Here and Now

I was reading Haggai this morning as part of my quiet time and in Chapter 1, God basically says, "You are living it up while there's no temple. So I've been making things hard on you. Build a temple and things will be better." And at first I thought that was kind of...selfish maybe? I don't know. It just seems like God doesn't NEED a temple (a House, as Haggai calls it), right? But then I had two thoughts. First, the repeated phrase, "Give careful thought to your ways." Not to your ACTIONS or to your INTENTIONS but to your WAYS. Ways are habits. Ways are personality traits. Ways are the deeply entrenched things in our lives. Give careful thought to that which you do out of the very center of who you are. And that opened up realization number two - God doesn't need a house/temple/church - but WE do - we need a place to worship God. Yes, we can worship God in the living room or in the woods or driving or whatever - but we won't. We...

Lori and I just finished an episode of CSI. It was okay. But there was a great line in the episode. It was about one of the CSIs thinking she had blown a case 18 years ago and the suspect was demanding a new trial. Evidence was beginning to accumulate that suggested that the suspect might be innocent. The CSI sits down with the detective, Jim Brass, who says the suspect is a scumbag. The line: "Don't let him live rent free in your head." Usually I accuse CSI of having hack writers who are a little too attached to puns (the opening scene of CSI Miami is guaranteed to end with pun) but that was an evocative line (I know, a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters...). Do we let people live "rent free in our heads"? I think we do. Bitterness. Doesn't cost the person we're bitter with anything. Regret. Hate. All that stuff that is, well, sin, right? The most evocative definition of sin that I've found is "that which destroys" -...

Just a quick note: Pastor Steve and I have been going through the life of David in worship in a series called "Good to Be King". So I've read the life of David more carefully than I have in years. All I have to say right now is...wow. Okay, you know me, that's not ALL I have to say. But what a screwed up life. And this is the guy God says is "a man after my own heart"? I mean, there's the whole Goliath thing, yeah, and not kicking Saul's butt when he could have - even mourning Saul's and Jonathan's deaths. But then there's the adultery, coverup, murder. One of his sons rapes one of his sisters (okay, there were multiple wives and concubines so it's a little confusing, but if they all have the same father - we'll say brother and sister, okay?), that son is murdered by another son, who later leads a coup to take over the kingdom who is killed by yet another brother. When David is about to die his wife and Nathan scheme to p...

I get this email once in a while called Catalyst Filter - I signed up when I went to the Catalyst Conference last year (I get other goodies in the mail, too). Anyway, one of the articles in the filter the other day was by a guy named Tony Morgan called "10 Stupid Leadership Mistakes I've Made." It's a good (brief) article - get the filter if you want all the details. Here are the bullet points of the ten mistakes: 10 STUPID LEADERSHIP MISTAKES I'VE MADE 1 . Hiring too fast and firing too slow. 2. Trying to fix the problem rather than the process. 3. Putting the projects before the people. 4. Delegating tasks instead of responsibility. 5. Assuming it's always black and white. 6. Not following my gut (... or is that the Holy Spirit?). 7. Dwelling on the worst case scenario. 8. Waiting until there's a problem to provide feedback. 9. Staying busy. 10. Spending too much time on the details rather than the dreams. So, I read this and I ...

In lieu of an actual post - puppy pics:

So Rachel and I are watching the Disney channel - oh, let me back up - Lori got a job. She's teaching at the Christian School - 5th grade (a position that didn't even EXIST six months ago...hmmm). So - Lori's been all day at the school, Elie went to my mom's (I am SO thankful that my mom is willing to give her days off to her granddaughter - not every grandparent is, but we're spoiled that Lori's parents havae done the same) and Rachel spent the day with Lori getting her room ready. I did hospital visits and a home visit and some office work - in between letting the puppy out (oh, yeah, we got a puppy too - hey, why only deal with a LITTLE transition? Do it all at once...). So, Rachel and I were watching the Disney channel - a Lindsay Lohan vehicle called Confessions of a Drama Queen . It had some moments of dad uncomfortableness (inappropriate clothing and a drunk rock star) but most of it was resolved pretty well by the end of the movie. I had a couple ...

Today the girls were on a float in a parade for the Corn Fest here in Youngsville. They were in the Children's Summer Theater production of Jungle Book . Now, there were maybe twenty kids in the production, only six were on the float (Rachel actually ran beside the float carrying a sign - boy was she tired...). But this isn't about Corn Fest of Children's Theater. It's kind of about the parade, though I have a history with parades . This parade? I didn't get to see it. Here's the problem: X is where I had to drop the kids off for their float Z is where I had to pick them up after the parade RED LINE is the parade route (which was completely shut down by the time I got out of the snarl of dropping the kids off - ten minutes later than they were supposed to be dropped off and they were the first and second kids there...). Look carefully at the map. So, tell me, how do I get from X to Z? Heh, join the parade, right? Thought about it... Here's how I end...

One of my favorite verses: Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. Anybody else singing Tomlin right now?

Just saw this looking for something else for worship: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html I was thinking about whether or not this is a representation of church, too. 90%lurkers, 9% kind of involved, 1% heavily involved... Now, I've been indocrinated by the 80/20 "rule" (that is, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people, or 80% of the ministry is funded by 20% of the people or...well, just about anything in ministry). But I think, like my friend Michael has said, that 80% of statistics are made up on the spot (including that one). I can say that I'm at a church right now where it doesn't feel like it's 90/9/1 or evn 80/20 - but we've got about 90/75 (that is about 90% of the ministry stuff is done by about 75% of the people - and the other 25% are the sometimes contributors). At least that's what it looks like from the outside - we'll see how that plays out over the next couple years...

So I got this email from a friend and it has all these outlandish origins for words and phrases, none of which are probably accurate, but they're funn nonetheless. When I got to "Mind your p's and q's" though, it was an explanation I had never heard before: it's from English pubs and means "Mind your pints and quarts." Huh? I don't get it... I had always heard that it was from early printers who would be looking at the letters backwards and would easily mix up the lower case p and q. So, this is discredited all over the internet by the following logic: lower case b and d look alike, too. So, neener, neener to the printer arguement. Okay, I can accept that. So I pulled up a page from the Gutenberg Bible (you know, an EARLY PRINTING PRESS PROJECT) and sure enough, lower case p and q look strikingly similar. Lower case b and d...um, not so much. The d and o look more alike that the b and the d. Now, did ALL printers use d's that look li...

So here I am working at the Crossing again (Lori says they need to put a bed in here for me) and it's almost tomorrow. Three people are playing a game at one of the table - they look to be in their 20s. Third Day is on the radio, ESPN News is on the TV. How do you spend Friday Night? These late shifts aren't a hardship on me (though to close on Saturday can be harder on me - impossible if I'm preaching the next day). Lori found out yesterday that she didn't get the job we've been hoping and praying for. We're disappointed, of course. But one really great thing came out of the wait for me, at least. Elie and Rachel have been praying differently the past couple weeks. Often we pray the Lord's Prayer - you know, I want my kids to know some of the fundamentals of faith (we'll get to the Apostle's Creed in the not too distant future, at least with Rachel). Anyway, they're praying for people now. Elie, the other day, ended her prayer (which she's b...

Just a quick note as I'm eating breakfast.... Yesterday to open worship, Ray read the very same passage the I wrote here yesterday morning. Yesterday was Youth Sunday and he made a connection between the disciples pushing people away from bringing the children to Jesus and us disconnecting from our children by how we spend our time at home (watching TV, reading the paper, whatever - NOT connecting with children, and connecting our faith with our children). God moves in neat ways...

Well, I woke up early this morning with a song running through my head. That's not unusual, really - I always have a soundtrack running through my head that's often affected by what goes on around me. Anyway, this morning it was the Hooters singing "Where Do the Children Go?" What? Not a Hooters fan? (the band, not the bar/restaurant, of course) Here's a video that somebody put together of the the song and posted it on Youtube: "Where do the children go, between the bright night and darkest day? Where do the children go? And who's that deadly piper who leads them away?" I don't know what Hyman and Bazilian intended when they wrote these words, but in my mind this morning I'm hearing a lament for the loss of innocence, a longing for our kids to stay kids and not grow up so fast... But that's probalby just me. So I get up and I'm reading the Gospels this morning (Matthew, actually) and I read this: 13 Then little children were brough...