It is almost here.  It is with a weird mixture of excitement and sadness that Sunday approaches.  I am excited that I will be going to Brazil for 13 days and spending a week with a local pastor in the Rio de Janeiro district of the UMC.  I am sad that I will be leaving my nearly full-term pregnant wife and our little girl.  Sarah has repeatedly committed to severely beating me if Pax comes before I get back, so... Pray that the little guy is patient.  

I am going this Thursday to get some vaccinations.  There are certain things that are sort of fundamental to being a functioning adult citizen that I haven't quite grasped, like keeping up with what immunizations I have.  I am glad it is safe to double up on Tetanus - just in case I have had one in the last decade. Also, there have been some outbreaks of Yellow Fever in Brazil and we have a national shortage of vaccines here in the US.  That translates to lots of mosquito repellent for me.  

So what is the purpose of this trip?  Essentially it is this:  The Brazilian conference of the United Methodist Church is the fastest growing UM conference in the world.  Our mission is to go down there and see what they are doing right.  The bishop there, Paulo Lockman, is part of the reason the conference has experienced so much growth.  After a spiritual conversion Bishop Lockman began preaching and winning many people to Christ.  Since becoming bishop he has established an evangelism school that local pastors are required to attend periodically.  We will be attending a few days of this school and then dispersing to stay in the home of a local pastor and accompany him in his ministry.   

Stay tuned for photos and updates from the field.  

Posted In: missions life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

For someone with a philosophy background and a love for apologetics when two Mormon missionaries show up at your door it is almost like getting a package in the mail on your birthday.  Last Friday was the first time this had happened to me since seminary so I was excited to invited them in and offer them some coffee (ha - just kidding about the coffee). We had a great discussion.  All three of us shared our testimonies.  I tried hard not to debate with them.  I did bring up to them the illogical idea that God was once like we are and that he himself had a 'heavenly father'.  If this were the case then the genealogy of gods would extend infinitely into the past with their never being a beginning.  I have written a paper on this here.  This made them pause and wander for a bit, but it did not hold them back for too long because the litmus test for truth for them seems to be a warm-fuzzy feeling you get when you ask God if the book of Mormon is true or not.  They held this up as the ultimate answer.  

I didn't know where to go from there.  I tried telling them that a subjective feeling is not a great indicator of truth, but to no avail.  I have compassion for them.  In a sense I wander if what they are doing was similar to what Christians did before there was good evidence for the validity of their faith.  I don't believe the Mormon faith will ever be proved valid by science or history (that would involve finding an ancient Jewish temple in North America), but their faith is sincere and hopeful that it one day will be.  I guess part of my sympathy comes from the fact that Christianity has stood the test of time and has the backing of history and reason now, and they are left to wrestle with the reality of their faith.  And seeing the painfully-true colors of something you have rested your whole life in bleed through the paint that your family and your faith community have painted over it is gut-wrenching, and I am guessing that most of us if faced with it would probably turn a blind eye.  

I am saddened that, like what happens in many churches today, these two young men have been sold on the idea that faith should be blind.  God is not a God of confusion.  He hasn't created reason, and science, and nature one way and asked us to believe in something contradictory to them all.  That is the beauty of Christianity - as time goes on the core of the Christian faith witnessed in different areas of life.  It is like seeing the true colors of something good and beautiful and holy shining through the superficial spirituality that many have painted over the church.  When we see it, it makes us want to tear away the fake paint.  And as our culture takes the form of post-Christendom we still see that a genuine faith lived out by lovers of Jesus looks more true and more beautiful day after day after day and the darkness will not overcome it.  

Posted In: theology life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

Do you ever have those music days where something just clicks and you find some great music and you just can't get enough of it.  Every once in a while I am graced by hearing some new (to me) great bands.  Tonight at The Change we started talking about Phil Keaggy and I mentioned that I always heard he was supposed to be a great guitarist, but I never heard anything of his that I really liked.  That is when someone pointed me towards Glass Harp, the band Keaggy started in.  Contrasted to his chorus-pedal-ridden contemporary recordings this stuff was hard core 70's rock and Keaggy has some great solos in there.  

I also happened upon a newer band on MySpace called All the Day Holiday – great stuff.  They have a great mixture of instrumental and vocal in each song.  A lot of their music reminds me of Explosions in the Sky – that is the band that did the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights (the movie). 

So, overall not a bad day for music appreciation.  I guess if I want anything more than serendipitous glimpses at good music I will have to stop listening to so much talk radio 

Posted In: life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

Peter Joseph's 2 hour 'documentary' (which really amounts to a conspiracy theory gone digital) entitled 'Zeitgeist' is full of falsities and poor research.  Dr. Ben Witherington gave a magnificent review of the historical and academic reliability of Joseph's review.

His review can be found here:

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/12/zeitgeist-of-zeitgeist-movie.html 

Posted In: theology life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

Sunday night was surreal.  The fog was so thick in downtown Knoxville that you could hardly see 15-20 feet in front of you.  This is not a good situation to be in if you don't know where you are going.  Such was our predicament on Sunday evening.  Before our Moravian Love Feast on Sunday night a young lady showed up at our church.  She was homeless, escaping from a bad family situation, and looking for some assistance.  It is an odd situation (calling it awkward seems to blur the moral urgency of it though) to have a homeless person show up at the steps of a fairly affluent church and not have a home for them to stay in.  Her situation came into clearer focus when we found that the local safe houses had no vacancy.  She had no family or anyone to turn to in Blount Co.  Her only other family was in Texas.  

Faced with the decision to either put her up in a local motel for the night and essentially prolong her current situation by one more night seemed vain or get her on a bus to Texas we opted for the latter and thus began our excursion into Knoxville late Sunday evening.  Our plan was to have her stay at the Knox Area Rescue Mission and get up early enough to catch her 6:40am bus to Texas.  It seemed like a good plan to me.  Luckily Roger was able to come with me and knew the downtown area well enough to get us to where we needed to be.  The fog that night was thicker than I have seen it, especially in a city.  Things always look much different in the absence of light and the denseness of fog.  Even in familiar places you lose your way and in foreign places you are simply trapped in your lostness.

Upon arriving at the Knox Area Rescue Mission we were greeted by some homeless people wandering the street and a gentleman passed out and mumbling something to us as we requested admission to the building.  When we got to the check in desk, it was evident that the folks staying the night had lived hard lives.  The fear and anxiety written in the face of the twenty-two year old girl we had in our charge was apparent.  It is in these situations that the quandary of our current church social structure is undeniably painful.  We have places for people without means, and they are not in our homes.

At this point our only other option was to leave her at the bus station overnight.  They have 24 hour security, well lit facilities and she would be less likely to miss her bus.  Roger, who had worked as an inner-city basketball coach in Knoxville for 3 years, guided us to the greyhound station on Magnolia Ave being careful to make sure we didn't park in certain areas.  The reason he told me after we were on our way home is that the area of Knoxville we were in was where 90% of the rapes, murders, and robberies took place.  Most of these are never reported on the evening news.  The few blocks around the station are known by the Better Business Bureau as the 'gun-zone'.  Unbeknownst to me, a young girl walking alone in the dark early morning hours from the rescue mission to the bus station would have a good probability of getting robbed, raped, or worse.  So, while I felt pretty spineless leaving a young girl in a bus station in downtown Knoxville overnight, in hindsight it was probably the safest solution for her we had at the time.    

As we left we had to navigate around downtown to find our way back to 129.  We took a wrong turn and ended up in Old Town.  I have only been to Old Town twice in the past.  Both times during the day when it was busy with commerce and tourism.  It the light of day it is a very eccentric part of Knoxville with whimsical shops and venues.  However, as we passed through I was struck by the numerous homeless men wandering, drinking, or sleeping on the streets normally traveled by folks who go home to a warm bed and plenty of food.  I guess the biggest shock was that I had forgotten that ghettos are in my own backyard.   

Posted In: social-issues life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

One of the highlights of our Thanksgiving:

What a motley crew!  I love you guys. 

Posted In: sappy-things life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

I knew the peaceful Thanksgiving holiday was over when we pulled up to leaves that an hour and a half later would be raked into a 3ft deep 3ft wide and 20 ft long pile, and Morgan was running naked through the house after having removed a diaper full of poo in the bathroom screaming, "POO POO, POO POO!"  To which mommy and daddy replied with thesauratical accuracy. 

The last few days were a time for Sarah and I to catch our breath a little.  She was able to go about 3 days without puking (in part due to the generous donation of 12 Zofran pills from a gracious friend).  And I was able to get started on Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.  I have been wanting to read this book for a while now.  So far it has proven fairly cumbersome vis-a-vis vocabulary.  There are often large words that have Russian origins or common words that are capitalized leaving me wandering whether or not I am missing something already.  I am only about a sixth of the way through it, so the mystery is still unraveling a bit.  However, I have heard that it supposed to make The Da'Vinci Code look like a child's book. 

Now that we are back in Maryville I have a feeling that the book will remain face down on page 101 for a while.  But with life getting back to the usual pace it was nice to have a few days to just do nothing.  Including shop.  I have always wanted to observe 'Buy Nothing Day', but we have always wound up buying something in years past.  However this year we successfully denied Madison Ave of its hold on our wallets and lives.  Looking back on it, it would have been fun to participate in a protest such as 'whirl-mart' or 'zombie-walking', but right now I am content to protest merely with my absence from the frenzied aisles of Target and Toys-R-Us.

At this time of the year in the past I begin to feel the pressure to try to divvy up the budget for parents and nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and friends.  However this year we are making a major cut in our Christmas spending for two reasons:  #1 (the more noble of the two) - I believe Christmas has become something nauseating to God; rather than save a starving child we buy an inflatable Santa or a singing rabbit.  And #2 - Sarah and I have already fallen for the lure of the 'Buy Now - Pay Later' hype and we are trying to pay now for what we bought back then.  

In conclusion, I couldn't rightly call this a Thanksgiving blog with out giving two big thumbs up to everyone that did the cooking at the LaDuke's and the Morgan's.  My doctor thanks you.   

 

Posted In: life social-issues

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

(This video is about 56mb, so it may take a minute or so to load.) 

After weeks of anticipation we discovered that we are pregnant with a boy!  We were really expecting another girl, so this came as quite a surprise.  I felt a little more comfortable having another girl because we already had some practice with Morgan.  But now I am a little more nervous.  I feel like Sarah  will have a little more influence in Morgan's life as she gets older, and now I will have a little more influence in the new baby's life.  Maybe that is just the remnants of a sexist culture I haven't quite flushed out of my system.  Maybe it is because I am a man and know what it is like to be a boy.  With a girl I could just be blissfully ignorant.

We haven't really even talked about boy names.  Elijah keeps coming up, but I am not quite sold on doing the whole Biblical name thing yet.  If it was a girl Sarah almost had me sold on Rahab Magdeline - the two prostitutes associated with Jesus.  That would have been a very good counter-cultural, upside down grace kind of name.

I mentioned  Pax to Sarah the other day and she seemed to like it.  Pax is latin for Peace.  It would be really cool to have the first and middle name a combo dedicated to the peace of a certain region, like  'Pax Darfur' or 'Pax Iraq'.  However, I found out from a friend that Pax is also Angelina Jolie's kid's name.  We would be taking a chance if we went with Pax.  You never know what Angelina's kid will turn out like.  However, if we had a really good middle name too we could change horses if we saw your typical child-star personality emerging from Pax Jolie.  

Maybe, 'Elijah Pax'.

Posted In: life baby

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

I have just had one of those "wow-my-life-is-boring" moments.  Every once in  a while I will go blog-hopping.  Tonight I happened upon Rob's blog.  Rob is a fellow I knew (kinda-sorta, not really) from seminary that seems to be an adventurous lad.  His blog title is 'Off On An Adventure', so that should tell you a little bit about the content.  It is all about his life in Alaska and the many adventures he has experienced as a hiker/rock climber/marathon runner.  He is getting ready to have a 7000 mile road trip!  On the other end of the adventure spectrum however, I think the last big adventure I had was... this

Well, you get the point.  

But I must admit, Rob's blog is very well written and the worst adventures do make the best stories.  

However, I think my extraordinary adventure quota will be met since I have come to serve at Fairview UMC.  As a church we take about 12 overseas mission trips a year.  And I have heard some of some interesting experiences from mission trippers, including the time when a couple of our members were driving a bus full of school supplies through the jungles of Liberia to be delivered to some impoverished children during Liberia's civil war.  They were stopped several times by rebel and national forces alike at make-shift toll booths along this jungle road.  They had enough money to pay their way through the first few stops, but when they happened to come upon one lone and intoxicated rebel 'toll-booth' operator they ended up surrendering some of their cargo at gun-point.  This case met the 'bad adventure = good story'  formula.  My first trip will be to Zimbabwe next May.   I am hoping for some good stories without the bad adventure, or at least no life threatening adventures.  

Though as I look at my life I can see the many day to day adventures of raising a child, being married, pastoring, and following the Slaughtered Lamb.  Today, Morgan learned to play one of those games where you match the cards that have the same pictures on them.  You are supposed to have them all faced down when you play, but we aren't quite there yet.  I have also seen today the 'almost there' life of someone I love.  I believe he knows what he must do, but is not aware of the peace, love, joy, and fullness God has in store for him.  This is the adventure of hope we have for those on their way to God.  I believe that God is waiting to fill our lives with wonder.  He is ready to take us on an adventure into the depths of His love and grace.  It is one adventure to experience the love and grace God has for you, and another to live your life committed to pouring that love and grace into your neighbor, your family, and your enemy.  

Posted In: life

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon

My good encouraging friend, Jason Roe, commented that he was reminded of me as he killed and gutted a deer last night.  He said that he didn't think I would approve since I look like I am a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).  if dirty hippies were a race I think Jason would be guilty of racism or at least a severe case of prejudice.  And for the record I ate a nice piece of ham tonight.  And to illustrate this point even farther, here is a never-before seen photo of me - with a mullet, substantial proof that I am not a PETA member.

Posted In: life funny-haha

Bookmark This Article: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Stumbledupon