Amy is off doing her thing this weekend. And the timing isn’t all that great. I have a new bike that I can’t ride yet. I preach tomorrow and have been in a fine mood this week. Cayden is going through some phase right now that the other two didn’t and it’s freakin’ us all read more
So I vaguely remember my phone ringing at 1 AM last night. Actually, I don’t remember at all but when I went to check voice mail messages…I had one at 1 AM. From some students…at the Waffle House. They weren’t drunk…at least as far as I could tell. They wanted to tell me what an read more
She ran it in 1:57:56 – that’s 7 minutes better than here Little Rock time. I have no pictures but she called, she sounded pumped. I’m now going to start my training for my bike race next year.
A blog-friend of mine is a dad… could you do me a favor? Go over to his site and give that man a blessing/prayer for this oh-so-hard but oh-so-worth journey of kids? Here is the crazy story. Here are pictures. Congrats, Rey!
Amy is on her way to the Music City Marathon. The funny thing is that on the web page it’s called “Country Music Marathon, but in registering it said Music City… There are 11,000 runners in this race. That’s crazy. What is this world coming to? People running that distance for no reason what-so-ever. Me? read more
I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email program – which I love – other than the just recently really slow load time…but that is another blog. I love the RSS subscription feature but couldn’t get Xanga users in my subscription list. UNTIL TODAY!!!! Thanks to Radio Free Blogistan you can now subscribe to Xanga with read more
Something hit me this week. I’ve had some major conflict resolution talks this week – both in my home and outside of it. I got a glimpse of something inside my son this week that I’ve decided to tackle now. No more playing the victim. The kid has a tendency to view consequences as if read more
I’ve got a couple of students who have their blogs/journals on Xanga and I hate it. It won’t let you comment unless you are a member – Blogger has done that now. I kinda get that because of the whole spam thing. But the more annoying thing than that is you can only subscribe a read more
dis·tract·ed adj. 1. Having the attention diverted. 2. Suffering conflicting emotions; distraught. ap·a·thet·ic adj. 1. Feeling or showing a lack of interest or concern; indifferent. 2. Feeling or showing little or no emotion; unresponsive. which makes me pa·thet·ic adj. 1. Arousing or capable of arousing sympathetic sadness and compassion: “The old, rather shabby room struck read more
Got to hang out with a “one of us” guy yesterday in the metroplex of Searcy, Arkansas. I love hanging with other youthworkers who are trying to figure out how to reproduce Kingdom focused teen leaders in a consumer driven-entertaiment saturated-youth focused-sex obsessed culture. The safe rant is to blame the parents. The truth is read more
I’m ready for a break. Like a complete shut down of anything productive for about 3 days…that’s coming up May 18-21 at the emergent church convention. I’m looking forward to it, here are some blogs of those who went to the one in San Diego…which, I think God is telling me that is the one read more
Here is the list of the happiest places to live AND the most depressing places to live. Little Rock didn’t make either list, yet two cities in Louisana made it. (Wayne is probably dancing about this.) How does Baton Rouge AND Shreveport make the list of “Happiest Cities To Live”? I think the whole thing read more
I blogged about conflict a couple of days ago and promised/threatened that I would throw down my thoughts. 1. Don’t make something a big deal if it isn’t. This is Harry Anderson’s Rule of Thumb. I remember a parent going nuts because a kid banged on our money-stealing-Coke-machine. Then she (the student, not the parent) read more
I played golf in high school. I was terrible. I then kept playing in college…I got better. I then joined a course in Colorado one summer and played 27 to 36 holes a day – 5 days a week. I got to be pretty good. That was over 13 years ago. Pre-marriage, ministry, kids, Xbox, read more
It’s true – I love Doug Field’s website. I know the whole Purpose Driven stuff has its detractors, but I love Doug’s heart and honesty. And after 25 years in student ministry – he’s probably learned a thing or two. After this week, I “randomly” ran across his article on conflict. Click on the link read more
Rambled across this and I am going to go out on a limb that these findings are NOT going to be limited to that side of the pond. We found the same was true in Brazil as we hung out and conversed with teens in Porto Alegre, Brasil. For those of us stateside – I read more
It’s been a hard week, now this! I mean look at them! This is ridiculous. Does Jen know that now her career is OVER. As in over easy, over there, over and out. Ben kills careers for a living – look at what he did to JLo! She hasn’t made a decent album or movie read more
Star Wars Fans, UNITE!! This is what I’m talking about! 14 hours of Star Wars, including Episode III! It’s a shame that I am going to Nashville for the Emergent Church Conference. Anybody else going to the eC? We can do Star Wars together!
This is quite funny. A blogger gives unofficial tours at Disneyland telling you all the stuff the official tour doesn’t. Looks like the Mouse wasn’t amused!
After this, we went to the game and Cooper took a shot for the team. It’s the top of the last inning, and Coop’s team has 5 run lead. The first two get on base, the next guy rips a shot into center and it rolls right between the kids legs. 3 runs score. So read more
Amy and I are in the kitchen, Coop hollers “Camber told Cayden to pour milk in her plate!” So I waltz in the dining room – Camber is now screaming “No I didn’t!” Cooper is already in trouble for tattling on his sister – whether she did it or not. And now the lie-in starts. read more
It’s 8 pm and I feel like it should be midnight. I’ve got three kids in bed – one is trying to page her mom who is at Chili’s – a nice 3 to 4 miles away. She’s got a good shot at being heard. I’m fighting off some stomach bug that makes me weary read more
….Without Creating Mass Chaos Here’s a short list of things NOT to do: Don’t start off a Life Group Meeting by assigning people to leaders and say “see ya’ in your new group next week. Don’t drag your feet to the point that you have 30 people in your group, enough small children to open read more
Why birth in the first place? Let’s get real with each other – why is it even important to birth? If our LIFE Group is consistently having life-changing experiences with Jesus, we have incredibly high vulnerability with each other – why would we even want to jeopardize that by ‘splitting up’ the group? Great questions read more
This weekend was our 3 year anniversary at Grace Church. Honestly – that shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Yeah – I’ve heard the myth of the 18 month tenure of student pastors. It’s a myth. The truth be told – we last longer than most “real pastors.” (Read this.) But I digress… After read more
I hate yardwork. The only thing appealing to me about living in New Mexico is the yards – or lack thereof. I sneeze, itch, tear, cry, and afterwards the yard still looks like crap, er…junk. I DO enjoy running the weedeater – a power tool thing, not a yardwork thing. Same as a chainsaw. It’s read more
Here is a letter that Tall Skinny Kiwi, aka Andrew Jones, wrote to Don Carson concerning his stingy critiques of the ‘emergent church.’ It’s a great letter, but it raises something that I fear is only going to get worse as the gap between “emergent” and “traditional” widens. (btw – here are my random thoughts read more
Let’s get this straight right now. I like Bruce Willis. He’s the man that has been married to Demi Moore longer than any other human on the planet. He’s been a part of some of the most kick-derrier movies of all time… Die Hard Tears of the Sun Unbreakable Sixth Sense Hart’s War He was read more
Well this ought to be interesting… Click on the picture for full story – but a big as a barn Britney singing “I’m not that innocent” is just painful, isn’t it? The “dad” has been busy lately…
Reason 1. The Blackened Tilipia. What’s a tilipia? Glad you asked. Here’s another piece of worthless info concerning the fish. Reason 2. Deserts. From Jello to cheesecake, apple pie, chess pie…the only thing better than a Luby’s desert is the Chocolate Turtle Empanadas. Reason 3 The Parmesan Tilipia. See links in Reason 1 above. Reason read more
I have finally found a couple of posters that express my current feelings. Had a 6 AM elders meeting this morning. Right now, if you are human, you’re thinking – what on God’s good earth is worth meeting at 6 AM about? And it’s a valid question. If I could remember the first half of read more
The cool thing about blogsphere is that I don’t have to candify an answer to “What happened on your mission trip?” So here are the blogs – in order as best as I could. Starting from the start of the trip to the final thoughts. Enjoy. Last Minute Blog – March 22, 2005 Rat Killing read more
I’ve been to Brazil 3 times, Eastern Europe once. This by no means makes me an expert – but I definitely have opinions. GE’s List of Cross-Cultural Phenomenoms1. All 12 to 13 year old boys are annoying. Hearing the same presentation for the 36th time allows one to observe other things. Flicking of hair, picking read more
March 24Sao Paulo was interesting – we had to take a bus to another airport. 90 minutes later – we were there with 50 minutes to spare. The lady checking Steve in freaked us all out by saying there were no more seats on the plane. She was right – there weren’t but she was read more
Looooong Weekend. We had 6 games in 2 days. One of them was a forfeit. Cooper is taking to baseball like a duck to water. They won the tournament. Cooper had the game winning RBI in game 1. He scored the tieing run in game 2. He’s become quite the little fielder and is beginning read more
I got lots of face time with Thomas driving from school to school – which was an act of complete trust in the sovereignty of God with Thomas driving. Basically, it was leadership 404 by Thomas Schneider. It also further convinced me that the best way to grow in leadership is to hang those who read more
PV-Sul excels in what they call day camps. Schools take field trips to their campus and do the adventure trail, high ropes course, a great lunch, and games. During the course of the day – a gospel presentation is given and students are given an opportunity to respond to Jesus. This day we had over read more
The school scenes typically went like this. We would do our “Life in America” infomercial. Part of that infomercial was why Jesus was so important to us as to consume major amounts of our schedule. As we would move from classroom to classroom – because in Brazil the teachers change rooms, not the students – read more
We were nervous. Coach put him in the 3 spot. Coop could only hit the ocean if he fell out of the boat. But – here it is. His first hit. He went 1 for 3, 2K and no errors. He’s playing third base and he loves to field, scared to death to bat. His read more
It’s Wednesday. I’ve sermon notes and slides to prepare for Big Church. I’ve got music to do for 5.36. My cell phone is ringing off the … well, what does a cell phone ring off of? A hip? I’ve got 151 emails to go through. My best friend is moving to Purgatory, aka NWA. I’m read more
Here is the crew! I couldn’t have picked a better bunch of students to experience this trip with. Tomorrow – I’ll unpack the heavy stuff.
This is the Cafe Colonial. A traditional German meal served in Brazil. Yeah, go figure. Noticed the food. They just kept it coming. Plus you get an unlimited pitcher of grape juice, red wine, and white wine. To bad this was a youth trip, huh?
This was in the courtyard cafe area. Notice that the apron of the waiter is exactly like the tablecloth. I just thought that was the funniest thing ever.
Day 2 of the trip was an unplug and tour day. We went to the city of Gramado, known for it’s chocolate. This church was the site of a concert that night. The concert started at 9 PM. Yeah, the Brazilians are on a completelly different clock than we are. Lunch is at 1 PM read more
Matt (aka Adonnis), Clay (right), and I (left) with the camp’s waterfall in background. These two young men stepped up big this past week. More on that to come.
Here is the Palavra da Vida – Sul Center of Events. It is beautiful. Their mission is to take city teens and young adults from primarly Porto Alegre put them in a wilderness/adventure camp environment to communicate the story of Jesus with them. They do an awesome job of getting area public schools – most read more
We are home in the USA! This has been probably one of the most significant missions trip I have ever been on and I will unpack it this week in a 16 part series….okay, maybe not 16 but there will be a few! And I just wanted to get this out of the way before read more
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