Month: October 2005

This morning 5 students are starting a secret mission. This mission, titled Operation C, is simple in it’s goal and extremely complex to complete. I can’t go into the details. But please pray for them as they look for opportunities. From this point on, it’s a God thing.

Luke 5:14, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

Exodus 22:9, “In all cases of illegal possession of an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any other lost property about which somebody says, ‘This is mine,’ both parties are to bring their cases before the judges.”

Jesus, you are the judge… These students are the bounty hunters. We seek, you guide.

This is the first time in my life I’ve had both a cat and a dog at the same time. I think we were a bit idealistic about how they would get along when Stoney came home a couple weeks back. So far, it hasn’t worked out.

While I was in the back yard this morning burning leaves and brush, Stoney was happily laying nearby. I also knew that Violet, our cat, was in the yard and asking to be let inside and away from the dog. Well, she got a bit too close and the dog noticed the cat. The next things I knew I was in an episode right out of Dumb and Dumber. The cat ran to one end of the yard with the dog hot on it’s tail. I was hollering at them both… then the cat realized she couldn’t jump the fence at full speed so she doubled back and hauled butt towards the tree. Just as Stoney was neared her tail… Violet gave a huge leap and flew up about 20 feet into a tree. I didn’t even know that cat could climb trees and I wondered if she knew she could. Instincts saved the day.

Within a few minutes I had the dog safely in the basement and the cat came inside to rest. So much for the dog and cat living in harmony.

In other news… I placed a limit order to buy some stock today in a company most people haven’t heard of before. Grey Wolf Inc is a oil rig driller. The play is that after Katrina and Rita there will be an increased desire to drill both on and off shore in the U.S. Well, with a previous downturn in that business… a lot of driller went out of business and their rigs were sold off. But since there is a huge demand for drilling now and not a lot of drilling rigs… Grey Wolf is working 24/7 to try to keep up. It might only be a stock I hold for a quarter or so… but I think it’s a solid energy play… away from my default “likes” of retail consumer goods and technology. I am eager to hear Intel’s numbers tommorow. I’d like for them to make me some money before I ditch them 1/1/06.

I could tell last night by the amount of times the furnace came on that it was cold. Michigan + October = Cold? I know, it’s a shocker!

When I finally got up at about 7:30 this morning I found out that it was about 35 degrees. OK, now that is cold. Officially in Romeo it is 34 at the airport. Considering that it doesn’t normally get below 20 in the winter… I think it is officially cold. (Yes, I know you think Michigan gets really, really cold… But not all the time.)

Anyway, it is my day off. I have some home projects to get crackin’ on. I’ve got to finish winterizing my shed and do a little yard work. Namely this means I have to burn the leaves. Not my favorite thing to do. Other than that… I have some inside projects to play with. It should be a nice day.

In financial news, Intel continues to flounder… It even got downgraded a week ago or so. The problem? I have to make my quarterly investments this week and I am not sure what I want to buy. With the way things are going in the markets I might actually do better just to leave it in my IRA’s interest bearing savings account! We’ll see.

We had a bunch of friends over for a putluck after church today. As is usual, I hear the lamentations of “I don’t know how you can get along with all of those teenagers” and “you must be crazy to be a youth pastor and like it.”

Honestly, I don’t get that. I just plain love being around students and absorbing our whole lives with them. Here’s something that people don’t always see… I learn as much from them that they learn from me. I consider myself lucky to spend my life with “stupid teenagers.”

Here is a note I got from a 12th grader in response to asking to get the NI team together one more time. She really revealed in me something I was thinking but hadn’t articulated yet.

You are going to hate me.

NI is beaten to death. Some people are being histronic and sentimental, trying to stretch their importance as much as they can for as long as they can. It’s time to move on. We can look at NI as a special time for us where we were spiritually stretched. But there’s a difference between appreciating and learning from the experience, and trying to relive the experience (over and over again). NI, for me right now, is like a piece of gum that started out tasting good but now tastes bitter and tough.

There’s ministry to do in Romeo. Why don’t we take what we learned, stop alienating the rest of the youth group that hasn’t been on a mission trip (stop using NI lingo), get some more people involved (dissolve the NI clique) and reach out to people who need to be reached?

(Telling people at school about how cute the wee Northern Irish kids were does not qualify as outreach. It does qualify, in the mind of the listener, as bragging. Somehow, people don’t respond to well to that.)

NI was great. You know what would be greater? If we got over our own spiritual superiority and began doing God’s work again.

Damn, that’s good stuff.

“And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.” Matthew 14:19

I wonder… what would have happened if Jesus had been by the Irish Sea and not the Sea of Galilee?

Every once in a while you get something that makes you smile. I received this note from a student last night.

how long does it take you to put together a talk? i think that if i tried…it would take me forever and still wouldn’t end up half as good as you….thats probably one of the reasons why your the youth pastor and i’m not. so, something that i’ve noticed, is that your talks almost always have something to do with whats going on in my life. like if i’m struggling with something, or feeling a certain way, it seems like you always talk about it that week. so basically….your frickin sweet…go you.

My week started yesterday fairly normally. I made the

, uploaded it to the web server, published our podcast, and started to tick things off the list of “things to do when PB is on vacation.” A big accomplishment we’ve had this month is that Shawna and I have been integrating Youth Track across all ministries of the church. [Our youth group management software.] Well, long story short. When I was installing the software on PB’s computer I had to link it to our network database. I was doing like 10 other things and when a dialogue popped up that said “Do you want to overwrite your database?” I meant to click no but instead I clicked YES. Within 10 seconds we lost 4 days of work. Not a good start to the day.

So the rest of my day was spent trying to repair the damage. I got most of it done. Amazingly, Shawna got a lot of her families back on line and I got all of her programs up. But nonetheless, it was a bad day.

On my way home, it got worse. I checked our cell phone bill on my phone. Bear in mind that our contract is for $59.99 a month. Our bill… $175! I was livid. Apparently there were about 3 add-owns we were paying for that were ringing our bill up. Plus, it appears we went over our minutes by a mere 180. Kristen made a 30 minute phone call to a neighbor that cost us like $30. I called Cingular and screamed at them. There is simply no way that a normal person can understand their bill. When I asked why they didn’t contact us to let us know we had been going over so badly in the past few months they told me “Well, we have 50 million customers and you want us to call you? Yeah right.” That sent me over the deep end! In typical Cingular [Understand this is just SBC in sheeps clothing, the worst non-airline company in America.] fashion I could have avoid $90 in overage charges if I bumped our plan up $10 and doubled our minutes. Fantastic customer service. AT&T wireless never did this to me. Ugh.

In other news… the master bedroom is 99% complete. We slept there last night as I finally was able to put up all the moldings. I have literally 2 more small things to do in there and then I am done. Kristen’s design is coming together now… Pretty soon our bedroom will be a Moroccan oasis.

This post is based on the thoughts a friend of mine began in my brain a few days ago with his post “church vs. business.” In this post, while I don’t agree with his thoughts, I completely disagree with the analogy. I hate it when we compare a church to a business. Todd’s point [again… A true and valid point] is that the church should act more like a business would when it comes to the way they spend money. His justification is that since student ministry is growing and bringing in new families… It should be a financial priority. Makes sense business-wise… But is completely unbiblical in it’s ramification. The church cannot and should not be run by a “do what works” mentality. Simply because a student ministry may generate more income than expense doesn’t mean it justifies more spending. In fact, this doesn’t even make good business sense.

As I look out over the scoop of what churches have become and where churches seem to be going… It does look more like a business. Decisions are often based on “stuff” and not on people. Let’s face it, our focus as ministers is often only about people on a cursory level. Sure, we do a lot of things for people… But our focus is often times on the program and not people. How can we reverse that? How can we make our primary “thing” people again? How far do we have to go? What do we need to get rid of?

Meet Stoney. Stoney is our families new dog that we adopted on Saturday.

Stoney is named after a creek in our area… we thought this was pretty relevant considering he is mostly yellow lab and I am 100% positive he will love being in and around the water.

So far, he’s been a great dog. He loves the kids and is especially cuddly. He came to us crate trained and everything. So far, his home has been down in the workshop and he’s done pretty well. He had a bit of an accident last night… but I think that has to do with his new surroundings and his new food.

So… I am sure we will all be adjusting to Stoney in the weeks to come. The cat, Violet, isn’t too sure about this pooch just yet. But I am certain that Stoney will learn that she is really in charge and he’s just the dog.