we're okay

we got power back earlier today and i am finally able to post an update on the blog. baton rouge was spared the biggest part of the storm. we had some wind damage (trees downed, shingles blown off, etc.) but very little water damage. the biggest issue we now face is handling the evacuees from new orleans. baton rouge is the closest metro area to new orlean and thus we are getting the lion's share of the evacuees. it is bringing some amazing ministry opportunities with it. i spent most of my day, after getting my family taken care of, at a couple of the area shelters. we're taking youth tomorrow to two different locations to help in the recovery effort.

if you would like to see pictures of what we are experiencing from the storm you can view them at my flickr site and you can view my announcements to the youth ministry at my youth ministry blog.

katrina

everyone is preparing for hurricane katrina around baton rouge. because of the huge possibility of electricity being out for a few days to two weeks i can not say for sure when i will be able to post again. i'll try to whenever the storm is gone and the power is working.

just for the fun of it here's another stupid robertson quote

this one is from the '92 republican national convention:

[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. --Pat Robertson, 1992 Republican National Convention

i find it interesting again that a supposed CHRISTian leader justifies his problem with an ideology by saying that it hurts "capitalism." since when should "hurting capitalism" be a reason for a follower of CHRIST to oppose an idea?

come on if you going to supposedly speak out "for" CHRIST please give a better reason than it will hurt capitalism. i can just see JESUS looking down from heaven and saying "why in the world would i be upset about american capitalism being hurt?" heck if it's going to hurt the really messed up western capitalism that we are experiencing maybe i should really begin to support the feminist allot more.

saying it right for once

it's nice to see that the vast majority of CHRISTian "talking heads" are handling robertson's stupid comments correctly ... condemning them.

here's what the world evangelical alliance said about his statement:

This kind of statement, by this well known American Christian leader, is in complete contradiction to the teachings of Jesus Christ who evangelical Christians believe and seek to demonstrate,” says Geoff Tunnicliffe, WEA International Director. He goes on to add, “Robertson does not speak for evangelical Christians. We believe in justice and the protection of human rights of all people, including the life of President Chavez.

you can read the rest here.

robert's calls for hugo chavez to be assassinated - i have a better target in mind :)

CLICK HERE to read the new york times article - robertson is pilloried for assassination call
would some one please tell me how "assassination" fits into CHRIST's plan for the kingdom?

i just can not get it through my mind how a supposedly CHRIST-honoring show can make bold statements about assassinating a non-hitler type ruler. chavez is no saint and personally i think it was great if he wasn't in power. some say he's driving his country economically into the ground. yet he's not committing human rights violations on a huge scale. whose lives will be saved by killing such a man? the only thing that will be saved by assassinating him is money and oil. in my opinion this is not a very good reason for toppling a government and almost a blasphemous reason when it comes from someone who professes to be a follower of CHRIST.

i'm really ready for some sane CHRISTians to start being the public mouth-pieces of the religious right. i'm tired of being "lumped in" with these psychos.

the joy of the blogosphere

i love when my youth have blogs and they don't realize that i read them. anonymous reading of teens blogs gives me real, honest feedback concerning what we do. here's what one of my teens posted today concerning the 24 hours of prayer we did today.

sooo... today i went up to the church to pray and man oh man! i was in there and it was just me and God. that was something i really needed. some one on one time with my Dad in a place that i love so very much. a place that i have seen Him move over and over again. i just got the reassurance that everything was going to be ok. that He is going to take care of us, of my family. it might take a little time, but He will make everything right again.

of course, sometimes the statements aren't as positive. such as this one from the visiting preacher we had at church two sundays ago.

It was at this point I was getting enraged. i seriously almost lost it right in the middle of church. WHERE DID THIS GUY COME FROM? He was clever in using Louisiana terms to get people to buy it...even saying he lived in LA "way back when." i seriously couldn't believe such a false Christian could appear right in front of me and actually declare what he said to be true! I know what I believe...I know the truth, but I felt sad for the people who actually WENT and bought his book.

even the negative stuff helps though.

as a famous philosopher once said ... "you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life." truer words have never been said.

24 hours of prayer

our church is seeking GOD's direction and doing it the only way we know how ... an extended time of prayer. starting this morning at 12:01 a.m. i opened up the church sanctuary for prayer asking that church members would "man" it continually asking the FATHER for help in understanding HIS will. it's been 4 hours thus far and during the roughest part of the 24 hour period the sanctuary has not been without at least one person in there praying. it's been amazing. it seems that almost every other person that comes out of the sanctuary starts talking about how know they remember that GOD is in control. funny how spending time listening to GOD seems to calm us, HIS children, down.

Coming this Sunday...

Coming this Sunday...
Originally uploaded by GoofyStuff.

saw this on flickr and i thought it was funny. it's fake of course but still funny.

morford on megachurches

here's a real interesting piece of fiction concerning JESUS being found in a closet at a megachurch. when you read it look to the side and read the other posts concerning megachurches. some excellent thoughts.

true in advertising - i am an associate pastor at a church that runs 1,500 in worship each week and thus my church could be accused of some of the same things.

crud war

last night was "crud war" which is something i look forward to every year. "crud war" would be called a food fight if anything we used was actually edible. of course, what we use is by no means edible. instead of wasting new food i ask everyone to bring all the food that has been rotting in their refrigerators and pantries. people bring more mess than you would ever believe. this year we had one family bring crayfish that had been in their frig since april (that's four months people) and another family brought three week old spaghetti.

two years ago i announced in church during worship that we needed food for "crud war" and i was presently surprised the next day when i received a "prayer request" form that had been turned in sunday. it said this:

with all the people starving in our state you still find time to waste food. now that's religion!

pretty typical. thankfully i was able to get my pastor to make the following statement the next sunday.

the youth ministry held it's annual "crud war" this past week. for those who don't know it the "crud war" is done with rotting food that is donated, except for one bag of flour and one bag of rice. robert said if you were worried about any of this food being wasted when it could be eaten by people who are starving then you are welcome to come eat it. i don't think you'll find it very appealing.

i haven't heard a complaint since then.

would JESUS spam?

comment & trackback spam is not a new thing to me but i just received "CHRISTian" comment spam. i have "CHRISTian" in quotes because i'm not really sure that you can call spam "CHRISTian." anyhow, the post below is about someone doing something very mean and hateful and some businessman/woman decided to use that post to paste their advertisement. it goes like this:

A cool trend discovery tool
I tend to blog about security things, but this amazing online tool can be used for other purposes as well.
Nice post! Visit a ministries site - learn more about ministries

Check it out when you have a chance.

i just really don't think that JESUS would spam and i'm not sure that we should either.

btw, i removed the comment because i don't want those scum getting any business from via this blog.

sometimes i just wish JESUS would clean house

today i read in jordon cooper's website that things with his diabetes are looking pretty bad, to the point that he might not make it through the whole thing. when i read that i wanted to post a comment of support on his blog and went to leave the comment. when i hit the comments on the post i was amazed to find the following comment from an anonymous poster:

I can't say I am that upset. Whatever suffering you and Wendy have, you brought it upon yourselves.

i was stunned. cooper makes reference every now and then to some unnamed persons or people who are out to emotionally hurt his wife. i seen this person(s) make a few comments but still i was amazed that anyone could be this callous.

i decided i would check the comments on his wife's, wendy's, blog to see if there was anything on it. sure enough the following comment was on it.

It's day of celebration here. You and Jordon get what you deserve.

again i was dumbfounded. how can anyone be so heartless. my hope that this is not a person that claims the name of CHRIST. for all i know it could be. sometimes i just wish JESUS would come and kick rear because that's what this calls for.

Free Thinker: Satans Slave

Free Thinker: Satans Slave
Originally uploaded by metaphorge.

based on this picture a guess it's a really good thing that allot of the CHRISTians i know are by no means "free thinkers". thank goodness they aren't satan's slaves. :)

treefinger

awhile back jonny baker mention the ambient music of treefinger. i immediately downloaded some of it and i have really enjoyed listening to it while studying. i've also used a song or two as background for some flash animations. they have once again updated their my space site and have new song for all of us to download. if you do anything with video or flash treefinger has some great music to use for background music.

a new use for my ipod

i'm sure all the other ipod users in the world knew this already but i just this week discovered that you can place text files under the "notes" section of my ipod and it will display them. this means that i have been able to place on my ipod all the chord sheets that we use for guitar and then i can view them whenever i want to. i had the chord sheets on the ipod already but only in the fashion of a usb thumb drive. i could view the files on the ipod by connect it to a computer and looking at them on the computer. now with the chord sheets within the "notes" section i can actually look at them on the ipod itself. this means that if i forget how to play or sing one of the waterdeep songs that we use for worship i can just look on my ipod.

sometimes technology actually does help with my life.

how great is my wife?

it was my wedding anniversary yesterday. pam and i have now officially spent 15 years together in wedded bliss. true romantic that i am i bought pam a lamp. sometimes i amaze even myself with how romantic i am (grin).

pam on the other hand went all out on my gift. we have a general rule of spending no more than $50 to $60 bucks for a gift no matter what the occasion. sometimes we go over a little but we stay pretty close to that range. it forces more creativity and thus the gift usually becomes more meaningful. case in point the lamp. pam quilts constantly. i once overheard her mention something about this particular lamp. i then remembered that random statement and went out looking for it. the lamp then becomes a physical reminder that i listen to my wife.

we do all of our money stuff together. i don't spend large amounts of money without going through her and she does the same thing with me. about three months ago pam asked if she could dramatically go over the spending limit. she wanted to spend one of her whole paychecks on a gift for me. who am i to try and stop her from buying a gift? so she went to work on this mystery gift. she has been dying to tell me about it for quite sometime. everyone i know has known about the gift and would keep saying how great it is. the waiting has been miserable.

yesterday pam gave me the gift. it's a two day trip to nyc to see the play "spamalot." how cool is that? two days in nyc for picture taking and then watching david hyde pierce in spamalot. i have a great wife.

bloggers i would like to meet

i'm blatantly stealing this from grant, but i've always heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. so grant consider yourself flattered.

here's a list of bloggers that i would like to meet, drink some coffee or eat some cane's with, go fly fishing with, and/or basically hang out with for an afternoon.

• grant english - reading his blog is kind of freaky because we seem to agree on so much and we even have a connection from the past - his sister was in the church where i first started my experiment in youth ministry.
  
• ian mcdonald - pam and i are planning on going back to england some time in the next few years and when we do i have got to meet ian. his blog is great. on top of that i want to see his shed.
  
• jonny baker - again when pam and i go to england (years from now) visit with jonny baker is a must. i wonder how he'll feel about a strange american just showing up at his house for supper?
  
• shane yancey - shane is a youth minister in eufaula, alabama (about 45 minutes away from where i grew up in dothan) and i really like reading about the stuff he is doing at his church. if we ever would make it over to see my wife's sister in dothan it shouldn't be too hard to meet him. of course, i haven't been to dothan in 9 years so i don't see it happening soon.
  
• ty siscoe - it's a flickr thing.
  
• underbunny - again a flickr thing.
  

of course, there are others that i would also like to meet but those are on the top of the list. i also have a list of bloggers that i have met that i would like to spend more time with - len evans and marko top that list.

nicaragua

so thursday i got back from taking some members of the youth ministry to diriamba, nicaragua. this was the third year that i took some people to diriamba. usually we go there are hang out with (basically build relationships and play) the street kids who live in the shanty town. this year we did a kind of "retreat" for some of the kids who are a part of the church we work with, helped feed kids who live in the dump, and continued to hang out with the street kids. on a whole it was a pretty good week. it was definitely cool to see some of the stuff that is now happening because of our "hanging out". last year one of our number was so overwhelmed by working with the street kids that he/she went into the process of developing a school for teaching them crafts. this year we got to see the property on which that is going to happen. it was great to know that our spending time with these kids was going to lead to an opportunity to help them work their way out of the shanty town that they presently live in.

for me the big thing this year was something i have been struggling with for three years. the first time i went to nicaragua i wanted to see the dump in managua. i was completely blown away. last year i took the youth through it and again it was simply too much. last year i was convinced that i had to be apart of making a difference within the dump. i've been struggling with how to do that and as of going to diriamba this year i still had no idea. this year we had the opportunity to work within the diriamba dump - same types of situations and problems only on a smaller scale. this was eye opening. suddenly huge problems became small enough to grasp. i still don't have the answers but i realized within these visits that the diriamba dump present a small enough evil to act as "trial run" for helping some of the people. when we figure out what will work within the diriamba dump i'll at least have a starting point for working within the managuan dump.

while i don't have any real answers right now i do have a couple of things that i am going to start working on. first, we ran into one easily fixable issue in the dump in the fact that some of the kids didn't have bowls, plates, or anything else to put their daily free meal in. if you don't have a place to put the meal in then you don't get a meal. i saw kids bringing plastic grocery bags and cereal boxes to have their meal placed in. they had found these within the dump itself. so our first step as a youth ministry is to start raising bowls.

the second thing i am going to start working on is stolen from tony campolo. i once heard dr. campolo talk about some of his students developing a strategy for teaching haitian street kids to make and sell shoes made out of old tires. i'm convinced the same thing could work within the diriamban dump. i'm presently trying to find out as much as possible about how to do this. this may not be the answer for us but it is at least a step in the direction of learning what can work.

all i know for sure is that i don't feel that i can stop trying to correct a situation that smacks of evil. that's what it is. it is just plain evil for someone who was made in the image of my GOD to be reduced to living in a pile of trash.

bbc sport | fun and games | pained and shamed

bbc sport | fun and games | pained and shamed

the above is a bbc article on strange british sports injuries. a few of them are doosies.