Planet Wisdom

ONE24, or more specifically students from some of the churches that are a part of ONE (Valley Christian, Faith Church, and Inspiration Church), went to Planet Wisdom in Minneapolis last week...here are some pics:

Most of the Crew

My Beautiful Bride & I

Here they are again

Ghostbusters! dada-dada-dada ---- dada dada da da da
(yeah, this is one of the cleaning pics, I'll post more on Facebook)

Pat, Chris, and Dan were awesome!

Deacon Christmas Party

Every year Russ & Becky throw a Christmas party for the Deacons & their spouses at their house & Sarah & I help out. This year we thought it would be a good time to give them a goofy game so they could have some fun too (it's usually us doing the goofy things). Anyway, in this game they had to roll dice 'till they got a 7 and go put on mittens, a scarf and a hat before tearing through boxes upon boxes to get to a gift. Enjoy the video and pics. I videotaped the whole thing so I wouldn't miss anything...look for Dana's boxing moves :-)


Chuck (Worship Deacon) helping my Grandma (Adult Discipleship Deacon) with her hat

Yup, they're gamblers...come on SEVEN!

Kim (Children's Education Deacon) showing off her Snoopy gift card and sled ornament.

Hypocrisy

Last night we talked about Hypocrisy. We looked at Matthew 23:1-31 where Jesus lays into the religiosity of the Pharisees with 7 different "woes." I came out of that thinking about how easy it is for us as followers of Jesus to become like the people Jesus opposed the most, the religious, by doing like they did and worrying more about the "outside of the cup" (our appearances) than the inside (our heart). It's so easy to get caught up in the game of acting like something you're not or worrying about your appearance (spiritually, physically, professionally, etc.) and completely overlook the true condition of that area.
I'm not sure if it's connected to this, but something God has been making very real to me lately, the phrase just came to my mind several months ago, is:

If you ignore the Spirit's correction you won't hear His direction.

Let's be real with God and with each other!

Ugly Sweater

Tonight the college groups are having an Ugly Christmas Sweater party hosted by Josh and Sarah Hardie. I had to go out to the thrift shop to find one, but I'm ready now...I'll try to post a picture of our ugly outfits later...

I Miss Mowing The Lawn

I never thought I'd think that, but after today I'll take lawn mowing ANY day over shoveling snow. There was like a foot of snow on the driveway and sidewalk. Sarah and I had kind of cleared out one side of the driveway on Saturday night, but then the plow decided it was a good idea to fill 1/5 of the driveway back up with snow...so that ended up packed down. Anyway, I definitely got my exercise for the day...they say there's supposed to be more snow tomorrow...on the plus side this just means that it's snowboarding time!

The End of the World As We Know It...

Well, not exactly. But I did finish reading a book called "Till Jesus Comes," by Charles Holman. It's about the origins of the Christian apocalyptic expectation. It's about as deep as you would expect a book written by a Professor of the New Testament (he taught at Regent University until he passed away recently). You know it's going to be deep when you realize that it's an expansion of his doctoral thesis! Anyway, although it was written in a fairly complex way, the concepts were pretty straight-forward: The Israelites had an expectation of the coming reign of God that grew out of the reign of David and Solomon and took shape in the following thousand years. The Early Christians writings, including the Gospels were written during this time of expectation of God's Kingdom and they appear to expect an imminent return of Christ and for His Kingdom to come in its fullness during the lifetimes of the authors. The book concludes with different approaches we can take given the delay of the return of Christ...that's about it.
Since I last posted about books I've also finished reading "Jim and Casper go to Church," by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper. This was a good book that helps you realize what goes through the mind of a guest as they enter your church...very insightful. I would strongly recommend it if you are working in a church or ministry as we have a tendency of getting sheltered from reality whether we like it or not. I also read "God's Blogs," by Lanny Donoho and interesting look at what God would write if He had a blog.
I think that being a life-long learner is HUGE because the world is constantly changing and we have to be prepared for the challenges of life in this ever changing environment...if you don't believe me, think about how different life with cell phones is now from 10 years ago...or how within the last 5 years social networking sites have changed the way teenagers and young adults live their lives.

We're Back

We just got back from Planet Wisdom. We left a couple of hours early from the conference because of the weather. The conference was great, as usual. Mark Matlock had a lot of powerful things to say. Skit guys were great. All in all great.
Drive back was long, but we were brought safely home by Eric Seibold and fed deliciously by Carrie Guy & Carrin Seibold.
The end.
Goodnight.