Ramblings of a Distracted Mind

the final countdown

2008-09-04T19:29:00.002-04:00

Anybody remember that song from the 80s? I loved 80s music. Still do.

So what does 80s music have to do with me coming back to post on this blog for the first time in more than 6 months? Absolutely nothing. Other than the title of the song. It's the final countdown. I know in my last post I said that we had decided to extend our stay an extra semester. But things change. New schedules come out and you realize that you can fit in 3 classes in the summer instead of just 1. To make a long story short, as of 10:01 AM yesterday I officially have less than 100 days until my graduation from seminary.

As I said above I was able to fit in 3 classes this summer, along with my Air Force tour to Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs. I currently taking my final 4 seminary classes and, assuming that I pass everything, I will graduate on December 12. That's when the fun really begins. I still have to get 2 years of pastoral experience before I can go on active duty with the military so we're looking for the place God has prepared for me to serve. Our lease on our apartment is up December 30 and we don't know if we'll still be here or moving elsewhere so we're not sure what to do about it. Oh, and Dee Dee is pregnant with our 4th child, which is due on January 15. Busy, busy, busy.

Speaking of the baby, yesterday was great in many ways. Not only did it mark the crossing of the 100 day plateau but Dee Dee had an ultrasound and we found out that we are having another boy. His name is Tyler Ethan and we are all excited to welcome him into the chaos that is our family.

Well, I know it's been a while, but you'll remember that in my last post I said I would be extremely busy during the Spring semester. Well, it lasted through the Spring and Summer, and into the Fall. I have 19 books assigned this semester, 2 of which I've already finished, 2 more of which must be finished, along with parts of 2 others by Tuesday. So I must bid you all adieu for now as I bury my head in a book for the night. I promise that more will be coming to this website in the future. Good night all.

and then there were 2... (update)

2008-02-01T14:03:00.000-05:00

We have decided to reevaluate the timing of my graduation. I got all the syllabi for my classes and loaded everything onto my calendar. It was quite a bit of work but would still have been doable. The key came when sitting at community group on Wednesday. We are going through a series on money and our attitudes toward it. I was convicted by much of what was said and Dee Dee and I talked and looked over things after group. We realized that it will actually end up costing us less money out of pocket if I drop a class now and take an extra semester to finish instead of pushing myself to finish in December. So, I dropped my Personal Evangelism class and graduation has been delayed for an extra 5 months. A little more time and a lot less stress on me and my family is a good thing.

and then there were 2...

2008-01-26T18:43:00.000-05:00

As in only 2 semesters remaining in seminary. I can't believe that I will actually (God willing) be graduating in December. The spring semester starts on Monday and I will be taking 15 hours. Before everyone starts telling me how absolutely insane I am, I've already heard it quite a few times. The thing is, I can either take 15 hours this semester, 6 in the summer and 11 in the Fall or I will have to go another semester. Since I'm not keen on putting off active duty with the Air Force for an additional 6 months, I'll just have to take 15 hours. Here's the rundown of my classes for the Spring.

Introduction to Old Testament II
Ministry of Proclamation (the preaching class)
Personal Evangelism
Biblical Worldview and Education Practice
Discipling Adults

So, if the frequency of posting here on the blog does not increase like I promised for the next few months at least you'll know why.

square peg, round hole

2008-01-07T19:33:00.000-05:00

Ever been somewhere--church, school, job, wherever--and felt like the proverbial square peg in a round hole. I've been feeling that a lot lately. It's not that I'm trying to force myself, or being forced, into positions that I don't fit. This is occurring in places where once I fit into the slot like a hand into a glove. I just can't tell if I've changed shape or if the hole has altered shape around me. I guess it's a little bit, or possibly even a lot, of both. But regardless of which shape has been altered I know that I no longer fit correctly in some of the places where I am and I need a change. Pray with me that I would make the change that God wants for me to make.

writing again

2007-12-28T19:02:00.000-05:00

Since I seem to have developed a small but fairly loyal following (as evidenced from the small but steady numbers on my traffic reports) I suppose I should attempt yet again to return to posting on this site. The end of this past semester left little time for things like blogging. Following almost immediately on the heels of Dee Dee's miscarriage I found myself rapidly coming to the end of the semester with all the book reviews, research papers, projects, and final exams which that entails. I managed to get everything done, with a little grace on the due date of a theological position paper from one professor since that paper was due the day after the misscarriage. It wasn't my best semester but I did pretty well, managing to squeak out an A-, 2 B+'s and a B-. Following finals I spent about three weeks reading nothing but fiction (I finished the Harry Potter series and started a new series about the legend of Robin Hood). Throw in traveling to Atlanta, Nashville, Greenville SC, and Hendersonville NC and my mom visiting with us for 3 weeks in the last month and things have been pretty hectic. Now I have two weeks to prepare for a one week class that I'm taking in January. Things are busy, but I still can't wait until January 1 when I can say "I am graduating THIS year."

Well, that's a brief update on the last couple of months. I would say that I am going to make a New Year's resolution to post more regularly here, but come on, everybody knows that New Year's resolutions only last about 2 weeks anyway. I will however say that I will do my best to post more so keep checking back.

P.S.: Thanks to whoever it was that used the links here on my site to purchase books through Christianbook.com. I get a small percentage back on all sales and that check got here in time to pay for my wife's Christmas present.

joy and sorrow

2007-10-31T19:59:00.000-04:00

Several weeks ago we found out that Dee Dee was pregnant with our fourth child. We told the kids, called all the family and friends, and began preparations for the addition to our family. On Monday of this week, Dee Dee and the kids went out to the campground where her parents were staying in their motorhome. When she called me to tell me they were on their way home that evening she said that she had been bleeding slightly during the day and had experienced a little bit of abdominal pain. We called the doctor on Tuesday morning and went to have her checked out. After blood tests and an ultrasound it was determined that the baby was measuring at about 6 weeks development instead of 8 1/2 weeks where it should be. The doctor prescribed some hormones and sent Dee Dee home to rest. At about 4:15 this morning (31 Oct 2007) our baby went home to heaven. We are sad that this has happened but we "know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28 ESV)

We may never know, this side of heaven, why God chose to end this pregnancy the way He did. But we know that He is in control and that His plan is perfect, no matter how hard it may seem to us at the time we are going through things such as this. God loves us and we are leaning on that love right now.

The BCS must go

2007-10-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

This article from Dan Wetzel pretty much sums up my feelings on the BCS and what it is doing to college football. This thing just needs to die so we can move on to a playoff system like every other normal sport. For the people who are crying and moaning that it will destroy the old traditional bowl system I have a solution. The winner of each conference makes it to the playoffs. That's 11 teams. If you have a 16 team field then you would have 5 wild card teams that would have a shot (there's the chance for the stupid AP, USA Today, and Harris polls to still mean something). Then the remaining teams that are not in the playoffs can still play in the traditional bowl games. There you go, everybody's happy. The fans, players, coaches (and especially the SEC which tends to get messed over most years by the current setup) get an actual national champion crowned with fewer arguments (I would say no arguments, but come on, it is college football after all). The big corporations and the smaller conferences are happy because they get to keep the bowl system which brings in so much money. Of course, maintaining the bowl system and adding a playoff just generates even more money, so everybody is even happier. There, problem solved. Whose desk do I need to jump up and down on top of to get this thing done?

semester 5 halfway point

2007-09-28T00:20:00.001-04:00

Well I just got out of a midterm exam in my Intro to Old Testament class. Could have gone worse, could have definitely gone better. But regardless of that, we have reached the halfway point of the semester. We get a week to sit back and relax and take it easy next week................... Yeah right! We'll all be scrambling to catch up on the reading that we've fallen behind on over the last seven weeks and hopefully get a little jump on the reading and papers that will be coming in the six weeks following the break. But even with all this work ahead of me and even with a little more than a year remaining until graduation I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. When I started seminary it seemed like I would never be done with school. I figured out a while back that since I started Kindergarten I have been in school for 26 out of the last 31 years. But now I can actually see the end in sight. I'm ready to get done with school and get to work actually doing ministry. My chaplain candidate tour this summer was just a small taste of what I will be doing as an Air Force Chaplain but it was a wonderful taste. My current job, though with a church, has me sitting in front of a computer the vast majority of the time. I'm ready to get away from the machines and start dealing with people. And I can see the day coming!

Incredible song and video

2007-09-10T23:29:00.001-04:00

I got a link to this video from a friend of mine and just had to post it here. The love of Christ for us is amazing.

The song, "New Again" is by Brad Paisley and Sarah Evans.

preaching

2007-08-31T22:52:00.000-04:00

I got a call on Wednesday of this week from a little church out west of Louisville asking me to come preach for them on Sunday morning. The church is English Baptist Church in Stephensport, KY. Their interim pastor, or actually their former interim pastor now, was one of my graders at seminary my first semester. He was also an Air Force Reserve Chaplain. I ran in to him this summer and he told me that he was switching over to the Army so he could go on active duty and asked me to send him my resume to forward to the church. I got a call from the head of the pulpit committee this week. I would covet any prayers that might be lifted up for me as I prepare the share the gospel with them on Sunday.

I'm still amazed that God has called me to do this since I never wanted to be a preacher and honestly liked dealing with computers more than I did people. But He has placed this call on me, and I have seen His transforming hand on my life over the past couple of years as He prepares me for it. I am now anxious to get away from the computers (at least as a profession) and to deal more with people. I long to develop relationships that will give me the opportunity to share the gospel with lost people and see them brought to Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives. I have seen the evidence of what I've heard all my life. God will not call you to do something without equipping you with the tools and gifts you need to do it.

Money for nothing? Well, almost...

2007-08-24T23:17:00.000-04:00

With as much time as I spend on the computer in general and on the internet in particular I have for a long time wondered if it is possible to make money online without spending a ton of it up front. I have tried many different programs and most of them end up dying a quick death just about the time they are supposed to actually send you money. I have found a couple that actually pay however. One of them is sendmoreinfo.com. This program works by sending you emails based on the interests you select in your profile. When you get the email you click on a link to go to the advertiser's site. You can then just close the site and move on to the next email. For each email you click on you get a "share". You also get shares for each email that anyone you refer clicks on. These shares are converted to cash at the end of each month. The amount varies based on how much revenue the company has generated and how many shares were earned. I was skeptical about this at first but I have actually received 4 checks from them. You're not going to get rich clicking emails (unless you refer a heck of a lot of people) but I know in my family, any extra money is a good thing.

back to the books

2007-08-17T15:52:00.000-04:00

Well another semester has officially begun. I am again taking 4 classes this semester. They are:
1. Introduction to Old Testament I
2. Systematic Theology III
3. Introduction to Christian Philosophy
4. Team Ministry Relations

So far it seems like this is going to be an interesting semester. The only drawback so far is that 3 of my 4 classes are 3 hour blocks one day a week. In one sense that's good because I only have to have assignments done for those classes once a week. However, I have the feeling that sitting through two 3 hour block classes on the same day is going to get really old. But, oh well, it's only for a season.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour - update 4

2007-08-05T20:08:00.000-04:00

Well today was a new experience for me. I had the opportunity to preach my first sermon. I've led Bible studies and youth group meetings before but never had the opportunity to preach an actual sermon. It was a great experience. I'm sure it was nowhere near the greatest sermon ever preached. It probably wasn't even very good, but I got lot's of encouragement from the congregation following the service and that helped to build my confidence and let me know that, yes, I can do this job that God has called me to do.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour - update 3

2007-07-21T12:40:00.000-04:00

I'm back. Blogger decided for a while that my blog was spam so I couldn't post anything new until they reviewed it and realized that there is in fact an actual person behind this thing.

The past two weeks have been full of hospital visitation, invocations at various base functions, and meetings in preparation for two 5K runs that the chapel is sponsoring in the next few weeks. We spent the last two days going around to every building and every office we could get into passing out info about the runs and making sure everyone knows about them. The first run is tomorrow morning so I've got to get this done pretty soon and get in the bed. We've got to be at the chapel at 0530 to get everything loaded and set up at the run site.

I've been scheduled to preach in the Evangelical service at the chapel on 5 August. I have the scripture that I am going to preach on and have some illustrations that I know I want to include, now I just need to sit down and figure out how to put everything together. This will be my first experience in preaching a sermon instead of leading a Bible study so pray that I would accurately convey the Word to those listening and that I would not be too nervous.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour - update 2

2007-07-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

Our candidate team is complete. Two more chaplain candidates arrived today and both of them are guys that I went through COT with last summer. So now there are four of us, two Baptist seminary students and two Jewish rabbinical students.

I got the briefing and tour from the hospital chaplain today so I guess the ministry begins in earnest tomorrow. The biggest challenge I anticipate right now is not getting lost in the maze that they call a hospital here. The next two weeks should be very interesting and intensely busy. The chapel staff is large but will be stretched pretty thin over the next two weeks so we candidates will get lots of experience in a hurry.

AF Chaplain Candidate Tour

2007-07-06T21:55:00.000-04:00

I started my first AF Chaplain Candidate tour today. I drove up to Wright-Patterson AFB yesterday and got my car registered, got checked into billeting, and ran to the Base Exchange (the on base equivalent of WalMart or Target for those of you not in the military) to pick up a few things I needed. The chapel staff here is all very friendly (as you would expect a chapel staff to be). I actually ran into a couple of people I know. One of the other candidates went through training with me last summer. The other person is a reserve chaplain who was actually the grader for one of my classes at Southern while he was working on his PhD there.

The day went pretty well. I got to Chapel 1 about 0715 and chatted with the NCOIC until my sponsor arrived a little later. After going out to breakfast with my sponsor all four candidates who are here right now went with one of the chaplains to a Commander's Call (an awards ceremony and a time of information briefing) for one of the squadrons. We then all went to the club for lunch and spent the afternoon moving some equipment out of a few rooms that the chapel doesn't use anymore so they can be turned over and then doing some maintenance in one of the chapels. I was done for the day and back in my room by 1600 (4 PM). I'm looking forward to finding out what the remainder of the summer holds.

too long away from all things LSU

2007-07-01T23:25:00.000-04:00

OK, we have officially been in Kentucky for too long as of tonight. I was just glancing through the headlines on my "My Yahoo!" page and saw one that read "UK officials widen hunt in terror attack." My first thought was "What happened at University of Kentucky?" Sorry, I've got to cut this short and go listen to LSU pregrame about 50 times in a row to purge myself of this Kentucky-itis.

social networking - connections and reconnections

2007-06-30T21:34:00.000-04:00

I've been on the net for years now. That's a pretty simple thing to figure out considering that I've been involved in some way or another with computer networking as my job for almost 20 years. In all that time I've avoided many of the popular sites that have sprung up, especially those dedicated to social networking. I hated AOL and it's instant messaging from the outset. I've used it sparingly but never really liked it. I avoided Plaxo for years due to the privacy concerns that many industry leaders raised when they broke onto the scene. I've rarely even browsed on Myspace much less set up a profile. My sole foray into the popular culture of the net was in starting this blog just over 2 years ago. But even in this I've not been very active, as you can see by my post count. However, over that past year or so I've begun to break down a few of these barriers I've built up. I signed up with Plaxo after reading a review in PC Magazine about how many of the privacy concerns have been answered. I've loved it so far. It has allowed me to get updated information from many of my contacts and even more importantly has allowed me to keep the data easily synced between my office, home and laptop computers.

More recently I read some comments from a good friend of mine about how he had found many old friends on Facebook and Myspace. I thought "You know I think I signed up for a Facebook account a while back but never did anything with it." I went back and set up my profile and in a very short while have connected with friends ranging from my high school days to some that I am in school or work with currently. There was one person in particular that I went to high school with whom I had been looking for off and on for the last 10 years or so. Within 2 days of getting active on facebook we had reconnected. We also reconnected with some of the students from our youth group in Georgia that we haven't talked to in almost 5 years.

Now that I'm reconnecting with all these folks I guess I'll have to do a much better job of using this blog for what it was originally set up for - a way to keep our friends and loved ones updated on what's going on with our family as we follow the path that God has laid before us.

and the silence is broken...

2007-06-15T08:40:00.000-04:00

I've noticed from my site statistics that there are at least a few people out there who still check this blog on a regular basis. So, after far too long a time spent away from writing, I have returned to break the silence that has held sway here for more than 4 months. Some may ask, "Why were you gone? Where were you?" Well, this past semester at school was an incredibly stressful one for our family. It wasn't so much the workload as it was all the external things that occurred. There was a lot of traveling and many external crises that had to be dealt with. All of this on top of the stack of books that I had to read and the papers that I had to write left little time, and even less desire for blogging.

The first weekend after school started we made the 13+ hour trip to Baton Rouge for a surprise party for my Mom's 80th birthday. It was a wonderful occasion but far too quick of a trip. We left Louisville on Wednesday and came back on Sunday. About a month later was Dee Dee's sister's wedding on a small island off the coast of Belize. The kids and I didn't go to the wedding but a week without Dee Dee here and with my mom and cousin in town to help out with the kids so I could go to school and work added to the stress level a bit.

A little later on in the semester we took our van in to the shop because the air conditioner was making noise whenever we turned it on. The estimate to fix all that was wrong was around $1800. Being poor seminary students we don't have $1800 lying around to fix the air conditioner. We do however have some pretty wonderful friends in Baton Rouge several of whom happen to be mechanics who offered to help and who refuse to take payment. So during Spring Break off to Baton Rouge we went once again. Toward the end of the semester we took the van in to the shop again (I honestly don't remember exactly what was going on that time) and the estimate to fix the shocks, struts, rear wheel cylinders, etc, etc, etc, was around $1500. Again, poor seminary students here. We did get the things fixed that were major safety issues and then my father-in-law helped me replace the shocks. OK, he replaced the shocks while I handed him tools and parts.

Somehow, through all the traveling, visitors, automotive and financial crises I actually managed to pull my best set of grades since starting seminary. I got an A and three A-'s for the semester. I was planning to take at least one and possibly two classes this summer but decided I needed a break for a while. So for now I'm reading some fiction I picked up from the library and just taking a much needed break from academics. I leave 3 weeks from today for my ADT at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH. I'm really looking forward to getting there and actually being able to engage in ministry with Airmen. A huge bonus is that one of my flight mates from last summer at OTS and the Chaplain Candidate Course will be arriving just a few days after I do.

Well, that's about it for now. I will try my best to make sure that it's not another 4 months before my next post.

In service for freedom

2007-02-06T22:25:00.000-05:00

I have been searching for a while to find out what awards my Dad got during his time in the Navy. This image shows what I believe his rack to be. The records I got from the archives in St. Louis left a lot to be desired. When I got out of the Army the clerk that was processing me made sure that every single award I had earned was listed on my records. I guess they didn't take that much care with folks getting out 50 years ago. My dad's records showed only the National Defense Service Medal and the Navy Occupation Service Medal. The other ones wer in his old stuff that my Mom still has though they were extremely worn and faded. His rack may not be the biggest or most impressive of the era but for a WWII era sailor it's not too shabby. I'm proud to come from a line of military service and I'm proud to be continuing that tradition of defending the rights we hold dear in this nation. I count it an honor to be one of the many who have voluntarily answered the call to serve. Remember that all the men and women serving in our armed forces today do so of their own free will. We are not compelled to serve, we are not sent to war; we choose to serve the interests of this nation. And if it means that we must lay our lives down on foreign soil, like so many of our predecessors, we will do so, in order that our loved ones, and those that we may not agree with or even like very much, may enjoy the freedoms that make this nation great. My father did not lose his life in service to our country, but he did answer the call to serve, and did so honorably. I pray that none of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines would ever again have to lay down their lives for the cause of freedom but I know that that prayer will probably not be answered in the way that I would wish. However, even though they lose their lives, it shall not be in vain if their sacrifice brings continued freedom to our nation and carries the cause of freedom to other peoples.

If you are reading this, whether you agree with the current war in which we are fighting or not, please take a moment to say a prayer for the safety of the men and women in uniform who are fighting to keep this country free and to bring that same freedom to other peoples around the world.

fitness training - a new idea for setting goals

2007-01-27T22:22:00.001-05:00

Since I got done with my Air Force training last summer I must admit that I have been pretty lazy. With work, school, church and finding time for family I just didn't eke out the time that I needed to in order to keep up with my physical conditioning. I finally realized something in December about the way I set goals for myself. In the past I have tended to set goals such as "Do 100 pushups and 100 situps everyday" or "Read 5 chapters in the Bible everyday." The problem with these type of goals is that when I miss one or two days I say "What's the point? I can't do it" and I give up the whole enterprise. So I decided to set my goals a little differently this time. Instead of setting a daily number for my fitness goals I decided to set a larger goal to shoot for. I set an average number of pushups and situps that I want to do for the month of January and figured out what the total number for the whole month would be. That way if I miss a day or two I can make it up by doing extra on other days and still reach my goal. For subsequent months I will add to the average number per day. Setting my goals this way I came up with a total number that I want to do for the entire year (38,420). Actually I set an ultimate goal of 40,000. I know that sounds like alot, but when you break it down over a year's time it's only about 110 per day.

I've also set a goal for the total number of miles of cardio exercise I want to do for the year. I didn't want to limit this to running alone in order to plug in some variety. I'll keep track of running, biking, elliptical, etc. My goal for the year is 1500 miles. I might have to adjust that goal some as I go along, but we'll see how things progress.

Ultimately of course, it's not about the numbers. The numbers are just a way to keep me focused. The real goal is to make physical fitness a lifestyle and not a means to pass my annual Physical Fitness Assessment for the Air Force.

In order to keep track of my progress (and just because I wanted to try out the Wordpress blogging tool) I started a new blog. I'm also using this blog to keep track of money that I find laying around. I started doing this on paper sometime last year after finding several blogs in which people were doing so. I haven't really been trying to find money the way some of the other folks do, but so far I've found a total of $59.82. Not great, but not too shabby either. I might find other things to track on there also. You never know. As the tag line on the blog says it is going to be "A place to track random things that no one else cares about."

1 picture, way more than 1000 words

2007-01-21T20:51:00.001-05:00

I saw this story today on Baptist press. It's about a memorial for victims of abortion. The picture is what really grabbed me. So many in our culture today think of babies while still in the womb about the same way that they think about pennies. Many see pennies as worthless and just toss them away. Long ago many saw babies as worthless and wanted to be able toss them away in the same manner. In 1973 they were told they had the right to do this and this picture is a representation of the results of that decision by the Supreme Court. In 33+ years almost 5 million choices have been made to toss away what was seen as a worthless life. The picture shows a penny for each life that has been aborted. It adds up to almost $500,000. I guess pennies aren't so worthless after all and each life is worth far more than this. Life is a priceless comodity. Psa 139:13 tells us "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb." We were formed by an act of God so each human life has infinite worth. We should not so blithely toss it away

political games, when do we get to have an offseason?

2007-01-20T22:39:00.001-05:00

Hillary Clinton officially threw her hat into the ring for the Presidential race in 2008 today (as if anyone in the country had any doubts whatsoever that she would). We just got done with the mid-term elections, which were oh so much fun (yes that was definitely sarcasm you noticed in that statement), and now we get to start the whole process over again and listen to these people trash each other for the next 2 years. For once I'd like to see a politician run a campaign in which they actually talk about what they believe, and what they plan to do instead of spending all their time trying to discredit their oponent. I don't care what party a candidate is from, if they would take an ethical stance to build their campaign on their own merits instead of focusing on the bad points of thier oponent they would definitely have an advantage in getting my vote. I stop short of saying that I would definitely vote for them because what they consider to be their merits might not match up with my own worldview. Am I alone in this, or are there others who are tired of seeing these negative campaigns drag on and on for years on end.

to blog or not to blog...? to blog!

2007-01-19T22:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I blogged anything significant. I want to blog because I want to exercise those writing muscles, to keep the creative juices flowing as it were. I know that's a tired old cliche, but it's true. I want to write and I know that the best way to improve writing is simply to do it over and over again. I've simply been in a blogging funk for the past several months. This past semester at seminary wasn't as difficult or time-consuming as previous semesters but for some reason I just had more trouble keeping up with the reading and finding time to do the things that I really wanted to do. The spring semester starts in a week and a half and I'm taking more classes this time. Maybe with more time constraints on me I'll actually do a better job of managing my time and finding the time to blog.

One of my biggest concerns as this semester starts is finances. Our credit card balances are creeping ever higher and our income is not reciprocating. Even with a small scholarship this semester's tuition and books will come to around $1600. I received a small raise at the church to start the new year but I'm still only working part time. Plus, due to the busyness of the holidays Dee Dee has not had any Pampered Chef shows for approximately 2 months. Things will start getting a little better pretty soon as she has 6 kitchen shows and 1 catalog show scheduled over the next 4-5 weeks. I placed advertising from Yahoo! on the blog a while back in the hopes of creating a little bit of income from that, but the fact that I haven't blogged much has not helped the effort. That's one incentive to keep blogging. The more I blog, and the more people I get coming to the blog regularly, the more chance I will have that someone will actually click on an ad now and then.

I'm officially done with my language study now. I took Introductory Biblical Hebrew this past semester and by the grace of God managed to pull an A- in the class. So, no more foreign alphabets, no more vocabulary, no more grammar. At least not until I get onto active duty with the Air Force and they see my background in languages and decide to send me back to DLI to pick up yet another language. Actually, I'm not sure if they would bother sending a Chaplain to DLI for language school, but I wouldn't mind spending another year out there in the Monterey Bay area.

This spring I'll be taking four classes - Systematic Theology II, Biblical Counseling in Human Crises, The Ministry of Teaching, and Lifespan Developments. I'm really looking forward to this semester. I've got some great professors and the classes sound really interesting. I was planning on taking The Ministry of Proclamation (a preaching class) but after looking at the syllabus I decided that I needed to put that class off another semester or two. The class is basically designed to be a culmination of your seminary training so I'll wait and take it in the final semester or two before graduation.

Well, that about does it for tonight. I'm going to go surf the web for a while and try to find something interesting to blog about for tomorrow. Hope to see you then.

My Exciting Life

2007-01-05T11:19:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since she did it but a friend from Baton Rouge posted this list on her blog. I finally decided to go through it and post it here. The idea is to highlight the things on the list that you have done.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne (let's say tipsy)
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends (see the previous post for proof of this one)
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced (might as well take this one off the list, not gonna happen)
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children (still working on this one)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (not sure if this counts, but I've moved twice for school, to Baton Rouge, and to Louisville)
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (yes, yes, and yes)
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper (I had a bag over my head, but it was me)
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

amazing friends

2006-12-11T21:00:00.000-05:00

Dee Dee and I had some visitors from Baton Rouge this past weekend. Two friends of ours from Parkview (both are now part of the Ring Community Church) came up Friday. They had been planning this for a long time and the date shifted a time or two. They were trying to get a date when another friend of ours (Angela) could come as well. We thought that all three of them just wanted to come together to see the kids (oh and us too by the way), but when they got here we discovered the real reason for all the planning. Paula and Ann drove the 12-14 hours (depending on how much you stop) from Baton Rouge and arrived here at about 8:15 Friday evening. Paula called and asked if Dee Dee and I could come outside to help them unload their stuff so they wouldn't have to make two trips in the cold. When we walked out the front door of our apartment building we saw Ann with a video camera and Paula holding out a key and asking "Can you give us a ride to the airport on Monday?" Looking around we saw, not Paula's car which we were expecting, but a strange car with a big red bow on the hood. (For those who may have missed it, my car died on me about 5 miles after leaving the Air Force Base where I was training this past summer.)

I still don't think I have the story completely straight but it seems that Ann's old roommate Katy got a new car and wanted to donate her old one to someone who she knew really needed it. Ann told her she knew just the people. They picked the car up a couple of months ago and Patrick, Angela's husband, has had it and has been working on it ever since. A couple of weeks ago their entire community group at the Ring got together and prayed over the car before bringing it to us. I don't know how many people have been involved in this whole thing but to each and every one of you I say "Thank you and I pray that God blesses you as much as you have blessed us. We love each and every one of you."

Semester #3 in the books

2006-12-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

I've now completed my third semester of seminary. I took fewer classes this time than I have in previous semesters but for some reason I seemed to be more stressed out this semester. I think part of the problem was that I actually had too much time on my hands. Since I had less to do I tended to put it off longer. Time management is obviously not one of mine strong points and I really need to try to improve on it. I'll get my chance pretty soon. I'm taking a one week course in January so I'll have to manage things pretty well in order to get everything done on time.

Hopefully, now that I'm out of school and life is going to be settled down a little for the next month or so I'll be able to blog more often. We'll see how things go.

Veteran's Pride

2006-11-08T09:50:00.001-05:00

I just read on Military.com about a campaign to get veterans to wear their medals this month in honor of Veteran's Day to show their pride and patriotism. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson says that he hopes that this will become a tradition for all national holidays, and said he thinks it will benefit the current services as much as the retired troops. I think this will start dialogues, inspire neighbors to talk to veterans who live next door about their sacrifice. I hope it will help with recruiting, because our veterans are the face of America.You can read the entire story here.

Well, I decided to show my pride and patriotism by wearing my medals on my blog. That way they are always visible. If you know someone who has served in our Armed Forces remember to say thank you this Veteran's Day. In fact, you don't have to wait until Veteran's Day, you can say thank you to a veteran any time of the year. It will make their day. If you've never served in the military you can never understand just how much a simple thank you can mean to someone who has made the commitments and sacrifices that our military servicemembers make every day.

P.S. For any vets or servicemen reading this the ribbon rack above was created with Ultimaterack. This is the best rack builder I've found on the web. The programmer has actually incorporated the regulations for order of precedence for each service so that your ribbons are ordered correctly. Military.com doesn't even have this implemented yet. Plus he's got many of the National Guard and civilian awards incorporated into his ribbon sets. Check it out.

Car repairs. Is there a bigger money pit out there?

2006-10-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

The past couple of weeks have been stressful for us. A few weeks ago I went out to get in the van to go to school and it wouldn't start. I pulled the battery and had it tested and it was fine so the problem lay elsewhere. We ended up having the van towed to a garage and after more than an hour it turned out to be a loose connection to the passive anti-theft system. The system is designed so that if power is cut to it power is cut to the entire electrical system. So they reconnected the wire and charged me $12 for the time it took them. No big deal, except... We've known for a while that there was a slow leak somewhere in our coolant system but no one has been able to find it. Well it obviously finally got big enough that these guys found it. To make a long story a little less long we waited until Dee Dee's parents were in town, so we could have the use of their car, and put the van in for the repairs this past Monday. I picked it up 1 day and $950 later. Of course that amount only covered the absolutely necessary repairs. The total bill would have come to around $1300 if I had gotten them to do everything that needed doing. Anyway, we got the van back and Dee Dee's mom left to drive back out to where they are parked in their motorhome. Ten minutes later we got a call from her. Her car broke down. Their problem was with the transmisison and ended up being significantly more expensive than ours. Everything is back up and running again now but finances are tighter than ever as you can imagine. I know God never promised that seminary would be easy, but sometimes I pray it could be just a little less stressful.

Saints go marching home... but at what cost?

2006-09-26T23:44:00.000-04:00

Last night I watched as the Saints returned to the newly refurbished Superdome for the first time in over a year. I loved seing the team draw on the emotion of the night to beat the rival Falcons. Alot of people have criticized the city of New Orleans for rebuilding the Dome while people are still without adequate housing in the city. Being from south Louisiana I understood the necessity of rebuilding the Dome and drawing people back to the city in order to stimulate the economy. However, last night, one of the comments made by the announcers really struck me. He said that the new coach, Sean Payton, had someone come up to him this summer and tell him that even though he did not have a place to live or a job he had purchased 6 season tickets because that's how much he believes in the Saints. The announcer told this story to emphasize how important the Saints are to the city and how much havign them back home will help to energize the citizens. But I couldn't help but to draw the exact opposite conclusion from his statements. Here is a person who does not have a job or a place to live who is spending what money he has on tickets to a game. How lopsided has our culture become? How addicted to athletic competition? I don't even know what else to say but that I am disgusted.

Hello world!

2006-09-11T22:55:00.000-04:00

That simple statement has been the result of countless computer programmers' first lines of code. As they move on to learn new languages they often return to this familiar phrase. I think that it is appropriate here for my return to blogging after such a long hiatus since I am moving to the new version of Blogger. Many, many, many, many things have transpired since my last post more than 5 months ago. I'll give a quick run down of the summer's activities here and will likely expound on some of them later.

1. I finished out my first year of seminary on May 11.
2. I worked full time (plus some) at our church for the next two weeks preparing for our software switchover from Shelby to Fellowshipone (these are church management database programs).
3. On May 28 I packed up my car and drove down to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL for Commissioned Officer Training (with 209 other new Air Force officers) and the Chaplain Candidate Course (with 47 other chaplain candidates). My instructor for COT turned out to be from Louisville, and I found out around the middle of the course that he is actually a graduate of SBTS and is a pastor of a church here in town.
4. On July 14 I graduated from CCC and was ready to spend a week on vacation in Baton Rouge before returning to Louisville and work.
5. Less than 5 miles after leaving Maxwell my car overheated which cracked the block. We ended up selling it for scrap and are now living life with one vehicle.
6. On July 24 I returned to work and to all the problems that had been waiting for me all summer. I worked full time until school started back.
7. On Aug 15 I began my third semester of seminary. I decided to take things a little lighter this semester. I'm only taking 3 classes (Ministry of Leadership, Elementary Hebrew, and Systematic Theology I), but since 2 of those classes have a combined 3000 pages of reading and Hebrew requires quite a bit of study, on top of the fact that we're still getting the new software properly configured for the way we do church, I thought this would be a good idea.

Well, that's the whirlwind version of my summer. I'm planning to do a complete redesign of this blog sometime in the near (or possibly not so near) future. I just need to come up with a good name. If anyone is still poking their heads in here periodically, don't give up on me (and leave me some suggestions for names if you'd like). I promise there will be much more coming soon.

P.S. Here's a shot of Dee Dee and I just before going to our Dining Out (a formal, military dinner).

immigration debacle

2006-04-06T20:53:00.000-04:00

OK, I've stayed out of this whole immigration reform thing till now, but I've finally gotten fed up enough with this ridiculousness that I have to comment. I am so sick of hearing people on the MSM complaining that some of the bills being put forward to reform the immigration laws would "criminalize undocumented workers". These people are here in violation of current immigration laws and therefore they are already criminals. I'm also sick of hearing people talk about the need for a "guest worker program". We have one. It's called getting a green card. What we need is not reform of the immigration laws, but enforcement of the laws as they currently stand and I think that the vast majority of Americans feel the same way. Our senators and representatives spend too much time debating what they think we want and what they think is best for us and far too little time actually representing us and listening to what we really want.

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

2006-04-01T20:37:00.000-05:00

My brother-in-law pointed out that I have been remiss in posting about the incredible run of the LSU Tigers basketball team in the men's NCAA tournament. So Kyle, here it is. I'm sitting here right now getting ready to watch the Tigers take on UCLA for a chance to play Florida for the championship. And our women's team gets a chance to knock of Duke just like the men did. It's always a good thing when Duke loses but it's even sweeter when the Tigers knock them out in the tournament. Geaux Tigers!

Update:
Well the game just ended and the Tigers were on the short end of the final score. It was still an incredible season. This was a team that wasn't supposed to do much. We were picked to finish third in the SEC West and ended up as one of the final 4 teams standing in the Big Dance. Way to Geaux Tigers!

I feel like I need to say something about the commentators for the game. With 15 minutes left in the game and UCLA up by 21 points the commentators basically called the game and said it was over. I've played and watched enough basketball in my life to know that you cannot call a game at that point no matter how badly the losing team is playing. I've actually seen a high-scholl team that was down by 21 with 3:00 left hit 6 three-pointers, a two-pointer and a free-throw and end up winning the game in overtime. Through the last 15 minutes of this game the commentators continually talked of how dominant UCLA was in the game and at one point said that this performance by UCLA was the best they had seen in the tournament so far. They must have been watching a different game than I was. UCLA only scored 9 points over the final 15 minutes. How is that dominant? If LSU could have hit a few more shots down the stretch it would have been a totally different game. I just wish these guys could drop their bias for the big name schools like Duke and UCLA in basketball and USC in football and call the games like they actually happen.

anniversary

2006-03-28T20:29:00.000-05:00

It was one year ago today that God set in motion the events that would lead us to apply to the Air Force Chaplain Candidate Program. For those that have been following this blog you probably already know the story, but in case anyone wants to read the details you can find them here. As I stated in my last post I found out that I have been accepted into the program. Well, I have received my letter of appointment and this past Friday we drove to Cullman, AL to meet Dee Dee's parents so that her dad (who is a retired Air Force officer) could swear me in as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. All that's left now is to get the final paperwork in so that I can receive my orders to attend training this summer. This has been a long process and at times we wondered if we were really following God's plan. But every step of the way He has revealed to us that we are doing what He wants us to do. Thanks for all the support and especially for all the prayers that so many have offered up for us over the past year. They really mean alot to us.

into the blue

2006-03-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

Well it's official now. I just got off the phone with my recruiter and he has received my letter of appointment as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. All that's left now is for me to be sworn in and to contact the Chaplain Candidate Office to have my orders cut for this summer's training classes. I'm not sure yet exactly when we'll get the oath accomplished. I have asked my father-in-law, who is a retired Air Force officer, to swear me in, so we have to wait till they can wrap things up in Louisiana with his dad and drive up. This has been an incredibly long year of working towards this point but we have seen the hand of God on us throughout the process. We continue to pray that he would guide us and we continue to covet your prayers as we prepare for this next phase in our lives. I'll be gone for 6 weeks this summer so Dee Dee will need lots of prayers and support to make it through that time with 3 kids and no family in the area.

Well I better cut this off. I have two mid-terms this week and I need to get to studying. I post more details later.

ports, pork barrels and whiny politicians

2006-03-15T18:43:00.000-05:00

Wow. It's amazing how quickly time can pass by between posts. It feels like just a couple days ago that I made my last post on this blog but I see that is has been almost two weeks. With school assignments and meetings and projects at work time can very quickly get away from me. Anyway, on the the reason for this post.

I have not said anything about the whole port scandal though I have been following it via talk radio and the internet. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about a Middle Eastern country controlling some of the terminals in our ports. The security is still the responsibility of the Coast Guard and the Dept. of Homeland Defense but it just doesn't seem quite right to me to allow a potentially hostile country to control some of the means of shipping in this country. But that's not really what this post is about anyway. My problem with the whole situation was the way legislation was presented to oppose it. Attaching an amendment to a bill that the President could not possibly veto just seems like a dirty underhanded trick to me. I know, I know, it's the way things are always done in Washington. You attach an amendment to a bill in order to get your pet project through. And that's my problem. Our politicians act like a bunch of kids. If they can't get enough other people to agree to vote for their pet projects they whine and cry like a bunch of babies and find a way to slip it through. You can almost here them sitting around saying "Well if you don't vote for this, I won't vote for that." In fact, sometimes you actually can hear them saying it. I hear echos of children playing "If you don't play like I want to play I'm going to take my toys and go home. Nyah." I just wish they'd all grow up and let their bills live or die on the strength of their own merits, and stop attaching riders for silly insignificant junk to bills that really matter.

*Stepping down off soap box now.

some companies still believe in customer service

2006-03-03T11:48:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure many others have, I have long been decrying the general decline in customer service in our culture. The old adage of "the customer is always right" seems to have been pitched out the window in favor of an "I just show up to get my paycheck and I don't care what you want" type of attitude. Well, today I found one company that still has excellent customer service. I ordered some of my books for this semester through Christianbook.com. One of the books was on back order so it was not shipped out with the others. I checked my account yesterday and noticed that the back ordered book had indeed been shipped, 2 weeks ago. I called Christianbook today. As is common a computer answered and gave me a list of options to choose from. But it was only 2 options as opposed to the confusing list of possibilities at many other companies. I selected my option and was placed on hold ... for a total of about 3 seconds. The person that answered listened to my explanation then asked for the order number. When she pulled up my order she said "Yep, it would probably be there by now so we'll reship it." I was flabbergasted. In a world where we have to navigate increasingly confusing automated phone systems, and then explain our problems to 17 different levels of management before being told that it's not the company's fault and that there is nothing they can do to rectify the situation, here is one company that still believes in customer satisfaction. I'll definitely be ordering more from them in the future.

bible software

2006-02-23T14:07:00.000-05:00

My first class of the day was cancelled today so I went to the library to complete an assignment for another class. We had to spend an hour working with the BibleWorks program to familiarize ourselves with it. So I spent my hour playing around with the program and found out that it is incredibly powerful and also incredibly un-user friendy in my opinion. I somehow got the display changed from showing a single version of the Bible to showing a parallel display of 5 different versions and couldn't change it back. I ended up exiting the program and getting back in. Granted I only spent an hour of the program but it just didn't impress me all that much. I much prefer e-Sword. While e-Sword does not have the tools for grammatical analysis and the like (which I probably wouldn't use outside of class requirements anyway) it has one MAJOR advantage over Bibleworks. Bibleworks 6 runs $299 while the new version 7 is $349. e-Sword is free! That's right boys and girls, you can download it for free from the internet. There is also a huge user community on the web which provides support and additional modules. There are several user groups on Yahoo! Groups that are devoted to e-Sword. Just go the the Yahoo! Groups page and do a search for e-Sword.

I'm sure that if I were getting into incredibly detailed exegesis of a certain Bible passage, or if I wanted to know how many times a certain form of a word appeared in the Greek New Testament, then BibleWorks would be the program I would go for. But since I'm using my computer to read the Bible and possibly do some research in commentaries or dictionaries e-Sword more than meets my current needs.

proud parent

2006-02-20T12:04:00.000-05:00

On Saturday Ashtyn and I braved the frigid temperatures and the snow and ice covered roads to go to her final basketball game of the season. Her team hasn't done very well (they finished 1 and 5) but they had fun and really improved through this short season. When we got to the church the coach asked all the players and parents to come downstairs into one of the school rooms. He wanted the parents to witness the type of devotional that the kids have been hearing before each game. He used an Evangecube to present the plan of salvation. If you are unfamiliar with the Evangecube, it's a really neat witnessing tool. It's one of those perpetual cubes that you can continually unfold in the same direction and they keep going back into the cube shape.

Anyway, as he was walking everyone through the cube when he got to the picture of the empty tomb Ashtyn raised her hand and said "I know a good verse for that. 1 Corinthians 15:4 - that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,". Most of the other players on the team were kind of looking at each other like "huh?". One of our ministers kids is on the team and her mom spoke up and said, "That's one of their Awana verses". So the coach put in a plug for the Awana program at our church on Wednesday nights. And of course through all this I'm sitting there going "Yes! That's my girl!" It's awesome to see how spiritual things are starting to come together in her mind and how she is beginning to connect them.

what should the local church look like?

2006-02-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

For a while now I've been pondering this question. What exactly should the local church look like? I've seen statistics that say that less than 1% of all ministers will ever serve at a mega-church, one that runs over 2000 in Sunday worship. I have been privileged to serve at 3 (FBC Jonesboro, GA; Parkview in Baton Rouge, LA; and Highview in Louisville, KY). But one of the things I have seen by being involved in large churches like this is how poor a job we do of discipling people and truly getting them involved in the life of the church. Sure we have programs for all ages and Bible studies every night of the week, not to mention choir, men's groups, women's groups, recreation and all the other stuff that comes up. But does this really get people plugged in?

At every church where I have served you can look through the database of members names and see thousands of people who joined the church and are still officially members but who have not been seen or heard from in years. There are hundreds of people in each church who "walked the aisle" to join the congregation and asked to be baptized and are still listed in these databases as "pending baptism". Some of them have been listed this way for 20-25 years. Why have we let things get to this state? I think that in many ways we have been too lax in making sure that people understand what is expected of them when they become Christians. We have fostered a culture in our churches that leads people to believe that all they have to do is walk forward and shake the preacher's hand and get their names on the official membership roll of "First Church in the City" and that will serve as their "get out of Hell free" card. In studying church history I was amazed to see that in the first few centuries of the church, when someone wanted to be baptized they waited, sometimes up to 2 years, while they were discipled and taught what it meant to be a Christian. While I don't think we need to return to a set catechism I do think that a time of study and reflection would be appropriate. We have focused so much on numbers, while saying that numbers don't really matter because "every number is a soul won to the kingdom", that we have almost forgotten that new believers are like babies. They need to be fed and cared for in order for them to mature into adult believers.

So back to the original point of this post. I wonder if we have not focused too much on getting as many people into the pews as possibleby adding more and more pews, and too little on training the ones who have heard the gospel to be able to share it with others. I've talked with some friends about our conception of church and it seems that there are many others who are wondreing these same things.

Here are just a few of the questions that are popping up in my mind:
Should we focus more of our money on ministry and less on buildings and facilities?
Would it be better to keep the size of the church smaller in order to foster closer relationships?
When the church grows should we expand the current church, or start a new one?

In my Baptist History class at here at Southern Seminary we have been reading various confessional documents from William Lumpkin's, Baptist Confessions of Faith and one in particular jumped out at me. In 1611 Thomas Helwys, wrote

That the members off everie Church or Congregacion ought to knowe one another, that so they may performe all the duties off love one towards another both to soule and bodie. Mat. 18.15. I Thes. 5.14. I Cor. 12.25. And especiallie the Elders ought to knowe the whole flock, whereoff the HOLIE GHOST hath made them overseers. Acts 20.28; I Pet. 5.2, 3. And therefore a Church ought not to consist off such a multitude as cannot have particuler knowledg one off another.

It seems that this debate has been around for a long time, and it is likely that it will be around for a long time hence. But these are questions that we need to ask ourselves through every generation, for by not asking them, and making sure that the image of the local church is in line with scripture, we run the risk of following man-made traditions that will lead us away from scripture and therefore away from God.

Any comments or thoughts? They would be much appreciated.

cool idea

2006-02-08T23:36:00.000-05:00

As I was surfing through various blogs the other day I stumbled on Thoughts from the Change Race and Race of the Century. These blogs were the result of two friends sitting around a pizza place and talking about how much change is lying around on the ground because people lose it. They decided to have a race to see who could find $100 in change the fastest. One of them actually did it in about 4 months.

I love this idea. I immediately started trying to think of how this could be used for ministry. Unfortunately I haven't come up with anything yet but I'll continue working on it.
If anyone else has any bright ideas let me know in the comments section.

that's more like it

2006-02-03T21:37:00.000-05:00

I posted before about the huge stack of books I had to read for the Fall Semester. My stack of reading has shrunk considerably for this spring. The pictures below show the books that compose my required reading for each semester. I placed an 18 inch baseball bat from the Louisville Slugger Museum next to each stack as a point of reference.

There is one book missing from each stack. A friend borrowed one Spiritual Disciplines book from last Fall and one book from this Spring has not yet been shipped by CBD. So each stack should actually be about 1/2 inch taller. Hopefully this difference in the amount of required reading will equate to a little more time to spend with my family this semester.

Well, that's about it for tonight. Gotta go read one of the books in that stack on the right.

here we go again

2006-01-30T22:39:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow starts yet another semester in what seems to be the never ending cycle of school that my life has become. My second semester of seminary will hopefully be better than the first. In previous entries here I blogged about the questions and doubts I was having about being here at all, but God has dispelled all the doubts and answered all the questions. Plus, I got my schedule worked out much better this semester. I'm taking:

Intro to New Testament II
History of the Baptists
Survey of Christian Ethics
Greek Syntax and Exegesis

I got my classes worked out so that I'm only in school on Tuesday's and Thursday's. The first three classes listed above will be back to back from 1:30-5:35 p.m. on both days. Then on Thursday I'll take Greek from 7:00-10:00 p.m. This will be so much better than last semester. Then I was in class Tuesday-Friday. I had 5 classes on Tues and Thurs, 2 on Wed, and 1 on Fri. Plus I would have a class, then a break, then a few more classes, then another break, then another class. In between all that I had to try to fit in some work hours.

And to top everything off, my stack of reading this semester has decreased by approximately 7 inches. The only scary thing with the reading is the fact that my professor for Baptist History authored 3 of the 5 assigned books, and coauthored one of the other ones. That should be a challenging class, but interesting.

Now that school is starting back, and I will have to be a little more disciplined with my time, I am going to try to return to blogging more regularly. Hope you'll all tune in.

Book of Daniel

2006-01-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I actually watched an episode of "The Book of Daniel" the controversial program about an Episcopal priest and his dysfunctional family. In the show this priest is addicted to drugs, he has a son who is gay, a sister in law who is a lesbian, his wife has a horrid, antagonistic relationship with her mother and he has just hired a construction firm run by the mob to build a school at the church he pastors. Many people have been offended by the portrayal of Jesus, whom the priest can see and interact with on a physical level. I personally found him to be funny. At one point he asks Daniel (the priest) "Aren't you going to take a pill? Somebody said something mean to you." Sometimes I think that is exactly the reaction Jesus has to us. We claim to follow Him and rely solely upon Him, but when we are attacked or when something bad happens to us how often do we turn to our own personal crutches?

To me the really sad thing about the show was how accurate its portrayal of liberal Christianity seemed. They have taken the acceptance of all people into the church and twisted it into the acceptance and even tolerance of all practices, no matter how sinful. They have gone from looking the other way when what they considered to be a small sin occurred to embracing all practices and not calling them sin, even in cases where the practice is clearly prohibited by scripture. This is what saddens me about "The Book of Daniel". Not that it is such a horrible portrayal of what Christianity is supposed to be (which it most definitely is), but that it is such an accurate portrayal of what mahy modern American churches have become.

Anyone else have any comments on the show or the state of the American church?

kudos to ER

2006-01-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

I just got done watching tonight's episode of ER and I was incredibly impressed with the way they presented the war and veterans' views of the war. Dr. Gallant, who is recently back from Iraq, visited a wounded friend in the VA hospital. Even though the friend was horribly injured the only thing he wanted was to go back. Gallant later told his new wife that he wanted to go back also and in trying to explain his feelings to her he told her "There's a war going on. Some people may like to forget that, but I can't." What an awesome statement. What an incredible presentation of what the military truly feels about this war no matter how much the MSM tries to tell us that they are disillusioned and have low morale. From this veteran, kudos to ER for presenting the true picture of our military servicemen's feelings.

what a difference a month makes

2006-01-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

I retook my Greek final today. When I took it back in December I was questioning whether I should even be in Seminary and what God's plans for my future were. Well, God reaffirmed that yes I am supposed to be here and yes, I am supposed to be pursuing the chaplaincy. Anyway, back to the Greek final. The first time I took it I didn't do very well. In fact I did horribly. I got a 61 on it and I needed a minimum score of 70 to pass the course. But since Southern has experience with people not doing well on the final they offer a free Greek Review course and a chance to retake the final if you don't pass it the first time. So today I retook the final and this time I made a 91.5. Amazing how your scores can change when your perspective changes.

When it rains...

2006-01-09T23:48:00.000-05:00

What a whirlwind week this past week has been. On Jan 3 I started taking a two week Greek review course. I didn't score high enough on the final exam last semester to move on to the next level class so I have to take this course and retake the final. Hopefully I'll score high enough to move on so I won't have to retake the entire course. Well, in the middle of me taking this course Dee Dee started feeling bad and went to the doctor only to find out that she has a bladder infection. We got her medicine and she started feeling better toward the end of the week. But then on Sunday afternoon she told me that her back had been hurting all week long and it was getting worse. My first thought was problems with her kidneys. This morning, the morning of the Midterm exam for the Greek review course by the way, she was really feeling bad so I took my exam and then came home. She already had an appointment to see the doctor this afternoon but we called and got the appointment moved up a little. Just as I suspected, the doctor said that she has a kidney infection, so she prescribed a strong anti-biotic to knock it out. We came home and Dee Dee crawled back in the bed and I went to get her medicine. She took the first dose at around 5 PM. Between 5:30 and 5:45 she called me to the bedroom and said her eyes were itching and her mouth hurt. When I looked at her eyes they were puffy and red and the side of her tongue even looked a little swollen. So, we called a friend from church to come sit with the kids and I took off to the emergency room with Dee Dee. By the time we got there one eye was swollen completely shut, the other was about half shut, her face was swollen up like she had just gone 10 rounds with the heavyweight champ, and she said her throat was starting to get tight.

The ER at Baptist East here in Louisville is fabulous. They rushed us back into triage and within a very short time Dee Dee was lying on a gurney and getting a shot of Benadryl among other assorted drugs. Within 15 mintues after that first dose she was already looking better. Her face had lost the red color and the swelling had gone down enough that she could actually open both eyes. We were back home by 9 PM and she sacked out (which is to be expected after 2 doses of Benadryl). Tomorrow I'll go get the new prescription and hopefully this one will agree with her system a little more than the first one did.

We have no idea how much the emergency room visit is going to end up costing us. Hopefully it won't be too terribly much since I have tuition payments coming due again real soon. I didn't really want to do this, and I debated it for a long time, but I have actually added a Paypal donation button to the blog just below the Christianbook.com search box. If anyone is so inclined as to donate to the "Help send Rob to seminary" fund we would appreciate it. We also get a percentage (a fairly substantial 10%) of all sales on Christianbook.com that are made through the search box, or the book links that I have placed on the blog. If you're looking for a particular book you just type in the title, or the author, or whatever other information you have and click Go. If you then make a purchase from Christianbook.com we'll get the percentage back.

If this is not something you feel comfortable with doing, what we could use even more than donations or sales percentages, is prayer. We covet the prayers of our friends and spiritual family more than ever in these times of stress that going through seminary bring. As one of the professors here at Southern put it, "I'd rather get a C in Greek and an A in family than the other way around." These times are stressful on our family with me having to spend so much time studying. Please pray for us, that I would divide my time wisely.

Well, that's it for this installment. It's approaching midnight and I have a quiz tomorrow morning. That is, if Dee Dee is feeling well enough for me to leave her alone with the kids.

Thank you Texas!

2006-01-05T22:49:00.000-05:00

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy that Texas beat usc last night that I just don't have the words to describe it. I have gotten incredibly tired, over the last 2 years, of hearing about how the current trojans are basically God's gift to college football. They were the media darlings and every sportscaster from here to Timbuktu was talking about how they would make history this year by winning their 3rd consecutive national championship. Excuse me? I know many will think I'm biased since I graduated from LSU but this would not have been number 3. No sir, methinks it would have been number 2. There was a great article on Yahoo! Sports a couple of weeks ago that talked about this very thing. USC won the national championship last year, but the year before that it was LSU.

I absolutely hate the BCS and think we should go to a playoff system (along with basically every other person in the country except for the presidents of the universities in the 6 major conferences who don't want to give up any money). However, all the schools in those conferences, of which USC is a member, agreed that the BCS would crown the national champion. They did not agree that the BCS would crown the national champion... "unless we don't like the outcome and then we'll decide to use some other poll that we like better." That's not the way things work. You have to play by the rules on the field, and you have to live with the results when you come off the field. Otherwise, I think I might just form a foundation to name a national champion every year. We'll even go back and look at records from prior years to name champions for those years as well. If so then in 2006 LSU will be going for its 114th consecutive national title since they started play in 1893. Don't you just love revisionist history.

Oh yeah, Hook em 'Horns!

another step down

2006-01-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I have taken one more step toward becoming a chaplain candidate. After my Greek Review class yesterday I drove up to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio for my commissioning physical today. I spent the day being poked and prodded and running from building to building to get everything done and get all the paperwork filled out. Ah the efficiency of miltary paperwork. This was the first time I have been back on a military base since I got out of the Army in April 2000 and it felt great. Even though this was my first trip to WPAFB it felt like I was coming home. It's amazing how much the military lifestyle can get into your blood. But I digress. Now that everything is done my application will go up to the Department of Defense and we begin the waiting game. As soon as they sign off on it I will be commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserves. I've been told that it has been taking about 90 days for applications to be approved, but the length of the wait has been steadily coming down from 7 or 8 months 2 years ago to 90 days a month ago. Hopefully it's still coming down. Well, that's about it for tonight. I need to go study some more Greek.

Don't blame me... I voted for Bobby Jindal

2006-01-02T13:59:00.000-05:00

This post over at Michelle Malkins blog points out just how much some people in Louisiana are out of touch with what's going on there. I have heard some horrible reports about Gov. Blanco since she took office and particularly since the hurricanes devastated my home state not long after we moved to Louisville, but this report takes the cake. We are constantly told by the MSM that it's the conservative Republicans who hate the poor and downtorodden and spend all the government's money on themselves but this shows the other side doing so. I have long said that I believe the state's reaction to the crisis would have been totally different if Bobby Jindal would have won the gubernatorial election. I can almost guarantee you that he would not have spent more than half a million dollars to renovate his offices 6 weeks after New Orleans was flooded.

amazing things you can find on the internet

2006-01-01T18:29:00.000-05:00

Awhile back I was doing some random Google searches, (this was obviously not during this past semester of seminary) and I came across the site of the USS Fletcher. This was one of the ships my father served on during World War II. For those of you that know me and are wondering how my father could possibly have served that long ago, I was born very late in my parents' lives. My mom was 44 and my dad was 3 days shy of 49 when I was born. Anyway, I started surfing around the site just to see what was there. I started looking through the photos and found a couple that made me say "Hey, Dad has that picture in his memorabilia." Then it happened. I actually found a picture of my dad among the pics of WWII crews. He's standing in the back row all the way to the left. The internet is an amazing thing. My father died in 1979, long before the vast majority of people had ever heard of even the precursor to the internet, and yet now, 26 years later, I can find pictures of him on the web. What an amazing tool we have to share information, and more importantly to spread the gospel.

blast from the past

2005-12-29T21:06:00.000-05:00

Last night I couldn't sleep so I went out to the living room and was surfing the internet (thanks to the wireless router that my wonderful wife gave me for Christmas). I was doing some searches for e-sword modules and stumbled across a blog that had a review of the software. But that wasn't what caught my eye. On this blog the author mentioned the 80's Christian metal band Stryper with a link to their website.

Huh? Their website?!?!?

I thought Stryper died long ago. But I have to admit that in the 80's I loved this band. The tape player in my car had a different opinion. It ate one copy of Yellow and Black Attack and two copies of Soldiers Under Command. It never ate anything else. I guess it just didn't appreciate good Christian metal. Anyway, I had to check out this website and when I got there I discovered that Stryper is not only back together, but they have released a new CD titled Reborn. How could this news not have been splashed all over the internet?

Stryper lives! The world seems right again. You may now go about your lives.

The price of freedom

2005-12-28T20:59:00.000-05:00

I have a nephew who is serving in the Navy as a construction engineer and this year he spent 7 months in Iraq helping to rebuild the infrastructure there. We see more and more from the MSM about how this war is wrong and how it is like Vietnam in that our troops don't know what they are fighting for and don't want to be there. Well I thought I would present a little different perspective. This is a letter that he wrote while he was serving in Iraq. I think this shows more of what our troops feel.

I learned a lot this July 4th. I spent my 4th of July defending freedom for I proudly answered my nation's call for help and volunteered to go into harm's way. I hope that the sacrifices that I've made over here will help to ensure that our nation is free of terrorists for years to come. I also hope that one day the children of Iraq and other nations will grow up in a world of peace - a world free of terrorists. I think the hardest part of this war is seeing the children endure this hell hole. During my time over here, I've seen thngs that I hope to never see again in my lifetime, but I'm a better man for having seen them because I now know firsthand the true price of freedom.

Happy birthday America!

Derek Cherry
Navy Seabee

Enough said.

One semester down...

2005-12-01T23:42:00.000-05:00

Well my first semester of seminary is officially over. I took 2 finals on Tuesday and 2 finals today. I'm glad to have a chance to sit back and catch my breath for a few weeks before I have to dive back in again. Well, actually I won't be able to sit back just yet. If you read my last post you saw that I was having questions about God's plans for my future with the Air Force. I received some great encouragement from some incredible friends and then on Tuesday, out of the blue (pun definitely intended), I got a call from Chaplain Dave Markwalder with the Chaplain Candidate Program asking if I was still interested in the program. After I hung up with him I just had to look up to heaven and say "Yes Lord, I get the point." To make a long story at least a little bit shorter he faxed my information to the recruiter for this area and I will be meeting with him on Monday to finalize my application and schedule my physical. So this weekend will be filled filled with completing a stack of forms for the Air Force and ordering transcripts and whatever else the application process entails. Hopefully now that the semester is over I'll have a little more time to keep this blog updated so those of you that actually check it periodically will know what's going on in our lives. Well, it's late and I have to get up for work tomorrow so I'd better sign off.

Return of the Long Lost Blogger

2005-11-14T22:54:00.000-05:00

For all my faithful readers out there (all 2 of you) I must apologize for the long and protracted silence. I have simply been overcome by the daily facts of life, school, work, family, and reading far too many theological books. This past month has been an incredibly busy one as I started my new job as Director of Computer Services for Highview Baptist Church here in Louisville while trying to keep my head above water in school. Dee Dee and I have had many long discussions concerning God's will for our future, especially with some of the things going on in the Air Force these days. It seems that evangelical chaplains are being silenced. The Chief of Chaplains has said that there is nothing to worry about and that everything will be fine, but I can't help but think that he has been in the Air Force for a long time and will be retiring soon. Things can change under new administrations. Needless to say, we have been praying alot about God's will in that area of our lives.

I have also been having lots of trouble staying focused in school, not because of the difficulty of the course work (though it is plenty difficult), but because I hate having to tell my children that I can't play with them or read to them because I am constantly either running out the door to go to class or closing myself off in my bedroom to read something for class. I was talking with David Price, a friend from church and a graduate of Southern, about this today and we seemed to have pretty much the same view. My first responsibility is to my family, and to bring my children to a knowledge and love of the Lord, and if I spend all my time getting a theological education and neglect my children then I have failed.

So, keep us in your prayers as we continue to grow and study and try to discern God's will for our family. Our future seemed set when we moved up here, but now it seems that God is revealing more of His plan to us. He is not changing the plan since He is unchangeable, but He doesn't reveal all of His plans to us at once for various reasons. Sometimes it's to lead us to a stronger faith, and sometimes it's just because of the fact that if He revealed too much of the plan to us at once it would scare us out of our wits and we would turn and run the other direction as fast as we possibly could. Somehow I think the latter might be the reason in my case.

past the halfway mark

2005-10-10T21:48:00.000-04:00

Well we've passed through the halfway point of this semester. Last week was midterms. I think I did OK on them, but the results remain to be seen. They were a bit more stressful and quite a bit more detailed than I was used to in undergrad or my previous Master's program. These last two weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster for me personally. Going through the stress of preparing for midterms and getting all the reading done for two papers that are due this week just got me sort of depressed. I ran through a time of wondering why I'm here and if this is really what I'm supposed to be doing. Then I got some good news about a job prospect that really raised my spirits. I'm still waiting to hear back but I'm pretty confident that it will come through. I also completed my application to the North American Mission Board for endorsement in the Air Force Chaplain Candidate Program. I know that I have been called at this point in my life to pursue the chaplaincy. I don't know if that is the ultimate plan that God has for me. I might end up doing something totally different, but for now at least, I'm supposed to be going through this process. That knowledge helps during the difficult times of studying for midterms and wondering where the money for next month's rent is going to come from. I am in the middle of God's will for my life right now, and that is exactly where I need to be. Well, that's about it for tonight. I've just felt a need to put some of my feelings down on paper (ok, so it's cyber-paper) but now I need to get back to reading Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship". Gotta finish it and get that paper knocked out.

Cell Phone Etiquette

2005-10-05T16:18:00.000-04:00

OK, I know there has been MUCH debate of this subject over the years, but I'm putting in my two cents now. I'm sitting at Panera Bread studying for a midterm exam that is coming up tomorrow. I watched this woman drive up about half an hour ago. She was already on her cell phone when she got here. She came in, still on the phone, ordered her food, still on the phone, got it and sat down two tables over from me to eat. She's still on the phone. Now I realize that I am in a public place, and I don't expect complete quiet, my problem is with the fact that she is speaking loud enough for people to hear her on the other side of the restaurant. And she's speaking in Spanish no less. Why do people insist on yelling into their cell phones? And if the reception is that bad, why do they continue sitting somewhere they are not getting good reception? Get up and move somewhere that you might be able to hear.

OK, she just got up to leave, and started whispering by the way. Guess I'll end this particular rant and attempt to get a little more studying done.

From the "You've got to be kidding me" department

2005-10-01T22:35:00.000-04:00

CNN.com - 'Planet Xena' has a sidekick: Gabrielle - Oct 1, 2005

I was reading some reports on CNN.com tonight and ran across this one. Has our culture degenerated to such a point that we are now naming scientific discoveries after cheesy characters from even cheesier TV shows? I will admit I have watched an episode of "Xena: Warrior Princess" here and there. But in my opinion there is a huge difference in watching something cheesy on TV and memorializing it by naming a planet after it.

politics test

2005-09-29T02:42:00.000-04:00

OK, some of my friends from Baton Rouge were taking this test and I was surprised by their results so I had to go take it too. It seems that alot of the people I knew back there were Democrats which really surprises me. Anyway, here are my results.

You are a
Social Conservative
(16% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(80% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Strong Republican

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

time flies

2005-09-28T22:34:00.000-04:00

Wow! It's amazing how quickly time can pass by. I blinked and realized that 10 days had passed since I last posted anything to this blog. The last couple of weeks at school seemed to get much more intense. The pace really picked up in Greek and I had even more reading to do so I just haven't had much time to spend posting.

Looking back over my posts since we moved I realized that I haven't posted anything about our new church. We joined Highview Baptist Church here in Louisville. This church is doing some amazing things here in the city. It is a well established church that has been on the south side of town for a number of years. About five years ago they decided to start a second campus on the east side of the city. They started it with 80 people. In February of this year when they moved into a brand new facility on their East Campus that original 80 had grown to about 650. Bro. Kevin (the pastor) told me this evening that we had over 1380 in attendance this past Sunday. He also just announced that we are making plans to possibly start a third, fourth and fifth campus at different areas around the metro area. And we are also partnering with other churches to help plant a church in Manhattan. The Lord is truly working at Highview to spread the kingdom.

Also, for those of you that aren't in Baton Rouge, and don't know about this, the pastor at my former church resigned not long after we left. As you may remember, there was a power struggle going on in the church between two different factions, one that didn't like the path of change that the pastor was following and one that supported him no matter what. There were things done wrong on both sides and there is a huge need for church discipline to be applied to some of the ring leaders. Anyway, Bill realized that the church was becoming too polarized around him and he resigned and started a new church plant in Ascension Parish. Things seem to be going very well. People are coming and really getting involved. He tells them from the outset that if they want to come and just sit in a service and then go home and not get involved they are in the wrong place. That's what he was trying to get people to realize at Parkview. God bless you Bill! I pray that God would use you and everyone else at Graceworks in a mighty way to reach people in Baton Rouge and the surrounding area with His love.

One final note. If you've visited here in the past you may have noticed that the Google search box is gone and the Google ads have been replaced. I simply wasn't happy with the control that Google gave me over the advertisers so I'm trying out a different company. Bidvertiser lets me view every ad before it is placed on the site and accept or decline it. With Google I just had to check the site and if there was something I didn't want (which turned out to be most of it) I could block those ads, but it would take a while for them to drop out of the rotation.

Well that's it for tonight. Hopefully it won't be quite as long before I get another post up here.

Officials clash on people returning to New Orleans - Yahoo! News

2005-09-18T13:56:00.000-04:00

It seems that Ray Nagin, who so publicly whined and complained about what he saw as a lack of response on the part of the federal government after Hurricane Katrina, is now ignoring the advice of the federal officials he so desperately wanted. Mayor Nagin is encouraging residents to return to the areas of the city that were not severely damaged by the disaster. However, the head of the federal recovery effort, Vice Admiral Thad Allen, says, that after consulting with the EPA and CDC, the timeline given by the mayor is at best ambitious. This is especially true in light of the fact that there is another hurricane readying itself to enter the Gulf of Mexico. (See story here) Ray Nagin wants it both ways. He wants the federal government's help to get him out of a crisis, but now that the immediate danger of the hurricane is gone and the flood waters are receding he wants to do things his own way.

Some great observations about the blame game

2005-09-13T10:39:00.000-04:00

Many in the Main Stream Media (MSM) are villifying President Bush in their reports on Hurricane Katrina and coming just short of actually claiming that he caused the storm itself and sent it to wipe out the city of New Orleans. A friend of mine sent me this great article that points out some very basic truths that the MSM and liberals in general need to realize.

it's been awhile

2005-09-08T23:00:00.000-04:00

OK, so I've let my posting frequency slip quite a bit (not that it really matters since there's no one reading this blog besides me anyway). Things have been hectic this past week or so. LOTS of reading, a quiz in Greek (every Friday), my first paper due, trying to get together with my accountability partner so my Spiritual Disciplines class, plus the kids have been getting sick, and I'm still looking for a job. Actually, hopefully the job situation will be taken care of soon. I'll post more about that when I get more details.

There are so many things I want to say about the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath but if I put everything down, I'd be typing all night long. To begin with, I'm sick and tired of hearing the liberal media say that the federal government and the military did not show up on the Gulf Coast until 4 or 5 days after the hurricane hit. FEMA is a federal agency and they were there from day one. The Coast Guard is a branch of our military and they were there from day one. That's it. End of story. You CANNOT continue to say that the military and the government were not there. They were. Move on.

Then there's this whole racial thing. Why is it that anytime something happens in this country that warrants extensive media coverage Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or someone has to stick their nose into it and claim racial discrimination? We've actually had some idiotic people trying to claim that the government broke the levees in New Orleans on purpose to oppress the poor blacks that live there. Come on! How can any sane person truly believe that our government would intentionally endanger the lives of so many, and intentionally destroy one of our major cities? Yes, it is true that the majority of the people affected by the flooding were poor and black. But let's look at the demographics of New Orleans. According to the 2000 Census nearly 70% of the population of the city of New Orleans is black and almost 30 percent of the population was below the poverty level (one of the highest of any major city). With statistics like that, yes, the majority of the people affected are going to be poor and black. Complaining about it is like complaining about a tornado hitting somewhere in Mexico primarily affecting Hispanics. Duh! That's who lives there, so that's who is going to be affected. Let's stop pulling out the race card whenever anything happens. We can't change the way the statistics read now. We can however change things and make them better in the future.

OK, I guess I'm done ranting for now. There's much more I'd like to say about the left-wing media but I need to get to bed.

Surreal

2005-09-01T23:00:00.000-04:00

That's the only way I can describe what is happening on the Gulf Coast. Seeing places that I know and love in New Orleans and Biloxi either under water or totally gone is nothing short of surreal. Even after growing up in south Louisiana and living through hurricanes and the aftermath that goes with them, I cannot even imagine what it is like to be living through this. Honestly many of the pictures I've seen remind me of Sarajevo, Bosnia. There was an area in Sarajevo that had been nicknamed "City of the Dead" because the houses there were so mangled from the house to house fighting. It nearly brought me to tears when we were driving through there and I saw children playing soccer in front of an apartment building that was riddled with holes from bullets and mortar shells. But that pales in comparison to what I have seen going on in New Orleans and the Mississippi coast. It looks like a war zone.

We've spoken with friends in Baton Rouge who said that the population of the city has doubled with all the refugees. There are reports there of violence at gas stations. One of our friends told his wife that he didn't want her going to the gas station because people were waiting for women to swipe their credit cards, then attacking them and stealing the gas.

This is all evidence of the fact that this world is stained by the taint of sin. No matter how much secular humanists try to tell us that people are naturally good at heart, times like this show that our natural state is one of selfishness and sin. We need to pray not only for the physical and temporal safety of those on the Gulf Coast, but for their spiritual and eternal safety that can only be found through faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Pat Robertson's Comments

2005-08-23T23:19:00.000-04:00

Last night we had the 700 Club on as we were getting ready for bed and heard Pat Robertson's call for the assasination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. I was utterly shocked to hear this statement come from a man who is a leading conservative Christian. Many Christian leaders have called for him to retract his comments and I add my small voice to that call. I agree with Mr. Robertson in that President Chavez presents a serious security risk to this nation if he is allowed to continue along the course he is currently on. However, assasination is not the answer to this problem. There are numerous other courses of action that are open to the United States besides killing the head of state of another sovereign nation. We as Christians need to be especially careful of our words particularly when in the public sphere. We need to be sure to speak the truth in love if we ever expect the lost people of this world to listen to the message of the gospel.

what have i gotten myself into?

2005-08-17T23:31:00.000-04:00

I just got done with my homework for my Greek class and I'm wondering what in the world I have done. Today was the second day of class and for homework we had to translate 20 sentences from Greek into English and 4 from English into Greek. This is the 4th language that I have studied formally (other than English) and I'm amazed at how quickly the class is moving. Day 1 - here's the alphabet, Day 2 - translation. Yikes! I knew seminary was going to be a big jump from what I was used to and so far I have not been disappointed. Actually, it's not too bad. It's going to be A LOT of reading, but luckily I love to read, and so far everything I've had to read has been really interesting to me. Again, luckily I'm a history geek and that's alot of what we've had to read so far for my classes.

books, books everywhere

2005-08-13T00:23:00.000-04:00

I have a stack of books that is about a foot and a half high sitting here on my computer desk. These are the books that I will have to read for my classes this semester. Here's my schedule of classes for the fall. Anyone reading this who has been to seminary please feel free to tell me how absolutely insane you think I am.

9:00-9:50 AM Tuesday - Friday - Elementary Greek
11:30-12:20 PM Tuesday - Thursday - Intro to New Testament
12:30-1:20 PM Tuesdy - Thursday - Personal Spiritual Disciplines
1:30-2:45 PM Tuesday & Thursday - Intro to Church History
5:45-7:00 PM Tuesday & Thursday - Biblical Hermeneutics

I put all the reading assignments into a single calendar so they would be easier to keep up with. I'm not sure how smart of an idea that was. It's a little overwhelming when you look at the calendar and see assignments for 50 pages in one class, a chapter in another, 2 chapters in another and an entire book in another. Luckily on that particular day I only have to read about 10 pages in the fifth class so it's an off day :)

Classes start next Monday, or in my case next Tuesday and my first quiz is scheduled for next Friday in Greek. Part of me keeps asking "What have I gotten myself into?" But then I remember how clearly God told us that this is where He wanted us to come, and this is what He wants me to do. As long as I keep my focus on Christ and doing what He has called me to do I can do anything.

On a different note, I posted a new book on the recommended reading list, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. While I don't agree with everything Miller has to say (he is very much a part of the emergent church movement which I don't fully agree with) I would still recommend this book. He focuses alot on the biblical commandments to feed the poor and clothe the naked and how we should build relationships in order to share Christ with the lost. Plus the book is incredibly funny in places. There's one section in particular in his chapter on Money where he ends up having a shouting match with his conscience. You gotta lova a book that has the author shouting "Shut your gaping piehole!" to the voices in his head

back online

2005-08-10T00:44:00.000-04:00

We're back online after what seemed like an eternity. It's amazing how dependent we have become on the internet. I didn't have easy access to the web for over a week and felt like I was cut off from civilization. No news, no stock quotes, no email. Thankfully the cable man came this afternoon and got us connected back to the world again. At least to the cyber-world. Well, that's about it for this installment. I know it's short, but it's late and I need to get to bed.

We're here!

2005-08-02T01:59:00.000-04:00

We made it to Louisville after a very, very long couple of days. We picked up the U-Haul on Friday and started loading that afternoon. We finished loading and cleaning up the old apartment by about 2:00 on Saturday. Sunday we drove to Dee Dee parent's house in Tennessee and unloaded and then reloaded part of the truck with furniture that we were trading with them. On Monday we drove up to Louisville. We got here at about 3:00, picked up the keys to our new apartment and went with the lady from the office to do a walk thru only to find out that they had that particular apartment entered incorrectly in their computer files. It was a two bedroom with a den instead of the three bedroom we need. She quickly switched us into another apartment that is a three bedroom, but when we walked in the hall carpet was soaking wet. The drain pipe for the air conditioner had become clogged and condensation overflowed. They got someone in to rip out the padding and extract the water. We finally started unloading the truck at about 5:00. Since we were all already exhausted, and since we couldn't put anything in one room until the carpet dries it took forever to unload. We finally finished at about midnight.

Alright, that's enough rambling for one night. I'm off to crash in my own bed (for the first time in two weeks) in my new apartment. Good night all.

we won't be homeless

2005-07-20T19:43:00.000-04:00

Yay! We just signed a lease for an apartment here in Louisville. We can move in here the day after we have to move out of the apartment in Baton Rouge. We've spent the last 3 days driving all over Louisville looking at different apartments, or pulling into the complexes and pulling back out again before we even went to the leasing office.

Anyway, I'm just glad the search is over. And we have plenty of room for people to come and visit (just not everyone at once OK. let's space things out a bit). I'll send out an email later letting everyone know what our new address is.

PS. Sorry if this sounds disjointed, it's been a long few days driving up here and then driving all over the city so I'm kind of out of it.

I am now jobless

2005-07-14T23:23:00.000-04:00

As of today I am currently unemployed. This was my last day of work. Now the pressure really sets in on this move. We head north to Louisville on Saturday to begin the process of looking for a place to live and a job. If anyone knows of any computer/technology jobs or any church jobs that are opening up in Louisville please let me know.

Today was a bittersweet day for me. I have made many close friends here that I hate saying goodbye to. But I am also glad to be leaving a church that is in turmoil. It seems that every time things seem to settle down just a little bit someone has to stir things up. Some of the people remind me of a child poking a stick in an ant bed. They don't seem to care what they are doing to other's personal lives or reputations as long as they can get them riled up and make them scurry around. I pray that people would focus on God and His will for Parkview and stop worrying about rumors and whispers of rumors before God removes His spirit from the church.

I done gradumuated

2005-07-09T23:15:00.000-04:00

Dee Dee and I just watched my online graduation ceremony from CTU. It seems kind of silly to have an online graduation, but since it was an online degree program I guess it was only fitting.

Now the online chat reception is another story. Especially when you read the claim they made in the announcement email -- "It'll be just like being there!" No. It won't. It'll be just like sitting at a computer 1000 miles away from there. Anyway, we skipped the chat reception. Now I'm just waiting for the diploma to come in the mail. And then I get to start the whole process over again at seminary.

Oh, the power of advertising!

2005-07-09T01:05:00.000-04:00

As we were leaving our friends' apartment tonight we saw this vehicle, proudly advertising it's owner's business.

I'll just let the picture do the talking. There's really no need for comments on this one.

World Magazine Blog: The award for ugliest dog goes to

2005-07-08T15:35:00.000-04:00

World Magazine: The award for ugliest dog goes to

This has got to be the absolute ugliest living thing I have ever seen in my life. Be warned, this picture is not for the squemish.

This is an actual contest that is held in California every year to find the world's ugliest dog and Sam has won for three straight years. Take a look at the article and you'll understand why.

the longest/shortest week in the history of the world

2005-07-07T23:15:00.000-04:00

Ever have one of those weeks that seem to both drag by and speed past both at the same time? Starting last Friday we have had a whirlwind of a week. The girls went to spend the night with my sister on Friday and Dee Dee and I left Owen with my mom and went shopping for a new laptop that evening. I found a great deal on one at BestBuy. Saturday we were doing some packing and then were invited to dinner at a friend's house. Sunday we had a single combined worship service (something that Parkview desperately needed) and then went to lunch at the house of one of our members. Monday the girls wanted to go swimming so we went to the pool that morning, came home and got cleaned up then went to my Mom's for a family lunch for the 4th of July. When that was over we went over to a friends house for a cookout around supper time. We made it home in time to watch some fireworks on TV (I know, I know, it's just not the same, but I wasn't going to fight the crowds to see the show down on the river here in Baton Rouge). Tuesday we were invited over to some more friends' house for dinner. Wednesday I ran around at lunch time and after work looking for some accessories I needed for the laptop, and then we ended up at my Mom's for dinner. Tonight, we had a farewell party at yet another friend's house with our Sunday School class since some of them will be out of town this weekend for a Chi Alpha reunion in Ruston, LA.

Whew, it sounds like even more when you write it all out like that. Looking back over the past 7 days at times it seems like it all passed by in a flash and at other times it seems like last Friday was months ago. And it's not over yet. Tomorrow at least we'll be able to sleep in, but then we have our last Parents' Night Out at the church. Dee Dee and I are going out to dinner with two of our best friends here in Baton Rouge. Saturday morning I have my online "graduation" from the master's program I just completed through Colorado Tech. Sunday we have Parent/Child Dedication at the church, plus it will be our last Sunday so there will be many goodbyes to be said. Monday Ashtyn leaves for GA Camp. Next Friday night we will get together with my family to say goodbye. And sometime in all of this we have to find time to pack up our belongings, close out our accounts, and prepare to move 12 1/2 hours away.

time is slipping away

2005-07-04T00:18:00.000-04:00

I can't believe how quickly time is flying as our move to Louisville approaches. We pushed things up a bit, we are now leavingon the July 16 instead of July 24 but even taking into account the one week difference it seems awfully close. My last day at Parkview will be July 14, we will pick Ashtyn up from GA camp on the 15th, get together with all of my family that evening, and pull out on Saturday morning, the 16th. We're not actually moving our stuff up there yet, this trip will be to look for a place to live and to hopefully find a job. Then we'll be back in town for a couple days to load everything onto a truck and head up there for good.

It seems like just a couple weeks ago that we got the postcard from Southern announcing the Preview Conference that got this whole moving process started, but it has been just over 3 months. We are still trusting God to provide for us while we are there since we still don't know where we will live, where I will work, or how we are going to pay for school. But God is faithful to provide what we need. He has shown us so clearly that Southern is where He wants us to go that I cannot help but have faith that He will provide the means for us to do it.

the bears, or whatever they're called, didn't like me

2005-07-04T00:05:00.000-04:00

When I'm feeling down and sorry for myself, there's no better cure than to listen to the logic of a child. It always cheers me up, and often sends me into an uncontrollable giggling fit. Especially if the child is sound asleep. Such was the case tonight when I went in to kiss the girls goodnight. As I was turning around to leave I heard Ashtyn say "the bears, or whatever they're called, didn't like me." When I looked, she was still out cold. I came down the stairs laughing like crazy and my night was vastly improved over what it had been before I went up.

the packing has begun

2005-07-01T00:15:00.000-04:00

I guess it's official now. We're moving. We have actually begun packing. The living room is already looking pretty bare. All the pictures are off the walls, the knick-knacks are wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in boxes and the book case is essentially empty. It's funny how you never really notice all the little decorations in the house until they're gone. Sitting here right now looking at the bare walls with just nail heads sticking out it seems so spartan and unlived in. Once we leave this apartment the only evidence that we were ever here will be the nail holes in the walls.

I pray that something different can be said about the people that we leave behind. Dee Dee has many close friends who are heartbroken to see us leave. I know guys are different and don't show emotion the way that women do in situations like this, and I'm fine with that by the way. But I just wonder if I've made that type of connection with anyone here. I guess if I have to wonder about it, I probably haven't. I just pray that I leave behind more than scars on the walls of the lives of people I've come in contact with here in Baton Rouge.

desiring God

2005-06-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

I've been reading an incredible book called Desiring God by John Piper. I'm still only about halfway through the book but I would highly recommend it to anyone. This book will definitely change the way you approach the Throne of Grace in worship. I won't go too deep into the meaning of the book. I just want to comment on one point in particular that has stuck in my head. Piper makes the claim that the greatest hindrance to our worship of the Father is not the fact that we are too focused on our own pleasure as many would say, but that the things that we allow to please us are so pitiful. The whole point of the book is that we should seek pleasure. But we should seek it in the ultimate source of pleasure, our Heavenly Father.

In the book Piper quotes often from C. S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards. One quote from Lewis particularly stands out.

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

I pray that all of us as Christians would be less easily pleased and would seek our pleasure in the worship of the only name that is worhty of worship. If you feel yourself struggling during worship, being distracted, thinking of all the other things you could be doing, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book and give it a read.

gaggles and gossip

2005-06-22T23:49:00.000-04:00

Have you ever spent much time around middle school girls? Especially the younger ones that are just crossing out of childhood into the teenage years? When I was involved in Youth Ministry I dreaded meetings with the middle schoolers, not because I didn't want to be around them, but because I had no idea what the complex matrix of relationships among the girls would look like that day. I would always hear things like, "I'm not friends with her anymore because she said..." or "She told so and so that I like him and I don't!" (Though in reality I knew she did.) It always reminded me of a gaggle of geese all honking and snipping at each other.

I feel much the same way with the situation going on in our church right now. It's hard for me to get into a spirit of worship anymore becuase there are people on both sides of the issues that are acting like a gaggle of 6th grade girls. "They're just being judgemental and trying to play God." "So and so said such and such about the pastor and that's just not right." And the sad thing is that much of the "information" that is being passed around is third, fourth, or fifth hand or even farther from the source. "Well I heard that Joe Bob was talking to Mary Ellen and she said that Betty Sue told her that Billy Frank said ..." You get the picture.

I just wish that everyone, on both sides, would realize that our reason for coming together in the first place is to worship the living God, the Creator of the universe. Let's get back to doing that and all the gossip and back-biting and manipulations will seem so petty and insignificant in the light of His glory.

worldview quiz

2005-06-19T12:32:00.000-04:00

A bunch of the other bloggers that I have been visiting have been posting links to this quiz so I thought I would take it too. It seems to be pretty accurate. It shows me as being highly evangelical and highly fundamentalist, which is very true of my personal worldview.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan		86%
Fundamentalist		71%
Neo orthodox		68%
Emergent/Postmodern		64%
Reformed Evangelical		61%
Charismatic/Pentecostal		25%
Classical Liberal		18%
Modern Liberal		7%
Roman Catholic		0%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

5 weeks

2005-06-19T00:40:00.000-04:00

We're down to about 5 weeks until we move to Louisville, Kentucky and the nerves are starting to set in. Currently I don't have a job for when we get there, we have no place to live, and we're not sure how we're going to pay for anything. I know, that sounds insane, but we are trusting that since God has called us to go there, he will provide a way for us to make a living while we are there.

I've signed up for a couple of affiliate deals which will provide a small amount of money through this website. That's why you see the Google search box and ads on the side of the page. Anytime someone uses the search box and clicks on the links on the results page, or clicks on the ads on this page, I will receive a small amount of the advertising revenue from Google. I will also be adding some other links in the near future to some other Christian websites. I'll let you know how those work when I get them up and running if anyone would like to help us out by using the links.

On another note, Dee Dee pointed out something else that proved to us that God has called us to seminary at this particular point in time. When I was accepted to the Master's program that I am currently finishing up (today is the last day of the session, Yay!) I was scheduled to start in the middle of a term, in May of 2004. A day or so after being accepted I got a phone call saying that they had had someone drop out and were wondering if I would like to start early. I said sure, so I ended up starting at the beginning of a term, in April, 5 1/2 weeks earlier than I was scheduled to start. Doesn't sound like much until you realize that if I had started when I was scheduled I wouldn't be done for another 7 1/2 weeks from today (there's a 2 week gap between each 11 week term) which would mean I wouldn't be able to start seminary until January, which would mean I probably would not have enough time to be accepted to the Chaplain Candidate Program before I was over the age limit. Isn't it cool when God does stuff like that in our lives to prove to us that He is the one who is ultimately in control?

loving those that are hard to love

2005-06-16T00:54:00.000-04:00

My church has been going through a rough time recently. There's alot involved but to boil it down to something manageable for this post I'll say that the pastor and staff had proposed some changes to the structure of the church and some additional steps for membership. We had met and prayed over these changes before ever presenting them to the church and felt that this was the direction that God was leading us to go. There was a backlash of opposition to the changes and it quickly degenerated to personal attacks from people on both sides of the issue. The pastor and his family have had to endure attacks on their character for several months now. I say all that to say that I have never met anyone who gives a better example of the character of a minister as laid out in 2 Timothy 2:24-26, than my pastor, Bill Pruitt. Throughout the entire ordeal, with accusations flying on both sides, I have never heard him utter a negative word about anyone. I have watched him love on people and had my human mind screaming out "Kick them out of the church" (which, by the way, he doesn't have the authority to do anyway). But he has followed the command to love the flock that God has called him to serve. This has been an incredible, and humbling example to me as a young minister just starting out and learning what it means to be a servant leader. I pray that when the trials and attacks of Satan come in my ministry, as I know they will, I will exhibit a small part of the character that I have seen exhibited here.

decisions

2005-06-14T00:05:00.000-04:00

Alright, I sent out an email to my entire address book with a link to this blog telling them that they could come here to read the story about how we decided to go to Southern seminary and apply to become an Air Force Chaplain. So I guess I had better actually write the story out so that if by some huge stretch of the imagination someone comes looking for it, they will actually find it.

The whole idea of the chaplaincy has been kicking around since not long before I got out of the Army, but Dee Dee and I have always dismissed it. We thought, "No, I'm too conservative", "I wouldn't fit in with the inclusive atmosphere" and anything else we could come up with to shoot the idea down. But it just kept popping back up.

When we moved here for me to finish my undergrad degree it was with the plan of going on to seminary afterwards. Well, I started visiting seminaries all over the place but just didn't feel like any of them were where God was calling me to go. In fact, I felt like God was telling me "It's not time yet." So in the spring of 2004 we put seminary on hold and I began working on another degree (see the post below for that story).

In March of this year God told us it was time to start thinking about seminary again, and He told us pretty emphatically. Here's how it all happened. Dee Dee is in a Bible study group with some of the other women from our Sunday School class. The topic of the study on Monday, March 28 was submission. Dee Dee asked me how I felt she did in the area of submission and I told her I thought she did great. She agreed but said that the one area she felt she didn't do very well in was the idea of me being a chaplain. I said "Wow, I haven't thought about that in months" to which she quickly replied under her breath "Take it back. Take it back. Take it back."

That week, our Sunday School teacher and I got together for lunch. We had been trying to do so for about a month and a half but just never could hook up. One of the things we talked about was my conversation with Dee Dee about submission and the chaplaincy. I'm not sure why I evern brought it up, but I did. He challenged me to do something about it, to talk to a retired chaplain, or find an active duty chaplain I could talk to just to see what my options were. Well, I emailed a contact for the Chaplain Candidate Program that I found on the internet and got a call back the next day. After talking with him I really felt like God was telling me to pursue it. I know it sounds fast but by Thursday, March 31, I was convinced that God was telling me that this is something I need to do. I might end up not becoming a chaplain for one reason or another, but it's something that I must pursue at this point in my life.

OK, now for the Southern Seminary decision. Like I said, by March 31 I was making plans to go to seminary again (you have to go to seminary to be a chaplain). My human brain said, "OK, I have a good job here at Parkview, so I'll just stay here and commute to New Orleans for seminary." I got home that day and had a flyer in the mail from Southern about their Preview Conference that was coming up in April. I know, coincidence right? Well, let me tell you a little more about that flyer.

It was postmarked on March 28, the day the idea resurfaced
It was mailed to the wrong apartment, but made it to my box anyway
I got it on March 31, the deadline to sign up for the conference was April 1

So we decided that God was telling us we needed to at least look into this school. When we got there we fell in love with it. Through the people we met and the things we heard at the Preview Conference God definitely confirmed that He is calling us to attend there. Oh and when we got to Southern and told the Director of Admissions the story about the flyer he said "And I can add something to that. All the flyers were mailed at the same time, about a month before yours was postmarked."

So there's the whole story. I know it's long and confusing, but that's how it happened.

degrees and more degrees

2005-06-13T22:20:00.000-04:00

I did it! I just turned in my final assignment for the last class in my Master's program. On July 9th I will receive a Master of Science in Management with a major in Information Technology Management from Colorado Technical University Online. Now that this degree is completed I will take a two month break before started work on a second Master's degree, this one in Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Looking back over the past dozen years of my life, this is so far from where I thought I would be. In December 1993 I dropped out of college and joined the Army because I was tired of school. The Army promptly sent me to a language school that lasted over a year to learn Arabic. After completing my training I spent 2 1/2 years in Germany and then was transferred to Atlanta, GA. While there I tried for a while to complete my undergraduate degree but it just didn't work out with my work schedule after leaving the Army.

Just a little over three years ago Dee Dee and I decided to move back to Baton Rouge so I could finish up at LSU. We came back here thinking that it would take me a minimum of 2 to 2 1/2 years to finish up. I ended up switching my major to General Studies and finishing in 1 year and then begining this Master's program that lasted 15 months. So in the time we thought it would take me to finish my undergrad degree I finished it and a Master's. Now I'm getting ready to start on another degree. As my friend Shawn said the other night, "This from the guy that nobody thought would ever finish his first degree."

I know, I know, I've rambled in this post, but read the title of this blog OK. I'm just amazed at the places God has taken me and the things He has helped me to accomplish once I stopped running from Him and gave in to His will for my life.

Nerd quiz

2005-06-13T13:21:00.000-04:00

OK, so I found this quiz that is supposed to tell how much of a nerd you are. I know there are tons of these things out there and most of them are pretty silly, but I just had to take the five minutes to run through this one to see. Here are my results. I always knew I was a nerd, just not quite that much of one.

"I wanna go with a girl"

2005-06-12T23:08:00.000-04:00

It's funny how silly little comments like that can stick in your head for years. We had Shawn and Marja Liner and their daughter Maggie over for dinner last night. Shawn was the best man at our wedding and though we haven't stayed in touch over the years as much as either of us would have liked I still consider him to be one of the closest friends I have. Even after a year or more of not seeing each other when we get together it's like being with family. And I know that anytime we get together, at some point the phrase "I wanna go with a girl" is going to come up.

OK, a little background on the title of this post. It goes back about 12 or 13 years. I was in college at LSU and Shawn, Jim and Arthur Harvey and I had been sitting around their apartment. None of us had dates for the evening so we decided to go see the movie "Groundhog Day". As we were leaving the apartment, the whole idea of not having a date struck me and I blurted out "But I wanna go with a girl!" That phrase will follow me till the day I die as long as I am friends with those guys. But hey, can you really blame me? I mean, I was a 20-21 year old guy, going out to a movie on a Friday night with 3 other guys. OF COURSE I wanted to go with a girl instead.

Anyway, it's just those type of little unguarded moments that allow us to see into someone's heart and form a connection with them that can last for a lifetime. And it's just those little unguarded moments that Christ uses to change a life, and form a relationship that will last for eternity. So form connections with people, seek out friendships in which you can open yourself up and allow Christ to shine through you to touch another life and possibly change them for eternity.

Ramble relocation

2005-06-11T23:29:00.000-04:00

For those of you who may not have heard, our family is on the move again. For several years now, actually since before I left the Army, I have had recurring thoughts of returning to the military as a chaplain. I've always dismissed these thoughts for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here. Well, about 2 months ago this thought recurred yet again and this time I couldn't ignore it. Through a series of events over the course of about a week God confirmed to me that He wanted me to pursue becoming a chaplain. To make a long story short, Dee Dee and I visited The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in April and felt that God was confirming that we should apply. So we are off to Louisville, KY to begin my seminary training in August. Once there I will apply to the Chaplain candidate program with the U.S. Air Force.

beginnings

2005-06-11T22:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I've finally been assimilated into the blog collective. The youth minister at my church has been blogging for a while now and has been telling me about it but I've just never really thought much about it. I finally started reading his blog among others and I've been sucked in. I've been wanting to send out a newsletter to all my friends from the military and from previous places I've lived just to let them know what's going on in my life. Hopefully this will be a way for me to keep them updated on a more regular basis. As you can see from the title I plan to pretty much just ramble on about nothing in particular in this space. I've also been wanting to journal for years but just never could bring myself to do it. Since I spend sooooo much of my time in front of a computer maybe this is the way I can finally bring myself to do it.