Q & A

It’s that time of year again. Yes, one of the scariest times of the year. When people from all over gasp in horror, and shriek out the ghoulish question… “Is ok to celebrate Halloween, to trick or treat?” The answer: No. if you dress your children up as ballerinas, or Star Wars Jedis you are going straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars. That was the trick (aka: a joke), now are you ready for the treat? Continue reading »

Well, here we are at camp once again, but this year is extra special for me. My kids, who I have been dragging to camp for years are growing up, and this year Noah has come to camp as a camper for the first time (add sniffling sounds here). It’s a strange mixture of joy and feeling very old all at once. Kind of like carnival ride induced nausea (sorry, it’s the best analogy I could come up with). One of the fun camp activities is the blob which most of our kiddos (and some of our sponsors in need of medication) conquered. I’ve included Noah’s go at it for a couple reasons: 1) of course, I had permission to publish his, and 2) it’s a man thing, which if I have to explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand it if I did. Continue reading »

Here’s an easy one for you. A friend of mine recently asked me about a major life decision for her family. The problem is that there really are no easy decisions, period. By the way, if you end a sentence with the word ‘period’ follow by the punctuation mark also named as such, is that officially redundant? OK, there may be a few easy decisions out there, but they are never about major things. Where are we going to eat tonight? Does this dress make me look fat? What’s on TV? These are all questions that we either already have the answers to, or really don’t need the answers to. But, the major decisions of life; the big ones that come along about jobs, love, life, kids, money and all that other high stress stuff, those decisions are never big fat slow softball pitches over the middle. Those decisions are always tough ones. Why couldn’t the choices be more like these: I could stay at this job that I hate, or move to my dream position for three times the cash and the beach house…hmmm I could stay single and searching, or I could marry this drop dead gorgeous supermodel with the morals of Mother Theresa who keeps throwing herself at me… hmmm I could continue to wander spiritually wondering what to do with my life, or I could open up this glowing letter with the return address marked Heaven that has been floating in my living room for the last month… hmmm Continue reading »

When I was a kid I knew what I want to be more than anything else int he whole world, Indianna Jones. Acutally, when I found out the same guy was also Han Solo I really just wanted to be Harrison Ford, I mean, how much cool do you have to have in your DNA to be that guy? By the way, when the new IJ movie comes out this summer I’ll be there with my boys at the midnight showing witht he rest of the freaks, wearing my fedora. Oh, yes I will. Anyway, I really thought I wanted to follow in the footsteps of good Doctor Jones for while as an archeologist. That is until I realized they spent most of their time digging up nasty old bones and sifting through ancient garbage and NOT dodging ancient booby trabs and outrunning huge boulders in jungle caves. Who knew? Yet, even as a pastor today, I am amazed how much archeology and bone digging is required in this profession. Continue reading »

I almost always hate it when someone says, “I know how you feel.” The reason… they usually have no clue how I feel. “Oh, you lost your arm in a horrific kitchen blender accident. I know exactly how you feel. Last year I got this nasty paper cut that…” Give me a break. Honestly, even if someone has a similar experience there are usually so many personal factors that truly associating seems cheap and distant (maybe that has less to do with others and more to do with the ego-centric way most people see the universe revolve around them. I’ve heard many other people have that problem). Continue reading »

Yeeee haw…. a brand new entry! You may or may not have noticed that we are starting a new CATEGORY of blogging articles called Q & A. I am starting to see some response from our open invitation to field some questions spiritual/biblical/otherwise and thought we’d keep them all under the same heading. So, anyway, here we go (he typed with giddy excitement)! An email I received over the weekend posed this question: John the Baptist, practiced a baptism of repentance. Jesus never sinned, why would He be baptized for repentance? Hmmm, good question. Let’s look at the text in question: Continue reading »