Coffeespoons

Seeking a New Job (III)

2011-12-02T11:08:00.000-06:00

I sent the application package off to the university in January and then worked to forget about it. My brother gave me some good advice several years ago that whenever I was applying for a job, not to “move there in your mind.” And so I tried to manage the amount of time I thought about it, particularly since I didn’t expect to hear anything from them for a few months.

So I was surprised to get word in mid-February that they wanted me to participate in a “telephonic” interview. I was unfamiliar with this term, but apparently it means the same thing as a telephone interview. I then spent about ten days preparing for the phone interview, memorizing names, familiarizing myself with significant issues on the campus, and preparing to articulate my own personal and professional goals. I also spent a great deal of time reading through articles on the peculiarities of job interviews in higher education.

I had not participated in a telephone interview before, and approached this one with some degree of anxiety. The hiring committee (search committee) was chaired by the program director from another area and six faculty members whom I would be supervising if I applied. But the committee did an excellent job of putting me at ease and generously asked questions that I had spent a considerable amount of time thinking about.

By the end of the interview, it felt more like a conversation on pedagogy and leadership skills than an interview. I felt that it went very well. After several weeks of waiting (about three weeks) I received word that the committee also felt that it went well. They invited me to come to their campus for a face to face interview in April. Everything was lining up perfectly.

Seeking a New Job (II)

2011-11-28T08:04:00.000-06:00

The academic world is one in which the mill grinds slowly. University administrators and faculty prize process over results (one of several areas they share with most Baptist churches). And so the process takes a while. I first saw the job ad in December and began to compile my application packet. Standard contents requested by a university search committee are: A letter of application, a resume (called a curriculum vita or cv), four references, and copies of transcripts for each of your degrees.

This can take awhile to assemble. The most difficult part is crafting a letter of application that is specific to the institution and demonstrates that you are familiar with their focus and their interests, all the while demonstrating that you, coincidentally, happen to be the best candidate for the position.

So over the holidays (almost exactly a year ago) I worked on my application. The hardest part of the process was getting two of my references. I wanted to get one from a colleague and I wanted to get one from my supervisor. So part of our decision to apply for this position was talking to these two colleagues and letting them know that I was interested.

Telling my supervisor that I was searching for another job seemed to be crossing a Rubicon of sorts. But, it ended up going better than I thought. My supervisor told me he thought I was ready for the promotion and that I should definitely apply for another job (thanks?).

Seeking a New Job (I)

2011-11-20T17:22:00.000-06:00

We had quite the adventure this last Spring. Starting in December of 2010 I began a lengthy process of applying for an administrative position at a fantastic Christian college. Although we've been blessed for the last ten years to be at our current location at a state institution, I have felt an increased calling to begin working in a school that is more closely aligned with my own sense of vocational calling. I had kept an eye on the job sites where such positions are posted and found one in an ideal setting.

This university is big enough to have a nice sized student body (and corresponding budget) but still about half the size of my current location. It would afford a great opportunity to get to know a smaller group of people and be united with them toward a common purpose. The position was one of greater responsibility as well. It would stretch me out vocationally and push me to develop some skills that I'm currently under utilizing. And it is a pretty stable place. Sadly, not all Christian institutions offer the same sense of stability and fairness that I've grown accustomed to in a state institution.

And so it seemed like a good fit for both sides. We began the process with high hopes.

The Accident

2011-11-09T07:09:00.000-06:00

A few months after Scooter got her license, I had just dropped her little brother off at home when I got the call every parent of a teenager dreads. "Daddy, I just got in a car accident and the policeman wants you to come here!" I could hear the tears in her voice as she took gasping breaths between the words. I asked her if she was injured or if anyone else was hurt. She replied "No Dad, I'm fine. I looked down for a second and ran into the guy in front of me. We're both OK, but could you hurry?" She was on the street in front of her school and when I arrived I saw her car behind another car with a policeman standing between them.

I saw another father standing next to the driver of the other car. The driver was a boy who was as skinny as he was scared. He looked about 12, but I found out later had just turned 16. When I identified myself to the police officer he thanked me for coming and then motioned for the four of us to gather round.

He cleared his throat and began speaking what sounded like a speech he has given before. "OK, here's how this works. We have here an accident involving two brand new teenage drivers. If I report this accident, there will be auto insurance rates skyrocketing all over the place. There were no injuries and there are only a few scratches on both cars. If both fathers are willing to walk away from this without reporting it to anyone, I'll close my notepad and drive away." He had already talked to the other father (who nodded his assent) and then looked at me. I quickly agreed.

"Alright, y'all have a nice day." And he got in his squadcar and drove away.

As a friend told me later, it was a great way to have your first accident. Thank God for mercy over judgment!! And Scooter's been accident free ever since.

A New Driver in the Family

2011-11-07T22:10:00.001-06:00

Shockingly, Scooter has begun to drive a car. I’m not sure that has completely sunk in. She turned 15 last year and took driver’s education last in fall of 2010. Scooter earned her permit in January and was required to drive for 50 hours under our supervision. She counted the days until her birthday when she would turn 16 and be eligible to take her driving exam. On that day we drove up to the DMV to take her exam…but a problem quickly arose.
Scooter’s car was graciously given to us by my brother and sister-in-law. But they live out of state so I had to get new plates and registration. I had done that, but left the out of state inspection sticker (I mean, it wasn’t due for another three months and why spend $10 if you don’t have to?) When we arrived for the exam early in the afternoon, we were discouraged to find that we couldn’t take the exam without getting an in state inspection.

We got back to the DMV to take the exam around 4:15 only to find out that they ran their last exam at 4:00. As the gentleman told us we were too late, I saw Scooter begin to tear up. I asked him if there was anything we could do and explained that we had been by earlier in the day. It was her birthday after all. He paused for a moment, looked back at the clock, looked at my weeping daughter, and then said that he would see what he could do. (So note the other important lesson for Scooter that day: A woman’s tears are a powerful force. I have encouraged her to use them only for good).

He returned a few minutes later and told us that he had arranged for her to take her exam. She took her driving exam and made an exceptional score, well above what was required for passing. She has the maturity, the skills and now the license. Everything looked fantastic.

So it came as some surprise two months later when she had an accident.

A Good Day, But A Hard Day

2011-10-30T07:12:00.000-05:00

My time at Pecan Grove ended well. It was a long interim, lasting almost 20 months, but quite gratifying. The church called a new pastor and we left back in January. The hardest part in the entire interim was saying good bye. I shared with them at our last service together, that I would not return to fill the pulpit or speak with individual church members for about a year. I wanted them to have a good chance to bond with their new pastor. I also shared with them that I wouldn’t be coming back to perform any funerals or weddings. Mrs. Clark, an octogenarian that had served well on the Transition Team said “You mean if I die in the next year you wouldn’t do my funeral?” I had to tell her no, I would not. On our final Sunday, they thanked me and had a farewell reception. It was a good day, but a hard day.

A few weeks before we left, I was at a retreat with several other Intentional Interim ministers and got to know one gentleman who has served eight churches as an intentional interim pastor. I mentioned to him that our time of service at Pecan Grove Baptist was nearing an end and decided to call upon his experience leaving these churches. I asked him about strategies for leaving a church cleanly while minimizing the pain of saying good-bye (both to me and to them). He paused just a second and smiled. “O, you can’t minimize the pain. It ALWAYS hurts when you leave” he gently said.

And he was right. I shared with the church in my final message that my time of service with them had been THE most rewarding service of ministry in my entire life. And I meant it. They had called a wonderful pastor and have a very bright future. And after the thank you notes and gift cards, they presented me with their favorite gift of a lasting memory:

A Pecan tree.

Living with Diabetes

2011-10-25T16:31:00.000-05:00

Skeeter now is indistinguishable from her other 13 year old peers. Only a few differences mark her from her friends. She can’t stay up as late at sleepovers as she would like, because she has to get up no later than 9:00 to check her blood sugar level. She also has to do a finger stick during half-time of her soccer games.

She can’t pig out on pizza and has to stay away from non-diet soft drinks (I’m not sure either of those things are bad).

She has to be a little more deliberate with her meal choices and MUST eat a snack at appropriate times during the day.

Sometimes we get on to her and she blames "The Diabetes" (for inappropriate things like "Mom, my room is a mess because I have diabetes", etc). This is mostly done in jest.

But she’s adjusted far better than her mom and I ever dreamed she would.

Green as a Cabbage Patch!

2011-10-19T09:45:00.000-05:00

I came across a great article by Dr. Bill Leonard from Wake Forest who wrote about his first pastorate in a rural New England church. It reminded me a lot of Lone Oak Baptist. Enjoy!

In the Hospital

2011-09-27T16:45:00.002-05:00

What followed after the diagnosis was a three day hospital stay. When most people are diagnosed with diabetes, they are in pretty tough shape. Since the early symptoms of high blood glucose levels are similar to the flu, most don't go to the doctor until they have run very high glucose levels for several days. They are often very sick by this time. Since Kadie and Skeeter went to the doctor’s office so quickly, Skeeter was in comparatively good shape.

During the three days in the hospital, Kadie and I went through a detailed educational experience. We spent our time with nurses, pediatric endocrinologists, and registered dietitians. We learned about the various kinds of insulin, the safe places for injections, carbohydrates, and the "honeymoon period" (during which the pancreas continues to produce some small degree of insulin) . We received a lot of reading material and free samples of syringes, glucose monitors and strips.

During this time in the hospital we also got a sense of what Skeeter is made of. The first day she was in the hospital, they gave her insulin through the intravenous drip. But the second day they showed her how to give herself injections. The nurse began by patiently giving step by step instructions. She was going to explain each step one at a time. She showed us how to prepare the syringe, and then wiped her leg with the alcohol wipe. But as the nurse prepared to giver Skeeter her next instruction, Skeeter plunged the syringe into her thigh without a moment’s hesitation. (While I cringed).

And she's done it three times a day ever since.

Receiving the News

2011-09-21T13:37:00.000-05:00

It had been a hectic day. Kadie had taken Squealer to the doctors for his normal checkup earlier that morning, but the doc’s office was swamped with walk-ins. So she and Squealer had to wait for several hours to be seen. After his appointment, Kadie dropped him off at school and got a call that Skeeter was in the nurse’s office at her school and wasn’t feeling well at all.

Kadie picked her up and was taking her home when Skeeter said that for the last several days she had experienced a burning when she urinated. As a nurse, as well as a parental veteran of two daughters, Kadie immediately diagnosed a urinary tract infection. Since she didn’t want to spend several more hours in the doctor’s waiting room, she called the office, shared Skeeter’s symptoms, and asked for them to phone in a prescription to the pharmacist.

The doctor’s nurse responded that in these circumstances the Dr. prefers to see the kids in person before calling in a prescription. So grumbling the lengthy drive back to the doctor’s office, Kadie reluctantly took Skeeter to see him.

After another lengthy wait in his office, they checked Skeeter’s vitals and took a urine sample as a routine part of her visit. A few minutes later her doctor came returned with a somber expression. In a voice that Kadie said she will never forget he said “Skeeter’s Glucose levels are way too high. I’m afraid that she has diabetes. You need to immediately take her to the emergency room at the regional hospital.”

In a state of shock, Kadie began crying as she asked: “Can we go home and pack some clothes?”

The doctor replied “No, this situation is very serious. You need to go straight there.”

What I Learned

2011-09-19T08:37:00.002-05:00

I knew very little about diabetes. I knew that there are three different kinds, Type 1 (formerly Juvenile Diabetes), Type 2 (formerly Adult Onset Diabetes), and Gestational. I also knew that some kinds of diabetes are insulin dependent, and some kinds can be regulated with diet and exercise.

But recently I’ve learned a few things about Type 1 diabetes. It affects .04% of the population, or about 700,000 people in the US. I’ve learned that it is an auto-immune disease in which the body’s protective immune system is turned inward and begins to attack the pancreas, rendering it incapable of producing insulin. No one knows why the auto-immune system does this.

I learned that insulin is necessary for allowing the cells of the body to convert glucose into energy. Glucose is the food of the cells and that leads to a great irony: without insulin, glucose levels in the body simply build, and build, and build while the cells starve--surrounded by food! These increased glucose levels eventually harm the eyes, the nerves in the extremities, and the renal system. Left untreated, diabetes can result in blindness, loss of limbs, and kidney failure. Until insulin was isolated and purified in the early 20^th century, a diagnosis of diabetes was a death sentence: a 100% mortality rate.

I’ve learned that Type-1 diabetics are insulin dependent for the rest of their lives. They do not outgrow it. They do not control it by exercise or by eating a particular diet. If they do not take insulin daily, they will die.

A few months ago , I learned something else about Type-1 diabetes.

I learned that my 12 year old daughter Skeeter has it.

Returning

2011-09-16T15:04:00.000-05:00

Just a note to let you know that I am planning on returning to the blogging world. After the last few years off, things are changing a bit to allow me the opportunity to think through some things in the blogosphere. Although the great interest in blogging seems to have cooled down some (Due to Facebook?) I’ve decided to reenter the fray.

Some things have happened with the family recently that I want to explore online. In addition, I had some experiences at work that were particularly challenging and this anonymous space gives me a bit of room to process them. And lastly, it looks like I will be beginning an interesting Intentional Interim Ministry and I don’t want to miss the opportunities to blog about it.

I’m looking forward to being back.

Is This Thing Still On????

2011-03-28T13:32:00.001-05:00

Anyone still there after a year and a half of radio silence?

Kids' Story

2009-10-09T22:35:00.001-05:00

Kadie and I checked the kids out of school early today and took them to the Toy Story double feature. When Toy Story came out in 1995, Scooter had not quite been born and Skeeter was still a couple of years away. (Squealer was almost a decade away!) So watching the films today was the first time any of the kids had seen them on the big screen. I remembered enjoying the films, but not connecting to them in the same way I did this afternoon.

Both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are each stories about the tremendous brevity of childhood. The key plot elements of both films involve the affections of children being transferred from childlike things to more grownup things. Apparently this will even be moreso the case in Toy Story 3 as Andy goes off to college.

As I watched our three kids watch the movie, complete with their matching 3-D glasses, I was reminded again of the tremendous blessing that each of them are. And how quickly the days pass.

Anyone still out there??

2009-10-08T20:55:00.002-05:00

With all apologies to Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback, here’s 10 things I think I think.

I think I’ve been a bit lax in blogging as of late. Time has a way of getting occupied. I plan to remedy this oversight.

I think that I’m continuing the intentional interim work at Pecan Grove Baptist. Work has gone slowly, but we had a breakthrough service a few Wednesday nights ago. Well worth its own blog entry. But the three hours on the road every Sunday is starting to wear a bit thin.

I think I haven’t been watching enough movies. The last movie I saw was Rocky which I introduced the girls to. Many comments about life in the mid-1970’s.

I think the family has struggled health-wise a bit. Scooter came down with the swine flu this week, so our house has been in lock down mode. Kadie thinks that she and I have already had it. (We both had some respiratory issues this week).

I think that the university is dealing with record enrollment (no doubt do to the economic downturn), but fortunately, we’ve faced severe budget cuts so we’ve had far less faculty to teach all the new students.

I’ve been doing some fiction reading lately, catching up on the Patrick O’Brien novels. There’s 21 of them and I’m down one with 20 left to go.

I think I like my iPhone. Right now I’m taking advantage of a new audiobook rental program of my local library. I think after a few weeks it disappears from your iPod…or something. I’m listening to The Accidental Billionaires about the founding of Facebook.

I think Tony Romo’s best days may be behind him. Fortunately the Rangers provided a distraction by playing meaningful games into September for the first time in a decade.

I think I’ve been using Facebook and email to communicate with church members moreso than ever before.

I think I am in desperate need of a ski vacation in a couple of months.

Blessed are the Peace Makers

2009-09-01T14:43:00.005-05:00

This would be one of the more offensive Bumper Stickers I've ever seen It was on a truck I passed right down the street from our house.

Church Minutes

2009-08-24T09:41:00.001-05:00

Statistics, as they say, are a lot like bikinis. What they show is important, and what they hide is even more important.

The same could be said for church minutes.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in the last few weeks working through the minutes from the past nine years of business meetings at Pecan Grove. They show the barest outline of the conflicts and confrontations which have shaped the community of faith during this decade.

Reading church minutes is up there with reading food labels and graduate papers as pastimes that induce narcolepsy. But going through the minutes with the Transition Team has added a lot of background and color and texture to the minutes. (As well as filling in the gaps!).

The record of the minutes don’t lie. They allow us to pinpoint different times when various conflicts began. Reading through the minutes, we’ve seen the missteps emerge in black and white. What also tend to emerge are patterns for dealing with conflict and disagreements. At times these patterns play out and repeat over decades.

So reading minutes are a dull, dreary process…but a process that can be quite revealing.

...Summer Daze...

2009-08-14T16:38:00.003-05:00

I’ve been watching a lot of baseball lately, due no doubt to the impressive pitching performance of the Rangers this season. Skeeter has been watching a lot with me and learning a bit about the game. And it can be a confusing game. Recently, after a Ranger scored from third, she asked “Was that a Death Run?” I was stunned for a few seconds before remembering a previous conversation. “No, it’s called a suicide squeeze.”

We took a five day vacation to San Antonio and traveled with two other couples. We had much fun, but I was outvoted on two significant issues. We didn’t have a single Mexican meal there and we didn’t go see the Alamo. It reminded me again why we normally vacation alone.

I signed up for extra classes this summer. The result was that I taught classes all summer and thus reduced my days off to about two weeks over the summer break. Part of the reason I got into teaching was to get summers off. Of course that was before kids’ college funds.

Scooter has had a time consuming job this summer and it’s wearing on her. She baby sat one of Squealer’s friends for eight hours every day all summer long and is worn out from chasing them all around. I’m secretly (and not so secretly) amused every time the Girl or Squealer says to her “I’m bored.”

Pecan Grove continues with Transition Team meetings on a weekly basis. It’s going well, I think, but slowly. Many conversations, many different points of view. We continue to pray for breakthroughs in some of these unresolved issues.

FPU is going well at Pecan Grove. Recently one guy (who’s in financial difficulty) roared out of the church parking lot in his 08 fire engine red Mustang. One of the coordinators for the class said in his slow southern drawl. “Dave’ll tell him to sell the car.” Indeed.

A triple wammy next week as Scooter starts High School, Skeeter Middle School, and Squealer begins the first grade. I took Scooter to her high school orientation (at my own alma mater) this week and found the rising nostalgia a bit overwhelming. I can’t believe my daughter is entering her freshman year of high school.

Facebook has taken over more of my life and crowding out a bit of blog time. Perhaps that will change as we start school on the 24th. We’ll see.

Dirty Words and Squealer

2009-07-24T15:52:00.002-05:00

Squealer: “Dad, is butt lick a bad word?”

I sat frozen as I considered my six year old’s query. We’re pretty old school (read “legalistic”) with profanity in our household. The word “butt” is verboten (verbutten?) in our home, even moreso if you append it to the term “lick” (or any other verb for that matter).

Me: “Son, where did you hear that word?”

Squealer: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Did you hear it at school?” (“Objection, your honor. The prosecution is leading the witness!”)

Squealer: “I don’t know. I think I heard it at school.”

I think he affirmed school as the origin because it’s the middle of summer and that’s a pretty safe place for the blame to rest. I was puzzling this through when he repeated his question.

“Daaaaad! IS BUTTLICK A BAD WORD?!” he slowly, and forcefully repeated.

Me: “Yes, son, you know it is. We don’t say the word butt, we certainly don’t say it as a combination with another word. Butt is a bad word, so we don’t say words that have butt in them.”

Squeaer: (after thinking for a few seconds) “We can’t say the word butler?” he asked incredulously.

FPU Explosion

2009-07-20T15:56:00.005-05:00

We’ve had a bit of an explosion at Pecan Grove, and I couldn’t be happier.

In one of our listening groups from a couple of months ago, A church member mentioned a quote often associated with Dave Ramsey. (As you may recall, our family has benefitted from following his financial program). This church member indicated that Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU) had greatly blessed their family and he had been interested in getting it started at the church. In fact, he had received a bonus recently and would be happy to purchase the Leader’s Kit and donate it to the church.

I asked him if he would like to teach it and he replied that he’d never taught anything in the church before. But after a few weeks of thought and prayer, he consented. In the overall scheme of things, I thought that this would be another Bible study that might reach a dozen people or so. I brought it up with the church council and suggested that the church pay a scholarship of $50 to help defray the $100 charge for those who wished to participate in the study. They quickly agreed and we set a day for Financial Peace University to start.

And then it exploded.

We moved the study to Sunday evening because not many could participate on Wednesday nights. First 10 couples signed up, then 20, then 30. And now we’re ordering more kits to get us up to 40. Each kit represents a family unit; that is, either a couple or a single. So we have about 70 people in the church going through it. In addition, we’ve had a half dozen families from the community choose to participate. Almost three fourths of our Sunday School attendance will be taking the class. We were going to run it concurrent to our evening worship service, but only 2 people who normally attend were NOT going to be taking FPU. So were are running it during the evening service and the two agreed to help with child care.

The credit crisis and general anxiety about the economy are no doubt factors in its popularity. We’ve had a couple of business plants in our community shut down and several church members are jobless. The chance to pay off debt and to establish an emergency fund looks pretty attractive right now. All in all, the church is excited about this opportunity to be engaged in a common task, and to offer something for the community.

Our transition team discussed the FPU class this past Sunday and think that it could be an important opportunity for the church to work together on a focused financial goal without conflict. That would be an important accomplishment and something that the church has struggled with achieving before.

(photo above was taken last night during FPU)

Facebook

2009-07-15T15:31:00.002-05:00

As a four week old newbie in the area of Facebook, I’ve enjoyed exploring the new medium. PC World creates an amusing (and accurate) taxonomy for the basic 12 types of FB status updates. (And don’t you like my subtle display of street cred to use the abbreviation FB instead of writing out Facebook?) My only addition to the taxonomy would be one distinct to the Christian subculture: Prayer Requests.

Christians are definitely into Facebooking (more street cred) prayer requests. Are there others out there I'm missing?

Transition Team Agenda

2009-07-08T14:07:00.001-05:00

Working with Pecan Grove, we’ve identified disunity as one of the key points we need to address. While there are always several issues pertaining to disunity in the church, we are going to focus initially on one. In several of the listening groups, I heard about a fairly unhealthy process that has developed in various church committees at Pecan Grove. In some instances, before committees would meet, several members would get together and caucus about what the group should decide. Then when the entire committee met, the group would push through its agenda.

When the committee would present this to the church as a recommendation, some members would disavow this proposal and it became an issue of contention. I had several people express concern that certain members of the Transition Team would coordinate their activities to place the process in jeopardy.

Frankly, I possess neither the necessary skill, nor the time, to investigate each of these claims. But I can encourage the Transition Team (and the church) to try a few different things to address the underlying problem of disunity.

First, as a Transition Team we will talk about this concern. My hope is that by putting the issue on the table, it will lead the group to police itself and hold itself accountable. I shared that we can certainly adopt that method of decision making if everyone is comfortable with the process of caucusing as small groups before we meet. Needless to say, the committee rejected that conclusion.

Second, we’re going to focus on Transparency. The group will share freely with one another of course, but also with the church as a whole. We will keep the entire church informed as to our deliberations. We’ve opted to use a variety of settings (deacons meetings, Sunday school classes, business meetings, Sunday morning services) and a variety of individuals on the committee to make frequent reports to the church.

Third, we will attempt to model trust. With each person on the committee reporting to the groups that they represent ,my hope is that this will give members in the church confidence in the process.

Transparency --> Trust --> Unity

Selcting the Transition Team (II)

2009-07-07T15:45:00.001-05:00

And he was not alone. I had feedback from other members concerned that some folks who sought to undermine the previous pastor were now on the Transition Team. This meant that some of the “troublemakers” were now in a position to be involved in leading the church through the interim process. In addition, they feared that some in these different Transition Team members would get together before our meetings and then lead the process according to their own whims. The end result is that there would be no changes in the church.

I responded to these concerns in a couple of ways:

First, in the process of organizing the Transition Team and making sure that all groups were represented, I could’ve made some mistakes. Perhaps there were some people on the Team who should not be. With prayers and numerous requests for divine wisdom, I’ve tried to make sure that every member of the Transition Team was appropriate.

Second, I noted that the people about whom they were most concerned had each received overwhelming support from the congregation through their vote totals. They might be manipulative so and so’s, but they still represented a significant portion of the church.

Third, I would ask the concerned member if they felt that they had representation on the committee. In every case, the answer was affirmative. I’ve then reiterated that my number one goal in assembling the committee was to ensure fair representation.

Fourth, I’ve tried to encourage them that if there is anyone seeking to undermine the process, I’d rather have them close by. I want to stay in dialogue with those who have been a source of trouble in the past.

Lastly, whenever a small group is intensely focused on accomplishing a task, and is open to the Lord’s direction, I think that there is a possibility that God will transform them through his work. It is my hope that the experience of participating on the Transition Team will change each of us in this process.

I finished each of the conversations by summarizing my underlying optimism about the process by saying: “If the entrenched powers in the church didn’t see the need for change, then I wouldn’t be standing here today.” That’s exactly why I’m optimistic about the church’s desire for change.

SBC Impact

2009-07-06T12:10:00.002-05:00

SBC Impact has foolishly allowed me another post on their site. Go their to read about the four tiers.

Selecting the Transition Team (I)

2009-06-30T16:40:00.004-05:00

Little activity here at Coffeespoons lately and I wanted to write a few posts about the constitution of the Transition Team. For the composition of the team, my basic goal is to have representatives from every major group within the congregation. One of my primary jobs during my first two months at Pecan Grove was to find out what the groups in the church were.
I shared with them ahead of time the process for the composition of the Transition Team.

The process would be as follows:

First, I asked the congregation to nominate five people for the Transition Team. I asked them to request permission from the person before they nominated them. I shared with them that this person needed to be someone with whom they would trust the future of the church. The criterion should be “If you were going into the hospital, this person is one whom you would call and ask them for their prayers.”

Second, after these nominations were made, I sat down with the personnel committee and we tabulated the results. We then selected ten members for the Transition Team based on two factors: number of votes received and diversity of representation. We did NOT pick the top ten vote recipients. To do so would’ve left certain groups in the church unrepresented on the committee. The Personnel Committee assisted me in the composition of the committee.

We spent about two weeks on this process.

The following Sunday morning after the vote was taken, I presented the transition team to the church. As I announced their names, I had them come up before the congregation. I then invited the church to come up and pray over these women and men whom they had entrusted with the future of their church.

The service was meaningful and moving. I saw some people pray for members of the team that I knew they disagreed with. It was in this service that I genuinely felt the church was united in their desire to take their first major step through this interim process.

So as I began to move to the back of the church to shake people’s hands as they departed, it came as some surprise to me when an angry church member blocked my path. He could barely contain his rage as he said through whispered clenched teeth:

“How could you put some of THOSE PEOPLE on this committee?!”

Web Site Story

2009-06-30T13:44:00.003-05:00

If the musical West Side Story were retold today in a world of social networking, what would it look like?

View here

I share their dislike of evite and I too am all about Pandora. Still not Twittering, however...

Fish Anecdote

2009-06-11T18:09:00.002-05:00

Me (during a lecture): “Take for example, the peach shirt I’m wearing...”

Him (interrupting): “Dr. Taran, that’s not peach, its salmon.”

Me: “What?”

Him:”That shirt isn’t the color peach, it’s salmon.”

Me: “…I guess that explains why I’ve had the urge to flop up the stairs all day today.”

End of the Year Party

2009-05-28T09:00:00.002-05:00

In the chaos of Squealer’s end of the year kindergarten party, Bruce caught my eye. His oversized build and beefy hands indicated a comfort level more accustomed to working outside rather than in. I joined him on the periphery of activity as one of the few fathers there for the school day party. Kadie walked up and introduced herself. She asked who he was married to and he mumbled a self-conscious reply that he wasn’t married.

We were saved from an uncomfortable silence by the announcement that the kids were going to scrap book some pictures that the teacher had taken throughout the year. The parents huddled around large pieces of construction paper and began putting titles, photographs, and stencils in their proper places on the paper. Since I had the camera (and Kadie has the artistic skills) I stood back and observed. My eyes and attention returned to Bruce.

Bruce was looking over his daughter’s shoulder and working on getting the “Kindergarten 2008-2009” title centered in the middle of the page. He then carefully stretched four strips of tape over each corner and said “Ok, now, umm…let’s get some of the pictures in place” he said hesitantly. As the only father at the table of moms, he looked clearly out of his element.

“That’s not right!”

My gaze shifted to a large, older woman standing next to Bruce. She was apparently a grandmother who was forced into the background as her daughter helped her grand-daughter. She was also the one who had made the beautiful end of the year cake for the class and obviously had an artistic gift. I’m unsure whether she was talking to Bruce’s daughter or to Bruce himself.

“You see, that’s double sticky tape. You don’t put it on the corners of the paper!”
Bruce looked confused. “But you have to tape the title in the middle of the page” he said, uncertainly.

“Here, let me show you” she said as she carefully peeled the tape off the paper. She then folded the tape back on itself and placed the tape behind the title so that the tape didn’t show at all. “There, that’s right, don’t you like that better?” Bruce’s daughter nodded hesitantly.
The large older woman then said (to herself as much as to anyone else) “Now, let’s see what’s next.”

Over the next half hour, Bruce stood off to the side while this woman worked on his daughter’s page. As they created an impressive work of scrap book art, Bruce was pushed closer to the periphery. He seemed tortured the whole time. His body language indicated that he desperately wanted to work with his daughter on the project, but he realized that the work would be much more beautiful if he continued to allow the woman to help.

My heart ached as I watched all this. Most single parents I know and think about are single women raising kids on their own. But few things can be tougher emotionally than for a single father to raise a daughter on his own. The emotional distance is so vast.

After the party I shook Bruce’s hand and told him that I hoped our kids were in the same class again next year. I’d love to get to know him better.

More Listening Groups

2009-04-20T15:50:00.000-05:00

Listening groups continue on at Pecan Grove Baptist. As I’ve shared previously, I’m attempting to get a feel for the where the church is by dialoguing with the major groups in the church. I’ve met with several of the Sunday school classes and had four open sessions where anyone could attend. Last night (for three hours!) I met with the staff for the first time and got their take on the current state of the church. I had several questions to ask them, but I quickly discerned that my job was simply to listen. I had the impression that no one had asked them for their thoughts on the direction of the church for awhile and they were full of thoughts and impressions. They had also not had a staff meeting in several months, so they were also sharing with one another the recent frustrations that they had seen in the church.

I’m having a few more meetings to finish out the listening phase of the IIM. I’ve got one meeting with a key member who has left the church. My purpose is not to convince him to come back, but rather to talk to him about the circumstances surrounding the recent conflict the church’s life.

I also think it’s important to have the view of a few outsiders. With that in mind, I’m also going to sit down with the other main Baptist pastor in town and get his thoughts on Pecan Grove. For another outsider’s perspective, I will be meeting with the Director of Missions for the association to discuss the church. Finally, I have contacted the former pastor and he has agreed to spend some time with me to help me gain additional insight into his eight years of ministry at Pecan Grove.

Several positive things have come out of these conversations and the stories I’m hearing are remarkable consistent. One reason I think that the church is essentially in good shape is that every group has agreed on what the primary problems are. The interesting part will come next as we start to turn our attention to solutions.

God Doesn't like Puns

2009-04-13T11:12:00.004-05:00

Bart Ehrman is a scholar in the field of Textual Criticism at Duke University. Unlike most academics, he has a compelling life story. He was raised in a conservative home and attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. He then went to Princeton to study under the great Bruce Metzger. Through his studies of textual criticism, he began to seriously reconsider his faith. He has now decided that his views on textual criticism have made it impossible to continue believing in the historicity of the words of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. He is a gifted writer and possesses a quality rare among academics, the ability to write for a popular audience.

His most recent work is entitled Jesus, Interrupted and argues that the New Testament writings that we have are not representative of what Jesus actually said. For an academic review of his works (seriously challenging Ehrman’s conclusions) see Ben Witherington’s evaluation here and here. For a more popular review (and more witty) see Steve Colbert here:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bart Ehrman

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

Experiencing the Spirit

2009-04-10T22:29:00.002-05:00

I haven't had a chance to review this book, but here is the most recent work by Henry Blackaby

The first Christians “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) shaking the gates of hell even in the face of severe persecution. The result: People all around “were filled with wonder and amazement” (Acts 3:10).Why don't Christians today have the same impact?

God’s Holy Spirit is ready to answer that for us in an awesome way, as Henry Blackaby and his son Mel Blackaby make clear in Experiencing the Spirit. You’ll see how the proof of the Spirit’s presence is our awareness of God’s personal assignments for us, plus our supernatural enablement to carry out those assignments. You’ll find essential clarification on the difference between natural talents and spiritual gifts. You’ll explore the dynamics of being filled with the Spirit through intimate relationship with Him, committed obedience, and radical departure from sin.

Instead of considering what you can do for God with your abilities and talents, you’ll be encouraged here to seek what God wants to do through you supernaturally by His Spirit, empowering you beyond your personal competence and capacities. Release the Holy Spirit’s work at the very core of your experience of the Christian life.

Drop me an email if you would like a copy.

Time Out!

2009-04-08T09:45:00.003-05:00

Today's post concerns sabbatical leaves and is over at SBC Impact!, a real blog.

Film Montage

2009-04-07T15:51:00.004-05:00

I've shared before my affinity for the medium of film. Here's the best film montage I know. It is called 100 Years of Film and I saw this on TCM several years ago. It has recently popped up on YouTube (as all things eventually do). Enjoy!

And after 100 years, few images are as haunting as the initial shot from Edison's Kinetoscope.
(For a cheat sheet, see the list of films here.)

Best Friends

2009-04-06T08:09:00.001-05:00

I was helping my brother-in-law Sully install some new venetian blinds this weekend. We were hard at work, measuring, drilling, and hanging, when his six year old daughter Grace walked into the room clutching a piece of paper.

“Daddy, I have a list of my bestest friends.”

“Mmmm-hmmm” Sully responded through lips pursed closed around a pair of screws.

She read carefully: “Here are my best friends: God, Jesus, Mommy, Daddy, Scooter, Skeeter, and Squealer.”

“Run that by me again, Pea?” Sully said, never taking his eyes off the window.

I said: “God, Jesus, Mommy, Daddy, Scooter, Skeeter, Squealer!” Grace replied with some degree of aggravation. Then she stomped out of the room.

As she left, Sully turned to me and said “Isn’t that just like a good Southern Baptist, leaving the Holy Spirit off a list of your best friends.”

Conduct

2009-04-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

For just the second time this semester, Squealer is on the verge of getting straight A’s in conduct for a week of class. Every day the kids in his kindergarten get a grade for behavior. Squealer demolishes spelling tests, crushes his math work, and blitzes his geography. But conduct is his kryptonite and an ongoing challenge. He has a list of five rules for class behavior and can recite them when prompted. He struggles the most with the rules “Control yourself” and “Be quiet at appropriate times.” Every time they violate one of the rules, they drop a letter grade.

To try to encourage good behavior, we’ve decided that a week’s worth of A’s gets him a present, a dollar, and a trip to Baskin Robbin’s Ice Cream. But we’ve only had to pay out once this school year, and it remains an elusive goal. So we gave him an extra encouraging hug this morning before he got on his bus and reminded him of what’s on the line. He nodded soberly. He knows what’s at stake today.

So Kadie and I will busy ourselves with our daily routines, but keep one eye on the clock looking forward to when he gets home on the bus.

All creation waits in expectation.

Engaging God's World: a (brief) Review

2009-04-02T16:26:00.002-05:00

Cornelius Plantinga is the president of Calvin Theological Seminary and a systematic theologian. His work Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living was suggested to me by Mister Ginger a few weeks ago. I recommend it most highly.

Plantinga divides his work into five sections: Longing and Hope, Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Vocation in the Kingdom of God. His work details the Gospel narrative and how it interacts with the life of the mind. Plantinga is that rare theologian who can in language that actual people can understand. He carefully offers a well reasoned world view that sees the world as it truly is: made good, yet fallen. This keeps him between the twin falsities of pantheism (Creation is God) and Gnosticism (Creation is Evil). This book is an excellent work for college students (or anyone else) with curious minds about this world that God has created.

The Christian Life and Academics

2009-04-01T14:52:00.003-05:00

I’m preparing an address to a Christian group on campus tomorrow evening. The topic given to me was Academics as a form of Worship. I think the direction I will take is that education is a necessary and vital part of Discipleship. I would appreciate any feedback.

Matthew 22:37 -“ Jesus said unto him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your MIND.”

Why should a Christian engage in education?

1. Creation bears the testimony of its Maker. Learning about this world carries out our responsibility to be good stewards of it.

2. Studying the writings of atheists like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud provide a pugnacious and pungent critique of Christianity. And we need to take seriously critiques against our faith. In general, the Christian community does a poor job of looking critically at ourselves.

3. The Bible teaches us that it is not only acceptable, but necessary to ask God the question “WHY?” Habakkuk, Job, Jeremiah, the Psalmist, and even Jesus didn't hesitate to ask God why. Neither should we. (But that doesn't mean we'll get an answer. We might get something better.)

These are the barebones of the lecture. Any thoughts?

Sing, Sing, Sing

2009-03-31T14:50:00.000-05:00

My fondness for music goes back to my earliest days. I recall riding along in the car as a child, listening transfixed to Piano Man by Billy Joel. I also remember my father grading papers with the radio tuned to NPR, listening to classical music in all of its thunderous glory. I drank deeply of contemporary Christian music throughout high school. Steve Taylor, Phil Keaggy, Rich Mullins, as well as Amy Grant, Randy Stonehill, and Michael Card played the soundtrack of my life. Hip Hop and Country were two genres I could never embrace, even rappers and cowboys filtered through the Christian subculture which targeted sanitized versions of their music towards me and my friends.

I’m unsure when the change happened, sometime around my early twenties. I think one motivating force was a new movie. When Harry Met Sally was a tremendous film of course, but the music that gave the movie life introduced me to a whole new world that I have never successfully escaped. Big Band and swing music have been a part of my life ever since.

Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Connick, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong have all made a substantial impression on me. The sheer joy and fun that these musicians are able to convey through their music has always downloaded directly into my soul. One of my absolute favorite songs is Sing, Sing, Sing. When done well, it is an instrumental performance that dares you to sit still while you experience it.

In this version by Benny Goodman’s band, watch the sheer exuberance of the drummer, the great Gene Krupa. Such music is, simply, inspired. I suspect that when we get to heaven, there will be as many songs performed from the Cotton Club as there are from the Baptist Hymnal.

Boundaries

2009-03-30T11:38:00.002-05:00

For the last several weeks, we’ve been undertaking the laborious process of converting ancient VHS and miniDV tapes to DVDs. We’ve never done this before, so it’s been quite the challenge. The power supply on our ancient videocamera (purchased in 1995) no longer works, so I bought a replacement on Ebay for $15.00. A small price for videos, unseen for over a decade. So we’ve been enjoying a few hours each evening watching these videos and explaining to the kids who all the strangers in these videos are.

What does this have to do with Ministry Monday? One of the video tapes was an extended recording of Scooter’s second birthday. We had it at a local park in Waco and it was full of the normal chaos, screams and frivolity associated with such locations. One amusing side note to this party is that on two occasions, I forgot that the camera was on and the viewer gets vertigo from me carrying the camera at my side as I walked around the park. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the microphone was also on and so you could hear every conversation that I had with various family members.

But at the time, I was pastoring Lone Oak, and we invited several church members to the party. At one point in the party, you could hear me earnestly talking with this church member about some significant issue. I don’t recall exactly what it was regarding, but you can hear him expressing disagreement with the way I had handled something. Then you can hear me responding. It wasn’t so much an argument as it was a discussion over a difficult issue. Watching this video these eleven and a half years later, I am struck by one inescapable question:

WHY AM I DISCUSSING CHURCH ISSUES WITH A MEMBER AT MY OWN DAUGHTER’S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY?!?!?

(Sorry for all caps.) Looking at the tape through the lens of a decade’s experience, I am reminded of a desperate need for boundaries between pastor and church. If I could go back and have a conversation with Pastor Taran, I’d strongly suggest that he take a look at the boundaries he had set with his church. The line between church and family was too much a blur. I wish the younger Taran had said to the church what God said to the sea “This far you may come, but no further.” I don’t blame the man for the conversation, but I would like to wack my younger self across his forehead and say “What were you thinking?!”There is a lack of self awareness among many good meaning, Godly, well-spirited people in the church as to this issue of boundaries.

Pastors should set them early and often.

Ode to Bobby's Car

2009-03-27T11:48:00.005-05:00

Digging around in the archives. Friday is for familys, except for today when its for friends.

One of my roommates from college (and frequent commentator here at Coffeespoons) is Bobby. In college, he drove around a 1982 Mustard Yellow Toyota Corolla that had seen better days. Held together by an unholy alliance of dirt and bondo, it consisted of dents, cracked windows, and chipped paint. (Completely unlike the one in the picture.)

One day (as I recall, Bobby will correct me otherwise) we went out from our apartment to discover that someone put a brand new dent in the vehicle. (Though frankly, in retropspect, I’m unsure that we could actually tell.) Anyway, at the time I wrote the following poem and read it to Bobby in a strongly exaggerated British accent. And for some reason, I saved it.

“Ode to Bobby’s Car on the Occasion of a Recent Accident” September 1990

O’ the certain servitude which thou hast rendered unto your lord.

And how noble was thy form and such color as was pleasing to the eye.

But now…Hark! A nick hath marred they unblemished brow, and a flaw has disrupted pure utter perfection.

Oh the hooliganism!

Oh the waste of it all!

Ye gods, why sleepest thou when such abominations as these cover the earth?!

Kings: A Review

2009-03-26T16:36:00.004-05:00

As we’ve discussed around here before, part of the biblical text that makes it most enduring is how it is reread and refashioned in different contexts. For millennia, culture has taken and retold these stories. Perhaps the most recent example of how Biblical stories are updated is found in the newest dramatic series on NBC, Kings.

Kings retells the story of the David narrative in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. It is set in the nation of Gilboa, a modern nation replete with cell phones, modern aircraft, and skyscrapers. Gilboa is ruled by King Silas, a man who has been a successful soldier in the past, but now is trying to lead his nation toward a time of peace. But that is complicated by the nation of Gath. Gilboa has been locked in a bitter war with Gath for several years. Recently arriving in his court is a young soldier, David Shepherd, who has recently become a national hero.

David single handedly faced down an enemy supertank (the Goliath, natch) and rescued several soldiers. One of the soldier he rescued turned out to be the crowned prince of Gilboa, Silas’ eldest son Jack. In appreciation for his impressive service, Silas reassigns David to his court in the capital city of Shiloh. Once there, David meets such impressive people as Michelle (the alluring daughter of King Silas), the Rev. Samuals, and General Abner. (Corresponding to Saul’s daughter Michal, the prophet Samuel, and ummm General Abner). I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but it’s like catnip for a Old Testament geek like myself. The details are pretty impressive . For example, David refuses to wear the flak jacket before taking on the tank (It wasn’t a good fit) and when the Reverend Samuels tells Silas God has rejected him and chosen another, Silas grasps his shoulder (though he doesn’t actually tear it). Not everything works. God’s divine favor resting on Silas is depicted by several butterflys that land on his head. Strange. Also, Silas insinuates strongly that Jonathon is gay, which adds a distracting edge to his impending friendship with David.

But the strongest reason I look forward to this series (they’ve already completed around 13 episodes or so) is that it deals forcefully with the reality of God in the lives of people. I expected that the characters would mention God very obliquely, if at all. But the main characters of David, Silas, and Samuals each speak explicitly to the central role that God plays in each of their lives.

David and Saul are two of the most fascinating characters in the Old Testament. Few other people in the Bible were as capable of such incredible acts of butchery and destruction as these two. But one of them was hand-picked to be the first king of Israel, and the other was a man after God’s own heart. They are compelling figures in any age and time.

Each of the first two episodes are available online at NBC. Watch the rest of the season on (naturally) Sunday evenings.

A Contrast

2009-03-24T16:16:00.004-05:00

"Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed, to consider well that the maine end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternall life, Jn. 17:3 and therefore to lay Christ at the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning."

Mission statement of Harvard College, 1643

The Puritans, Perry Miller and Thomas Johnson, (New York: American Books, 1938) p. 702.

"In a contentious Feb. 26 deposition between Dr. Biederman, a Harvard professor, and lawyers for the states, he was asked what rank he held at Harvard.

“Full professor,” he answered.

“What’s after that?” asked a lawyer, Fletch Trammell.

“God,” Dr. Biederman responded.

“Did you say God?” Mr. Trammell asked.

“Yeah,” Dr. Biederman said."

New York Times, March 20, 2008.

Times change.

From the Archives

2009-03-24T12:33:00.006-05:00

I came across some old poems and writings the other day. On Nostalgia Tuesdays , I'll post a few of the least embarrassing ones. (And yes, you'd be amazed at the poor quality of what I'm not posting!). As you'll be pleased to note, I've been remarkably pretentious for around three decades now.

2-27-90
"It's nine o'clock on a Saturday,
The regular crowd shuffles in,,
'There's an old man sittin' next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin"

I turned off Billy Joel in mid-verse as I pulled my truck into the school's back lot, and for a few minutes I just sat there in silence, examining the playground. Here I was, sitting in the back of Nell Burks Elementary school after "graduating" over ten years before. As I climbed out of the suburban, I noticed the bicycle tracks in the winter grass, and smiled faintly recalling how my own bike's tracks used to criss-cross the grass as well. In 1980 my family moved from McKinney, Texas to a different town so that my father could start his new job. This visit was my first time to return to the school-yard of my youth.

As I walked across the playground it became obvious that many things had changed. There was now a chain-linked fence that wound its way around the perimeter of the schoolyard. New equipment replaced the (OSHA mocking) aging jungle-gyms and slides that I remembered so fondly. Despite these changes, though, the playground still felt the same.

In the center of the area, I noticed a familiar spot of dark earth whose grasslessness attested to its popularity as the center of recreational activity during recess. Walking on, I kicked an empty crayon box forgotten and flattened by careless students. The box and I shared the lonely Saturday schoolyard of my youth and I lamented the passage of time and the ending of schooldays.

I went over to the slide that I had played upon as a youngster. It didn't look as tall, or as foreboding as I remembered. Looking quickly around and vereifying my solitude, I reached out for the two hand rails. Climbing the ladder, I noticed two worn spots on each step and tried to imagine the thousands of little feet that had scampered up in excited expectation of the trip down. As I reached the top, I could survey the entire schoolyard.

For a second. . .for a second, the yard was again filled with children and I could see the
playground monitor motioning for me to slide down, so that others could go.

Then I slid down, closing my eyes as the wind rushed around me, thrilling in the exhilaration of the moment until the short ride with the impact of my feet on the dirt at the bottom of the slide. At first I blinked in the brightness of sunlight. I sat still for a moment, savoring the thoughts of
another time and another place. A place too far away for me ever to return to.

As I got in the truck to leave, I thought of Heraclitus who said: “The same man cannot walk through the river twice, for the next time he does, both the man and the river will have changed."

Heraclitus was wrong. I turned on the tape recorder as I slowly drove out of the playground.

"He said 'Son can you play me a memory,
I'm not really sure how it goes,
But it’s sad and its sweet I knew it complete,
When I wore a younger man’s clothes.'"

Pieces of the Puzzle

2009-03-23T15:22:00.002-05:00

I’m unsure of what metaphor to use for the Intentional Interim Minister’s job. In training I was told that our job was like a private investigator’s (except no crimes been committed). We would come in, ask a lot of questions, formulate a theory as to why certain events occurred and then execute a plan to solve the church’s problem. I’ve also conceived of the metaphor of CSI (except no one’s dead). What each metaphor shares is an attempt to recreate a series of events that brought the church to its present point. After this is achieved, the IIM will then help the church to deal with any lingering issues and then move on.

But each of these metaphors presents a problem: the focus is on the IIM and what he can figure out. With these metaphors, what is the role of the church in this situation? Is it to sit around and wait for the IIM to answer all of the questions? Clearly a fresher approach is needed.
I’ve been mulling over (and using with Pecan Grove) the metaphor of a puzzle. The current church is like a puzzle with various pieces scattered around. There are lots of pieces to this puzzle, and I don’t know what (or where) they all are. So I’m depending upon the members of the church to share them with me and then to help me put them together to form a coherent narrative about how the church has arrived where it is.

But this puzzle isn’t the kind you put together by yourself. It’s more like putting a puzzle together over a vacation with the rest of your family. The more eyes you have on the puzzle, the more likely you are to have a solution. And the faster it goes.

In order to help identify the pieces, I’m setting up a series of listening groups with different members of Pecan Grove. This last Sunday, I put out sign-up sheets for several periods of time that last about an hour each. I asked the church to sign up at one of the times on Sunday afternoon in groups of nine or ten. Two of the senior adult classes told me that it would be difficult for them to come back up on Sunday afternoon, and they asked if I could meet with their classes during the Sunday School hour. These groups will start meeting on this coming Sunday.

For each group, I’m going to ask two questions: First, on a scale of one to ten, with one being utterly demonic and ten being heaven-on-earth, how would you characterize the current state of Pecan Grove? Second, what do we need to do to move higher up the scale? Essentially, I see this as performing a SWOT analysis and getting the church members to participate in identifying what is working well, and what is not working well in the life of the church.

Review: Don't Let Me Go!

2009-03-20T11:34:00.005-05:00

Don’t Let Me Go is a wonderful exploration of the relationship between David Pierce and his teenage daughter Chera. Somewhat on a whim, David and his daughter decided that they would climb Pike’s Peak, despite never having moved much beyond the comforts of the couch in their living room. After climbing the mountain (and experiencing numerous obstacles) they decide to continue undertaking several challenges that included running in marathons and culminating in an attempt to climb Mount Rainier. As they overcame these various physical obstacles, they grew even closer together. It made their last four years together before Chera went off to college deeper and more meaningful. The book ends in a poignant moment as Chera must face the last (and greatest) challenge with Dad as a spectator.

As Pierce shares the present day story of his daughter, he also narrates the past mountains he faced in his own childhood. He tells the story of a distant and alcoholic father and his own search for God throughout a difficult childhood. The contrast between his own upbringing and the way he raises his child is light years away.

This was a tough book for me to read. Squealer, at 13, is precisely the age that Chera was in the beginning of the book. Pierce models the kind of parent that I think most anyone would want to be. Certainly he presents himself in the best light possible (that never happens here at Coffeespoons;) but Pierce models the kind of involved, caring parent I aspire to be.

(Spoiler Alert)The book ends with Chera getting married (thus morphing the tale into, as Bowden would say, a “horror story”). David is made all too aware that the mantra he repeatedly told himself while he and Chera were on mountains (“Don’t let go!”) had to change, as the minister told him to place his daughter’s hand into the hand of her husband and then to “Let go!” Good grief! (End Alert)

Overall, this book expands beyond the story of one father and one daughter to include all fathers and daughters. This is the mark of an memorable piece of literature. You start off thinking about this character and their relationships and end up meditating upon your own. I recommend this work highly.

Squealer is 13 and goes off to college in four years. The clock is ticking…

(I have one extra copy. Whomever first tells me which Southern Baptist seminary I attended gets it.)

Spring Break

2009-03-18T22:37:00.002-05:00

A week "off" filled with a list of honey-do's, leaves little time to blog. Today we spent painting the outside of the house, already looking forward to returning to work next week!

Nostalgia Animals

2009-03-13T20:04:00.005-05:00

After taking Squealer to the doctor last week and forced to sit through an entire viewing of Milo and Otis in the waiting room, I was reminded of how many animal shows I watched as a kid. Here are the intorductions to the two I enjoyed the most.

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
(Note Marlin Perkins sniffing the wind like a prairie dog).

Daktari

It wasn't an animal show of course, but no one did animals better than Johnny

Crazy, Crazy 2

2009-03-13T09:00:00.003-05:00

I mentioned last week that Ed Young performed an exceptional service for ministry types (or frankly, anyone who deals with people) by identifying characteristics of crazy, crazy people. Here are 8-13. You can tell crazy people because:

9. They dress in the full uniform of the team they cheer for. Shoulder pads, helmet, the whole nine yards.

10. They always talk about their dysfunction. They marinate in their difficult kids, their loveless marriage, their awful job situation.

11. They have crazy pets. "If your cat is jacked up, you are crazy."

12. They answer the phone ‘mmmmyellow?’

13. After you finish speaking, they are the first people who come up to you, but the last ones to speak. That way they get your undivided attention.

What would you add to the list?

The House of the Sick

2009-03-12T08:59:00.001-05:00

Squealer has been sick throughout this week. Influenza A. “That’s the most contagious kind!” the doctor’s assistant informed us in a chirpy voice. He’s been home all week, feeling pretty beat down. When Scooter arrived home Tuesday, he was lying on the couch with his eyes closed, but not asleep. Just feeling awful. Scooter said “It really doesn’t feel the same around here without Squealer running around destroying everything.”

Indeed.

But she’s right of course, the house of the sick doesn’t feel right for the whole family. Whenever one of us goes down, things are out of sync until they revive. I would expect that to be true for the parents, but its interesting to see that its true for the kids as well. There is a certain stability, a routine we fall into. When the family is firing on only four, instead of five cylinders, it’s not the same.

I’ve been reminded this week of one time when I was sick, around the age of five or six…exactly the age of Squealer right now. I had some severe illness that prevented me from holding down any liquid, and I remember being desperately thirsty. For some reason beyond my understanding, Mom and Dad wouldn’t give me any water. I couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) connect the dots between drinking liquid, and then ummm….undrinking it a few minutes later.

So I recall sneaking out of bed one night and beginning the process of crawling down the hall to the bathroom. I knew that a cup of cool, cool water awaited. But shortly before I reached the oasis, my father silently walked up behind me, scooped me up and carried me back to bed. He again patiently explained why I couldn’t have any water. I wonder how many of these evenings Squealer will remember. The way he's feeling, I hope not many.

Review: How to Argue Like Jesus

2009-03-12T08:33:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I receive a book I request for a review and wonder “Why did I ever request this book?!” Such was my feeling when I opened the packaging for How to Argue Like Jesus by Joe Carter and John Coleman (Crossway, 2009). I expected another book that carefully explained how the views of Jesus happened to coincide with the views of the particular author and now the reader should spread these views a bluntly and confrontationally as possible.

Happily, I was very much surprised by this work. Carter and Coleman focus on the art of communication in this book. They spend the majority of the work, exploring the rhetoric of Jesus in the gospel accounts, and locating his rhetoric within the context of Aristotle’s analysis. For example, they discuss the concepts of pathos, ethos, and logos and cite several examples from Jesus’ teaching that reinforce these concepts. The authors also use Jesus’ discussions with opposing religious officials to highlight their usage of various rhetorical fallacies.

After their focus on Jesus’ logical argumentation, Carter and Coleman turn their attention from building the message to spreading the message and explore several contemporary examples of how churches follow the example of Jesus. Jesus engaged in discipleship, using his own material, and developing the first concept of cell groups. We should do the same. Following this section the authors include a couple of case studies of rhetorical analysis and a glossary of terms.

This is a helpful book, one that would be a nice addition for any preacher or teacher who devotes time to speaking in front of people. I recommend it. (But I would’ve changed the title. How to Communicate Like Jesus would’ve been a better one.).

Don't Do It!!

2009-03-10T15:57:00.002-05:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education is the primary professional publication for higher education in the United states. Thomas Benton, one of its best writers, recently took up the question of how he advises his undergraduate students who are considering graduate school in the Liberal Arts.

The money paragraph:

“Nearly every humanities field was already desperately competitive, with hundreds of applications from qualified candidates for every tenure-track position. Now the situation is becoming even worse. For example, the American Historical Association's job listings are down 15 percent and the Modern Language's listings are down 21 percent, the steepest annual decline ever recorded. Apparently, many already-launched candidate searches are being called off; some responsible observers expect that hiring may be down 40 percent this year.

What is 40 percent worse than desperate?”

His advice to his students? “Just Don’t Go!”

Leningrad

2009-03-09T16:19:00.005-05:00

I've been to St. Petersburg, Russia twice, once in college and once while in Seminary. In fact the first time I went (1991) it was Leningrad, the second time in 1994, the city had been renamed St. Petersburg. (I've mentioned my trip previously here). One of my most cherished possesions is the passport that I have stamped with the ominous CCCP of the Soviet Union (in red ink of course!).

Leningrad was the site of one of the most monstrous of battles during WWII. Nazi troops laid seige to Leningrad for close to 900 days before the seige was broken. I came across a series of pictures contrasting modern St. Petersburg with WWII Leningrad. Haunting.

Look here for more.

Crazy Crazy

2009-03-09T16:13:00.003-05:00

A few weekends ago, I attended the C3 conference at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. Not having been previously exposed to Fellowship Church, or Ed Young I wasn’t sure what to expect. Our associate pastor asked me to go and I enjoyed it immensely. (Actually I enjoyed the preaching, the music wasn’t as enjoyable. But at least they didn’t paint anyone during the worship time).

One of the best sermons preached was by the aforementioned Ed Young. In his message, called “Crazy Pills” he distinguished between good crazy and crazy crazy. Good crazy he described as a focused passion on the positive things of faith. Tim Tebow and Jesus (natch) exemplify good crazy. But then he spent the rest of the sermon on crazy crazy people. By this he’s not talking about people who are clinically insane, or diagnosed with some particular disorder. Rather, those who can function just fine in society, but are in fact crazy crazy. He noted that there are a lot of crazy, crazy people out there and that most of them are attracted to churches.

This presents a problem for ministers, because they often waste their time working with, praying with, advising people who will in fact never change. Better to focus on those who are open to personal and spiritual growth. To more closely define the craziness he spoke about, he identified several characteristics of crazy crazy people. I’ll post his list this week and next. When he shared the list I thought “Yep, I’ve worked with him before.”

People who are crazy:

1. They have crazy eyes.

2 They are always playing the God card – ‘God told me to do this’ or ‘God told me you should do this’

3. They are constant name droppers

4. They always find a way to ‘one-up’ you – If you went to Olive Garden for lunch today, they will say ’ ‘Well, I flew to Tuscany last week on my private jet and ate a feast in a vineyard going back several centuries.’

5. They will blow up your phone. They will text you and email you all day long!

6. They ask for your advice. You spend time and energy and prayer preparing to give them the proper advice. AND THEN THEY DON"T TAKE IT!!!!!

7. They talk endlessly about themselves. Their conversations are scattered with I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine.

8. They don’t have a filter. They speak whatever they think (and are proud of it!).

More next week.

Fridays are for Family

2009-03-06T10:15:00.003-06:00

The Sunday I went to Pecan Grove in view of a call, the church requested that I bring the family to meet them and to give us a lunch fellowship. After the morning service, the church hosted a reception for the family, but asked me to stay in the sanctuary and answer questions. The kids went on to eat lunch while Kadie stayed with me until the Q and A ended. They asked us a lot of questions.

By the time Kadie and I arrived in the Fellowship Hall, the Scooter, Skeeter, and Squealer and were finished eating. Squealer was completely wired, so I asked Skeeter to take him into another room so that we could finish our meal and fellowshipping with people. She took him into the toddler Sunday school room down the hall from the Fellowship area and left him there to play.

After several minutes, I completed my meal and went to the dessert table to get some pecan pie (natch!) when I saw movement coming down the hall. It was Squealer. He was heading back down from the kids' classroom, coming back into the Fellowship hall. But he was walking very strangely, quite gingerly, as though he were walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope with his arms out from his side. He was also looking down at the ground the whole time, but I couldn’t see what he was looking at. So I stepped over to the side so I could see down the hall at what held his attention in such a powerful grip. I immediately set down my pie as my eyes went down to his feet and what he was wearing on them.

A pair of pumps.

Purple Pumps.

Plastic Purple Pumps.

Princess Purple Plastic Pumps.

Apparently, the toddler room contained several princess outfits and Squealer had helped himself to a pair of princess shoes.Perhaps he heard my gasp, or sensed my inspection, because he looked up and our eyes locked in place. We both froze, uncertain how to proceed. Then, a devilish grin crossed his lips.

And he began “running” for the Fellowship Hall.

I didn’t want to yell at him from across the room (attention was the last thing I wanted) so I tried to walk/run to the doorway before he reached it.

And I almost made it.

He beat me to the doorway by a half step and shot into the fellowship hall. All eyes in the room turned toward him (plastic pumps are LOUD on a tile floor) as he dashed/slid into the middle of the fellowship hall in front of God (presumably) and everyone. There was a half second of shock as every brain in the room slowly processed this unexpected sight. Then the entire room erupted in laughter. And Squealer loved every second of it. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Squealer ended up right next to an aged deacon who looked him carefully up and down. The deacon then slowly turned to me and said:"Brother Taran, I've just thought of a few more questions I need to ask you before we vote."

Blog Note

2009-03-05T17:31:00.004-06:00

It was brought to my attention by a reader that the RSS feed was only showing partial postings, requiring each person to click directly on the site to read the whole thing. This news surprised me greatly.

Mostly because I was unaware I had any readers.

I think I've successfully reconfigured the thingamajig (not to get too technical) and correctly tuned the doohickey.

You should be able to read the entire post from your RSS reader. I mean, you'd hate to miss posts like this one.

Two Reviews

2009-03-05T17:15:00.003-06:00

Thursdays are for Reviews

In a previous post, I mentioned the difficulty that readers face in filling in the gaps of biblical texts. One of the great benefits of gaps is that it leaves a narrative space for creative reflection on the rest of the text itself. The artist is invited to dialogue with the text by carefully reading and noting these narrative gaps.

I recently received one artist’s attempts to creatively interact with biblical texts. After a recent review in which I noted the paucity of pink books on my bookshelf, Benjamin Potter graciously sent me two works which fill in some of the literary gaps in the infancy narratives of the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke.

Something Special at Leonard’s Inn (Loom and Wheel Publishing, 1999) is the story of the birth of Jesus told through the eyes of the innkeeper in Bethlehem who let Joseph and Mary use a stable and the manger.

Just a Simple Carpenter: the Story of Joseph (Loom and Wheel Publishing, 2000) retells the same story from a different vantage point: the perspective of Joseph. In this work, Potter casts a wider net as he begins months before the birth of Christ and ends his story right after Mary and Joseph lose Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

I enjoyed each of these works a great deal and would recommend hem highly. I was reminded as I read them about the great challenge that we have as Christians to retell the Story to others and to ourselves. As we read the Christmas story year after year, it can become repetitive and comfortable. Potter resists the comfortable reading by engaging each text from the first person perspective. He fleshes out the characters of the inn-keeper and of Joseph with much care.

One consequence of Potter’s telling of these tales is that they are darker than the sunny Christmas story we set out on our lawns every December. As Potter rightly (writely?) notes, the splendor of the visit of the Magi is shortly followed by the (no doubt) desperate flight of the first family to Egypt before the murderous edict of King Herod.

And in Leonard, Potter reminds us that each of the peripheral characters in these narratives bring their attendant hurts and sorrows to these stories. The shepherds, the inn keepers, the wives, and the Magi were all genuine people with actual thoughts and feelings. Far from the two dimensional images we meet in Christmas pageants throughout December, they were real, actual people.

Each of these books remind us that the people surrounding Jesus shared sorrows and rages, pleasures and joys. Just like us.

Wednesdays are for Work (and Play)

2009-03-04T10:08:00.001-06:00

Wednesdays will be Work or Play Day. I’ll attempt to find some bloggable material at the location where I spent the majority of my time, or from what I enjoy doing. Today, it’s all work.
A substantial reorganization was recently announced at our institution. It will involve the elimination of a few administrative positions and will rename several academic units across the campus. I don’t want to belabor the reader with the particular merits of the decision, but I do have a concern with how it was devised. The reorganization was developed by a small group of leadership and then announced to the larger campus in an email.

There are more similarities that you may think between communities of faith and academic institutions. One dysfunctional similarity is that a silo mentality can develop between leadership and the larger community. This mentality is especially strong in how leadership makes decisions and communicates ideas to the rest of the organization.

The situation plays out like this: out of a concern for negative feedback (or a feeling that feedback is unnecessary), leadership expedites the implementation process. When there is the predictable blowback after the decision is announced, leadership commends itself that it made the right decision and it was better to generate the feedback after the decision rather than before.

The primary problem with this thinking, is that it detaches the rest of the church or institution from the decision making process. Then when the organization depends upon the members of the congregation to carry it out, they often have nothing personally invested in the process and they don’t participate. By involving the congregation (or the rest of the organization) in the decision making-process, you get more buy in down the road.

Tuesdays are for Nostalgia

2009-03-02T10:20:00.004-06:00

Somtimes looking back can be a good guide to the future. With the injunction of Ecclesiastes in mind, on Tuesdays I'll take a look back.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is
done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9

One of the worst parts of parenting a thirteen year old is seeing the recycled teen culture that you thought you'd sucessfully escaped the first time around. This dawned on me again recently when Scooter showed me her new heartthrobs: the band called the Jonas Brothers. They are the most recent Disney singing group. Here's a fair representation of their work: Lovebug.

It bugged (sorry) me how familiar they were, but somehow I couldn't quite place them. Until finally it came to me. Yes, I distantly recall in the far recesses of my mind another long haired trio of brothers who took the teen demographic by storm. Regrettably, their video cannot be embedded (it has been disabled at their request, the punk kids). Perhaps they were embarassed by it.

As I told Scooter, enjoy the Jonas brothers, but don't blink or you'll miss them.

An Open Door and Changes at Coffeespoons

2009-02-28T15:13:00.007-06:00

After much reflection, and at the encouragement of no one, I've decided to stretch out the thin gruel that is Coffeespoons, into a blog post each weekday. By arranging the days topically, I hope to build some accountability for the blog.

So, from now on, today will be known as Ministry Monday.

Recently I've had several ministry opportunities that I want to talk through in blog format, drawing upon the wisdom of the readers. The most significant of these is that last night I was called to be the Intentional Interim pastor at Pecan Grove Baptist Church, a church an hour away from our home.

With these opportunities in mind I anticipate that I can genereate at least one ~~interesting~~ meager blog post per week.

Or not.

A Closed Door...

2009-02-17T21:26:00.001-06:00

A few months ago, I received a call about the Intentional Interim Ministry (IIM) from a church in a town around 2 hours from my home. They had been given my name by the state director (from another state) who trained me in IIM. They church had recently terminated their pastor and they thought that the IIM might be appropriate for them. So they asked me to come out on a Wednesday night and share with the church the Intentional Interim Process.

I visited with the deacons and they described a fairly bleak picture. Their pastor had been there for twelve years and church attendance had decreased over that time period. The average church member is in their sixties and the pastor (according to the deacons) did little to address the serious issues facing the church. I asked the chairman of the deacons why he thought that they needed an Intentional Interim Minister. He replied “I can look out from the choir and see the congregation seated in the pews. Everyone is sitting where they’ve always sat. But people are beginning to die off. Now I see the holes in the congregation where people used to sit. There’s no one to replace them and the holes in the congregation are growing.”

They thanked me and asked me to come back a few weeks later to preach to the church on a Sunday morning and to attend a fellowship afterwards. The deacons expressed one bit of concern. They were unsure whether they needed someone full time or part time. In a follow up phone call, the deacon chairman quizzed me in some detail about the necessity of the minister being either full time or part time.

When I returned a few weeks later, I led in worship and then went to the lunch fellowship. Following the fellowship the church called a business meeting. I was asked to address the congregation and give another brief summary of the IIM. At the business meeting, the deacons recommended to the church that the church undertake the IIM. After a brief time of discussion, the church unanimously agreed that the IIM would be the best option. They expressed an excitement and a joy at what God might do.

They then turned to the question of full or part time. After much discussion, the church voted to call an intentional interim minister to lead the church full time through the process. They would try to find someone willing to relocate to their community (of around 8,000). As I prepared to leave, the deacon chairman patted me on the back and thanked me for visiting with them. I told him I’d keep the church in prayer and I asked him to stay in touch.

I haven’t heard from them in months.

One amusing occurrence. After finishing my lunch I went back to get some pecan pie. Right after I stood up, a lady approached me and said “We don’t have any church by-laws. Isn’t that strange?” I confessed that it seemed unusual for a Baptist church not to have any by-laws. When I reached the dessert table I was about to select the largest slice of pie I could find and another lady gently caught my arm in her hand. “Preacher, don’t you think it's important that a church should have by-laws?” I replied “Since you are the second person to ask me that question between the dinner table and the dessert table, yes I think it’s important that you have some by-laws.”

Valentine's Book Review (II)

2009-02-13T06:13:00.002-06:00

But the best book of these four is I Do Again by Cheryl and Jeff Scruggs. This is a powerful book by a married couple narrating an affair that one of them had and how it destroyed their marriage. Rarely is a book put by a Christian publisher so frankly honest about the tragedy of an affair and the difficulties of reconciliation.

Cheryl narrates the “harmless” flirting that led first to an emotional, then to a physical affair. What was striking about her story is how she lost her heart long before her physical affair was consummated. Cheryl pushed for a divorce so that she could leave Jeff and continue her relationship with the man. Jeff opposed the divorce, and (not knowing about the affair) was mystified that Cheryl pursued the divorce with such determinism. Ultimately, she achieved the divorce

But after the divorce, Cheryl found little happiness. Although she did continue her relationship with the other man for a time, this relationship was ultimately unsatisfying. But in the aftermath of the divorce, Cheryl did form a relationship with Christ for the first time in her life. Through the mentoring of some Godly friends and increasing involvement in the church, she gradually became convinced that God wanted her to reconcile with Jeff.

There was only one problem: Jeff (who was already a Christian) wanted nothing to do with her. When Cheryl shared with Jeff her hopes for reconciliation he threw her out of his house. It was only after a lengthy process (covering some seven years) that Jeff too became convinced that God wanted them back together and overcame his own anger and bitterness toward Cheryl. They then remarried.

There are two other characters in Jeff and Cheryl’s narrative. They have twin daughters who were around the age of two when they were divorced. Their presence formed a powerful force that required Jeff and Cheryl to live in proximity to one another and to interact weekly as they shared custody of the girls.

What I liked a lot about the book:

1. As I mentioned earlier, I Do Again is brutally honest in its powerful description of the sheer pain and hurt that came into their marriage as a result of Cheryl’s unfaithfulness. But the book takes a hard look at Jeff’s emotional neglect of his wife during their first marriage.

2. This is a book that should scare the heck out of anyone involved in “harmless” flirting with someone besides their spouse. Cheryl’s heart left her husband long before her body did and that fact made her unwilling to work on their (first) marriage, even after counseling.

3. This work emphasizes the impact of the divorce on the kids. Towards the end of the book, after she and Jeff are reconciled, Cheryl talks about the night when she had to tell the girls about her adulterous affair that ended their marriage. The girls were thirteen and she painfully describes how she had to explain the affair in terms an eighth grader would understand. Furthermore, in a Q/A section at the end of the book, one of the twins (now aged 20) describes how she wrestles with trust issues in her relationships, attributing this fact to her parents’ divorce.

4. Lastly what I really liked about the book is that it was complex. I expect in books like these that the central characters will find Jesus and everything will work out nice and neatly. But not here. Even after Cheryl became a Christian, life remained hard, messy, and painful. Like the rest of us, her new life in Christ didn’t erase the consequences of her sin.

One of the best books I’ve read this year.

Valentine's Book Review (I)

2009-02-13T05:58:00.001-06:00

A three pack, yea a four pack of valentine reading pleasure for you. I’ve divided these four reviews into two posts. Just read the second post if you’ve not got much time.

First up is a devotional version of the well reviewed book from last year Love as a Way of Life. This devotional takes the five categories of love in Chapman’s book and breaks them down into 90 devotionals, with stories added for illustrative purposes. Frankly, the entire enterprise reeks of repackaging. Chapman had an assistant work on this and I could never tell how much Chapman wrote and how much his assistant contributed as both writers speak in first person throughout the text. Regrettably, this has the feel of a repackaged text, aimed at a literary marketing microniche. Skip this book and read the original.

Two books I had not encountered before are entitled For Men Only and For Women Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn. These two books have just been released as a boxed set entitled For Couples Only. They each contain a great deal of useful information for members of the opposite sex. Based upon interviews and surveys of thousands, the Feldhahn’s make numerous conclusions about each gender. They then summarize their findings in this work.

Each of these books reads like a wildlife handbook for examining strange species. Now I understand that Men are from Mars while women sojourn from Venus. I am further willing to concede, that after living in close proximity with not only a wife, but two daughters, for almost a decade and a half, I know less about women than I did while I was single. But I do think we need to be careful in the broad stereotyping that goes on in some of these books.

For example, For Men Only comes with a fold out cheat sheet on women (I’m not making this up). It’s called a “Quick Start Guide.” Again, let me emphasize, I’m being serious. This is a sheet (not unlike what you would find accompanying a box of software or a new stereo system) that allows you quick knowledge without having to read the entire manual. This guide is subdivided into several different areas (reassurance, beauty, emotions, etc) that contains questions like “Why does she ask ‘Do these pants make me look fat?’” Answer “When she asks you how she looks, she’s not asking whether or not she’s presentable for the party. She wants to know that she still rocks your world.” I think that there is a lot of valuable information here, but packaging it as a quick start guide is offensive and dehumanizing. She’s your wife, not your new Kubota Tractor.

But aside from the packaging, I would recommend each of these books. For Women Only offers an accurate, though stereotypical, exploration through the male mind. And a quick check with Kadie confirms the accuracy of For Men Only as well.

Review: The New Media Frontier

2009-02-10T06:39:00.003-06:00

The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ is the first work that I’ve read to take a detailed look at how the emerging world of cyberspace is affecting the way we Christians commonly think about connecting people together. This work illustrates how several institutions are affected by these various new media. The book divides into two parts: the platform and the content (these are my terms).

The first section covers the essential elements of the growing media presence online. It provides several reflections on the consequences of media migrating from print to pixels. Helpfully, this section doesn't simply take up pom poms and cheerlead this new reality, but it also explores some of the very difficult implications of these new media for Believers. It concludes with two chapters on the nuts and bolts of the new media: blogs, podcasting, vlogging (video blogging) etc.

The second section of the book takes a magnifying glass to several different areas of these media and explores how they are shaped by some of the top practitioners in the field. So Fred Sanders looks at what changes that the internet will bring to higher education, Scott Ott to Journalism, Roger Overton to Apologetics, and Mark Roberts to Pastoring.

Some chapters simply take the existing topic and translate it into cyberspace. Other sections, like the one on Bioethics by Joe Carter and Matthew Eppinette go beyond simply looking at how Bioethics are affected by the media and include an excellent survey of the topic itself that their work could be used in a classroom setting. It could be stolen by some unscrupulous professor and foisted off as their own material. Not that anyone would actually do that.

Conclusions from the book:

As one might expect, each of the authors takes a position that the new media have emerged to stay. There will be no turning back the clock. Those who ignore this new media will increasingly find themselves marginalized from contemporary community. The benefits of the new media are a wider circle of contacts and a greater opportunity to provide megaphones for individuals and organizations.

But the authors pretty consistently argued that the wide opportunities carry a significant cost: while these various media allow more and more people to be reached than ever before, their impact is proportionately smaller than ever before. For all their breadth, the new media sacrifice depth.

Additionally, these new methods of communication add to rather than remove barriers between actual humans. Human interaction is always mediated through electronics. Anyone who has perused the comments of a blog often see how the commentators can misunderstand one another.

But the authors of The New Media Frontier know these shortcomings of their approach. And since these media are here to stay, they engage proactively, and constructively with them. Anyone wishing to seriously harness these new media for the good of the church and the good of the Kingdom of God, should be familiar with this work.

Full Dsiclosure: One of my good friends wrote a couple of chapters of this book and provided me with the review copy, which no doubt affected my glowing review. A little.

Life and such...

2009-02-08T21:03:00.002-06:00

As much as I enjoy blogging and dialoguing, it is sadly amongst the first to go when the tempo of life picks up. My intention is to deluge you with a series of book reviews and perhaps some thoughts on budget cuts which have occupied too much of my mind recently.

Some details of what’s been going on:

I’ve been in contact with a few churches recently about the Intentional Interim ministry. It is heartening to see some interest in this area. If there’s a fit, I’ll share some of the experiences.

Things at Lakeview continue to go along well. Pastor Rick has implemented several changes and they have been well received. His honeymoon has stretched to six months now.

Our girls have decided, fresh from their experience of cheering on Mom and Dad down in Houston last month, that they want to run in the same ½ marathon next January. With that goal in mind, we’ve begun to train for a 5K here in town at the end of February. We’ve all enjoyed being together and it’s easier to run with a group in the cold, so you can huddle together for warmth.

I was called, out of the blue, to lead a marriage seminar for a young couple’s class in another church. It was a good experience, but reminded me again how far (alas) Kadie and I are from that demographic. I had a wonderful time spending a few days in a retreat setting with this group. More thoughts later this week.

Budget reductions continue to batter our campus. We’ve made substantial cuts for this fiscal year, and are looking ahead toward next year. In a worst case situation, we will lose some faculty and staff. Part of the greatest challenge of managing in this environment is addressing the undercurrent of fear that affects the faculty and staff. Like any other worker in this economy, when it’s difficult for them to focus on their jobs when they’re worried about losing them.

I leave you with one of the more curious political spectacles of recent years, the ongoing public immolation of (former) Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. He recently appeared on David Letterman and the interview is painfully enjoyable to watch. (I haven’t felt this embarrassed for someone on TV since the Bakkers went on Nightline a few decades back). Unbelievable. (And Dave can still bring the heat when he wants to. His first question had to be the exact one on the minds of every viewer).

A Review: Twilight

2009-01-29T23:26:00.004-06:00

Summary

Twilight tells the first person story of Bella Swan, a 17 year old from sunny Phoenix who has to move to the damp, dark town of Forks, Washington to be with her Dad. (Oddly, Forks is embracing its newfound fame, though the picture painted of the town in the book is far from ideal.) Her mom is following her stepfather to Florida and Bella doesn’t want to go. So Bella moves to a town where she knows her father and no one else. The story follows Bella as she moves into the new community and struggles to fit in to its closed society.

At the local high school she wrestles with the typical challenges of the new kid as she tries to carve out her own self identity while trying as best she can to “fit in”. In her first few days of school, she notes one group of teens who stay off by themselves, away from the regular students. They are members of the Cullen family, whose pater familias is a prominent local doctor. One of them in particular catches the eye of young Bella, another 17 year old named Edward.

Initially, Edward seems to go out of his way to either avoid, or torment young Bella. Despite his frigid attitude toward her, she is hopelessly drawn in by his good looks. After he saves her life in a near car accident, she discovers that he has reciprocal feelings for her and their relationship begins in earnest.

As most everyone knows by this point, Edward is a vampire, part of a unique family of vampires who have foresworn human blood so that they might continue to live among humans. They hunt and consume animals, and are thus able to satiate their bloodthirst and coexist with humans.

The story unfolds as Bella learns more and more about Edward’s clan, as well as the other vampires who roam the earth and still pursue humans. She is threatened by these other vampires, but ultimately is saved by Edward and his family.

Most of the problems I had with this work were sytlistic and are explained by the simple fact that I’m not its intended audience. Twilight is clearly aimed at the Young Adult (and specifically female) market. For example, it describes Edward as he and Bella were resting in a country field:

“He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.”

I had to take an insulin shot before typing that quote.

But more interesting that the literary dimension of the text is the theological.

A Theological Reading

The text is laden with theological meaning. There are some clues that Meyer has in mind a theological reading of this text. (And regardless of her intent, as a Believer, I can’t really read it any other way.) The cover of the text depicts two female hands offering a delicious red apple. There’s quite a track record with women bearing apples of course (never mind the more recent incarnations of Disney movies and one particular ABC television show, complete with apparel).

This cover calls to the mind of the reader another fruit borne of a woman, the famous fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Yes, Genesis 2 and 3 makes no mention of the word apple. Which makes it a gap of course. The reason that so many have thought it was an apple has to do with the Latin, which...sorry, off topic. Go here if interested.)

So the very cover leads the reader to conclude that there might be some element of forbidden knowledge, or forbidden fruit involved in the narrative. And when you open the cover and read the frontspiece, that suspicion is confirmed as the first text of the book that appears is the scriptural citation Genesis 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” So Meyer clearly reads this forbidden fruit into the background of the story.

The story rightly emphasizes the importance of blood. Blood is what the vampires must have if they are to live. As Leviticus 17:14reminds us “ because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’” The vampire story gets this element right. There is no life without the blood.

Meyer also portrays immortality as coming with a significant cost. The vampires are immortal, but without a soul. They can only find a meaningful existence by interacting with humans and ummm, playing baseball. The vampires strive for divinity but fall far short in their attempt to reach it on their own. They gain the entire world, but in the process lose their souls.

And lastly, I think that Meyer skillfully constructs a narrative in which blood is a metaphor for sex. In the story’s account of vampires, each vampire is particularly sensistive to a specific human’s scent. Naturally, Edward is highly attuned to Bella’s scent. It makes her particulary enticing for him and he is tempted throughout the book to feast upon her blood and turn her into a vampire. Consequently, there is a tension throughout the book as Edward and Bella fall in love. Does he really love her, or is he after her only for her body blood?

Edward’s bloodlust becomes a stand in for actual lust. Edward is animalistic and primal in his lust for blood. He desires Bella and the reader anxiously awaits alongside her to find out if Edward will simply use her for his own desires and get what he wants. And will Bella lose a vital part of herself in the process?

After Scooter and I read Twilight, we went out for lunch and talked about each of these theological themes in the book. Approaching these issues using a story from her world was unusual for us and I think we both enjoyed the talk. I hope that in the end, it will help her develop as a critical reader of popular texts.

After we talked, a friend of mine from church asked me if I was glad that I let her read it. I replied “She just read a story which compares hormone ridden teen-age boys to blood-sucking vampires. Of course I’m glad she read it!”

A Review: Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009

2009-01-28T17:17:00.002-06:00

The Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009 by Sally Stuart is a powerful resource for all authors interested in the Christian market. It contains a burgeoning amount of information identifying literary outlets for Christian writers. It is a reference work, not a “how to” book. It can help the writer to identify which books or periodicals might be the best outlets for its works.

After an initial chapter explaining how the book is best used, chapter 2 covers Book publishers. This chapter divides into three parts. Part one is a topical list of book publishers (e.g. Bereavement, homiletics, Marriage, Women’s books, etc). Thus the prospective published writer can use the list to guide her or him to the publisher most likely interested in that particular topic. The second list is a simple alphabetical listing of all Christian publishers. The third list is a list of “subsidy publishers.” A subsidy is when the publisher requires you to pay all or part of the costs associated with publishing a book. (The term I am more familiar with is “subvention”). The fourth section is a list of book distributors (e.g. Campus Crusade, Christian Book Distributors). The final section is what Stuart calls a “marketing analysis” where she lists publishers by the numbers of books published, most popular book topics, etc.

Section (chapter?) Three covers much of the same ground, except with periodicals. The first section is a topical listing of Christian magazines. It includes topics like book reviews, African-American Markets, Grandparenting, Poetry, etc. A second (sub)section then lists the Christian periodicals alphabetically. This is followed by a final “market analysis” of periodicals. The fourth section of this tome explores the world of Christian greeting cards, gifts, and specialty markets. It also includes Christian software, DVDs and music CDs.

The fifth section is entitled “Helps for Writers” and focuses upon subjects like writer’s conferences, editorial services, literary agents, and writing contests. The sixth (and final) section of the book includes an index and glossary as well as a break down of publishers by both corporate ownership and denominational affiliation. Included with the book is a CD which contains an additional three sections covering additional resources for writers, additional writing and marketing resources, and a final section of a glossary of terms.

This lengthy work (547 pages + a CD) provides a blizzering array of information categorized in a very logical way about all elements of the Christian writing market. In its collection of data, it is more of a resource4 than a how-to of getting into the Christian writing market. The Christian Writers’ Market Guide is an invaluable resource for any writer who is interested in writing their way into this market.

It’s also sad and depressing.

My mind reels at the micro-niches found throughout the Christian subculture. Do we need two magazines separated only by punctuation? Good News or Good News! (As opposed to the regional website Good News of South Florida or the Good News Connection). Maybe they’ll even come up with a Good News, etc. (Oh…. they did). How would the motorcycling needs of a Christian motorcyclist differ from a pagan motorcyclist. Plus, doesn’t another religion already have the motorcycling market down?

I understand the need for marketing analyses and micro-niches. I think that there is an important role for Christian publishing houses with their attendant books and magazines. I simply think that we get into trouble when we speak only to ourselves. What we need (as others have said) is fewer good “Christian writers” and more good writers who happen to be Christians.

But that is more a critique of the culture that provides the need for this book rather than a critique of this books itself. Which is exceptionally good and thorough.

Reading Gaps

2009-01-22T22:44:00.004-06:00

Gaps.

Every text contains them. No matter how carefully written, no matter how much attention the author gives to fill in all the details, narratives always contain gaps. Whenever we read a text, we fill them in with our own thoughts.

And this includes biblical texts. The church is notorious for filling gaps in the biblical narrative. One cluster of examples surrounds the birth narratives of Jesus as told in Luke and Matthew’s gospels. Famously, we aren’t told how many wise men were there, though the church filled in this gap by assuming that there were three (and even naming them?!). Another example is the idea that the wise men and the shepherds visited the First Family at the same time. One gap from the Old Testament includes the misconception that the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was an apple (I suspect that it was actually a kiwi fruit). None of this is in the text.

One big gap that has been consistently filled (and the precise example that triggered this post) concerns the story of Noah and the ark. We find this story in Genesis 6 and it relates the familiar story of the wicked world, the noble Noah and his kin. God tells Noah to build an ark, which he commences to do. Noah builds the ark while his neighbors mock him and deride him. But then when the rains come, his neighbors see the error of their ways and beg and plead with him to let them in. But he can’t (or won't) and they die along with the rest of humanity.

The gap in this story that has been filled in of course, is Noah’s neighbors. The Bible says nothing about Noah’s neighbors. Some are adamant that Noah preached to his neighbors who laughed at him for building an ark. But that view doesn’t come from the text. (I suspect that the view comes from children's Bibles.) So when a commenter on another thread says that “Noah was ridiculed to scorn” in order to explain why many people find Southern Baptists distasteful, he’s citing a story of his own devising.

Oftentimes, we fill in the gaps with our own ideas, which we call theology. Theology, at its most basic level, as our attempt to fill in the gaps in the biblical narrative. How does baptism work? What's the best metaphor for atonement? What does the sovereignty of God look like? 99% of theological disputation is probably reducible to arguing over what interpretation best fills the gaps. (And denominations form over how we fill these gaps). Perhaps this post will remind ME that these gaps exist and I would be better served exercising some hermeneutical humility as I recognize the gaps in my own reading of these texts.

On Vampires and Make Up

2009-01-21T21:12:00.002-06:00

Correctly drawing the line is our greatest challenge as a parent. Trying to carefully balance the two extremes of protection and independence is the most difficult task I’ve found. How do I decide what is too dangerous and what is acceptable? Working out the whole business of being as crafty as serpents and as innocent as doves is a pain in the neck. Certainly I pray for wisdom and seek counsel from others. Certainly I look back on my own parents’ child-raising techniques.

But then I wing it. Two examples.

Situation One:

The primary problem of course, is that my daughter Scooter is a lot like me. I grew up loving to read and throughout my childhood read fairly obsessively. Both of my parents (avowed readers themselves) adopted a pretty laissez faire approach and allowed me to read whatever I wanted to read. Kadie and I have been a little more tight reined in our approach, marking certain stories (mostly movies) off limits. But a situation arose a month ago that raised an issue for me.
Scooter told me she wanted to get a new book, the book Twilight. Many of her friends were reading it, a new movie was coming out about it, and it apparently was making quite a splash among the early teen world. I’m not sure why there was some familiarity with it, but I vaguely recalled hearing about it. After some checking around on the internet, I read up on the book.

It’s a fairly typical teen romance book, telling the story of a young girl who moves into a town and desperately wants to fit in to her new high school community. In the course of her arrival she identifies various social cliques and tries to decide the folks with whom she wants to build relationships. Then she meets a guy and they fall in love. The End. Pretty innocuous stuff, except for one problem.

He’s a vampire. Undead. Immortal and unliving.

So at what age should a kid start to read such fare? I had no idea. So, I read the book (a review will follow, at some point) and decided to let her read it. She’s in the middle of it now and we’ll have a conversation about it when she finishes.

Situation Two:

Unconnected (but not really) was the dreaded conversation about make-up. She’s entering the second semester of the eighth grade and high school is now for her more a reality than a distant dream. (It remains a nightmare for me, of course). So she’s gotten serious about wanting to try out make-up. This subject has come up a few times over the last few years and I’ve developed a pretty good line in response. I would always say “You look so beautiful without make-up, why would you want to cover your pretty face up?” But she’s no longer placated by that line and has now pushed me for a timeline. After some negotiation (she wanted to start wearing make-up today, I wanted her to start in her thirties) we decided that she would start this summer, to give her some time to experiment before high school begins.

I’m not too sure my exact motivations in each of these situations, but in each instance, to some degree, I recognized that I was the one with the greater problem. I don't want her to grow up. So each of these situations has challenged me in the area of letting go. I’ve seen the end result of holding on too long and it's not pretty. I have students in my classes at school whose parents never let them go and they end up at one of two unhealthy extremes. Either they go wild with their newfound freedom, or they bring their parents into my office when I advise them and try to speak with them about some of their life goals. It’s quickly apparent that they don’t distinguish themselves from their parents in any meaningful way.

Operating on the principle that we start with the end result in mind, then we have to cut the (insert metaphor of your choice: aprons strings or umbilical cord) at some point if we want to produce healthy, Godly adults.

On these two particular issues, the time is now.

Running the Race

2009-01-18T14:41:00.006-06:00

In 490 BC, Pheidippides ran the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to report the victory of the Greek army over King Darius' forces. After running the first Marathon and reporting the news, Pheidippides died.

Which explains why I feel half dead.

Kadie and I ran our first 1/2 marathon this morning, and lived to tell the tale. We ran the Chevron Aramco race in Houston, Texas. We've been doing some training for the 13.1 mile race, but Kadie's max run prior to this was 9 miles and mine was 5.

There's an entire running subculture that I really don't have a handle on. There are running clubs that ran together the whole way. Some people ran dressed as Winnie the Pooh (who could use a work out), Elvis, and even the Statue of Liberty. It was interesting. I saw several short shorts (on men, alas) that were in the design of the Texas flag. I couldn't decide if it was desecration or an homage.

The crowd of spectators was strange too. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of folks who come to the race and cheer the runners on. Surprisingly, one cannot underestimate the encouragement of perfect strangers. Our identification tags (referred to as "bibs") included our names. On numerous occasions strangers yelled "Great job, Taran!" as I went by. It felt a little like Norm walking into Cheers.

I've never been the biggest fan of Houston, but the 1/2 marathon was a great way to see a lot of neighborhoods. Many people came out on their porches and waved at us with their free hand while clutching mimosas (or beers?!) in their other. It was 7:30 in the morning. My brother Bartolo talked us into running this a few months ago and I'm glad he did. (Although he did leave us far behind him early on in the race.)

Looking Ahead

2009-01-13T20:32:00.009-06:00

My childhood was blessed in many directions. One memorable area of blessing was in family vacations. A few stand out.

Around the age of six my parents took us to California to visit some cousins and to see Disneyland. A few years later we visited Colorado and traveled the mountains to Ouray and Durango. Lastly, my junior year in college we took a trip to Washington DC. In between these larger trips we traveled on more regional excursions to various places in Texas and Arkansas.
And so we try to pass that blessing on to our own kids, hoping that they will enjoy well the full range of God’s Creation…or at least the part we can affordably reach. We’ve taken them on large trips to Colorado, Virginia, and Turkey and look forward to future trips.

This year we decided on a ski trip to New Mexico and made a couple of decisions that affected the trip. First, we decided to extend the kids’ Christmas vacation and to cut into their return to school. So we planned to ski the Saturday, Sunday, Monday of the weekend preceding the beginning of school. Although this cut into their return a bit, it guarantees fewer skiers. Despite my affinity for education, school attendance isn’t sacrosanct. This also allowed us to take our time getting out there. Since none of our kids have ever seen snow in any accumulation, we wanted to give them a chance to enjoy it before they skied it.

Our second decision was to go with another couple from church. Like me, Rob works for the state (although not at my institution) and Laura is a nurse like Kadie. They also have a little boy who is a couple of months older than Squealer as well as a two year old daughter. Frankly, they are among the few couples who could identify with the typical normal state of chaos surrounding our family. Our decision to travel with them cut our costs substantially.

Rob is an organizer and handled the lodging logistics throughout our trip. I, to put it mildly, am not. I did cook all the meals ahead of time so we wouldn’t get gouged by the locals. We rented a 15 passenger van and stuffed the nine members of our families into it.

We threw Squealer into ski school for 2 days and the girls for one. And they all took to it well. Kadie and I skipped ski school, but spent a day anyway remembering how to ski. It took two of full days for us to regain our skiing “skills,” which had lain dormant for twenty winters.

The second day we took the girls out and were amazed at how quickly they picked it up. Scooter took a few more chances and thus bit the ~~dust~~ snow more often. Skeeter, normally the risk taker of the two, was slow and steady and rarely fell down.

The third day we took Squealer out and worked with him. They teach the kids to either keep their skis in a “pizza” (a wedge) to slow down or to keep them “French fries” (parallel) to speed up. (I’m unsure what this says about the contemporary dietary status of most Americans that five year olds understand this language universally). But the effect is humorous.

As Squealer scooted down the slope, I followed behind him and constantly yelled “Pizza!” or “French Fries!” depending on his rate of speed. To an outsider it must’ve seemed like I was threatening him with a high-carb diet. Squealer invariably accelerated beyond his capacity to control his direction and I would have to shout at him to “Sit Down!!”which resulted in several spectacular crashes.

Squealer rarely does things halfway. He took to skiing quickly, but when he crashed, he did so with gusto. In one particularly tremendous show, he disappeared into a cloud of snow and pinwheeling skis as he lay motionless for a moment. Then he looked up at me and shouted “That was AWESOME!!” to the delight of the assembled skiers.

On the third day all five of us skied some blue slopes, definitely Squealer’s favorite. But still, it’s a sobering vision to see your five year old scooting past you at breakneck speed.

But the most beautiful memory of the trip was on a long green slope where the five of us were skiing by ourselves. Soon after we started, there began a gentle, but substantial snowfall. Flakes as large as nickels danced around us as we skied along our solitary path, looking at gorgeous evergreens graced with snow.

After a few minutes taking in this breathless beauty, Scooter stopped us and said “Daddy, it’s just like we’re inside a snowglobe!”

Looking ahead, I hope we’ve burned some family memories into their childhood.

I have a few pictures to inflict on you.

There’s nothing quite so strong as the bond between a boy and his tumbleweed. (Squealer at a rest area in the Texas panhandle).

Dalhart, Texas takes great pride in a large tile encrusted bovine that stands guard over highway 87 in front of a Valero gas station. When our kids saw it, Scooter immediately christened it Starbutt.
(I wonder if it's visible on Google Maps? Yep!)

Scooter (left) took some incredible pictures .

Looking Back

2009-01-09T22:19:00.010-06:00

January is named of course, for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces , always gazing in two directions. So maybe January is a good time to look back and look ahead.

Looking Back

My grandmother died the Sunday after Christmas. She was 93 and led a full and generous life. I was asked to share a eulogy, which follows:

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

I thank you for coming today as we share some memories of Sylvia McGeorge, or as I knew her, Grandmother.

Some of the happiest summers of my childhood were spent in her house. I think what made those summers so happy is that they were so distinct and separate from the rest of my life. Her house was a place where the normal childhood rules didn’t apply.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.

For example, bedtimes evaporated as soon as my parents left the driveway. My brother and I could stay up as late as we wished, with no consequences to our actions.

Medicine was very different. Whenever I acquired a sore throat, grandmother’s remedy of choice was brought a combination of brandy and honey, a far cry from my teetotaling home. “Well, what do you think is in cough syrup?” she would say when pressed. (Of course, the result was an increase in sore throats whenever I spent some time with her.)

Next to her home, a magnolia tree grew that was as high as any sequoia. Kid limbs scrambled over tree limbs as we raced each other to the sky.

One of her “jobs” was to prepare for Wednesday night meals at First Baptist Church. In a move that OSHA would no doubt denounce, she let me open the huge cans of tomatoes with a table mounted can opener. I still remember as a six year old, lifting it as high as I could and then slamming it down on top of the cans and then turning it slowly around.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.

She had a couple of rocking chairs with a swing on the front porch of the house. For the only times in my life, I would spend summer evenings just rocking and swinging.

She was the first person I knew who owned a large freezer, which she kept well stocked with Popsicles. We could go get one whenever we wanted, and didn’t even have to ask. She also had an old fashioned coke machine with coke bottles. It was too big for me to slide the bottles down and then pull them through the top, to get them out. But she never tired of helping me to retrieve an icy cold beverage, not matter how close it was to bed time.

Grandmother also loved music. 45 Records were in abundance. Lawrence Welk and big band music of days gone by always accompanied me as I walked from room to room at grandmother’s house. There was no Time-Life record offer she could resist.

Mornings followed a predictable pattern. Captain Kangaroo was on in the morning, followed by the PBS duo of Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Then we transitioned to adult fare as Bob Barker always showed us that the Price is Right. But then there was a large gap in the day. Grandmother would always say, "Now its time for my stories”by which she meant The Guiding Light and As the World Turns (Or, as one of my cousins called it, "As the stomach turns"). During the soaps, we would go out and play, knowing that grandmother wouldn’t come looking for us until late afternoon. By then, more interesting things would be on as we resumed control of the TV at 3:00 when Gilligan’s Island came on.

Grandmother loved dominoes. I was too young to follow the complicated math involved in adding up to five, but from my earliest age, I was mesmerized by her ability to shuffle them on the special domino table she owned. No dealer in Vegas could match her manual dexterity. Their rhythmic clicking together is a sound I still recall to this day. She could turn and talk to me while she shuffled them without even looking at the table. When she felt like showing off, she would point and send me on an errand while she continued to shuffle the dominoes with her other hand.
Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

It was a place without room for corporal punishment. Although she did threaten to “blister our bottoms” (whatever that meant) I don’t ever recall being spanked by her. Her punishment of choice was to make us hug and kiss when we couldn’t get along with one another.

Perhaps best of all, grandmother’s home was a place where you got to see your own father get scolded from time to time by his mother. What kid wouldn’t want to see that?!

Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

Although she lived on East Avenue, some wag added an “F” to the the street sign so it read "Feast Avenue." But that was still appropriate, as Grandmother's house was a place where food was abundant. By the time I came along, she had been a caterer for decades.

She was an artist, and cake was her most savory medium. As she prepared her wedding cakes, she would have to level them (for proper stacking I suppose). After they came out of the oven, she would take a bread knife, turn it sideways, and shave off the top, ever so gently. Cake slices, a big around and as thin as plates. I would gather in the kitchen as she would stack these perfectly formed, slivers of heaven. With eyes the size of saucers I awaited them and then I did eat them. And lo, they were good. Very good.

She had a long table with multiple folding chairs. I recall receptions that seemed to seat hundreds (but probably more like 40 or 50). The aroma of food, the clinking of glass, and the hurried elegance of the wait staff as they did her bidding are etched into my earliest consciousness.

She fashioned tiny roses made out of white icing that she pressed into molds and stuck on wedding cakes. She would make sheets of these on wax paper, hundreds of them, and put them in the freezer until she needed them. I could fit about five of these into each of my hot little hands and pop them into my mouth to consume them in a few bites. The ensuing sugar rush would be sufficient to get me through even the slowest of summer days.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

The Bible shares about a very special grandmother. Timothy had a grandmother who was so remarkable that Paul mentioned her in one of his letters.

"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also."

Paul succinctly identified the defining characteristic of good grandmothers: their influence on the generations to come. And like Lois, my grandmother passed on a legacy of faith to her children and her grandchildren.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

She didn’t have an easy life. She raised my father and aunt as a single mom during decades when that still carried with it the odor of scandal. But she picked through the difficult times and discussed them only when pressed.

My fondest memory of her is also one of the oldest. Grandmother purchased for me a sticker book, full of outdoor scenes. All the stickers were in the back and I had to search them out, lick the gluey side, and then stick them to their appropriate place in the book. I worked on it with all the focus a six year old could muster. On this particular day, grandmother was vacuuming the room while I busied myself.

One of the stickers was a bee. After carefully tearing it out from the back of the book, I accidentally dropped it on the shag carpet below. Having the attention span of a tsetse fly myself, I quickly went on to the next sticker. Several minutes later, my grandmother’s vacuum noisily inhaled my bee sticker while I continued to work. It was only a few minutes later that I realized what happened and I began to cry.

Really cry. In fact, I was in six year old, full liquid meltdown as I wept over my lost bee. Seeing my sorrow, she turned off the vacuum and then quickly learned the cause of my sadness. She assured me that it would be ok. Grandmother left the room and returned with the morning newspaper. She carefully spread out the pages, opened up the vacuum canister, and then dumped the contents of the vacuum onto the paper.

I can still see, with my six year old eyes, grandmother carefully working through the dust, dirt, and the hair as she sought the paper bee. After several minutes, she triumphantly held aloft the paper bee and returned it to me. Like the woman who searched for the lost coin, my grandmother's eyes twinkled as I stopped crying and joyously held my bee that had been lost.

And in this way, memory becomes metaphor.

Grandmother was always wading through the difficulties and the filth of this life to help and care for those she loved. I will miss her.

And now it’s her turn.

Now she is the one who has gone on to a different place, a better place.

Those of us who love her are impoverished by her absence, but were made far richer by her presence.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

Several years ago she shared a poem that she wanted read at her funeral. It follows.

After Glow

I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun
of happy memories that I leave when my life is done.

I will miss you, Grandmother.

(Grandmother and Squealer, August 2003)

Family Road Trip!

2009-01-02T20:28:00.003-06:00

We’re on the road with the family, doing some skiing in Angel Fire, New Mexico--our first extended vacation in about four years. After several days on the road, we arrived this afternoon and checked into our condo. We’re sharing space with a couple from our church who has a son Squealer’s age and they’ve booth kept the trip hopping.

The kids have never been skiing before, indeed they’ve seen snow only a few times. So we arrived in northern New Mexico yesterday so that they could play in the snow. After a day of that, we were all ready to arrive this afternoon.

We’re throwing all three of our kids into ski school tomorrow while Kadie and I try to relearn skiing ourselves. The only skiing we’ve ever done was almost twenty years ago on a BSU trip while we were still courting.

It should be interesting.

Only Nuns Change Habits Overnight: A Review

2009-01-01T21:56:00.001-06:00

Karen Scalf Linamen has written a fun and helpful book on how women should initiate positive changes in their lives.

She argues that every woman longs for change in some area of her life. Unfortunately, fear, fatigue, adversity, heartbreak, past failures, and even the choices of other people get in the way and make lasting change seem out of reach. Having been there herself, Karen Linamen knows exactly how to take readers from where they are to where they want to be.

In Only Nuns Change Habits Overnight, she examines 52 powerful readers can apply to any change they long to embrace. Her insights apply to career, finances, personal health and fitness, relationships, faith—in fact, every facet of a woman’s life.

Blending humor with sage advice, Linamen shows readers the link between dissatisfaction and transformation, how to remodel habits, the little-known truth about procrastination, how to generate the energy they need to pursue the life they desire, how to benefit from options and resources they never dreamed they had, and more!

Linamen combines humor and wisdom in an entertaining read that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I only have a couple of drawbacks about this book. First, it is completely aimed at the female population. Almost all of the examples pertain to women and, let’s be frank, it’s the only pink covered book on my bookshelf. Second, some of the information is rather trite. “Watch an uplifting movie” is among the more pedestrian pieces of advice. But despite those minor points, I recommend it.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-27T09:15:00.003-06:00

This was probably our busiest Christmas season yet, though I’m certain we will go for the record next year. We had a flurry of Christmas parties (two work parties, one Sunday School party), two church musicals (Children and Adult), assorted school musicals (one for Skeeter, two for Scooter), two family get togethers, and a partridge in a pear tree.

We spent time with my brother Bartolo who is wrapping up his dissertation and looking for a job (in a stellar job market) and his bride Bonita, who continues to encourage him at every turn. We also got to see my other brother Miguelito who is eying college next Fall.

After the family party with them, I had a shocking return to the real world with our notice of budget cuts. These cuts kicked our department’s tail and led to the release of several adjuncts. The number would’ve been greater, but several of our full time faculty offered to teach an extra class (called an “overload”) without receiving additional compensation. We then had to reconstruct the Spring schedule based on all of these changes. I made my last call to an adjunct on Christmas Adam.

We then turned our attention to Christmas Day lunch. We had a house full for our Christmas meal. My parents and Kadie’s sister and her family were coming over, but somehow that didn’t seem enough. I hope that hospitality ranks among the treasure of traits they’ve passed on to myself and my brothers. Growing up, Mom and Dad always had an open house for the holidays, often including others who had no options. We decided to practice hospitality by inviting four families from our university who were from foreign countries and didn’t really have any family in our area.

So we had one couple from New Zealand, one from Canada, one from Taiwan and one from Hungary. The accents (including my brother-in-law’s rural drawl) were fascinating to hear. Factor in all of the kids and we had around 30 people under our roof. Fortunately, the weather cooperated, so we kicked most of the children outdoors to the trampoline and soccer field (a Christmas gift).

Not all of the families are Christians, so perhaps we can build some relationships that might bear fruit down the line. A different, but still an interesting, Christmas. I hope that you enjoyed Christmas with your family.

Book Review: Living Rich For Less (and a chance for free books!)

2008-12-19T10:40:00.005-06:00

Readers will recall that personal finance greatly impacted our family a few years ago. Because of the financial peace of mind that came out of that experience, I remain interested in culling good ideas from other financial guides who may be out there. I’m reaching the conclusion that there are just a few excellent ideas of building and maintaining wealth. The only difference in many of these books is the packaging. Or to put it another way, we all know that we should save more and spend less, the question is how do we do it?

Recently I was asked to write a review of another personal finance book entitled Living Rich for Less: Create the Lifestyle you Want by Saving and Spending Smart by Ellie Kay. In this work, she shares a personal narrative of her and her family of seven going from $40,000 in debt to a surplus of savings in just a few years. She then offers you the reader the opportunity to do the same.

Kay’s work divides into three parts:

Part One: Giving Ten Percent

Part Two: Saving Ten Percent

Part Three: Spending Smart the Other 80 Percent (Yes, it should be smartly)

In Part One she addresses the concept of giving 10% of your income away. Giving is a tough sell in contemporary society. And although this book is from a Christian publisher, she (rightly I think) addresses the larger society as a whole. So while she mentions the tithe, she doesn’t end the discussion by simply saying “It’s in the Bible, so do it.” She takes a careful look at the value and benefits of giving away. She ends the section with a “Green” chapter in which she argues that green living (changing incandescent lights for CFL bulbs, recycling, etc)

In the second part of her work, Kay addresses the issue of saving 10% of your income. She looks at the various saving and investing options and includes chapters on debt, FICO score. She concludes this chapter with advice on how to put together a simple budget. There is some good advice here, but there is some tension I think between decrying debt and arguing that we should increase our FICO score.

In part three, Kay explores how we should spend 80% of the income. This is the strongest section of the book. In it, she offers practical guidance on how to save a great deal of money on insurance, shopping, vacations, and home ownership. Kay claims that if you follow her advice you could save $30,000.00 a year. (Which I suppose is technically true, though you'd have to be painfully clueless to be overspending in so many different ways).

Overall this is a helpful book. It hits the high notes of personal finance, but doesn’t offer much beyond the basic advice. For Kay (or anyone else) it is important to spend less than what you make, get out of debt, and save for emergencies, college, etc. Kay is a fun writer who includes in her advice numerous perconal anecdotes that flesh out her concepts.

The greatest strength is in its practical tips. She provides numerous websites, helpful hints on how to shave costs for gifts and many other examples of practical advice. This section alone makes the book well worth its cost. The college savings material is incredibly helpful. (Biggest hint: College savings starts in high school with good grades, AP classes, and dual enrollment).
If I could only buy one book on personal finance, I would still go with Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover . But Kay’s Living Rich for Less would be my number two purchase.

The biggest drawback for this book was the subtitle. It should be “create the lifestyle you want by giving, saving, and spending smartly”. There should be an adverb at the end. (Insert Kadie eyeroll right here.)

I tell you what. In these uncertain times, I would like to offer a couple of free copies of this book. The first person who posts to the comments the critical event that triggered our decision to begin Dave Ramsey’s plan will get a copy of this book. (I narrate our financial struggles here).

Then the next person who posts the last debt we paid off in our debt snowball will get the other book.

I’ll try to get it in the mail immediately and perhaps it will be at your doorstep by Christmas.

The Axe Falls

2008-12-16T20:41:00.004-06:00

A tough few days all across our campus. In addition to the normal end of the semester shenanigans, we are operating under some pretty severe state imposed budget cuts. We have to implement these cuts mid-year and are in the process of prioritizing programs and (adjunct) faculty. Public universities are in a double bind when it comes to recessions. During most recessions, enrollment in state colleges and universities rises as parents can no longer afford to send little Johnny to more prestigious institutions. In addition, workers who have been laid off will return to college to gain additional skills as they retool for future employment. So at the time when enrollment swells, we have to cut back on the number of sections being offered. Irony abounds but money doesn’t.

Although our campus has been through difficulties like these before, it is my first time to experience them in a decision-making position. And it’s a much different perspective. I had to recommend a list of adjunct faculty to be cut for this semester. Part of the challenge is balancing needs. The needs of the students come first of course, but there are also the needs of some adjuncts to, you know, eat. And their regular income was supplemented by income from teaching that they were counting on. But we're not given any idea ahead of time how many positions we should cut. So, like Gideon sending men to the river, we will start whittling down until we are told to quit. We should find out over the next couple of days how this will pan out.

And apparently we have much company, including some colleagues in at least one of our Southern Baptist institutions.

It makes for a tough week before Christmas.

When Two Stories Collide

2008-12-10T08:54:00.001-06:00

They had me at the headline:

Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup

HT: Andy McCarthy

Kilkelly

2008-12-08T20:01:00.004-06:00

Sorry for the delay. The end of the semester approaches with the force of an oncoming tide. Making time an even scarcer commodity is my foolish decision to take on a thespian role in this year’s children’s choir Christmas musical. So as is often the case, a lack of blogging is due not to the fact that too little is going on, but rather to the fact that too much is going on.

Longtime readers (both of you) will recall that I’m a sucker for good narrative. One of the better stories I’ve heard in awhile was in a recent song. While listening to the Irish and Celtic podcast a few months ago, I had to slow my run to a walk and listened transfixed to a song called Kilkelly, Ireland. The song was written by Peter Jones, an American who discovered a series of letters that belonged to his great grandfather, an immigrant from Kilkelly, Ireland. His ancestor had left his childhood home of Kilkelly to travel across to the United States. Peter wrote the lines directly from his great grandfather's letters and composed a tune for them.

It is a haunting song, one that reminds the listener of the tremendous sacrifices that emigrants form every generation must undergo. Of course, as Believers, the notion of the immigrant is one of the most common themes in all of Scripture, ranging from Moses’ description of himself as a stranger in a strange land to (a different) Peter’s description of the church as strangers and aliens. It reminds us that our faith has made us landless and looking ahead to the far country, to the one place we can truly call Home.

But it also makes you want to hug your family a little tighter at Christmas.

Here’s the requisite Youtube embed of the song. I suggest you minimize the video and just listen to the music. The song is grand and tender. The video is neither.

The Contract

2008-11-26T01:06:00.002-06:00

This is week three of the Long March in our household; similar in many ways, to its historical antecedent (except, you know, without all the communism). A couple of times a year, Kadie takes out a contract at her hospital and commits to work more often than normal.* Normally she works for two shifts a week which allows us to meet most of our financial goals at this point. But there’s little $$ extra for things like major household and vacations. One of the frustrating elements of my own job is that I cannot really pick up any extra work. (Unless I moonlight at Chili's).

So during such times, Kadie bites the bullet and signs a contract in which she guarantees that she’ll work 40 hour weeks for the specified duration. Most of the time, these contracts are 6 weeks in length, but these are great days to be a Registered Nurse. Hospitals are desperate for their services and are grateful for any hourly scraps that nurses can provide. So Kadie has signed up for a four week stint.

So that explains the “Why?” but not the “How?” Whenever she signs one of these contracts, our household goes into lock down mode for the duration. Adding to the difficulty of these days is that fact that with this particular contract, she’s working the 11 pm to 7 am shift. So on a good day, she arrives just after the morning rush to get the kids off and goes straight to bed. She then sleeps until the kids start to get home at three, giving her a nice 7 hours of sleep.

Only it never works that way. First, in most instances, a busy night has pushed her morning arrival as late as 10:30 am. Then there are those mornings when there is street construction going on outside the house. We’ve also experienced multiple visits from assorted judges and representatives in the days leading up to the recent election who were out “courtin the electorit”. Lack of maternal sleep leads to increased tension for all.

But enough about her. These contracts are tough on the rest of the family. The kids (and the husband) have to be a little more self motivated than normal. Mornings are particularly eventful. Scooter wakes up Squealer at 6:00 and prepares him breakfast while I hit the shower. Then I fix his lunch while she fixes her own. At 6:40 we wake up Skeeter. Then we get dressed and three of us hit the door to get to Squealer and Scooter’s bus stops. I then return to make sure Skeeter is progressing well. At 7:30 she hops on her bike and I leave for work. I drive by her crosswalk to make sure the guard is there and then head for my own school.

The evenings are filled with homework and house cleaning. I try to pick up the slack because Kadie only has a limited amount of time with the kids. We’ll all be glad when the end of the week hits and her contract ends.

*I’m well aware that the phrase “taking out a contract” has a Mafioso connotation. I’m sure that this is intentional. In my experience, with both a hospital contract and a mobster contract there is a high probability that someone will die during its duration.

Cross Posting

2008-11-24T15:47:00.002-06:00

No time for a full blown post at the moment. I do note two cross posts.

First, David Rogers continues to take a ball-ping hammer to my fragile views on ecclesiology in an excellent SBC Impact post.

In addition, a good friend of mine from seminary ~~stole~~ referenced the blog post “Deep Waters Ahead” in a sermon this last Sunday. He tells the story here.

True feelings

2008-11-20T16:07:00.001-06:00

This morning, Squealer wandered through the house shouting my name. When he finally found me he said “Daddy, Scooter called me weird!” Now weird is one of those nebulous words that is highly discouraged, but not actually forbidden in our house. Still, it’s unusual for Scooter to use that term with her brother. But clearly it was a situation that I had to address.

When I went into the living room I found Scooter sitting on the couch reading a book. I said “Scooter, did you really call Squealer weird?”

Without raising an eye she shrugged and said “Somebody had to finally let him know.”

Guest Post

2008-11-18T06:44:00.003-06:00

In the range of mountains that form the tectonic presence of the Southern Baptist Convention on the internet, the Mount Everest of publications is a site known as SBC Impact!. Judging from today’s lead article, their editorial screening process needs some serious revision.

Deep Waters Ahead

2008-11-11T21:48:00.000-06:00

Over the last few weeks, I’ve shared some special moments with my kids. With the small perspective that being a parent for 13 years provides, I know that these moments are fleeting. The brevity of childhood hit me years ago, the first afternoon I arrived home from work and Scooter didn’t meet me at the door with a shrieking “Daddy’s Home!!!!”

What I’ve long known in the abstract I’ve now witnessed in the concrete: kids grow up. Even worse, my kids grow up. So over the course of the last month, I’ve had three experiences that I know won’t last much longer. I feel like I’m walking from the shallow end of my kid’s childhood to the deep end of the pool where teen years and adulthood lie in wait. My toes can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

We’ve recently wrapped up soccer for the second season and the kids all loved it. But unlike last year, Squealer seemed to finally get the point of the game this year. He scored his first goal in his first game. A writhing, amazing shot as he fell down under a heap of defenders. As he scored the goal, simultaneously falling face first to the ground, he laid on his stomach with one fist raised victoriously in the air. His eyes met mine and he scrambled up and sprinted toward me on the sideline and gave me an enormous hug. Thus it started a trend. Whenever he scored a goal this season (a not uncommon occurrence, given his mother’s athletic abilities) he sprinted toward the sidelines and hugged me. It made me hope for high scoring games.

Skeeter recently, out of the blue, asked me a question I hadn’t heard in years “Daddy, can you rock me tonight?” And so, for the first time in a good two or three years, she crawled up into my lap (much smaller now than it used to be) and we rocked, although her feet were practically touching the ground. He face was in the crook of my arm as we sang and talked and pretty soon I felt moisture on my arm. Realizing she was crying, I asked her what was wrong. She said “I don’t want to go away to college. I want to stay here with you and Mom.” So of course, not only was my arm wet, but soon her hair as well. I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to rock her, but such moments too are disappearing. And of course, when the day comes for her to leave for college, I’ll be the one wishing she could stay while she’ll be the one looking forward to new adventures.

Scooter is the biggest and the oldest, neither hugging Dad in public nor rocking with him in private. But she still gets happy when I’m able to stop by her school for lunch. She likes it when I sit with her and her friends at the lunch table and they explain to me again all of the intricacies of early teen life. She rolls her eyes at my corny jokes and turns beet red in front of her friends when I display my attempts at cool lingo “Between us, let’s keep it on the ‘LD” or “That new group is really on the chain!” But her face lights up whenever I get the chance to come by and she gives me a quick peck on the cheek goodbye when her friends are safely around the corner.

But I can see changes coming. Squealer will one day celebrate goals with high fives instead of hugs and Skeeter will ask me for gas money instead of time in the rocking chair. Scooter will beg me to take her off campus to lunch instead of eating around her friends. But I’ll treasure these moments and I’ll miss them at the same time.

My feet can still touch the bottom, but not for much longer.

A Pastor Search Committee Observed

2008-11-05T12:17:00.000-06:00

I wanted to consolidate all of the PSC posts in one spot in order to impose order on my chaotic posting schedule. Here are the posts for the Pastor Search Committee experience at Lakeview Baptist Church. Once again, I’m certainly not indicating that this is the best way to conduct a search. My desire is simply to illustrate for other committees, or for pastors going through the process, what one search looked like. We dealt with a variety of problems and didn't always make the best of decisions. But it is my hope that others will find our experience valuable and will offer observations, suggestions, or rebukes to our conclusions.

1. Joining the Committee

2. Committee Composition

3. Chairing the Committee

4. Is Unanimity Necessary?

5. Determining the PSC Process

6. PSC as Ministry

7. Initial Contact Questions

8. PSC Covenant

9. PSC Etiquette?

10. War and wiring

11. Update

12. The Macro View

13. Gathering Resumes

14. Initial Contact

15. Checking References

16. Mealtime Interview

17. Meeting the Candidate

18. A Second Meeting and Shocking News

19. David’s Resignation

20. Resignation Aftermath

21. Visiting the Candidate’s Home Church

22. Visiting the Candidate’s Home Church (II)

23. Pastor Search Committee Interview Questions

24. The Theological Interview

25. The Theological Interview (II)

26. Background Checks and Insider Candidates

27. More on Credit Checks

28. The Announcement

29. The Phone Call

30. Phone Calls and Fire Fighting

31. Preparing for the Candidate’s First Sunday

32. In View of a Call

33. Setting a Pastor’s Salary

34. The Business Meeting

35. The Vote

36. The Installation Service

37. Loose Ends

38. Pastor Support Committee

How Would Jesus Vote?: A Review

2008-10-30T08:46:00.001-05:00

Politics and religion tend to form a witches brew of toxic commentary, often bringing out the worst from both fields. But as a devoted Christian, you may wonder “How would Jesus vote on the issues in this year’s elections? I’m glad you asked.

The 2008 election is shaping up to be one of the most important political contests in American history. In fact, Dr. D. James Kennedy believes it will be a watershed moment that could impact our very survival as a nation under God.

Values voters—people whose political views and votes are based on their faith in God—are being targeted as never before. As the campaign season moves forward, the significant players will debate terrorism, radical Islam, nuclear threats, global warming, social issues, gay marriage, immigration, education, health care, and many other essential issues that can create sharp ideological divisions.

Into this overwhelmingly complex political situation, Dr. Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe bring an application of what God’s Word has to say on these critical matters. How Would Jesus Vote? isn’t intended to tell readers which candidates to support, in fact it mentions no specific political figures. But the way it evaluates issues let’s people know precisely where the author’s stand.
And so Kennedy offers straightforward views on a variety of issues and how Jesus would vote.

Briefly, Jesus would vote as follows:
Abortion: Jesus is Prolife
Death Penalty: Jesus supports the Death Penalty
Warfare: Jesus would (on occasion) support a Just War
Education: Jesus supports prayer in schools, and would oppose taxes on parents whose kids go to private schools.
Economics: Jesus supports private property, would be opposed to governmental welfare programs
Healthcare: Jesus would favor care for the uninsured, but would not support eh government mandating a universal health care policy.
Environment: Jesus loves the environment, but would spend money on sewage plants, increased sanitation, and clean water for the poor of the world, rather than cap and trade emissions policies
Immigration: Jesus would oppose racism in all forms, vote for enforcement of immigration laws, but also respect and care for the strangers among us
Marriage: Jesus favors heterosexual marriage. He would oppose same-sex marriage, pornography, and no-fault divorce
Judges: Kennedy doesn’t promise that Jesus opposes judicial activism, but does remind judges that they too will be judged by God for their actions.

There is a final section of a collection of thoughts on religious liberty and the dangers of political compromise.

Some thoughts:

Kennedy helpfully offers some biblical perspectives on these issues. None of his conclusions are without problems however. Which leads me to my concerns about this book.

The primary problem I have with Kennedy’s work is not only its self-confidence in declaring Jesus’ position on numerous political issues, but how unfailingly they fall along the traditional Republican perspective. Repackage this book and you could have the Republican platform in place. Putting the Divine imprimatur on our political perspectives cheapens our faith. When the kingdom of God conforms itself to the political instincts of Man, we trade silver and gold for straw and chaff.

Second, there is a tension in this work on the relationship between the church and state. Although he works hard to insist that church and state be separate, Kennedy admires such reformers as Calvin (p. 42) who as a magisterial reformer, operated in the context of a theocratic state in Geneva. But on the other hand (when arguing that the individual, not the government needs to be accommodating to immigrants) wrote “We should make sure that we distinguish between personal ethics and national policy.” (159) So which is it?

Finally, I would suspect that Jesus would have a perspective both more radical and more conservative than our own. I agree, for instance, that Jesus would be pro-life in his outlook. But I suspect he would travel with those who oppose abortion, but also those who oppose the death penalty and war. Jesus might vote for candidates who are radically egalitarian, to the point that they not only reach out to the poor, but move into low income neighborhoods and live incarnationally with the poor and downtrodden, instead of visiting them for a short term mission trip.

The church has much work to do.

The more election cycles I live through, the more I see that the government will continue to be ineffective. That is the main reason for my passion for the church. It is up to the church, not to the government, to reach the dispossessed who have fallen through the cracks of society. But the government makes for a poor tool in the hands of the church.

Kennedy offers little help in that direction.

W: A Review

2008-10-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

W is an entertaining movie, but not a good one. It is entertaining in the same sense that a Will Ferrell DVD of SNL’s greatest Bush skits would be. Humorous, funny, and lacking any coherent plot.

The film is about the run up to the war in Iraq and the “debate” going on in the Bush White House. I put debate in quotation marks because it’s quite clear from the outset what the result will be. The president has already made up his mind. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al are each manipulating him toward a predetermined outcome. Only brave Powell opposes their plans, but his opposition is quickly overcome as he is portrayed as brave, if overly loyal footsoldier. Vice-President Cheney in particular is remarkable (Richard Dreyfus in an Oscar caliber performance). Cheney is the driving force behind the invasion plans and gives a powerful speech in favor of world domination to the assembled group of advisors. But his speech is so diabolical that it seemed more appropriate to a Bond (or Austin Powers) enemy. All he needed was, as one critic noted, a cat to stroke.

Throughout the film there are flashbacks (and at times flashbacks within flashbacks) about Bush’s life. The one recurring motivation for Bush in the film is that he is constantly trying to overcome his father (played by James Cromwell in an excellent performance) and to demonstrate his superiority. From his frat boy days at Yale to (literally) fighting with his father in the Oval Office, he’s constantly up against Bush 41. Poppa Bush opposes W at every turn. He dismisses Junior when he wants to run for governor of Texas, when he wants to run for president, and in one of the final scenes merely shakes his head at his son’s decisions in the Middle East.

But the central focus on the film is always Bush the Younger. Many of Bush’s infamous malapropisms (misunderestimated, “Fool me once, shame on you” etc) are here, though not in the context in which they were originally uttered. Although the common anti-Bush tropes are covered in “W” (Bush was motivated by competition with his father: check, God told Bush to run for president: check, the US invaded Iraq for oil: check), Stone eases up on the most left-leaning criticism of Bush. Some of his opponents have claimed that he deliberately used imaginary WMD weapons as the causus belli for the Iraq war (with the brief “Bush lied, people died” mantra). But Stone does not endorse this view and instead "credits" incompetence instead of malevolence. George Tenet (CIA director) summarizes the mistake by simply saying "We were wrong when we thought there were WMDs."

Ultimately, the problem with W is not that Stone aims too high, but too low. By portraying Bush as a self-confident dunce, he gives no insight into Bush the man. He provides no understanding on some basic questions that the narrative suggests: What did a demure wall flower like Laura see in him? Other than affecting his alcohol consumption, how did Bush’s religious conversion change him? And the ultimate question of course: How did someone so stupid end up as a President?

In the end, W is a failure as a narrative film. It is a disorganized mess with neither a coherent plot nor structure.

And yes, I recognize that that description is exactly what many critics apply to Bush’s eight years in office.

Pastor Support Committee

2008-10-24T07:36:00.001-05:00

Some of the concerned comments to my last post indicate that I need to explain a bit more about the new role for the Pastor Search Committee. In the last few weeks before he came in view of a call, I mentioned to Brother Rick that the committee would be dissolving after his arrival unless he wanted to keep us around as a Pastor Support Committee. (In other churches I’ve seen this referred to as the “Barnabas Committee”). He indicated that he would like us to remain active for a period of time.

On two occasions in these least four months he has called us together for an hour or so and Brother Rick has bounced some ideas off of us. Both times we’ve met, we've gathered at his request. It’s been an opportunity for him to get some feedback on planned changes for the church. He’s listened to our feedback; has accepted it on some occasions and rejected it on others.

In return, it has allowed an open opportunity for getting our perspective on how things have been progressing. We’ve also taken the lead on such things as asking him hard questions such as how he’s balancing work and family. Another item we addressed (fearful it might get overlooked) was making sure that the appropriate ministry groups worked on plans for minister appreciation month.

What we do in the future depends on Brother Rick. I could see that over time he would call us together to meet less and less frequently. Or if we continue to meet, I could see some original committee members rotate off and other church leaders rotate on. But the focus of the committee is up to him, not initiated by the committee.

And I would have concerns about operating the committee any other way.

(Back to main Pastor Search Committee Menu)

A Few Loose Ends....

2008-10-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

Brother Rick has done well in his first few months as pastor at Lakeview. If numbers can ever be used to gage the spiritual vitality of a church, they bear out that the church has responded and the Lord has been blessing. Almost every Sunday that he has been pastor, we've had someone join the church. In addition we've had more baptisms in the last three months than in the last few years combined. One of our goals as a committee was to extend his honeymoon as long as possible. His honeymoon is ongoing.
The Pastor Search Committee has morphed into the Pastor Support Committee (we kept the acronym the same so could keep using the same letterhead). Once a month or so we sit down with the pastor to provide an opportunity for accountability and for him to bounce ideas off of us. We've given him feedback, both positive and negative of his time with us.
Brother James has stopped attending the church. He quit coming the week after we called Brother Rick and he hasn't been to a service since. Efforts to contact him have proven ineffective (phone calls and emails not returned). Brother Rick has contacted him to arrange a time for a visit and no time has been convenient. Through the grapevine (I'm sure you're stunned to hear that a Baptist church has a grapevine) I've heard that he disagreed with the procedure of our committee.

In another day or two I'll post some final thoughts about this process and mercifully this series will come to an end...

(Just joking about the PSC letterhead, but you knew that already).

(Back to main Pastor Search Committee Menu)

Unchurched: A Review and Interview

2008-10-16T20:59:00.001-05:00

(Note, at the end of this review is an interview with the author and a chance to win a free copy of Unchurched)

The word “churched” has at least two meanings: First it is an archaic religious term usually used in the negative which refers to someone who has either not accepted the gospel or is not going to church. “Well, this basketball league is primarily for the unchurched.” A second meaning refers to the act of church discipline, primarily the expulsion of someone form the community as in “He was churched from the congregation”. (See usage 17 here).

In his book Churched: One Man’s Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess, Matthew Paul Turner walks the edges of each of these meanings. In this memoir, he narrates what life was like for him to be raised in a fundamentalist church. Matthew Paul Turner is a blogger, speaker and author of The Coffeehouse Gospel, Provocative Faith, Beatitude: Relearning Jesus, the What You Didn’t Learn from Your Parents About… series, and several other popular books. He has written for Relevant, HomeLife, Christian Single magazines and was the former editor of CCM magazine. Matthew and his wife, Jessica, live in Nashville, Tennessee. He can be found online at http://www.matthewpaulturner.com/.

Turner's memoir contains story after story about growing up in an environment where the unusual was the norm. For example, a typical Sunday morning might contain: the pastor getting into a boxing match with Satan, the worship service being hijacked by a Christian Pirate, a Barbie doll incinerated in Sunday school (as an example of the perils of hell) and getting baptized multiple (5 maybe?) times. Turner is an entertaining writer who does an excellent job of either reminding the reader of, or introducing the reader to, life in fundamentalist churches.
And he’s funny. The book is a series of disconnected, humorous stories. His sense of humor reminds me of David Sedaris and he has Garrison Keillor’s talent for drawing portraits of people with his words. I every much enjoyed this work. In an age when most memoirists take a tire iron to the kneecaps of their childhood, Turner is always respectful of his influences. As he depicts it, his church seems more a collection of strange religious eccentrics than of judgmental and angry legalists that I tend to associate with fundamentalist upbringings.

While I liked reading a memoir that wasn’t too critical of the influences on the author’s life, I found myself wondering what stories were omitted. There are hints of some scars he’s carried from his childhood (he mentions for example, that he has trouble talking alone with a pastor). (Note: See interview below). Regardless, that is more a criticism of what the book is not rather than what it is. And what it is, is a funny, funny book that offers a non-judgmental look at fundamentalism.

Since I've had ummmm unplanned interviews with authors before, I decided to be proactive and sent an email to Turner asking if he would consent to an interview. He graciously agreed to answer a few questions about his most recent work.

Taran: I've always thought it took a healthy ego to write a memoir ;). Why did you decide to write Churched?

Turner: Well, I certainly have an ego--not sure it's a healthy one--but I certainly try to keep it in check. :) I wrote Churched because I thought it was a good story that for some, may be an introduction to fundamentalism, and for others may offer a little bit of healing from the spiritual abuse they endured. And while I hope it's an entertaining and hopeful read, I certainly wrote it for me and for anybody else who has been hurt by other Christians.

Taran: In your book, you describe your upbringing in a fundamentalist Independent Baptist Church. How would you describe fundamentalism?

Turner: I think that "Independent Baptist" is CHRISTIAN for scary beyond all reason. Whenever leadership of any church, mosque, or temple takes on the role of God and uses it to control, manipulate, indoctrinate--that is a fundamentalism. Of course, there are varying levels of Christian fundamentalism out there.

Taran: In many memoirs, the author's work out a great deal of antagonism toward their childhood. But one thing that appears different in this work is that you don't seem particularly hostile to fundamentalism. As your portray it, fundamentalism seems to be primarily an eccentricity Is that how you view your church's brand of fundamentalism?

Turner: In some ways, yes. But that doesn't make it "innocent." It was my hope to present my childhood story to reflect on the "Christian issues" of today. The 17 essays serve as a mirror to some degree, one that all of us as Christians need to look at so we can see how we are presenting Jesus to the community of people around us. In order to do that effectively, I didn't want to be guilty of what I am pointing out. Does that make sense? If you're angry and mean-spirited, I don't believe you can effectively paint a good picture of the experience. And that was my goal... to paint a picture of what I experienced and let people come to their own conclusions.

Taran: You share at one point that fundamentalism doesn't take a high view of imagination. Were there any parts of being fundamentalist that helped you to develop your skills as a writer?

Turner: Well, it certainly gave me something to write about, I guess. But I inhereted my creativity from my mother and my grandmother.

Taran: From looking across your website, I see that you have a new son. Congratulations! Every parent wants to raise their child in a better way than they were raised. In the area of faith, how will Elias' childhood differ from yours?

Turner: It's my hope that Elias will learn about God in a hope-filled manner, that God will always be apart of his life's solutions and not apart of his problem. I'm gonna make mistakes along the way, but I hope he will experience the hope that comes from engaging the story of God and to not be overrun with fear.

Taran: You close with a story indicating that you have difficulty sitting down one on one with pastors. Do you see a bit of Pastor Nolan (the pastor of his church growing up) in a lot of ministers that you meet?

Turner: I do to some degree. They may not yell and scream and boast about the number of souls their churches are "winning," but the pastoral ego is often there. And it's the ego that made Pastor Nolan dangerous. He was just interesting and talented enough to make him dangerous. A pastor should never use scripture as way to manipulate or control--the truth should always set us free. And that's the kind of truth that pastors should be presenting. Pastors don't have to make us think they're perfect. Because we know they're not. Just tell us God's story with hope, that's something Pastor Nolan rarely did.

Taran: Reading your work I thought of people as diverse as David Sederis and Garrison Keillor. Who are some of the writers (aside from Matthew Mark, Luke and John) who have influenced you?

Turner: I love David Sederis, Elizabeth Gilbert, Chuck Klosterman, Augusten Burroughs, Brennan Manning, Phillip Yancey, GK Chesterton, Donald Miller, Anne Lamott--all of these writers have influenced to some degree or encouraged me to tell my story with passion and zeal.

Taran: Thanks for giving your time and may the sales of this book fully fund Elias' college of choice.

Turner: Thanks so much for this interview!

I have two free copies of Unchurched. My favorite Christian music artist was greatly influenced by Brennan Manning, one of the writers that Turner mentions above. In fact, the title of Manning's most popular book appears in the title of the musician's best CD.

The first two readers who can tell me which musician gets a free copy of the book!