Monsters Inc.

So I was talking to a friend the other day over lunch. We were talking about the church and culture and how the two relate. I left that conversation thinking about "Monsters, Inc." Have you ever seen it? It's the story of a bunch of monsters who work at a power plant of sorts. All of Monstropolis runs on the power that is captured from the screams of young children. The monsters go in to work, where doors are brought to their station. They open the doors (which are sort of like doors into another world - think Wardrobe and Narnia), go inside and scare kids. The kids scream, their scream is captured and converted to power. It's a rather clever story line. However, there is one thing about this job. It's a dangerous job. The monsters believe that any contact with humans or human things requires...

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Art

Ever wonder what you look like in the eyes of children? We went swimming this weekend at the home of one of our students. Hannah was in the pool the whole time. She drew a picture of the day. She's the one with girl hair and a tube around her waist. I'm the square guy with huge nipples and lots of hair. A classic pictu...

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Father's Day

I love my wife. She is awesome. She and the girls made me this amazing Father's Day gift. She had each of these pictures strung up across our living room. I went ahead and put them all together here. So co...

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Teaching

Tomorrow I get the opportunity to teach three times. First, in the morning I am part of a team of pastors who will be teaching a Father's day message from Ephesians 6. My part is the first three verses and asking the question "How can children build up their fathers?" It should be fun, but I have to keep it short, as three other pastors are doing a part of this too. After that, I'll be leading the high school ministry in a discussion of 2 Timothy 1-2. There's a really cool thing happening there where Paul continues to remind Timothy of his spiritual heritage, and then calls him to become part of someone else's heritage too. He tells him to take the things he has heard from Paul and entrust them to reliable men who will pass it along to others. The gospel is meant to be relational and I think...

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Blogs

Over the last few months I've been getting into this whole world of blogs. There are several that I read every day now. What I've noticed is that most blogs are way cooler than mine.Haha . Besides that, these people are dedicated. I try and write on here as often as I think about it, but it is still way sporadic. These other bloggers are writing at least once a day and Carlos writes like 3 times a day. That is some crazy dedication. I just don't have that much to say. I could give updates about every little thing I do (which I guess is what Twitter does) but I just don't think that would be very interesting. Anyway, I think in the future it will be a great way to stay in touch with supporters, and with our church. But for now it's more of an outlet, a place for me to put my thoughts out there....

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Fundraising

We are in full on fundraising mode at this point. After a couple of weeks of accumulating names and addresses, our first letter has been sent off. We need to raise quite a bit of money - something like $3000 per month of support. It's quite a challenge and quite overwhelming. I hate asking people for money. It's really difficult for me to do. Aside from letters, there are some people that I have set meetings up with and have begun to share our vision for what God wants us to do. That's kind of fun because I get to talk about something that I have a passion for. I hope that people get a sense of what it is that God is putting on my heart and catch a vision for how they can help make it a reality. It's really important to me to have the support of my family and friends and so I'm looking forward...

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