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Right now, 20 feet from me… is the motherload of Halloween candy. We’ve been told that our block gets hundreds of trick-or-treaters so over the last couple of weeks we’ve been gathering more and more candy. Well, yesterday Kristen decided to put all of that candy in a big laundry basket on the porch to get it out of the way. I gotta tell ya… when I pass that thing I have the hardest time not picking up candy. Especially since Skittles are in there. That is just wrong.

If you think about it, give Jonathon a jingle or drop him and e-mail. They recently left God’s country [Michigan] and relocated to SC. I think it’s fair to say that things haven’t worked out the way they had hoped and they could really use some encouragement.

With Sunday out of the way, my “big secret” is that I have a quiet couple of weeks. We have the harvest party on Wednesday night… so no tlak to prepare. Then we have the Chicago College visits this weekend… so no Sunday school. I’m looking forward to a nice easy week. That will give me lots of time to settle into our newly completed offices.

Here is my profound thought for Saturday morning: Whoever invested the coffee press, he’s a flippin’ genius. I could never make good coffee with our old Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Even if I followed the directions, set the timer, walked away, and came back at the perfect time… my coffee always sucked.

But with the coffee press, I can do it. I boil water, put the stuff in, wait 3 minutes… and push the plunger down. Next step, pour coffee. I can do that.

A private joke between my wife and I has now officially gone public. For the past year or so Kristen has been hooked on allrecipes.com. I don’t really know what she does there… but I know she goes there a lot and spends a lot of time looking at recipes. So much so that I started to joke with her that she was always on the PC looking at “girl porn.”

Well, I’ve joked with her so much that a lot of people know about her innocent addition. In fact, she is spreading her addiction throughout the ladies of the church.

In other news it came to my attention that two of my students have a date tonight. This was a shocker to me! I have been pretty famous over the past 3 years in sniffing out this kind of thing. But I missed this one and only found out about it when the girl’s mom called me to ask what I knew about the boy. Let’s hope that it both starts and ends well. My thoughts on adolescent love are well-documented here on All Blogs. These things are always like watching NASCAR. There is always a wreck. They call it “a crush” because it crushes. Oh well, I hope they have fun!

As of this moment, Kristen and I have no credit card debt. Incredible! I don’t even remember how we got in that mess to begin with. (8 years ago) But we are now out of it.

The only debt we currently have is “good debt” of our house. But that is a bigger project. Praise God for little victories like this. YES!

Last night at my 3Story training we ended up talking a lot about our humanity. The principle I taught in closing was that it is better to be real than anything else when sharing Christ with folks. The idea is that when we expose how imperfect we are, others see us in the same boat as they are… In desperate need of being saved.

This got me thinking… isn’t it amazing that a great big God loves little me? I mean, I am a failure in so many capacities… I think the thing I struggle with the most lately is that I don’t see myself as being very faithful to what I am leading people towards. It seems like the more I try to teach others about Jesus and God’s Word… The further from Jesus and God’s Word I feel. I could theologicize it by saying that I am just in full knowledge of my imperfection… But the reality is that I am a failure and I am overcome by feeling like a fraud. People have a radar for insincerity and duplicity and sometimes I feel like people look right through me.

Here’s another thought. There seems to be a real shift in ministry. There used to be a school of thought that told ministers “you need to be Jesus to those who don’t know him.” I remember hearing that coming up. I also remember thinking…. “Yeah, but if I really look at myself I know I could never be perfect… So why call myself a minister?” Now there is a paradigm shift to the other side. Now it seems like we are being taught to tell others what a mess we are. I mean, it seems like in order to be a good minister I need to be disclosing my failures all the time.

Here are a few pluses to that from where I sit in the boat.
– Failures are disarming.
– Acknowledging failures is part of dealing with them.
– Disclosing failures shows that I haven’t arrived yet.
– Letting people see my struggles makes me more human.

Here are some minuses.
– Some people aren’t looking for other humans, they are looking for people to help them!
– We assume that people care what’s going on in our lives.
– Acknowledging failures makes it seem like we aren’t working on fixing stuff.
– Disclosing too much can take over a conversation.

At the end of the day… I’m just working on this myself. I know I am a failure. I know that I am in need of Jesus every day. I know I can do nothing outside of his grace and mercy… But I am just not yet sure I want to go around disclosing all of that!

Ah man… we were excited for this thing to start… but the non-stop jack hammers and heavy equipment outside the building is a real drag. Half the time we can’t even hear ourselves think. Just about 2 months until it’s done. Ugh!

About a year and a half into this… The monthly Concert of Prayer and Pizza night is finally starting to mature into it’s own thing. Last night was our best yet.

Again, what I love about these things is that I have little to do with them. The worship team plans and executes almost the entire thing.

Last night we introduced a prayer box… Like this one on the right. This will become a standard part of our room for a while. It is simply a place where students can write out their prayers and post them. It’s my hope that this will be something really meaningful to my students.

I have a hard time describing what it’s like to be in our COP&P. If I am really honest with myself, while I am saying it is maturing… It is still a long, long way off. Afterall, we still don’t use live music. Afterall, most students aren’t really into it… They just play along. But it is maturing and it is getting better. I think… At least from what I observe… That kids are worshipping, at least they participate.

One thing I know for sure… They like the prayer activities that we come up with.

Did I mention that we had like a million students last night? I haven’t done the attendance but it seemed like more students than normal. I like it.

Operation C update: I’ve got students on the case, I have been praying for C, and I know for a fact that this is something God can use us for. But more than turning it over to God they are trying to find ways to turn their prayers into action. Hmmm… I love it when my students get it!

I’ll post some pics later on… but last night we had a great time at the Tomlin/Redman/Giglio concert.

I was able to get rid of about 24 tickets before the concert started for the MILLIONS of people who couldn’t go. Of course, I didn’t get full price for them… but I figured $10 was better than nothing.

Blah blah blah. Here’s what I was thinking. I GET PAID FOR THIS? I looked to my right and left and students… alumni… of mine were praising God. They were pretty much lost in the worship. They heard a fantastic talk from Louie… they saw the best of the best in the world of modern worship. And someone paid me to take them. I just can’t stop saying it… I love my job.

I did have a couple of moments that took me back to NI. They closed the concert with Holy is the Lord and it just took me back to the commissioning service at Methody. I will never forget the pure volume of worship there… in particular I remember closing the commissioning service with the same song… 200 people with a singular goal of reaching lost kids in Northern Ireland singing that song… the sound pounded that aged auditorium. I remember thinking… “God, are the windows going to blow out?” It was that loud. Last night was nowhere near that volume. It was nice and it took me back but it wasn’t the same. As Todd and Kim and I talked about on the way home… there are things in life you will never get over or get past. That memory is one thing I don’t want to get past. It was a profound moment, one that changed me then and one that changes me everytime I hear that song.

A Wednesday morning shout out to Joy in Tulsa. She’s a lurker, not a commenter.

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.