I posted a video a while back about a wonderful woman in our church named Monica Pryor. She went to be with The Father recently and I just wanted to ask you guys to pray for her family and to share her story one more time.
Here is the link for Monica Pryor
I am going a different route with this post today. First if you aren’t a fan of dead animals then I would ask you to stop reading this post right now. This was your warning. Yesterday a great friend of ours was working in the yard in the middle of the afternoon. He decided to just chill out in his deer stand and after some time. A 10 point 230 lb deer came into perfect view and became a new trophy for Mr. Tim Mackey. First of all let me tell you something about Tim. He loves people and could probably give Fellowship One a run for its money for the amount of info that it can hold about other people. He loves others passionately and is an incredible friend. Now hauling a deer out of the woods at 1 in the afternoon was incredibly fun. But it was way more fun because of who we got to help in the process.
I had an idea to write a book. I am scared to give the title because someone might take it but I think that it is important to today’s post. It was gonna be called “Fierce Lover” It was going to be sort of a look at how Jesus calls us to love others. My wife and I were in a long distance relationship (real long distance) 17 hour flight from where I lived. It was incredibly hard but proved our love even more real and true. It was an incredible time of growth for us and neither of us would change it for the world.
Now in the midst of marriage and ministry I am truly beginning to understand what a Fierce Lover our Savior is. See Jesus Christ put love at the forefront of our brains when He gave us the two commandments “Love God with absolutely everything, and love others the way that God intends them to be loved” (J.C. translation)
I want to tell you that taking someone to lunch may not get it done. But helping them pull out a 230 lb deer from the woods might. A card might not do it but visiting them when their family is in the hospital might. In the church I feel like alot of the stuff that we do is not fierce, its weak. Why can’t we be fierce in the way we love? Why can’t the church lead the way in Fierce Lovers?
If you’ve got a story of Fierce Love, I would absolutely love to hear it.
I have waited and waited and waited and waited. Waiting for someone to talk about this guy for a coaching job and it just hasn’t happened. Everyone right now is drinking the Dabo Swinney Kool-Aid and I think that he is doing some really innovative things. But, he is not what a football program needs right now.
First off, I am not a Clemson fan, but living in Greenville, SC for a little over 8 months, I cannot escape the realities of this discussion. Here is what I will tell you faithful Clemson folks. Dabo is a great emotional person but he seems way immature to be a head coach. You can’t implement all the things that he wants to at one time. It seems desperate and it seems sorta underhanded. But that is just a personal opinion.
I think that there is one person that no one is talking about that should be hired for the job. His name is Brian Kelly. He is the current head coach at Cincinnati. You may not know him. Well let me give you some stats. He is currently 5-1 at Cincy. His overall record as a head coach is 155-55-2! Ridiculous. Check out his coaching record. It is just plain sick. Clemson if you know what is good for you then I hope you at least give this guy a chance. He is proving it right now in a BCS Conference and is really just beating other teams senseless. Give him a shot.
Let me know what you think about the Clemson coaching search.
So now that I have gotten out of 1995. (I was in 3rd grade in ’95 that’s weird to me). So now if you look on the left hand side of my page. Go ahead look right now. No, above the blogroll you will see a cool new link allowing you to subscribe to my blog via email. Basically that means anytime that I post something new you will get an email notifying you! Cool, huh?
That’s pretty sweet. This might actually kill my views but since most of you are very faithful readers, this is my service to you.
So please check it out and subscribe today. There will be a prize to the 10th subscriber! Pretty exciting stuff. In other news you could be the 100th approved comment if you comment before anyone else. It’s time to comment people.
And as always thanks for reading!
Ok so I have been missing the last few weeks. Just really busy and haven’t put alot into it. But here are my picks.
I am 16-8 for the year.
My NCAA picks:
Texas over Missouri
GT over Clemson (sorry Dabo)
Georgia over Vandy
OSU over MSU
and my Upset Special this week:
Ole Miss over Bama. Ole Miss will be ready to play and they have the offensive line to beat Bama at the line of scrimmage.
NFL picks:
Pittsburgh over Cincy
New Orleans over Carolina
and upset special
St. Louis over Dallas. I hate Dallas. And new coach Haslett knows to give it to Steven Jackson.
Ok so I saw Andy Crouch at Catalyst. He was very good, but I don’t think that he got enough time to really dive into the intricacies of what he was presenting. I will touch the base of what he said so we can hopefully start a little bit of dialog on this subject.
First he said that we as churches don’t really to do anything to really affect culture. Most of the time we do one or a few of these four things:
I would like to offer that I don’t think that any of these really offers considerable insight or change into the thing that Christ really wants us to dive into: the lives of people. Andy Crouch challenges that we should do one of two things:
I would love to give you alot of insight on these but honestly I can’t. I haven’t read his book yet. However, I do think that its pretty awesome that he challenges the church to do this. We should celebrate creators of culture. Creative thinking comes from our Father. I believe that it is something that will be absent in Hell. But I think alot of people will be shocked at how much creative thought happens in heaven. Anyway, sidenote sorry.
I want to know what you think about these few statements.
If you think this is a cool idea here is the link to Andy himself.
Even if this isn’t your thing. I beg you to check out the site and read a couple of posts. I guarantee you it will spur your mind to thinking more about the subject.
At Brookwood, I have been learning so much not just about Children’s Ministry but also about ministry in general and really have grown to have some real concrete thoughts about ministry. I will share a few of them with you. The first is really built on Ephesians 4:12:
“to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”
A couple of things:
This verse is one of the few that has been really cemented in my mind as something that I have been living with and trying to figure out how I can:
Anyway just my thoughts on a verse that we really live by in our ministry. Tell me what you think about how church can most effectively do these things. Or maybe how you do them where you are at?
Incredible two days at catalyst last week! I was so challenged, encouraged, and motivated by the many people involved in the conference. I am so incredibly blessed to be where I am, doing what I am doing, and serving the God that I serve.
I will try and recap some of the thoughts that really challenged me over those two days and would love to have a dialogue about them. I am so thankful that a conference like this exists to speak to leaders, young leaders.
One thing that I had a problem with, however was the fact that there wasn’t a Children’s box for us to check. There was a Youth worker and lots of other positions available for choosing, but not in Children’s ministry. I am not insanely mad or upset but it did make me think, why is it like this? Is it because there just aren’t many leaders in Children’s ministry? Or because they wouldn’t invest enough to go to Catalyst? Or how about because maybe while students are our future, or are the present as my friend J.R. Lee would say, children are more babysat in churches than really confronted with spiritual issues and challenged to make a difference when they are young?
I don’t know but I do know that hopefully, God will allow me to make enough of a difference in the lives of kids to where these questions dissappear from my thoughts and yours.
Anyway as I climb off of my soapbox be looking back here to see some opinions of what I heard at Catalyst.
So after a nice night of sleep on a hotel bed. My boss and I were trying to come up with a way to infuse even more fun into an incredibly fun event at Catalyst. Well we knew that since church people would be there, and that most of the church people are in the middle of the post modern movement, we knew it would be a hub of metrosexualism. So we figured we could get enough photos of big hair to make it worthwhile. So without further ado, I present to you the Day 1 contestants. Please vote for your favorites.