sorry to hear it

the whole kyle lake death during a baptism thing is very bizarre. i feel for the lake family and the ubc family.

i'm not sure if i want to laugh or cry

here's the link to the ibelieve cap and lanyard that you can order and place upon your ipod shuffle.

laugh? if it is someone pointing out how stupid believers can be with our "CHRISTian" paraphanalia.
cry? if they are actually serious about this.

prayer wall

the above photo is from the simple way. in their basement they have a coal bin which they converted to a devotional area. on the walls they have tacked up prayer reminders. i really like the idea of having physical prayer requests tacked up in front of you and i decided to use something similar within our youth worship service on wednesday nights. so we created a portable prayer wall. it can be folded in half and moved each week.

here it is:

it just gets better and better

i would like to say that i hate the brag about the great gift that that the walters have given to me by giving me one of their "family passes" for the houston u2 concert but that would be a lie. i love the fact that it seems to get better and better.

today, sharon informed me that david, her husband who drives for u2, has been able to get us the appropriate wrist bands for us to be in the circle of the stage. oh yeah! i'm going to be in the circle! oh cool is that?

of course, it only got better when sharon also said that david had also rigged it for us get to be inside the venue while things are being setup staging, lighting, possible sound check, etc. again, how cool is that? i also get to bring in my camera and take all the pictures i want. i am very excited about this.

oh yeah!

i just got through reading dan kimball's latest blog entry on why youth ministry is so important and it was wonderful. it's nice to see when senior pastor's get youth ministry. so many pastors think they "get it" because most everyone of them have been a "youth minister" for a few months or a couple of years. they held a youth ministry position while they waited "to move up the ladder" to a senior pastor position. just look around and you'll see that almost every senior pastor has held sometime time of short term youth ministry position. thus they think they know what youth ministry is all about.

that's why it doesn't make any sense at all when they ignore youth ministry, treat it like a baby-sitting service, or treat it like it's just a way to entertain teens. that's what makes dan kimball's post so great - he gets it.

all that you can't leave behind

thanks to some wonderful people friday night i will be singing at the U2 concert at houston, texas. i've mentioned before that the dad of one of the families heavily involved within the youth ministry drives for various musicians and their tech crews. he is presently driving for u2 and james taylor. the family has been gracious enough to give me one of their "family passes" for the concert and therefore i get to bounce around with all the other people there. i am VERY EXCITED!

back home

after a week in philadelphia i am back home. as some of you know i went to the simple way, an intentional CHRISTian community (basically a bunch of believers living in the inner city and trying to make a difference). it was allot of fun. i'll talk about it more later.

i heard a rumor that some at parkview thought i was gone to another church "in view of a call" (this is part of the process of a southern baptist minister moving from one church to another). anytime things are tense at a southern baptist church and a minister goes off for a little while it is likely that some will think that he/she is at another church and considering leaving the old church. of course, that is not where i am right now. pam and i both feel secure that we are supposed to be at parkview during this time. they'll have to fire me to get rid of me. of course, pam and i will be going to new york/ohio in november and then colorado in december so people will have another option to speculate concerning me leaving ... when it isn't actually happening.

starting again

when i first got at parkview our wednesday night youth worship service had about 15 to twenty youth coming. it was a small intimate group within a large church (about 1500 average worship). over the next several years the group started growing in numbers and hopefully most importantly spiritually. for almost five years the youth ministry has been booming even though our church has had some serious issues over the past year. two months ago we would had around 100 kids at our wednesday night. of course, two months ago our church had a small split (about 300 people left - though very few youth) this whole thing hadn't affected the youth ministry too much because we really didn't lose any kids directly from it and very few of their parents left (i personally encourage all our kids to go to and be committed to their parents' church). that was until hurricane katrina. katrina kicked out butts. we had to move the locations that we used over a month or so. on top of this the church's wednesday night bible study went south very quickly. so the numbers slide began. tonight we had 32 (plus 4 adults who stayed outside and talked). it's a very different feel. i'm not a big numbers guy but it definitely feels strange missing half the normal room. this week is homecoming week for one of our main schools and i know that was some of it but i honestly believe that we will probably start averaging around 50.

i don't know what GOD's plans are right now with our wednesday nights. the wried thing is that i am kind of excited about whatever is going to happen. i can't completely understand it. i guess some of it is that i feel the whole thing is going to force me to depend even on GOD for whatever is going to happen. some of it also may be that it is going to force me to push some limits and try some new things. i don't know what the future holds but for some reason it doesn't seem that bad.

flash animation - acts 13:1-3

here is a flash animation i created for our commissioning service for the austins (a family who are going on mission to peru). the animation is composed of the words of acts 13:1-3 along with a song form treefinger. i really like treefinger's ambient music.

the end is near

after a long time of waiting i get to go to the simple way this saturday. i'm going to spend a week with the folks at simple way and i am very excited about it. i can't really tell you why i'm going all the way to philadelphia to just hang out with a group of people that i don't know. i was asked today if it was a conference or something. nope, not really. i heard the story of the simple way starting when i heard a message from shane claiborne and at that time i thought "hey, i would like to meet those people." i called them up and they said okay. since then i've read a bunch of stuff that they sent and recommended and it has only increased my desire to meet them.

i really can't wait to get there.

here's the post on the reading pack they sent me to read. the other source they recommended was schools for conversion which is a book written by a combination of people who are involved within the new monasticism movement. i've read about half of it thus far and i have been very impressed with it. i especially enjoyed shane claiborne's chapter on downward mobility.

tyrone prothro broken leg

tyrone prothro broken leg
Originally uploaded by beefcakejcc.

another angle of the moment prothro's leg was broken. again OUCH!

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Vancouver declares Tom Jones Day

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Vancouver declares Tom Jones Day


it's about time this fine entertainer was honored with a day named after him. i challenge anybody to find another entertainer named tom who has done half as much for the undergarment industry as tom jones has done. that's not to even mention all the wonderful film and television jokes that he has been the butt of. tom jones is a true welshionian hero.

tyrone prothro's broken leg

above is the image of tyrone prothro's injury at saturday's alabama/florida game. i couldn't believe this when i saw it happen. you could tell it was a terrible break the instant it occurred. i just started shouting to my youngest son (who is squimish) "don't look at the television." of course, this was the wrong thing to say because all it did was make him focus on the television. i just hope prothro ends up recovering from this injury. wether he ever plays football again doesn't really matter after an injury like that.

bike jousting

rise of 'mutant bike' culture | csmonitor.com
what will they think of next? i found out about this as a side note from a former youth's photo. he made a tall bike and by looking around a little i found out that people all over the place are making "tall bikes" and using them to joust. personally it all looks pretty cool to me.

here are a few links:

• a gallery of photos
  
• wikipedia entry on tallbike jousting
  
• new york mag article on bike jousting
  

word verification

sorry guys and girls but i have had to enable to "word verification" option on the comments of this blog. the spam comments were just getting unbearable.

antagonistic spam

as i posted before our church went through what i would call a "minor" split awhile back (others would call it a "major" split). basically 250 people out of a church that averages 1,500 in worship left to form another church. while i didn't like the fighting that was a part of it i'm really not too upset about the split because i have been telling our former pastor for four years that we could solve our space problem by forming a new church and getting church members to go over to it. personally i would much rather form new churches when a church gets to large for its space rather than building new buildings. forming new churches is the best way to grow the kingdom of GOD on earth. so while i wish the manner of it happening had been better i'm really not too upset about the result of there now being two churches.

of course, not everyone agrees with me.

this past week i received following comment on my church blog.

You cannot decide when you'll be a family member and when you'll not be one. Where were these "family" members when they were needed to stand strong at the onset of the Parkview craziness? Those who steadily fought the fight were weary and now have left. They could not be under the elected leadership of those who clearly oppose godly authority. Now the ones that are left at Parkview are mad as if their other family members left them with a mess to clean-up because now they have to step up and fight. You can never stay neutral. Choose you this day who you will serve. If everyone had done their part to be a true family member and stick together as a family in the first place - perhaps the ugly divorce would not have happened. Do you still stay in contact with your friends who were on the front-lines at Parkview, were injured and now moved on? Or have you cut them off? I would say to you that you are not acting like Jesus and that you actually abandoned your family. Quit acting like your holier than thou and have all the answers. Practice what you tell us in the youth. Let's go beyond the 4 walls of our youth group and actually be a part of the church.

the comment was made by someone supposedly named "james" but "james" didn't leave a last name, email address, or web address that i could respond directly to him/her. so basically "james" left an anonymous critical comment.

of course, being a slight "techno-nerd" i know that when you post on a blog you leave a "cyber footprint" behind. thanks to some tracking software i was able to find out the ip address of the commenter and then to determine who owns the ip address. this comment that is supposedly from a teen is probably not. the comment was posted at lamar advertising at 7:00 p.m. at night. i hate anonymous comments but it fun when it turns out that there is a way to make the anonymous commenter not so anonymous.