I hate blogger...

Blogger is having all kinds of bad problems with my photos. For pictures of the basement disaster as well as our trip into the city on Sunday, go here.

I am alive...

Okay, so I've been a little out of practice around here. I've been busy trying to tread water with school and my licensure exam, which was today. (What a way to spend fall break!) So, break wasn't as restful as I would have liked, but such is life.

In other news, we had an interesting event on Saturday. I didn't really think much of it when we had no water Saturday morning. I called the office, and they made some vague reference to a "major backup on your end of the building." Water was back on in the hour, I was home studying for said exam. No big deal.

That night we went to church and then to see Flight Plan. (DON'T DO IT!) AT 10:30, we thought, well let's do laundry since we're going to the city to see friends tomorrow. We make our way to the basement, the noxious smell of shit pervading as we descended the stairs.

Said "major backup" from earlier was a busted sewer pipe...oh, two units down from our storage unit in the basement. The apartment complex isn't necessarily responsible for pipe bursting or the fact it is located OVERHEAD...but the fact that they didn't inform the tenants in the two effected buildings, that is just plain rude.

So, we had to clean out a crap soaked Christmas tree, throw away a sleeping bag, dry out some chairs, disinfect everything, and take some hard core showers, all while trying to do our laundry. We moved our storage unit to another area that wasn't effected by the pipe break, but have no idealistic notions that it couldn't happen anywhere in the basement.

At midnight, we finally got to bed. Check out the pictures below to get the full effect of what a pain in the rear this was. EWWWWWW.....

Army National Guard to Start Buying Souls...

There is something so wrong about this...

Thoughts on Life and Church

I've been wrestling with how I can be both in ministry and a psychologist. I don't have a problem seeing how the two fit together, but convincing most churches otherwise can be really difficult. So, I set up a meeting with our teaching pastor at church. He was a marriage and family therapist for ten years before becoming the teaching pastor at our church. We chatted on Friday, and I thought that I'd share some of what we talked about. I hope that you all have some thoughts to share on what I say, as well. Of course, lately not many people have been around, so I'm either really f'ing boring (a real possibility) or my novelty has worn off, or people and their lives are as busy as mine.

*Consumerism is one of the most dangerous threats to the Church.* It was great to hear this from the pastor's mouth. It's not our job to create a better product, a better service, or to even keep you happy. It's our job as a leadership team to preach Truth, and if that draws people great, and if it doesn't okay. But Truth ultimately draws people who are looking for it.


*Churches that are inwardly focused are disgusting.* By inwardly focused, I mean offer ministries that only serve members and do not minister to the community as a while. I wrote my ugrad thesis about this. Some churches are all about serving themselves and the needs of its priveleged members. Instead, churches should be outwardly focused, looking to meet the needs of the community around them, to minister to suffering and to help the underserved and "least of these" thrive. Pastor said,"If people think we end up looking like a social gospel church, who cares. God knows who we are, and we know who we are in Christ. People who know us will know we are more than that."

Also, on this point, it was said that mega churches are disgusting because they just showcase the inward focus of small churches on a large scale. The magnification of self service might make us sick, but its the same sin that is present in countless other bodies of believers on a smaller scale.

*After the Gospel, anything goes.* Okay, some of you just passed out. Once you come to, let's talk about what this really means. You would think a church (according to many of my Christian friends) that supports such a theology would be overrun with relativism, homosexuals ;), and sin, right? Well, uh, no. Just those other issues that we may disagree on aren't worth splitting over. If we're going to be the body, let's be the body of Christ. And part of the Gospel is seeking justice, having support and recovery ministries, on and on. The Gospel is so pervasive, that if you seek to follow it alone, (a high calling) it will infiltrate all you do as believers.

*Post-Evangelical* What does this word mean? I want to know, and I need to do some reading.

Random Fun Making at the World

The absolutely most hilarious thing that I've seen in a long time is this adorable commercial of a little boy.

Also funny is this take on what it would be like if Jesus spoke at a Republican Party Fund Raiser.

And, as I'm reading Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down about four people who run into each other on top of a building in London on New Year's Eve each with the intention to commit suicide, I thought I'd share a quote that I liked from it:

How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a "fuck." I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, "And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers." How could you not, if you're a human being? Maybe they're not so admirable. Maybe they're robot zombies.

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?