We brought the outside in for a little winter fun in the kitchen. Here is Megan playing with some snow. 

Paul loves to play with clay and we just love to watch him do it. 

I had a funky dream last night. One that I can only pray comes to light. I dreamt that here in Romeo I took some students to a service over at St. Clement of Rome and it drew a little attention. So much attention that the busy priest asked if I would do a sponteneous “Q & A Session” about protestant vs. catholic differences. They were pleasantly suprised when I spent a lot of time highlighting what I admire about my catholic friends as opposed to what they expected. Likewise, they couldn’t believe that I knew things from Scripture… and I challenged them to read their bible for themselves.

Luther at Wittenberg’s Door

This was probably brought on by my late night watching of the movie, Luther. I thought it was a good mivie… definitely showed clearly that Luther never intended a schism.

The battle scenese took me back to the movie Michael Collins.

Kristen and I went to see this movie tonight “on a date.” Let’s just say it is not a date movie. I really wanted to see it since I had heard so many good things about it, but I was unprepared. I would put it in the same category as The Passion of the Christ, or Schindler’s List or Black Hawk Down.



I don’t know jack squat about the “oos” and “ahhs” of film making. But this was about a story. A story that deserves to be told and a story that should wake us up as Americans. A key moment is when the UN colonel tells the main character, “You are nothing to them. The entire Western world doesn’t want to get involved. You are on your own.”

This reminds me deeply of the work of Gary Haugen and The Intenational Justice Mission. Movies like this beg the question “what can I do?” and the unfortunate reality is the the baby boomers who run the world don’t care. The GenX (which includes me) is worse… But there is an emerging American generation that can and will arise to meet these challenges. We can act and we must.

Hotel Rwanda

There is no fear in defending the freedom of the United States from All Blogs. But we should never forget the tremendous price being paid.

As I looked through the Iraq casualty list from CNN, I don’t want to lose sight of this sacrifice these men and women made.

If this doesn’t humble you, I don’t know what will.

It’s easy to foget my biggest ministry is at home.



This is the real reason for my day off! Megan and I are going to go out today on our first daddy/daughter date in a long, long time. It’s so cold, we’ll have to find something fun indoors.

As I mentioned in All Blogs yesterday, this weekend we will be teaching (via my favorite media, discussion) the question “how should a man treat a woman?” in my Sunday School class. I believe we shouldn’t teach students rules… But virtues. “How should a Christian adolescent treat adolescent females?”

Yesterday I bombed my two co-teachers with thoughts. I was expecting them to help me continue the dialogue and come up with good thoughts about how to best talk about this vital subject.

Instead what I got was ignorance. Both fired back, “The first thing we need to do is separate the middle schoolers out of this… They aren’t ready to talk about this.”

That sound was the crashing of two worlds. We have the world where my students live. A place where sex is degraded, girls are to be treated like objects instead of respected, all under the so-called rights of freedom. On the other hand, we have teachers (parents) who have no idea what their kids lives are like on a day-to-day basis.

The biggest critic of this series has a daughter who has been devastated by a boy in our youth group. He probably hasn’t really talked to his daughter about relationship since she was in middle school. It’s sad that she will talk openly with me but has no outlet to talk to dad. My prayer is that these communication lines will be repaired and that this parent will face reality. I love both of them dearly and know they love each other. But they live in different worlds with different expectations.

These are the joys of being a pastor. I’m stuck between old-world ideals and real world reality.

With Thursday mostly gone… Let me reflect on the past 12-24 hours!

Light Force Report: Youth group was great last night. That’s three weeks in a row where it has been solid. A lot of students, good attitudes, good worship, good games, and my inability to communicate God’s Word. Actually, I think the talks in Revelation to date have gone pretty good. The students are feeling good since finals are over, they finally can relax and embrace the “blahs” of the winter term.

Grad school: I leave Thursday morning (2/3) for 3 days of classes at Huntington. As per my usual, I have some classwork to take care of before I go down there. A load of reading and a couple small papers to write. I know I have a research project to avoid as well, but I haven’t even opened the e-mail about it yet. The class is called “Historical Foundations of Christian Ministry” so I feel like I have a good handle on the subject from my undergrad. Basically, the class could be called “Church History and it’s ramifications on Education.”

I am really looking forward to being in Huntington. It will be a good refreshing time and I like being in an academic environment. H-town definitely has the small college town vibe going.

Sex! That’s always an attention-getter. For the next month or so we’re talking with our students about relationships and sex. Here’s some links to research projects in adolescent sexuality. (For you casual surfers… This is research, not kiddie porn!) Lost Children of Rockdale County (Frontline Report)

• National Study of Youth and Religion (UNC-Chapel Hill)
• National survey of young teens sexual attitudes and behaviors (NBC/People Magazine and Princeton University)

I watched the Katie Couric NBC special last night called, 411: Teens and Sex. As “an expert” in the field of adolescent culture I would say that I didn’t learn much new but it was good stuff for parents who are largely in the dark. More on my thoughts about this later.

Northern Ireland: Two team members sent out a gaggle of letters last week and we are daily getting reports back. This week we’ve received about $250 from supporters outside of the church. We’ve also accumulated another 5-6 prayer partners. That doesn’t seem like a lot compared to $16,000. But it’s a nice bit of change. 1.5% is 1.5%!

We will need some big hitters to write big hitter checks though. It’s still early and I know there are plenty of people holding off until the date gets closer.

More… More… More… At the risk of posting an ungodly long entry, I’ll stop here and post more later.

I’ve posted the notes from my talk tonight at here.

Which reminds me that I need to post a link to the download area for my talks here too. I’ll try to remember to add that to the links list tonight.

Last thing, if anyone has seen my secretary could you please send her back to the office. She left to copy some photos about 6 hours ago and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she is trying to say that I’m not much fun on Wednesdays. Probably true!