A few pics that I've taken . . .

I find myself missing my friends more and more. I had a good friend call me the other night and inform me of another good friend of ours having their first child. Exciting times and I can't wait until our next reunion.

Is this it?

Just a few quotes from the book Jim and Casper Go To Church. What are you thoughts and what do we do?

"Casper had a number of questions for me before, during and after each church we visited. But the one question that was far and away the most difficult for me to hear was this one: 'Jim, is that what Jesus told you guys to do?'"

"Casper could not imagine Jesus telling his followers that the most important thing they should be doing is holding church services."

"Unless we're willing to remove the handles from the front doors of our churches and publicly say to outsiders, 'We don't care what you think,' the church must become more reflective and repentant about how outsiders perceive us.

As long as pastors continue to promote 'bring a friend to church Sunday' and as long as we put 'Everybody Welcome' on our church sign, we are the ones who need to change - not our guests.

Jesus gave us a mission. I don't remember reading anything in the Bible written to missing people telling them to 'go into all the church.' They don't have a mission to adjust to us; we have to adapt for them. It's called the Incarnation."

Your thoughts?

8-18-08

I'm hoping that life will get back into somewhat of a routine with school starting for the students and summer being over. I hope that it will get in a routine to where it allows me to read more and to meet with other people more and to write more.

I met with a guy named Matt Conner, who is a local pastor here in the area and also does a lot of writing for several different websites and magazines as well and you can visit his website by clicking on his name. But I met with him and was excited to meet with him and just get to know him. I'm excited to continue to get to know him and just love meeting new people and getting to know people.

So with that said, I'm just excited to continue to get to know people both at Bethany (the church I work at) and outside of that as well.

I was doing almost my daily reading of the Rabbit Room which is an awesome website, and one that Matt writes for as well, but I check it daily and came across a few comments given by one of the writers that I'll leave you with.


~The deeper we go into our union with Christ, the more He manifests Himself in our lives. And we develop more and more a sense of responsibility about sin, and less and less of a sense of condemnation about it.~

~Holiness is a Person, and only one Person in the universe is that holiness - and He has given Himself to us to use as living Bread.~

Here are a few pics of Marley, our new dog.

So lots of new things happening in these parts of town. Moved into a new house, still renting but a bit bigger and a big back yard, which we love. However, will probably be a pain in the butt when fall comes around and we have a ridiculous amount of leaves in our yard, but it's worth it.

We also got a new dog. We were able to get a chocolate lab for free, so we couldn't pass it up. She is a great puppy so far and super cute.

For those of you that care, I tried to post the video of Courtney and I dancing from a few months ago when we did parts of the Napolean Dynamite dance, but I couldn't get it up and running, so I'll try it again and see what happens.