/fellowship, a typical mantra might amount to not standing for the things that they stand for. A church is considered to be "on the right track" if they have certain guest preachers in, or use certain lingo that is understood by others within the confederation, yada, yada, yada.

The end result of all this is that, even though our churches are, in point of fact, independent of each other, our leaders - and, from their example, our people - are as a general rule always comparing our churches/stands on issues/methods of ministry to each other. And when some leader or church doesn't match up, they are preached against and warned about in the gatherings of the various associations/fellowships.

At some point, we have to find something better to do.

I'm out of place in the type of environment I just described. I believe that the end result of these conditions has been that churches have focused on their standing within their social circles, and have addressed issues of importance within said social circles. This has resulted in members who either are completely in their element inside their church social circle and clueless outside of it, or who have been rendered marginal in both their church social circle and in their world.

These conditions are present in most of the churches that make up this circle of independent Baptist churches. It's not the rule, but it certainly isn't the exception, that's for sure.

But, theological arguments aside, the great thing about being independent is that, theoretically, the church and its leadership is responsible to God alone for its conduct in every area - doctrines, modes of operation, anything. As a pastor, I can respect someone else's opinion, and listen to it, and everything else, but it is not supposed to bear on my decisionmaking or the direction of the church one whit.

So, at this point in my journey, I don't believe that I have to leave anything to do the kinds of things that God has placed in my heart to do. I'll just be independent, in its real sense. The group of believers that God gives me to lead will be independent, in its real sense.

Will I be shot down at association meetings? Maybe. But I guess there's are bigger, more personal reasons that I will continue to challenge the status quo.

- Rhoda (not real name) had been sexually abused for at least five years by the only father figure in her life. When she went to the authorities, various members of her family (who are not believers) sided with him, and treated her as if she was the biggest part of the problem. She struggles with the emotional implications of being abused: blaming herself, hating him and her family members, suicide as a possible answer to her problems. As a member of an independent Baptist church, she has no outlet for her struggles, no place to even admit she needs help.

- Tim (not real name) has dreamed for as long as he's followed Jesus to work in ministry and have a family. His relationships with the women in his life have so scarred him that he's unconvinced that a marital relationship could be any different. Meanwhile, as a member of a Baptist church, he is constantly reminded of all the ways in which he can't serve God because he's not married.

- Ernie (not real name) came to Christ through friends involved in a youth group at a Baptist church. His relationship with his stepfather is strained, and his relationship with his mother has often been shallow. Through all his life, he found acceptance and belonging through being a "crying shoulder" for girls to go to. As he has come to grips with the way of Christ in his life, he has given up these relationships, only to find an incredible void because guys in the youth group often don't understand him. He fights the pull of wanting girlfriends, but it's often a losing battle. He believes God has called him to preach, but he often feels alone. Just flat alone.

These people are in our churches. I know they're there, because I know them, and this is just my world. God's allowed me to affect these lives, and I know there are others. I've been - and continue to be - mentor, surrogate father, and more to a precious circle of fellow Christ-followers who are on this journey with me. I can't leave them, and I know there are more like them in our churches, some of whom know what they're missing, some of whom just experience the gnawings of a hole in their souls.

For many of these, their journey of faith will not take them beyond their current experience. If they can be given hope, they can change their worlds, and the kingdom of heaven will advance.

If I had to pin down a reason for fighting the status quo, this would be it.

I just can't leave them.

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.
For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.
For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.
But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. 13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.
- The Bible, Romans 14:7-13

See this movie, ASAP

2005-05-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

What follows is the text of an article I wrote for Samaritan Ministries' Christian Health Care Newsletter, which I serve as Assistant Editor. It describes my recent experience watching Hotel Rwanda for the first time.

There exists no shortage of assorted religious leaders, pundits, and the like who decry the influence of Hollywood movies on our culture and our collective spirituality.

At the same time, it is undeniable that the medium of the motion picture, in the right hands, is uniquely qualified to create a visceral experience that demands both emotional and substantive responses from its audience.

For historical precedent, we look to no less than the earthly life of Jesus Christ, who “saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.” (Matthew 14:14, KJV) When Christ took in the image of those people - when He saw them - He responded with compassion, which compelled Him to heal those who were sick.

It was not hearing of their plight that moved Christ. Rather, it was the visceral experience: the images - and, surely, the sounds - of a large group of needy people milling around, helplessly searching, but not really even knowing what they were looking for.

All of which leads me to last night.

I rented the movie Hotel Rwanda to watch at home with my wife, Kristy. I consider myself a fan of movies of all kinds, and I had heard good things about Hotel Rwanda. It had been nominated for three Oscars, which served mostly just to put it up on my mental radar screen, and I waited until 11 p.m. on the night the rental was already a day overdue, to watch it. The plan was to get this movie watched while Kristy fell asleep so that my $3.50 wasn’t completely wasted.

Two hours later, as the end credits rolled, Kristy and I were literally on the edge of our seats. Kristy was in tears; I felt like I had had the wind knocked out of me. We talked for another hour - by now it’s 3 a.m. - about how badly we wanted God to use us to reach out to those who need Him.

We were moved to compassion.

Hotel Rwanda retells the true story of the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990's, when, in the space of one hundred days, Rwanda’s Hutu extremists slaughtered nearly one million of their Tutsi neighbors and any moderate Hutus who stood in their way. The story focuses on Paul Rusesabagina, a moderate Hutu who - at the height of the atrocities and after being abandoned by all who had promised to help - sheltered more than 1,200 refugees in the hotel where he was manager.

The movie follows Paul, a devoted father, as he moves from acting only in the best interests of himself and his family, to sacrificing to save scores of people with whom he has no other connection than that they have come to him for help. The emotions on display - the terror of imminent death, the helpless despair of isolation, the joy of safety and discovering loved ones thought to be lost - are palpable.

As the movie unfolds, the enormity of what actually happened - and that various governments and groups of people stood by as it happened - begins to settle on your consciousness with a weight that will not let up. Even as I write this now, I can’t stop thinking about the faces, the sheer terror, the streets running red, littered with scores of dead bodies. (I would not attempt to gauge the level of objectionable elements here; proceed with some caution, but, by all means, please proceed.)

In the end, I was moved to compassion for the people of Rwanda in a way that, sadly, I have not been moved in a long time, perhaps ever. It made me aware that our missions presentations could use fewer slides of rolling green hills and quaint village streets, and more of, well, Hotel Rwanda.

My prayer, now that I’ve been moved to compassion, is that I will follow Christ’s example of compassion leading to acts of restoration, mercy, and hope - for this life and the one to come.

For more information on Hotel Rwanda and on the events surrounding the Rwandan genocide, visit the movie's website.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. - The Bible, James 1:22-25

A Tale of Two Conversations

2005-04-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

I had two conversations recently.

One was over dinner with my dear friend. C___ needs to break out of the life place in which she currently finds herself, but the life place in which she finds herself also has the relative comfort that always comes with ruts. A decision to go to ____ would be a huge first step for her, but it's going to take some doing financially.

So, she told me, she laid down a fleece in front of God. If you'll take care of ____ bills by May 1, then I'll know I'm supposed to go.

He hasn't done anything yet. God, that is.

So what does that mean?

***

Earlier that day, I had a phone conversation with my sister Emily. She and her husband Phil are studying to be missionaries. To Great Britain. London, to be more exact.

She was telling me that they have purchased plane tickets for a survey trip to London this summer, and she was ecstatic. "We saved $700 off what we thought we were going to have to spend! We may have to pay on these tickets for two years, but we're going!"

How amazingly cool is that? To know that you're supposed to do something, to own it within your very being so intensely, that life becomes an adventure you take with God, interest rates be darned. To know that you have to do something at your core, to the point that how God takes care of the details of things becomes a non-issue in the blinding light of the journey on the horizon.

***

The two conversations presented an interesting contrast to me. On the one hand was a follower of Christ, kind of wanting to see the pot of gold before walking toward it; on the other, Phil and Emily, charging over the hill headlong, not blindly, but comfortable with trusting God that He was - is - going to hold up his end of the bargain.

God never gave Abraham the fleece deal. Moses neither. The disciples? Nope. They just followed. We could do a lot worse than for the journeys of our lives to turn out the ways that theirs did.

The girl in the first part of the story? She going to be fine. She's got more fight in her than she knows, and she's gonna step out, and it's going to turn out awesome.

Emily and Phil? Those crazy kids are gonna spend two weeks in London, stoking a fire that will burn in their bones until the moment they set foot back on British soil for good. The things they experience will give them dreams to carry them through disappointments, struggles of every kind, and the time-consuming red-tape-ish experience that can be the deputation period. They'll put faces with their calling.

They could pay ten years, and it'd still be totally worth it.

It's got me fired up to help 'em out. So Kristy and I are saving up to help get 'em over there, and be part of God's holding up His end of the bargain. We won't be able to give them a ton of money, but I'll be darned if I'm gonna sit here and not be part of something special.

Godspeed, Phil and Emily. Keep your eyes on the horizon.

Gospeed, C___. The best part of your story - your best sense of yourself - is yet to come.

I'm proud of all of you.

let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
- The Bible, Hebrews 12:1b, 2

Wanna help Phil and Emily? Send letters and contributions in care of "Phil and Emily's tickets" to Bethel Baptist Church, 2720 Broadway, Pekin, IL 61554. They'll see it gets to them.

Chapel, and other things on my mind

2005-04-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

So I preached chapel services for ___ Christian School (based out of ___ Baptist Church) today. They have separate chapel services for the Junior/Senior High and Elementary age groups.

I always enjoy the chance to preach to teenagers, and preaching these chapel services has been pretty much the only opportunity I've had so far. My years and relationships with the teens at Bethel taught me so much about integrating the way of Christ into the time/space where God has placed us. I have a lot of empathy for where teenagers are in their journey, and I am aware that many of the spiritual and relational crossroads they're coming to are pivotal ones. I want so much for them to make it as followers of Christ!

With the move to a new ministry and place coming soon, I was aware that this might be the last time I get to speak to them in this way. I didn't do anything emotional or dramatic, but I did begin my time with them by telling them that relationship with God on their own terms exists, and if they weren't at that place, to not give up digging and searching until they began to find it.

The religious experience of parents/leaders is so easy to co-opt as your own, especially in the hermetically sealed subcultures we often create, that finding your own relationship with God doesn't seem to be worth the work. Or surface actions get mistaken for authentic relationship, but by the time the mistake is discovered, bitterness/jaded outlook have set in, and it's too late.

Or, in perhaps the most ironic twist of all, they find the authentic relationship outside the church/relationship circles in which their walk with God was formed. That's just not supposed to happen, it's been dictated by those who've taught us: but it does. And it shouldn't have to.

Two friends of mine, D__ and S__, come to mind. Good kids, brought up in one of the signature ministries of our independent Baptist church circles. Talented, got-it-going-on types. Sincere and dedicated in their faith. And forced to come to grips with the fact that the expression of Chrstianity they were living was a dead end, in every sense of the term. Forced to consider straining - and losing - friendships built over young lifetimes. Forced to consider aligning themselves with local bodies of Christ followers outside the group of independent Baptist churches in which they had grown up. Forced by the intensity of their desire to be followers of God in the way of Christ.

Is it a shame they're considering churches that aren't independent Baptist? You bet it is.

It's a shame because it shouldn't have to happen. As a group of churches, our doctrinal statements are true to the Word of God. As a group of churches, our relational dynamics are haphazard at best, and at worst, they are absolutely detrimental to the development of the generations whose walks with Christ are just beginning.

At least D__ and S__ were strong enough in their faith to continue pursuing it. Most just continue mediocre, brain-dead, irrelevant existences where they are. Or they give up on any expression of a relationship with Christ whatsoever.

These are my observations. They are a big part of my heart for ministry: to be part of creating a whole-life church experience that is an expression of the way of Christ in the time and place in which God has placed us.

Godspeed, teenagers. Just don't give up the search, the journey.

Godspeed, D__ and S__. You're not alone.

Godspeed, independent Baptist churces. The ball's in our court.

Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. -The Bible, I Thessalonians 4:1,9

The Nays Have It

2005-04-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

So it won't be Cincinnati.

After two hours of interview by phone, I waited all day yesterday to hear from __ Baptist Church's pulpit committee as to whether they wanted me to come "candidate" (visit their church, preach, we get to know each other, leading to a vote by the members).

I had mixed feelings. The interview process did not have a great vibe to it. There were seven men on the pulpit committee, out of an average Sunday School attendance of 30ish. That seemed odd.

Then in two hours of interviews over two Sundays, they questioned me for all but ten minutes about the intricacies of standard Baptist doctrine. This after they told me up front that the doctrinal statement I had sent with my resume was the most detailed that they had seen. So that was weird, too.

But the weirdest was the second hour, this past Sunday. __ Baptist Church prints a doctrinal statement on the back of their bulletin every Sunday (indication of priorities), and they wanted to go through it with me and have me state my Scripture proofs for each point (there were ten). So we got started with the first point, and I gave them two Scripture references as my proofs.

"Do you have any more?"

I was not prepared for this. I told them that I didn't have another one off the top of my head, and after a few moments of awkward silence on their end, they said ok and moved to the next point.

It went like that for the entire rest of the conversation. If I offered two refrences, they wanted five. If I offered New Testament proof Scriptures, they wanted Old Testament prophecy. If I gave four Scripture references, they wanted me to quote the Scriptures. And I couldn't give hardly any of it to them - not off the top of my head, not over the phone in some theological pop quiz format. I was honest with them about that.

They resorted to volunteering possible proof Scriptures for me to use, as if they were trying to help me out. One gentleman, after I couldn't quote a proof Scripture word for word, asked me if I knew what Psalm 119:111 said.

After fifty minutes of that, they asked me if I had any questions for them. I said that, after two hours of conversation with them, all I knew about __ Baptist Church was that there were seven men on the Pulpit Committee, so, why don't you tell me a little about the church?

So they did: average Sunday School attendance of thirty, church building, parsonage, nursing home services, yada, yada, yada. I asked them about the average drive time of the established families (trying to get a sense of how connected they were to the church). They said they were all within twenty minutes.

K__, the chairman of the committee, said that they were an older congregation, and they were needing someone to bring in younger people. He got out the one sentence, and then the sound of piano playing in the background signaled that the conversation was over, because church was about to start. They said they'd get back to me, and hung up.

So I left the interview a little embarrassed, but mostly miffed and saddened. In two hours, not once had anyone asked me about the vision God had given me for leading a local body of Christ followers. Not once had they asked me... well, they just hadn't, and it was not what I was expecting.

But K__ had said they needed someone to bring in younger people, and several things were in place that could make __ Baptist Church an opportunity to do something special. I figured that if, after all this, if they still wanted me to come, there must be some level of openness to what God might want to do.

So I waited. I waited Monday, though I wasn't expecting them to call then. I waited all day Tuesday, and no call. After work, I go home to watch the kids while Kristy goes grocery shopping, and I wait, my pulse picking up every time the phone rings.

A little after nine, the call finally comes. It's K__, calling me during a break from his second-shift job. He says he hates to be the bearer of bad news... and I zone out as he finds some nice way to say that they don't want me to come.

K__ seems to genuinely like me. He tells me that he told the committee that if they want a younger pastor, they're going to have to be flexible. (Their previous pastor had been there 20 years before developing cancer and passing away.) K__ tells me that he'd like to stay in touch to see how I'm doing, and that he's genuinely enjoyed the time spent together on the phone.

I thank him, and as I hang up, I'm sad. This wasn't unexpected: if I were any kind of pragmatist, I would have been surprised at any other response. But, for a couple of days, I dreamed of a group of people in Cincinnati who had reached a fork in the road of their journey, and had decided to consider the one more real, more holistic, and in our Baptist churches, perhaps less travelled. For about five seconds, I mourned the loss of that dream.

I would have mourned longer, but at that moment Trey, my four-year-old son, brought a ball up to me and said, "Wanna play soccer?" I almost audibly heard him - or Someone - say: Do you want to keep dwelling on people who are stuck in the past, or do you want to come play with your dreams, your future?

Do I want to play soccer, Trey? Why, yes. Yes, I do.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. - The Bible, Jeremiah 29:11

I'm here...

2005-04-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've joined the real blogging world.

I hope to use this space to articulate some of the concepts, ideas, reactions, etc. that I work through every day.

I have a livejournal account, as well. Mostly I use that to keep up with other people, in particular, the teenagers and others with whom I followed Christ as Assistant Pastor/Youth Director at Bethel Baptist Church.

This will be my first serious, intentional blogging attempt. I look forward to it.