Also, this week.

• LookupCenter.org
• thesavageathlete.com
• landorhomes.com

Today, I am just enjoying the quiet while I write and think a little bit.  The next few weeks are going to be a radical shift for my family and I.  I’ve never done a long-distance move before.  I’ve contemplated it when I interviewed at churches in Lake Havasu, AZ and Kalispell, MT & sent a resume out to Juneau, AK.  As you can tell probably, Becca & I are really excited about the move.

There is a bittersweet part of moving in all of it too.  We had gotten pretty close to our church family at Narrow Road Community Church.  I mean, they knew we were looking for where God would take us since we first started attending there.  I had mentioned it in prayer enough while I was frustrated with the job search (which was often).  They knew also that it was wearing on us considering Becca being pregnant and also the primary provider for our family financially.  But we love these people.  We had gotten involved in numerous ways (not as much as we wanted even) and really felt loved.  They have in many ways become family to us.

I know there are problems in every church, but being at Narrow Road Community Church has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with a church… warts and all.  We have been blessed beyond measure, prayed for, lifted up emotionally & spiritually and invested into while being a part of the family there.  There’s been way more opportunity to get connected with the church family that I’ve never been able to take advantage of.  More ways to serve than you could shake a stick at.  I can honestly say that no one in that church feels like they are left out feeling that they don’t know how they can get involved.  If they do, it’s their own fault.  Now I know not every church is destined to be a mega-church.  I had never understood that till I came to Narrow Road.  Some churches are meant to be small.  Small is what they do best.  A congregation can be cared for adequately.  People can grow together in ways they just can’t in a big church.  The pastors (both of them) excite in me a passion for preaching the Word, really caring about people, and just being around them you know you are loved and cared for yourself.  I don’t know if Narrow Road is destined to be a large church, but I can say they do small really well and I think they would do large well too.

I am not belittling the lessons I’ve learned elsewhere before coming to Narrow Road as a burned out (probably mostly my own fault) recent Associate Pastor from another local church, but here is where I’ve been re-ignited, reforged, and set aflame with passion again.  Narrow Road has been a refuge for me and a place of renewing for both Becca & I.  I hope in the future I can maintain the relationships I’ve found at Narrow Road and bridges can be built in the Kingdom of God for God’s Word to be spread all the more because of it.

But if you aren’t doing anything on Sunday and you live in the area, we’d love to have you join us.  Check out the post on the church website for more info.

Keep our family in prayer over the next few weeks.  I am waiting to hear about a potential job with a church.  I won’t say where or anything yet, but in my opinion, it looks like a promising opportunity.

More than anything though, is that we are where God wants us to be.  Right now we are really enjoying the church we are at right now.  They have been a great family of people we’ve come to love.  With a growing family and all, it is time to find something full-time for me again.   Hopefully, it is doing what I love to do in ministry and what God wants me to do.  In this, the prayer is for God’s guidance to lead us where He wants us.

found via shallowfrozenwater (awesome find by the way)

I am trying a different tack.  Yes, the sharp pointy things that you used to put on your teacher’s chair but now you would probably get expelled from school for doing because in our culture you were trying to kill the teacher with tetanus instead of a mere tack.  Tact.  Yeah that word too.

A simple journal.  This is a deliberate effort to be more real.  Be more myself.  Something like that.  I think the other voice was me too, but it was a critical, self-absorbed version of myself trying to shoot myself with the same gun I was trying to aim.  Maybe it’s all a bad analogy… maybe I should just shut up my critical self and write more?

image credit to one of the most unflattering images I’ve ever taken of myself

For me, I’d probably become some kind of wilderness recluse.  Buy a cabin in the middle of the woods and have most things delivered. Books and stuff I’d order from Amazon.com.  I’d learn about trees and roots and what to eat and what won’t kill you in the woods. Maybe even live completely off-grid and invest in some kind of alternative energy while I grew my own food.  In short, I probably wouldn’t be much help to anyone outside my own family.

Maybe it’s not just a burden that I carry of debt and having to try to supplement income every month.  Maybe it’s the blessing that through my situation (however much I dislike it) that I can be used to be a blessing to others. If I weren’t in need, it might be rather difficult for me to understand those who are in need.

I thought I’d share the picture above of Aidan getting ready to completely obliterate his birthday cake.

A little tune up and maybe a light dusting brings it to happy life once more.

As of late, new friends have been encouraging me to get out the ol’ git fiddle again regularly.  My friend Mark, especially.  Tonight I got another surprise.   Another new friend who I’ve played with at church a few times… well, I never really realized how good he actually was.  His name is Nathan Hiltner.  Check out his video below.  The sound and framerate are a little off, but you will get the idea.

My dad has AIDS.  He’s not a homosexual.  He’s not a wild and crazy sex addict.  He doesn’t live in Africa somewhere.  He’s a regular guy just like you and me.

I don’t usually broadcast it out or make a big deal about it, but this disease has affected my life too.  It isn’t just some random disease to me.  He’s lived with full-blown AIDS since 1994.

I’ve been by the bedside while I watched someone I love battle the various illnesses that come as a result of a poor immune system.  I’ve seen the reactions that people still have to people with AIDS,  the judgement & the scorn still associated with it.

AIDS is still a disease that has touched millions in our day and age.  In the next decade you will know at least a few people who have AIDS.  In fact you already may and maybe you don’t even know it.  In fact, they might not even know it yet either.

The image included is my dad with his grandson (my son) Aidan.

It’s not who I want to be.  It is by nature who I have become and I dislike it.  Oh sure, I justify it through saying it’s a great way to connect to people I’d never meet in real life.  All the while, real life is going by.  When I was about five my dad and I moved to Jesus People USA.  Good place, good vision… but terrible leadership.  They lived in a commune that was self-sufficient.  They had work crews that would go out and build porches (those great big five or eight story ones) or be a part of a roofing crew.  The money from these projects would come back into the ministry and it would be used for things like food & shelter.  I was young but I have an astounding memory about my early childhood.  The homeless would come in off the streets of Chicago and we’d feed them.  Resurrection Band (or REZ) was in their heyday and Cornerstone Music festival was all the rage.  I remember kids my age coming into the ministry with no clothes and old boots that hurt their feet.  I remember my dad giving a kid a pair of my shoes because he had holes in his feet from wearing some old pair of workboots without socks.  There was a guy down the hall who had a huge mohawk and a turtle that had his address scrawled onto it’s shell with a sharpie.  It was in reality a remnant of the Jesus People movement in the 60′s and 70′s, with a distinct 80′s twist.

We were probably there for about eight months.  I started kindergarten early.  We left because there were some in the school who used more corporal means of punishment for the children.  Wooden spoons to be exact.  I wasn’t a bad kid, but if I didn’t memorize a verse for homework or spoke out of turn or something, I got the spoon.  The bruises would last a few days.  My dad saw this and decided he needed to talk to the leadership.  They didn’t see his point of view and we left.  My dad is a fan of spanking and to this day is very adamant about it, but he knows the difference between abuse and discipline.

But back to the point.  I am growing as a Christian day by day.  I have my struggles.  This idea of community keeps coming back to me.  Not the exorbitant online facades we throw up to mimic  genuine interaction and life together, but the real thing.  Not a group or a place but a reality of purpose and vision that supersedes the petty everyday Christianity we get caught up in so easily.  Today’s churches can become so centralized and self indulgent that they forget why they are there in the first place.  See Matthew 28:16-20

As I write this, I write it with clarity that I can’t just pick up and move my family out to some woodland hut and begin a new experience of community off the cuff.  I am not even sure if it’s what God wants from me right now in my life.  I do know that even if the most radical of ideas is what God wants of me then doing anything else is sin.

Maybe I should learn to make my own clothes first?

For the Sake of Christian Community – Audio Version