Home, Sweet hom...zzzzzzzzzzz.

Alright, we're back from the weekend adventure to tulsa, and I gotta say it feels good to be back home. Although feeling good isn't really all that accurate because I've acquired a pretty wicked cold, the kind that makes my whole body feel more sensitive. A little cough, the sniffle action, and the feeling that I have grown nerves in the individual hairs on my head. When I scratch my head it feels like I'm using a hundred hands.

That being as it may, I am still grateful for what was an excellent weekend with our students. The passion of a conference like this is so contagious, I think mostly because everyone has some desire to actually be there. that makes the level of intentionality go up through the roof, and the effect on worship and learning seems to be as raised as the sensitivity of my nerve endings on my head.

It feels good to be exhausted when you've spent the energy on that sort of event. But, exhausted is still what I feel, so I'm going to have to leave this entry at what it is. Perhaps I'll think through it all some more and give a fuller debriefing.

Peace.

kingdom seeking

Okay, here's a report from kingdom seekers.

We're all settled into the Sheraton on 41st street in Tulsa, and are about halfway done with the conference. The kids have really been great...playful, energetic, and engaging what's going on around them. Classes are finishing now for the morning, so we're about to go into solo time and some service projects.

the theme is dirty, and revolves around the idea of getting down to the wok of Christ. Last night they used an acronym (ugg) Decision, Intense, Real, Tough, and You. That seemd like an okay acronymn, even if a little stretched.

The themes of intensity and authenticty (real) hold a great appeal to me. The others make sense, and surely hold some value, but these two weigh substantially with me right now. I'm going to spend some of the solo time thinking and reading about the biblical concept of zeal. I think there may be some insight ready for the taking there.

The kids have been responsive so far, and I am hopeful that this will be a marker moment for them, a shaping event. All hope is in the power of Christ. Perhaps even here he is making all things new.

Later.

Off we go!

Okay, now we're down to the last few minutes before taking off for Kingdom Seekers. It's a leadership type conference based in the tulsa area, and we're taking a few kids for the weekend. It should be a blast, but I hope it moves us in the direction of being more like Jesus. I feel like that will be so, but there is one exception.

It is going to be extremely cold. I have a very adverse reaction to that. It's going to be like being in my office all weekend. But hey, it's for Jesus.

Okay, time to load up.

brrrrrrr.

Why do we keep this office so cold? this must be the coldest church office in the country. It's like some odd form of penance or something, freezing the sin out of us. brrrrrrr. I'm just not one of those people that likes to wear my coat all day, even at my desk, you know?

The other day, I could never warm up. It was cold outside, my shower in the morning was cold, and when I got home, I tried to take a warm bath, only to find that the dishwasher had used all the warmth to wipe food off of our plates. It was very sad. My wife returned a favor I had done for her a couple of months ago and heated up some water on the stove, but alas, it never turned out to be enough to get the temperature up.

While I'm griping, I know other apartment dwellers would probably argue with this, but it seems liek our pad must be the least well insulated home on the planet. sometimes I think the heater is sucking the heat out of the apartment, or that there must be a hidden window somewhere that I don't know about. Why can't I warm up???

hope and despair

this afternoon I got an email from a friend, and he sent me a short paper that laid out where he was in thinking about life and the church. I'm afraid it held a bit more despair than I was really expecting. I mean, I knew that's where he was, but it still made me sad to see him verbalize it that strongly.

Basically, I think so much of his disappointment comes from the way that the supposed body of Christ in the world, the church, fails to look anything at all look like the Jesus it claims to follow. Honestly, I think he (and I, and every sane person I know) has had a problem with that for a long time. I think the feeling intensified though, the more he was around two groups of people. The first was people that have been hurt by that attitude, and sent away from Jesus because of the foolishness of his followers. I mean, how many conversations can a person have that go "Yeah, I'm curious about Jesus, but frankly, Christians are jerks" before losing some hope that things can be different in the world. Secondly, I think he the people he was around who claimed the name of Christ just really didn't care that anything was wrong, or even see anything wrong with the church. That's a big fat problem. See, the church is majorly sick, all over the place. But it seems like most people don't feel that way at all, or don't care. I think that's because they judge churches based on the wrong criteria...How happy people there are, how successful people there are, how many show up for worship, do people participate in the worship, if they're "reaching the community" and such things as these. Nobody says, "well, our church doesn't seem to be doing very well at being like Jesus." or even, "Yeah, I'm a part of a neat church, and I think the people there are helping me be more like Jesus." When's the last time you heard something like that when people talked about churches? I don't know if I ever have, and I work in a church, one I really like! It's not that its an evil place, but sometimes I really wonder if we could throw out everything in the gospels and our church would still operate in exactly the same ways. I think that's bad. I wish that I felt like if all of sudden somebody took away the gospels then the church would collapse. But I'm just not sure that's the case. How the heck do we get there?

Hoorah! Disciple.

This morning I'm giving a big shout for joy, glad about a few things. For one thing, yesterday one of my students decided to become a disciple of Jesus. He took the rite of baptism yesterday evening in the presence of the church, gave a confession of faith in Christ, and a pledge of obedience. I was pretty pumped about it, after a long, long day. Thanks be to God!

The second matter for hoorahs is the birth of my partners' child. Ryan and Sarah, my coworkers among the youth at Pleasant Valley, gavebith to a baby boy late yesterday evening, after a long day of labor (over 20 hours seems long to me, at least). The moment wehn Karen, the doula (sp?) came out and said, "He's here!" was filled with such a unique joy, and it was great to eb a part of that. The grandparents who had come over from Oklahoma to pace the waiting room for that long wait were so relieved, and the joy...the joy was tangible. So thanks to God again!

A new life. What an unbelievable, mindblowing concept. A new person, full of the ambiguities, complexities, certaintites, hopes, fears and dreams that live inside me. It's amazing that human life, our life, exists in the form it does, with all that goes on inside of us, and among and between us. Here you ahve a new kid, who can't verbally communicate at all yet, one who sees daylight and other people for the first time. A person, catching the first glimpses of the life we share.

Yesterday also made me think of what Paul says in Romans 8 about the whole creation being in the pains of childbirth up until three present. He uses this analogy, saying that the world is waiting for it's redemption, and is fighting like a woman trying to give birth to a baby. As the time of labor stretched on yesterday, it brought my mind the labor of the world, of the whole creation. The whole world is struggling, fightin, pushing, in the hope of redemption. Exhausting.