Moving

It's been awhile since I've posted here for a lot of reasons, but I'm needing to move the blog over to a new site for a while, perhaps permanently.  

I've been working with creating a whole new personal site through apple's iweb and mobileme, and it just makes sense to use that as my blogging space as well.  It also makes it easier to post some sermons and that sort of thing.  It's a little vain, but that's because the site needs to function as an online resume as well.  

enjoy.  

www.stevenhovater.com

Lana

Lainey

Testing Picasa

Uploaded from iPhone.

Testing the Picasa connection

Testing blogwriter iPhone app

I'm thinking about shifting the old blog around, and am testing new inputs.

App Store Suspicions

Is it just me, or does every application in the apple app store for iphones seem to be reviewed by a lot of people shamelessly promoting the app?  So many of the reviews seem suspiciously like cheeky advertisements.  They don't seem very trustworthy at all.  

Assessment

Okay, so now that grad school's over, I'm kind of in the process of really assessing where I'm at vocationally, and trying to get a bigger picture of what's going on in our church.  It looks like there are some areas that have been outside of my youth ministry domain that I'm going to be more involved with in a leadership sense.  One of those areas is the big tent we call "Adult Education".

Adult Ed really includes all the stuff we do to help people grow and mature.  Sometimes it's a gloss for the official, set times of bible study that we've committed to as a community, and you can see how "education" is our choice term as opposed to "discipleship".  That language actually says something about our approach, and that drives me a little nuts, but for now it's the terminology we've got.  I'll have to save my beef with the terminology, and the priorities it betrays, for another day.  

Tonight what I want to write about is our need to develop clear, attainable, measurable goals for our discipleship process, even if we leave it in educational terms for the moment.  Right now what we have by design is a perpetual curriculum, one that rotates through the canon on a set time frame (six years), and then begins the rotation again.  Other items are thrown in as needed in between the canonical series, and there are occasional elective classes as well, but the rotating curriculum is the heart of the program.  

It seems that there are some assumptions that go along with this.  First of all, it seems to assume that you never really master the subject.  Now I think there may be a place for balance here, because I know that there is some truth to the thought that there's always something else to lear, other levels of meaning to grasp.  However, I think that as it stands, part of what we communicate realistically is that we don't really expect learners to, well, learn.  We rather expect that six years from now they will likely need just what they are studying now, and again six years after that.  Now that's not completely true...in reality each section of the canon isn't necessarily touched, so there would be some variety next time around.  

However, I still think there is an important issue with the church where we become so fixated on our imperfections that we forget to make room for the possibility that God can actually do something with us, so that over time we do actually become different.  So we do become more virtuous, we do become more wise and understanding, our knowledge of the scriptures does grow.  When we insist on remaining self-effacing and allow our pessimistic anthropology dominate our theology of sanctification, then we become content with the status quo.  "We're not perfect" becomes an acceptance of the status quo rather than a statement of intent.  

Our failure to assess movement and growth is somewhat rooted in this issue.  We don't really expect there to be much growth.  We almost assume growth to be impossible.  

More later.  

Brian King, and the Price of Friendship

My brother called  told me that an old friend, Brian King had died yesterday (Saturday).  He was an amateur pilot and had crashed, I think while traveling from Georgia back to his home in Birmingham.  Besides all the others who will mourn him, his wife is left with the care of their kids...I think they had four, but I'm not sure. 

Brian lived in birmingham and went to Church with Hovie.  He's worked with teenagers for as long as I've known him, at first professionally and then as a long term volunteer, and he was a pretty hilarious person for the role.  He would say and do some of the craziest stuff.  Not much of a filter, and he had no problem putting something awkwardly bluntly.  I think maybe a fifth of the time I was ever around him I was embarrassed, but somehow it was okay, because he really made me laugh.  

When I was ( I think) a freshman in high school, some of my friends in florence went to church where Brian was the youth minister, and so I got to hang out with him from time to time.  Once we went on this ski trip to North Carolina, probably one of my first really long church youth group trips.  I think if I looked back on it now, from my professional lenses, the trip might have driven me a little crazy, but at the time it was just one of those things I kind of needed.  He really did a pretty awesome job of making me feel really welcome, like I belonged, and for an awkward fourteen year old kid, that was a pretty significant thing.  Even this past year when I saw him we still laughed about some of the things on that trip, including...

On the way back, we stopped at a McDonalds outside Chattanooga.  I don't know why I was held up...maybe just last in line or something.  Anyways, the bus left and I got left behind.  Keep in mind this was 1992 or so.  Which means that even though (amazingly) I think he had a cell phone, none of us kids had them, and I definitely didn't have his number.  Which meant that I was kind of screwed, but no sweat, I was a pretty composed kid.  I got some change and called home, and my folks stated digging up his cell number, and I gave them time to find it, and called them back from the payphone to get it.  It was  a pretty shady area, and I remember this guy came up to me at the payphone and asked me if I was wearing any gold.  that was weird, particularly if you knew me as a high school freshman.  Gold?  Really?  

Anyways, by the time I got the number and called Brian, they were just a minute or so from being back to the McDonalds...maybe even pulling up.  I guess I was there 25-30 minutes.  

We laughed about that for a long time then, and the memory of it for an even longer time.  It makes me sad that I won't be able to laugh with him about it again for a while.  But I'm glad that I experienced Brian.  

That's the real kicker of life:  we are allowed to love, to share friendship, to laugh, but always it is only for a little while.  Brian's "little while" was shorter than it should have been, but even if he had lived a nice long life, it would only have been a little while, "a breath" as scripture says it.  So we live and love always knowing that the price for friendship, the price of love, will always be the same.  We cannot help but pay it: we will part company and bid each other farewell.  even those of us who believe that the parting is for a different sort of "little while" must acknowledge the grief that comes with the parting.  

I think it requires some faith to believe in the promise of reunion.  But that measure of faith is a subject for a different day  what I'm thinking about tonight is the faith that says that even though we must part company, even though we pay the price of farewells, love and friendship are worth the price.  

I believe that they are worth the price.  

The world will miss you, Brian King.

Movies my Wife Will Not See This Summer

Okay, so this weekend marks not only graduation weekend for myself and my fellow HUGSR students, but it also is the opening weekend for Iron Man, which in my view marks the beginning of this year's summer movies.  Now, as a fan of both comic books and their typically cheesy movie adaptations, I'm pretty psyched about going to see this.  Who knows if it'll be great or not.  I think the most likely bet is that I'll feel similarly, though perhaps on a more muted level, as I did with Transformers.  Beyond that though, it just kind of makes me excited for all of the fun movies coming out this summer.  

The catch is that my beautiful wife has made a vow to herself that she isn't going to watch movies in the theater anymore.  This isn't for ethical reasons, just her own viewing displeasure.  So, since I have not made any such rash vow, it seems as though there are a limited number of options:

1.  I will go to the movies this summer primarily with other people.

2.  She will break her promise to herself.  

3.  She will try to coerce me to not watch movies.  (and fail at this attempt.)

I'm not sure which pony I'm betting on here, but the summer is a long enough stretch to test her endurance on the matter.  

Here are some things I'm looking forward to watching, in no particular order.  Perhaps I should make a priority list.  I know others will pop up.  

Iron Man

Hellboy 2

Indiana Jones

Incredible Hulk

The Happening 

Prince Caspian

I'd also like to see Red Belt, but I don't think I'd call it a summer movie.  It's on the edge.  Looks good though.  

*Update*

Add to the List:

The Dark Knight  (an obvious omission.)    

Redeeming Ecclesiastes

While I was grousing about the chains grad school put on my reading life in the last post, I should have mentioned that every once in a while, a book would come along in my required reading that would truly influence my thinking.  This actually happened fairly often, and I have to admit that while there was probably some chaff, the crew at HUGSR really exposed me to some pretty  provoking material.  

One of these books was a neat little tome on the book of Ecclesiastes that I was assigned this last semester.  For a long time I think all I'd ever gotten out of Ecclesiastes was a pretty pessimistic take on life, something like "Life is short, and while I tried to make it worthwhile, it's all meaningless anyways, so obey God."

Now there may be some truth to that, but this sweet little book by James Limburg really provoked me to a different understanding of the book.

Basically, my new lens for Ecclesiastes is:  "Life is short, and sometimes doesn't make sense.  But, it's all a gift from God, and God expects you to receive the joy within it and live it as well as you can.  So understand your own mortality, and make the most of your life while you can."

Now that may have some elements in common with the other lens, but its enough of a different spin to really make for a different experience with the book altogether.  It's really interesting how the book has been left to die by the modern church.  I think that may be because it , in this reading reuses to give up on the present for a pie in the sky view of the future.  I think this book challenges us not to just become more "spiritual", but to truly embrace physical, bodily life.  

So, I feel like Ecclesiastes used to be a dead book to me, but now it's one of my favorites.  The book's been redeemed for me, brought back into the canon.  It's amazing the difference a new interpretive lens can make for a book.  I wonder what else in the canon I need to start looking at with a set of interpretive lenses.  What am I missing...what other lost books need to be redeemed?    

A Reader's Freedom

After a long seven years, I'm graduating this weekend with my MDiv.  It's been a good process for me.  the formal academic discipline imposed a clear set of expectations for learning, and that's good when I tend to be on the undisciplined side of the ball generally.  

however:

Grad school has a major paradox in the fact that it forbids success to anyone who does not genuinely love to read.  If you don't like to read, a Masters is simply not for you, my friend.  but the paradox comes in the fact that the demands of school impose very tight boundaries on your reading choices, so that pure pleasure reading can become a practical impossibility.

So, over the past seven years, I've been able to sneak a book here and there, over christmas break or occasionally in the summertime (my hardest time to read vocationally).  But I've generally felt like any time I was reading something that wasn't listed on a syllabus, I was committing literary adultery.  A furtive moment with a book before bed or while pooping simply was all I have really allowed myself.  

And thus my gratitude for my freedom renewed.  

Now I feel like I can regain the part of myself that absolutely loves to read.  I used to read voraciously:  at lunch, before bed, in the morning, in my office, pretty much anywhere and everywhere.  I have sincerely missed that part of myself.  But no longer!  I have jumped into Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, and anticipate some morning time with Herodotus in the coming days.  

Coming days?  Nah.  Right now.  Enough blogging for this morning...I've got a book to read.  

I do solicit recommendations.

A readers profile.

George, my brother in law, wanted me to come up with a list of my ten favorite books ever.   The hard part of that it's a narrow slice of a broad category...if he wanted my ten favorite thrillers or books that made me laugh, it might be easier, but as it is I'm left comparing stephen King with Henri Nouwen, and my list is full of books that are all over the map.  Here's what I'm looking at giving him so far.  I want to annotate it, but I need to just look at the list first.  

1.  Till we have faces by C.S. Lewis

2.  The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

3.  Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen

4.  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

5.  The Lord of the Rings, By JRR Tolkein

6.  The Dark Tower by Stephen King  (I know this is cheating to put 7 books in one slot, but I don't care.)

7.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

8.  The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

9.  ?  I'm tempted to put something by Chuck Palahniuk here, but don't know what to pick.

10.  The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas

Transformers

Right about now I'm feeling pretty vindicated in my anticipation of the Transformers movie.  I've pretty much been waiting on this since childhood, and for a summer action movie involving giant fighting robots, I think it's pretty dang good.  It's probably not going to change your life, but it entertains with some pretty sweet eye candy.  

not so critical!

I think it's hard for lot's of people, maybe particularly for folks in ministry, but it is so easy for me to slip into a mode of being over critical.  

I mean that for self-criticalness as well.  Like yesterday.  After preaching, I felt two competing needs.  The first was the desire to value what had happened, the good that was done, the presence of the word of God in the church through the sermon and  the act of preaching.  I really want to recognize and value that.  Competing with that, though, is the need to develop and become a better preacher, which I think involves a level of self-critique.  I know there are odds and ends of my technique, things that I could do to improve my level of skill in delivering the word.  

So these two things compete, and I really try to balance them.  It's really difficult, though.  

Home?

Has anybody noticed the shift in the way people talk about the places where they abide, their homes?  I've always referred to it as the place where I live but now, it's also common for people to talk about where they Stay.  Here's an example at urban dictionary.    I think this concept makes me kind of sad.  

Intern Team

I was just thinking this morning about how the trio of interns working with us this summer is really gelling into a wonderful team.  We've had so many great interns over the past few years, people willing to dedicate some serious time to loving on the kids in our youth ministry at PV.  

with three, they are beginning to outnumber the staff, and the energy these kids are bringing to the table really is pretty awesome.  

Good work, guys!  

Pollicious

Today they're using one of my polls at Pollicious.  Check it out!  

1408

Holy Crap.  

For whatever reason, Rampton and I decided to blow the free night tonight by letting Stephen King scare the crap out of us.  We went to see 1408, which is from a  King short story.  I love King's work, and really went on a tear trying to read a bunch of it over the last couple of years.  I've never read this bit of terror, though.  

It builds like crazy, and disarms you, then throttles you.  It's cruel, subtle, strong, and uses all kinds of trickery to bait you into its traps.  Even when it telegraphs them, you can't help but be pulled in.   

I hate movies like that.

But, for those of you that like them, this is worth a try.  I think it's pretty well done, and John Cusack makes it happen.  He carries the whole thing on his back, since most of time it's just him freaking himself out in this room.  

Gave me the willies.  

Powerpoint Church

Garr Reynolds wrote this blog entry about this article in the washington post this last week.  

I think there are some very similar questions to be raised about how Powerpoint is used in the church. Generally speaking, we use it poorly, in my opinion. I think much of what is said in the above could be used for us, if we substitute "sermon" or "lesson" for "presentation".

I still am guilty of much of this, but I've really tried to move towards a different style of using powerpoint, one that lets it support the content I'm working with, instead of duplicating it, replacing it, or dominating it in the development stage.  Powerpoint does those things when we forget that the slides don't do the teaching, they're meant to reinforce or provide emphasis to the content that is coming directly from the person.  One good rule of thumb to make sure that we're on the right track might be counterintuitive, but if our PPTs can be read through and our message comprehended without the oral communication that should come with it, then that probably means that we're letting it do to much of the talking.  If that's true, then we should expect that people will just read the slides, instead of listening.  On the other hand, if our slides are designed to enhance what we're saying orally, then they are really going to be minimal and poignant.  

Less is definitely more!