It’s official. The pews at church have been sold. They will be removed this weekend and begin their new life in High Point, Florida. (Strikingly close to where Kristen and I are headed for vacation next week.) Wouldn’t it be funny if we showed up in church and sat in our old pews?
-
Sold!
-
some weird things
I really consider myself a nobody on the landscape of youth ministry in America. Afterall, while I think Light Force is pretty cool… we’re not exactly bringing in Switchfoot or David Crowder just for fun. We’re just a small group of people who get together and focus on changing our little world… but we also have plans to take over the world! With that in mind, it’s fun to hear from and meet with or chat with people who only know me through YMX. It’s doubly fun because most youth workers are just really cool people. But occasionally I get weird contact too. One of these days I’ll list them… but let’s just say now I get the occasional "fan letter." I just got one today that closely resembles SPAM… but perhaps it isn’t, who knows?
-
Resignation Fever
Sometimes in my world I get caught up with thinking that it’s just youth pastor’s who wrestle with their jobs. That’s just not true. Ray Pritchard, our former pastor in Oak Park, writes about something he calls "Resignation Fever" in the pulpits of America.
Almost everywhere I go, I talk to pastors who are frustrated and church
members who are upset. It’s hard to quantify these things, and I do not
think that it’s harder to be in the ministry today than it was five
hundred years ago. It’s not like Martin Luther had an easy time of it.
Jonathan Edwards, arguably the greatest theologian America has
produced, was voted out of his own church. As Howard Hendricks says, if
you’re going to be a shepherd, you’re going to get sheep dung on your
sandals. Call it an occupational hazard. And sometimes ugly things
happen that embarrass us all. There’s no fight like a church fight. [Read the whole entry]I think he’s right. This feeling of uneasiness creates an impatience in the pews with their pastor’s and the pastor’s always feeling pressure to perform somehow. Can we all just relax? Just for a little bit can we all just be human? Why is it that everyone looks at this from a nuclear position… as if there weren’t going to be conflict in churches or something… when there is a conflict… do we always have to put pressure on everyone? Why not just BE and allow I AM to be God for a while?
-
think small
Want a preview of tongihts talk from Luke 17? I can’t get over the times "little" or "small" are referred to in this passage. It strikes me that Jesus wasn’t interested in moving mountains so much as he was after every little tiny detail of our life.
But you’re like, "PA, I can’t possibly make every right decision or handle every little detail in life correctly… what gives?" You are dead on. You can’t do it. It’s why you need to become a new creation. Not even a new person… you need to become something radically different!
-
Just questions
The recent changes in the church building have led to a number of people asking very good and foundational questions. I love that.
I love it that, by switching from pews to chairs, we’ve got to think about distributing the elements. What is a good way to do this? What is most honoring? Why am I comfortable with this and not that?
I love that, by putting in a different stage, we’ve got to think about our worship times together? How can we stage it in a way that focuses attention on God? How can we exhibit freedom or flexibility? What roll does "comfort" play?
All of these are great things to talk about. No answers just yet… just asking questions.
-
Some fun findings
Living in a house built in 1871 is fun for a lot of reasons. We love being in a house with history and knowing that many families have raised many kids within it’s walls.
A truly fun thing is finding little bits of evidence of their existence. One of these "discovery" moments is happening as Kristen is busy stripping the final remnents of wallpaper in the house. The dreaded stairwell. You can tell that before they wallpapered, the family let the kids have some fun with pencils. While this isn’t a good influence on the McLane children, it is fun to see their handwriting on the walls. It will be a shame to paint over it!
-
finally making money?
After my last investment in Sirius (SIRI) the stock promptly lost another $.75. Thankfully, due to two great bits of news, Sirius made a nice rebound. First, it was announced Friday that Volkswagen and Audi will install Sirius radios exclusively in their cars. Previously, some were also shipped with XM. Second, they announced that they’ve passed the 4 million subscriber number. My feeling since the beginning that Sirius will win the satellite radio race. I make the comparison between Sirius and upstart America Online back in the early 1990’s when they were chasing CompuServe. Remember them? They were the "big dog" who brought the ISP to the national stage… but they got swallowed by AOL in the mid-1990’s.
A lot less news on Texas Roadhouse. (TXRH) Things are looking up, the stock… like Sirius… has been making some big gains. As the Roadhouse continues to grow in popularity it my hope that the franchise will surge forward in many new locations. What’s next? I’m keeping an eye on the IPO of Tim Horton’s. Since I’m not a hard core investor and this is a new hobby for me, I don’t have a lot of access to IPO’s, but I like to see one of my favorite businesses going public. There is nearly infinite growth potential for this place. Growth is good!
-
Scabies at Romeo HS
LisaB just sent me an email from school. She said that there is officially a scabies epidemic at the high school. Click here for the CDC fact sheet on scabies. Yuck. And further evidence why Pastor Adam shouldn’t be too touchie!
-
The new look of LDS missionaries in Romeo
One of my lifelong passions is to reach out to LDS missionaries. You know, the guys on bikes with ties who talk to you about the book of Mormon. I don’t know why, but I’ve always both admired these students but also had a heart to share true and free grace with people who are tied up in a polytheistic and works based faith. Anyway, this is the image I’ve always seen. Particularly in the film "My Best Two Years" you get very acquainted with the uniform and routines of missionaries. Kids with black pants, white shirts, ties, backpacks, and mountain bikes.
Well, this morning on my way to the library I saw 4 20 somethings pile out of a car in khaki’s and backpacks. At 10:00 am on a Monday morning, this struck me as odd. Upon further review, they are clearly wearing the LDS "elder badges." These 4 guys look more like preppy punk rock wanna-be’s than anything else.
It’s no secret that LDS is one of the many "new things" popping up around Romeo. I know that they’ve had some hard times finding a place to meet in town as everyone either says no, or the place they choose isn’t zoned correctly. It will be very interesting to see how the new LDS push in Romeo turns out. I pray that many will not fall into her trap.
-
The final push
Tonight is session 6 of 3 Story Life. (Our churches adult small group spin on YFC’s 3 Story) In a lot of ways it has been fun doing this re-write, but in a lot of other ways, it has been really hard. It’s been fun to not just critique the curriculum, but to really spend time taking it apart and rearranging it, adding some parts I thought were missing and getting rid of things that I thought were too much. It’s also been fun training our leaders, getting feedback from them, and making the whole thing better along the way. (Several times I’ve re-written something after it didn’t go well on Monday for the Tuesday group.) It has been fun to see where peopel interact with the material, where they go "hmmmm" and where they go "ho-hum." Very interesting because it is mostly at times when I wouldn’t have done the same things!
The not-so-fun parts. Well, re-writing something that a bunch of people worked on to "make perfect" isn’t any fun at all. Looking back, it may have been easier in the long run to leave the original as it was. While tinkering with it has been fun, it has also cost me a lot of time. Specifically, every day off for the last several weeks has been consumed working on this project. It hasn’t been fun that I haven’t been able to finish this sooner. (Such as, I have to finish tonights session this morning. It hasn’t been fun that we thought it would work out well as a 6 week small group, but we’ve learned it may be better in a 4 week format.
All in all, 3 Story Life is a great project. To get the adults of the church talking, thinking, and trying to share their faith is amazing. It’s always been my hope that this would be the beginning of changing our community. Let’s hope so!
