In 2005, at the age of 26, David Platt became the lead pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, a megachurch in Birmingham. He was known as the youngest megachurch pastor in America. I imagine this has to be a pretty huge honor and responsibility.It's probably a good thing God never called me to be the youngest megachurch pastor in America because I'd probably be too prideful.That said, Platt wrote a book called Radical in 2009. I read it and then studied it a little bit with the Northeastern High School FCS group a couple of years ago. The subtitle...
Monday, November 11, 2013
Thursday, November 7, 2013
I read Kyle Idleman's first book, Not a Fan, a few years ago. It was a great book about seriously following Jesus, as opposed to being a fan of Jesus. We even used that book as the foundation for a sermon series at church. When I saw that he had written a second book, I made sure that I included it on my list of books to finish before I turned 30.Then, my Sunday School class at my new church decided to use this book as a study resource. I bought the book and read it, we're still going through it as a class, but I finished the book a few weeks ago.
Basically,...
Monday, November 4, 2013
Yes, I'm bitter. My hatred for the Red Sox just flows through me. I will admit, however, that the Sox had some incredible beards, though! One of the first posts I made on this blog was my predictions for the baseball season. So, it's time to pay the piper and see how I did.I had the Orioles winning the AL East. They did not.I had the Tigers winning the AL Central. They did!I had the Angels winning the AL West. They weren't even close.
I had the Blue Jays and White Sox winning the 2 Wild Card spots. They finished a combined 25 games under .500,...
Saturday, October 26, 2013
In 2009, my friend Daniel got me to start running. I had flirted with running before, but had never been able to get past the DTR discussion. I would run for a week or so, then give it up because... couch. But this time, I used the Couch to 5k program. It was already popular then, now it's uber-popular! I ran my first ever 5k in June of that year.I floundered with my running until the next summer, when I picked it back up. At church, my friend Nate said he wanted to run the USAF Half Marathon. I volunteered Daniel and I to run it with him. I spent...
Monday, September 16, 2013
After a 2-0 start, the Dolphins finally make their way back to Miami for a homegame against division rival the New York Jets.Heading into week 3, RB Adrian Peterson was having a fantastic season with 4 rushing touchdowns in 2 games.
The game started with both defenses flexing their collective muscles. The two teams combined for 28 total yards. Yes, 28. Early in the second quarter, things turned even more negative for the Dolphins as WR Calving...
Thursday, September 12, 2013
A few years ago, a guy named Terrace Crawford friend requested me on facebook. Terrace is a youth pastor in Virginia, he's been worth following over the past few years as I was a new youth pastor learning the ministry.Terrace maintains a website that includes a blog and some other news about his ministry over at TerraceCrawford.com. He released a book a while ago called Going Social about how to use social media in ministry.I read the book, hoping to gain some new insights on using social media in ministry. Unfortunately, this book wasn't really...
Monday, September 9, 2013
This is a continuation in my Madden Season using Madden 11. You can find week 1 here.
Miami Dolphins at Minnesota Vikings
Aaron Rodgers and the Dolphins made the trek up to the cold wilderness that is Minnesota to face Ben Roethlisberger and his Vikings.
The game between these two teams started in rather droll fashion with a scoreless and rather boring first quarter. Neither team could put anything on the board with the Dolphins defense doing the lion's share of the work for the team as the Vikings registered 4 times as long time of...
Thursday, August 29, 2013
I'll be honest, CS Lewis is one of my absolute favorite authors; but before this year, I had never read what many people consider to be his best book. My friend Daniel gave me this book a few years ago, and I never got the chance to read it. I made sure that I added it to my list of 30 books to read before my 30th birthday, because I wanted to read one of the pinnacles of 20th century Christian literature.
Before I talk about the book, I'd like...
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
At the end of August, every year, is a holiday of sorts for gamers and football fans. The new edition of Madden comes out, and people celebrate by playing the new version non-stop.
I actually started playing Madden in 1994 on the Sega Genesis. My little brother and I would play. He would constantly run backwards when he got the ball so that I could win. I genuinely don't think we ever finished a single game. We'd get frustrated and/or bored with...
Thursday, August 22, 2013
One of the most awesome things about the church where I'm ministering is that we do a Wednesday night outreach ministry. Our community has a lot of needs, and one of those is food. So, every Wednesday night we prepare a meal for the people of our neighborhood.Last night, they came in droves! In the youth ministry alone we had 40 people (about 10 more than usual). Counting everyone, I think we had 100 people in our outreach program.It was also the first day of school, which meant that every single student was totally wired. I knew it was going to...
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of those characters in history that I wanted to read more about. I'll be honest, biographies are generally my least favorite genre of book to read. The problem isn't the historical significance, it's the inane amount of fluff that seems to be present in them. It took a while to get through this because there was a lot of fluff that I found to be uninteresting, and therefore picking the book up to read it was a chore at...
Thursday, August 15, 2013
A little background is necessary to understand the scope of where I'm heading with today's thoughts. I grew up in Columbus, in apartments and rentals. The most formative of those years were spent in apartments where we didn't have room to grow plants or do things like that.Holly and I recently moved out onto a farm. Full disclosure, we are not operating the farm, it's operated by other people, but we do have a significant amount of land with which to "play." So, I've decided that I want to get some chickens and start a garden.This week, I've begun...
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
I don't consider myself to be nearly "snooty" enough to be a decent music critic. I don't know chords, and I can't really talk about the scientific dynamics of musical theory. I know what I like in music, and I can't always put into words exactly what I like about a certain album.If you've known me for any length of time, you know I had a major man crush on David Crowder and the entire David Crowder* Band. I practically worshiped at the altar of...
Thursday, July 18, 2013
I met Brooklyn and Coy Lindsey a couple years ago at NYC. I'm not sure if either of them would remember me, but she was a speaker at NYC and was one of the emcee's of the entire event. Her and Coy both grew up in south-central Ohio (the Lancaster/Logan area), so there was (at least on my end) some sort of connection there. I connected with her through facebook and twitter after the event.
Actually, there's a funny story about Brooklyn. Francis Chan also spoke at NYC, and anyone who knows me knows that I have a slight infatuation (man crush) with...
Monday, July 15, 2013
I love gaming, and I love the fantasy genre of movies/novels. One of the large consistencies I see in fantasy works (especially Tolkien, who is undoubtedly the grand-father of fantasy gaming) is the importance of the journey.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are both primarily stories about a journey. In the former, Bilbo and the company of dwarves take a journey to The Lonely Mountain with the goal of defeating the dragon at the end....
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
A few years ago, when I was pastoring at High Street, a church on the district got a new youth pastor. He literally started just a few months after me, but I had "seniority" on him, since I was on the district first.
Joel and I quickly became friends. We directed a district retreat together, attended events together and basically just started really enjoying each other's company. We actually were pitted against each other a couple years ago for District Secretary (I won). He went through a difficult time at his church which ended with him leaving...
Sunday, June 23, 2013
On June 16, 2012, I was on my way home from MVNU with a small group of my students. Things at High Street had been very tense for a few weeks. There was a lot of pressure coming from a few individuals on the board that was wearing me thin. Xavier was five weeks old, so sleep was at a premium. All-in-all, I was already high-stress.We had a conversation in April or May with some of the board and the DS, the DS informed us that finances were somewhat tight at HSN and nobody's job was secure. He told us there would be no hard feelings if we left in...
Monday, May 20, 2013
We're a little more than 1/4 of the way through the 2013 baseball season. I made some predictions for the 2013 season, which you can find here.
Today, I'm going to offer some of my awards for the first half of the first half of the baseball season.
Starting with the senior circuit, the National League.
My pick for NL MVP so far is none other than Paul Goldschmidt. If you're not a baseball follower, this name probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you. But Goldschimidt, who plays first base for the Arizona Diamondbacks, has had a fantastic first...
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
They say the more you do something, the better you will get at it. It should be no secret that I enjoy writing. This is my third blog attempt, each on focused a little differently. I find difficulty in blogging, however, because I think the majority of people who I'm already connected with won't be interested in a lot of the things I could sit down to talk about.
For instance, I finished A Dance With Dragons tonight. It's the 5th book in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series which has been made wildly popular by the show Game...
Monday, May 6, 2013
On May 6, 2012, at about 2 in the morning, my wife made what I've grown fond of calling her "ninja move" out of the bed as her water broke. The next 24 hours were spent in the hospital eagerly awaiting the birth of Xavier.
That day was the culmination of a lot of expectation and the beginning of an entirely new chapter in our lives. In order to properly place my emotions of that day, a little bit of historical perspective is necessary. Things at...
Thursday, May 2, 2013
We sang a song at church on Sunday. I'm pretty sure I'd heard it before. The song was "Crown Him," by Chris Tomlin. The chorus of the song says,
Majesty, Lord of all
Let every throne, before Him fall
The king of kings, O come adore
Our God who reigns forevermore.
I think a lot of times, we sing words without taking time to digest the complexity or theological significance of the words. So, as I was singing the song, I was struck by the phrase, "Let every throne before Him fall."
That's a really powerful, political statement though, isn't...
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
My goal with this blog is to post twice a week, on Monday and on Thursday. You'll notice, if you're closely following, that I didn't post last Monday or Thursday. Why didn't I post? Why the week of silence?Easy. I didn't have anything to say that I haven't already said. I didn't have anything to say that I wanted the entire world to hear.
Frankly, I don't want to come across as a whiner.
But, the truth is, I'm frustrated. I'm not sure what to do next.
In the meantime, I've been working on staying focused. I've been running consistently, logged...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The reading project is going really well. I finished the second of thirty books on Sunday night. The book is Church Unique by Will Mancini. When the new pastor of High Street (Rob) began his ministry, he had the entire staff and board read this book. My mother-in-law had a copy of the book and so it's been in my "to-read" pile for months.
I completely understand why Rob had the entire board and staff read the book, it's a great read for casting vision with your church.Some of it got a bit wordy at points, but overall, I was glad I read the book....
Thursday, April 18, 2013
I imagine that every family has an odd-ball cousin or uncle or nephew or whatever who doesn't quite fit in. Maybe that person smells bad, or doesn't understand normal social conventions, or whatever. I feel like I'm that odd-ball cousin of the running family. I enjoy running, but I don't really think of myself as part of the "Running Family." I'm sure my runner friends will disagree with that sentiment, they'll say, "You run, you're in the 'family.'" But seriously, when I'm running on the roads and oncoming traffic gets over to what I consider...
Monday, April 15, 2013
I can't lie about this, part of the reason I started writing this blog, made a list of books to read and things to do, is that I'm so frustrated with where my life is right now.
If you had asked me a year ago where my life would be right now, this was not it. This was nowhere near what I expected in my life. I can't overstate that enough.
So, I've spent the past 10 months trying to "right the ship," if you will. I've been trying to get things back into a place where I want them. I spent three months unemployed, but still drawing a salary, so...
Thursday, April 11, 2013
I set out to finish 30 new books before I turned 30 years old next August. To start my adventure, I read a book about... an adventure.Holly and I fell in love with the Lord of the Rings trilogy; in fact i twas one of the things in our lives that we shared before we dated and have fallen in love with the extended editions through our marriage (we actually took the entire series on our honeymoon with us and watched the trilogy that week).
When The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came out, we put it at the top of our "Must see list." Once we saw the...
Monday, April 8, 2013
Happy Monday! This is a small piece I wrote a number of months ago. I imagine it's relatively self-explanatory. I'm posting it as a sort of "ode to vulnerability." I suppose it's unfinished (hence the ellipsis at the end), and I imagine it will remain unfinished for the rest of history. I won't spend any more time detailing it, because I don't think it needs to be quantified today, with nearly 9 months of hindsight since writing it.Take time today to reflect on where you've been in your life.
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It's June 16, 2012 and it just started raining....
Thursday, April 4, 2013
I've made no secret that the past nine months haven't been very fun for me. I've openly questioned "why?" I've been miserable in many ways. I've definitely had to work on my anger with a few individuals and was intensely challenged by a sermon my friend Rob on forgiveness regarding my feelings toward those individuals.Another of my friends, Israel, was telling me a few weeks ago how he read through the book of Jeremiah during our pastoral interim. He was drawing the parallels for me to his experience with that of the Israelites/Judahites during...
Monday, April 1, 2013
On March 13, white smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel, announcing to the world that there was a new Bishop of Rome in the Roman Catholic Church. On that day, Pope Francis came into being and has taken the church by storm (in some regards).It's gotten me thinking about some things, however. First, I don't understand the high level of animosity that many Nazarenes (and evangelicals, in general) hold toward the Roman Catholic church. It's as if...
Saturday, March 30, 2013
I love a lot of things. I love my family; I love ministry; I love gaming; I love reading. And one of my loves is baseball.
When I went to MVNU in the fall of 2002, I was most assuredly not a baseball fan. In fact, I don't believe I had ever sat down to watch a game on tv, including the world series, all star game, whatever. I remember watching Mark McGuire break Roger Maris' record in 1998. But, I was not a fan. If you had asked who my favorite team was, I would've said Reds or Indians... but I had no idea.
That all changed living in Oakwood...
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