Apomo

I’m not sure how it has ended up this way but I’ve morphed into a double blogger. I started a blog on my MySpace page www.myspace.com/brianenis and have been putting all my innocuous day to day stuff over there and reserving this semi-private one for more personal stuff that I don’t necessarily want some of the people that I know who read the other one to be offended by in this one. Kinda dumb, but I’m getting old and tired of arguing with people. Anyway, it’s over there that I’ve announced our pregnancy (due April 1) and stuff like that. Over here I talk about more internal stuff like religion and politics and ministry stuff.

Speaking of double dipping. My family is Oneness and I’m kind of agnostic about Godhead doctrine although I probably lean more toward the Trinitarian side of the equation. However, as far as I know, my parents don’t know about that. I think they’d be very disappointed to know about that, although I don’t think it’d affect our relationship much. They know I’m attending and have been looking at pastoring Trinitarian churches but they’ve never said anything and they’ve been supportive. Even so, we’ve never directly spoken about the Trinitarian issue and I’m ok with that. It’s crazy, I’m almost 40 and worried about what my parents think. Anyway, I’ve been emailing all my seminary work to my Dad and he’s been reading and critiquing it for me. It’s been good for our relationship, which over the years has been not so good at times. Next term I’m taking Theology I which is on the Godhead and is the indoctrination class about the Trinity. So I’m a little worried about sending him my papers for that class since it’ll reveal my leanings even more and I suspect will solidify my understandings in that area making me an evil Trinitarian. My parents wouldn’t characterize Trins as evil, but many Oneness people kinda think that way. You know. So anyway, I’ve kind of been double dipping on this one as I’ve not disavowed Oneness theology nor affirmed Trinitarianism and I think the time is coming when I will have to and it kind scares me.

Last night was Halloween and I had to go to school instead of taking my kids out to worship Snicker bars and candy corn. But I had a kinda spooky moment, in a good way. Other than some chit chat here and there and a handful of questions during lectures I haven’t interacted much with the prof. I’d mentioned to him about the church that I had preached at since it was about 10 miles from where he is pastoring, but we didn’t talk in any depth about it. Anyway, last night I mentioned that they’d called back but I didn’t think it was a good fit and that I’d most likely wouldn’t pursue it unless God wrote otherwise with his finger on a wall. He said he agreed that it wasn’t a good fit for me. I was pretty taken aback since he doesn’t really know me or the church in question. I asked him why he thought this and he said something along the lines of, “Guys like you don’t generally do well in small established churches because your gift and skill set isn’t a match and you end up getting frustrated.” I raised my eyebrows. I wasn’t sure if I should be impressed or offended. He laughed and said, “Entrepreneurs and visionary leaders don’t do well with small established churches. The church board wants to run the church and the people want their pastor to be high in mercy gifts and to hold their hand and visit them in the hospital and you want to lead and reach a vision and don’t have the time or inclination to do that other stuff. If you go there you’ll have to rein in alot of who you are in order to make it and it’ll take years before you can ever do what you want to do. You have too much drive and vision to do that. I know, because I’m the same way and in my first church I was miserable for seven years as I had my hands tied behind my back the whole time.” I was pretty surprised by his perception. “How do you know I’m a visionary leader?” He laughed, “Because I can tell. It’s obvious. I’ve been around long enough to figure it out. I knew it the first week or two of the course. It’s just who you are. You need to either plan a new church or you need to be the senior pastor a church of at least 400+ in order to operate in your giftings. At this point if I were you I’d look at possibly starting a church since it’s doubtful that you could get a bigger church without some previous senior pastoring experience.” I mentioned to him my option here at my church in Lodi and he said that sounded like a better fit for me in his opinion. Hmmm…that’s exactly what I’d been thinking. Maybe God is confirming things for me.

Is that how that song goes? It goes something like that.

You know, I’m pretty excited about my seminary experience. It is not only teaching me new things but it is also supporting many of the things that I’ve suspected and pretty much believed but couldn’t really explain from Scripture in a cogent way. Granted, I’m only half way thru my first term so I don’t have much to say yet. But even so, the little that I have learned has supported so many things I felt in my heart intuitively and now that I can see that God is concerned about these things too it gives me boldness. And relief. Relief that yes, God is teaching me these things, I am hearing God speaking to me, he’s changing/transforming me, and I really am going in the right direction.

Perhaps the biggest area of affirmation has come in my expanding understanding of God’s very strong concern for the poor and the oppressed. My Old Testament class on the minor prophets has helped me greatly in this regard. Yahweh was, and is, incredibly concerned about the poor and the oppressed. He is also incredibly concerned about people perverting justice and economic interests trumping the best interest of the poor and the oppressed. In fact, in the minor prophets Israel and Judah were judged again and again by God for their mistreatment of the poor and the oppressed of their society. In these documents idolatry isn’t as much the issue as it is their unwillingness to apply the moral law of Moses and Yahweh to their daily relationships. See the book of Amos as an example.

This is something I’ve stumbled on in the last couple of years and have been growing in conviction about. Now that I see it clearly in Scripture it gives me confidence and assurance. And it helps me to see things in our culture more clearly. That’s something I’ve noticed lately. I’m just understanding life and society better now and seeing things for what they are. This is easier to see when you see so many things in the OT that are the saem as today. Not a whole lot changes over time and it helps bring clarity about what’s going on in politics and stuff.

Like last night I watched the Democratic debate in Philly. I blogged about it on www.myspace.com/brianenis . For the first time ever there wasn’t a topic brought up that I didn’t have an opinion about and my opinions are based on what I understand about God instead of what I know my denomination wants me to believe about God. I had opinions on health care, illegal immigrants, foreign policy, education, global warming. All these opinions come from my growing understanding of Scripture. Before my basis would have been a hunch or what I knew my Christian friends thought. Now it’s based on what God thinks. There’s a huge difference. It helps to make the process of elimination when votin a whole lot easier in some ways. About the only thing I didn’t have a biblical opinion for was the UFO thing with Kucinich. I haven’t studied cosmosology yet. But, I wouldn’t vote for Kuncinich anyway just because he’s strident and just a little too strange, even for a politician.

I met w/the senior pastor of my church for lunch at chili’s today to talk about my role in the emerging emergent church project at our church (how do you like my turn of phrase? corny, I know). Ironically, I was surprised to run into my former pastor there. I’m there to talk to a pastor about coming on staff and I run into the pastor who fired me. haha. that’s rich.

Anyway, here’s what he said. The church is going to do something proactive to reach what he calls “Millenials”. This will mostly likely be a separate congregation w/in the church and this congregation will most likely inherit the facilities and assets of the main church down the road when the current church ages. He says that he senses a real ‘anointing’ on me for this ministry and realizes as well that he is not called or equiped to do it himself. He said he doesn’t use the word ‘anointing’ but maybe once a year, but it’s the best word to fit what he feels in his gut about me. Anyway, he says that he’s working with the church board to help them get to the point that they see what he sees in this regard and that they’re coming along but, 1) they have a couple of other things to do in the main church first, 2) the board, while supportive thus far (they’ve been talking about this since Feb), is still on the learning curve on this one. So, he says that he thinks that I’m probably the right guy, especially so since I came here so providentially while they’ve been praying for the right leader to come. So, he wants to meet w/me some more in order for us to flesh this out and get to know each other better and he wants to have more time to help the board figure exactly what they want to do in this regard.He kept trying to educate me on how he operates and how he does things; almost as if he’d hired me and I was a part of team and this was a sort of orientation meeting of sorts. He’s thinking it’ll be early to mid next year before we do anything specific but in the meantime he wants me to be a part of the leadership circle and help them make this transistion.

So, that’s cool. At least it’s out in the open now and we can stop all the pussy footin’ around. And at least I know that my instincts have been right all along and that I’ve not been reading too much into stuff.

I’ll just go at the speed the Lord goes and try to be patient. I’ve already started putting together a church plant plan and so maybe I’ll need the time to get things more ready so that when the time comes I’ll be able to hit the ground running and have a plan.

But, this whole thing could all blow up at a moments notice and I have to keep that in mind. Even so, it’s cool to see how things are perhaps turning out.

Isn’t it ironic how things work out in life at times? It has become increasingly apparent to me that in some cases I am becoming what I used to make fun of, kind of coming full circle on things. Not everything for sure, but some of it. I find myself becoming more conservative in many areas of my life, more aware of spirituality, and have more of a desire to speak out about this reality I see. And in the process I becoming somewhat of the conservative, “spiritual”, “prophet” kind of person that I used to roll my eyes at back in the day.

What I mean by this is that I am becoming more and more aware of the holiness of God and the call to righteousness and “walking in the Spirit” that is so popular in the UPC where I came out of. Now, to be sure, my application of holiness is vastly different than theirs but my view of the holiness of God and the need for holiness in my life hasn’t changed much except to say that I am much more aware of Gods holiness than I used to be. It’s almost as if it never left but just went underground for awhile and now God is bringing it back to the forefront of my living. I think I realized it more vividly this morning as I read David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon’s book “UnChristian”.

Also, I’m aware and sensitive to spirituality and my viewpoint is increasingly counter-cultural and “prophetic”. Counter-cultural to both popular culture both secular and Christian. By prophetic I mean forth-telling (speaking plainly and in a convicting way, like the prophets of OT did to Israel and Judah) not fore-telling.

I remember in college and when I worked at CLC, the pastor’s son felt that he was a modern day prophet and did his best to offend as many people as possible. He did a good job of that. He then created an annual conference called “School of the Prophets”, supposedly patterned after the OT example, where other like-minded guys and gals could come and share their prophetic burden and scream and holler at each other all day for a week or so and go home knowing that they were not alone in their thinking.

Back then I, and many others, would roll our eyes and make fun of them. We dismissed them and I don’t think many attended their meetings. I know I sure didn’t. I avoided them and thought they were kooky and over the years these kinds of people usually engendered a cynical response from me. But, maybe they were on to something and its taken me this long to connect with it. Not that it wasn’t there already, it was, at the essense of it was there. But it’s taken me this long to accept it and become ok with being central to my theology and praxis.

I think their attitude and their approach was all wrong. I think it was arrogant, hypocritical, and ineffective. But I think their passion and zeal for holiness and for people to turn to God with passion and zeal was something worth catching. That’s where I’ve been the last few months I think. I had one guy tell me he had trouble reading my blog because it was “too spiritual”. That kind of hurt my feelings a little but only because I didn’t want to be lumped in with those kooky people. But, I understand what he was saying and it’s ok. It’s ok because he didn’t really mean it that way and I know that this is not where I’m at in my attitude and approach.

But the fact remains that I am becoming very aware of the culture of the kingdom of God and in comparing it to the culture of the kingdom of my secular and Christian worlds I am becoming acutely aware of the vast differences between the two and feel a deep need and urge to do something about it personally in my own living and to urge others to change as well.

But I don’t want to be a hard-ass and be arrogant and mean and hypocritical and legalistic and all that. I want to figure out a way to help/lead people to the same realization of true reality that I’m beginning to see. It’s cliche’ but true, wisdom is seeing things from Gods perspective. That’s reality.

And this is what I want to do. Realize and confess that I’m imperfect, that I fail to live up to God’s holiness (thus rely on his grace and mercy to live and survive eternity), and that I’ll never be good enough. But at the same time God is holy, and perfect, and sinless and his measure for religion is high and that He wants us to worship him and live a life with him and his value set (law) at the center of it. How to communicate that and live that in way that’s not gratuitously offensive and unnecessarily divisive? That’s a hard one.

I think it all goes back to the commands to love God and love others. If we just live our lives in worship to him and pursue spiritual transformation (holiness) then it will be expressed in consistent acts of love to other people which is the best witness I think of holiness and worship of God. I think it’s only with a huge and unmistakable body of these acts (done with love, not manipulation) in place can I think even attempt to dialogue on matters of Gods view of sin and that sort of thing. Even then we must approach these areas with humility and gentleness mixed in liberally with our unashamedness and conviction of Gods law, communicating all the while that our love for those who disagree or don’t understand is not conditional on their acceptance of God and his truth.

I hope that makes sense. It does to me.

I went to the first public gathering of a new emergent church here in town. Dan Kimball told me about it in class a couple of weeks ago.

They’re meeting at a Christian teen center here in town. There were about 30 people there, primarily high school and college age. It was pretty plain and not interactive except for journals that you could write in if you wanted. One of the leadership team (coincidentally she’s my neighbor’s daughter-in-law) gave her testimony for about 30 minutes and it was good. She was very transparent and real. She had a pretty wild and wooly past and God delivered her from an abusive marriage and such. The music was good, two acoustic guitars and a singer. Everybody sat in couches and chairs around cafe and bistro style tables which was kind of cool.

One cool thing that I liked was that the leadership team shared in the leading of the event and it was not at all centered around a single person. One guy opened in prayer, another introduced the journal thing, the gal gave her testimony, another gal prayed after the testimony, and the first guy came back to close it out and tell about the topic for the next four weeks. They’re going to talk about “Who is Jesus and why is he important?”. he said to make sure everybody brought Bibles if they have them. He said the next topic after that would be “What is the Bible? - Where did it come from and why is it important?”. Pretty theological and relevant topics if you ask me. That impressed me too. It’s not fluffy.

I’m going to try to go a few more times to make some connections there. You never know what might happen down the road.

I am using some of my student loan money to buy this software this week. I’m pretty excited. Next week in hermenuetics we’re going to start learning how to do word studies and stuff like that. Cool.

So far we’ve been learning about the inductive study method based on a plain sense interpretive approach. We’ve learned how to do make observations and ask questions of a passage, how to identify a passage in the original Greek, how to identify and label title statements, how to do identify and label clauses, do graphic clause outlines, how to write measurable and specific applications, how to create provisional message statements, and how to chart passages and books. None of us in the class are really any good at any of this yet but we’re learning it slowly but surely.

This week our homework is to chart Habakkuk. Then also take Habakkuk 2:2-5 and write 25 observations and 25 questions about the passage, write 2 measurable applictions, do a clause outline of the passage, and a provisional message statement for the passage. Plus, we’re read two 10-20 page sections in the textbook and write a two page paper on each section and we have an extra credit option to read a paper online and write another two-page paper on that. I always do the extra credit.

My real weakness in all this is my very low understanding of English grammar. I have to get better at that. I’m ok on the reading comprehension and analysis, but the technical stuff in clause outlines is screwing me up.

Interestingly, we’re also learning theology as we do this since we’re breaking down and analyzing passages. The last two weeks we’ve been looking at Deut 24:1-4 which deals with divorce in the Law. Then we connected it to Jesus’ response in Matt 5, Matt 19 and other places to get sense of what was going on and what God’s view of divorce really is. Interesting. According to my prof Moses never permitted divorce (as the Pharisees claimed) but was trying to prevent wife-swapping. According to Moses and Christ and Malachi God hates divorce. Duh. His final point was that in God’s mind divorce doesn’t end a marriage but adultery does. He says that in God’s mind divorce destabilizes a marriage but adultery kills it (and according to the Law killed the perpetrators of adultery too, thus divorce really wasn’t an option because they died). Thus in that that day if you divorced a woman the marriage was over in your mind, but not Gods. And if either of you re-married you were committing adultery which as a capital offense. In our minds adultery destabilizes a marriage and divorce ends it. He says this is backwards from God’s thinking. He said this created a real problem in Jesus’ day as adulterers/esses couldn’t be executed, per Mosaic Law, because the Romans wouldn’t allow it. This created a problem for Joseph and Mary’s community because they couldn’t stone her since she got pregnant. Thus, Joseph solved that problem, at the direction of Gabriel, by going to Egypt and essentially removing themselves from the community which is in many respects the same as if they’d died. He noted too that Gabriel talked to Mary first and then Joseph six months later. Thus for six months God let Joseph twist in the wind. Wow. That had to be a long six months. Interesting discussion.

We learned abou chiasm last night too. Pretty cool. It helps explain alot of texts that seem “unorganized” and “confusing”.

For the rest of the term I still have about 25-30 reports (I’ve written about that many so far already) to write and about five more books to read. Other than that I don’t have alot going on. It’s a good thing I hired somebody to do my lawn.
I love it though. I just wish I had more time to devote to it.

Next semester I’m going to take Theology I - The Triune God, New Testament I - Gospels, and Practicing Evangelism and Apologetics. That’ll be 8 units. I’m thinking about taking Character and Skills of a Church Planter too. We’ll see. It’s an intensive class that meets four times and if I can get all the pre-work done during Christmas vacation I’ll prob add it on. Especially if I do the emergent church thing at our church. It’ll be good to be thinking about that stuff then.

I love seminary. It’s alot of work and tiring but it’s interesting work and a good kind of tired.

This is a two part post. I keep them together because they may be related. I’m not sure they are, but I suspect perhaps they are…time will tell.

The first part is a bit of news. I had a long lunch yesterday w/the exec pastor of our church. In the course of conversation he told me that they’re definitely going to do SOMETHING to reach out to pomos but they’re still trying to decide exactly what and when. They’re leaning toward a phased in approach where they begin incorporating some experiential worship stuff into the main Boomer service in order to acclimate the Boomers to the whole alternative worship genre. Then they want to start a second service that’s emergent. Then when the emergent group gets enough people they want to move it off-site but keep it under the umbrella of the church. The idea is to let the two co-exist separate-but-together so that both groups can grow and have community together. Keeping them under the same umbrella will help them be connected to each other in common events, like Mens Retreats and stuff like that, which will foster intergenerational ministry. Then in 20 yrs? when the Boomers are “old” and the Gen X’ers are middle aged they come back together with the X’ers being the dominant group as it is today w/the Boomers and the Builders. Then the X’ers will do like the Boomers are trying to do today and start a separate congregtion for the younger people of that time. The idea is to not try to blend the groups but allow for their differences yet at the same time try to keep them connected which is good for them all. I think overall it’s a good idea but it needs to be hashed out and lots of hard questions need to be addressed.

In the course of talking he confirmed that I am being seriously considered to head up the emergent thing. He said they weren’t sure if I was available to do it or would be interested in working within the structure of staff thing since I seemed so intent on being a senior pastor. But we talked and I told him that I was interested and that we should talk more about it. Nothing was officially put on the table or offered. It was more a “Hey, how do you feel about this? Would it even be a possiblity for you?”. Interestingly enough, their other weakness is in small groups which is an area where I’ve led before as well. So i said maybe I could do both for awhile, to help justify the expense of a new staff person, and the emergent thing would be my priority but I’d do the small group thing too until they found somebody else and/or the emergent group became too large for me to handle both. I figured too that doing it this way would help me establish relationships with people in the church which would hopefully offset possible controversy down the road since they have a personal relationship w/me and would be more willing to give me the benefit of the doubt if something was deemed “too weird”.

So, interesting development but I’m still not getting too excited about it since nothing is official. It’s just talk and talk is cheap. it could all unravel at a moments notice and evaporate like the morning dew. How poetic.
*******************

Which brings me to my second point. I’ve been having vivid dreams again. I haven’t said anything about dreams for awhile because…well….I haven’t had any remarkable dreams that I even remembered. That is until this last week. I’ve had three of them that all seem to be connected. They seem connected merely by intuition, not necessarily by content.

First dream. This is actually the second or third time I’ve dreamed about old cars and a junkyard. One other time, about a month ago?, I dreamed of a junkyard of VW’s. This time it was not really a junkyard as much as a collection of old, beat up old sports cars. About 8-10 of them lined up like somebody would have in their backyard or something. At first glance they don’t look remarkable until you get up close and you then realize they’re dirty, beat up. scratched and abandoned exotic sports cars. Ones a 80/90’s Lamborghini Contouch, another is a 40/50’s convertible Mercedes roadster, and some others that I can’t remember for sure. One was an 60/70’s American made muscle car with a huge motor that was exposed to the elements since it had no hood and no fender on one side. Lots of chrome and headers. I remember noticing that the motor in the Lamborghini was in great shape and the one in the Benz was still inside the engine compartment and protected. It was the nice motors that caught my eye first. I remember going “Whoa! Check out these old cars! Wow, I wonder if I can fix ‘em up! How cool!” But they were too far gone to be restored, at least by me. I remember feeling a little powerless and anxious that I couldn’t do anything to help make them better and thought it was a real shame that they were out in the elements being wasted away.

The second one was me in a store of some sort. It seems it was a decorating, home interior type of store that was locally owned, not a chain store. Not a home improvement store like Home Depot. A smaller store that sells paint, curtains, flooring, wall paper and stuff like that. The impression I got was that everything in here was dated and out of style. It felt like I was stuck in the 80’s or something. It kind of reminded me of a store in Stockton called Pete’s Paint Pot, but it wasn’t that store. Just similar. Anyway, I’m looking around for some reason, wandering through the aisles. But it’s obvious that for some reason. I think I’m waiting on the owner although I’m not sure why. The owner is a guy in his mid 50’s, slim, brown hair, non-descript features. I couldn’t identify him if I had to. Just an average looking guy. He’s not happy that I’m here and seems to want me to leave and is frustrated that I won’t leave. Almost as if they’ve closed an hour ago and I’m still browsing around and won’t leave. Finally I realize they’re closed and leave.

The third dream. I’m with some men, at a mens retreat of some sort?, and I’m standing at a double sink next to a guy who I know is a skeptical gay unbeliever. We’re brushing our teeth. He’s kind of a dandy and is actually timing how long he brushes. Not wanting to be though unhygenic I actually keep brushing way longer than him until he finally says something, “Man, when are you going to stop?” But it feels like my mouth is full of a thick substance, the texture of peanut butter, thick and gooey. And then my toothbrush starts getting stuck in my braces. Finally I get it all cleared out and when I look in the mirror I see that my face is my face when I was in my early 20’s when in Bible school. Then I hear a pop and open my mouth to see that one of my incisors has popped in half. When I reached to get it the rest of it crumbled in my fingers. Then my other teeth started crumbling and they were all dark, like the root had died. I looked closer and realized that most of my teeth were rotten. I looked at one of the pieces in my hand and the inside was rotten to the core.

Here’s an email exchange between me and a friend. It’s in reverse order so you have to read it from the bottom up like you do in an email message.

**************

Isn’t it interesting that the only people that help
the poor grasshopper are Democrats? I’d remind whoever
wrote this thing of Luke
10:25-37. Then I’d send them to Matthew 6:25-34 and
then tell them to read Amos 2:6-7. If that didn’t
work then I’d have Bono call them.

Was at prayer meeting last night at church. We prayed
in small groups of 4-5 people all over the auditorium.
They do the Baptist prayer thing where each person
takes a turn praying aloud while the rest listen and
murmur “Amen. Yes. Yes, Lord. Amen”. Pastor would lead
from segment to segment from the platform w/pastoral
prayers and scripture readings.

When it came to the
part where we were to pray for our government and the
people in our group were praying I had to peek at the
big screen to make sure it didn’t say “Pray for God’s
party, the Republicans! Pray for God’s favorite son
who is being persecuted by the evil, liberal
Democrats, George Bush! Lord, help your candidates
(except Rudy) defeat the Democrats in the election so
that we can be a Godly country.” I thought for sure
it’d say that. But it didn’t, it just said to pray for
our government. Whew.

When it came to my turn to pray
I was very tempted to pray against the war and for all
the innocent families and children who have been
killed by ‘collateral damage’ and to pray for the
health and well being of illegal immigrants and their
children and for starving Africans with AIDS, and pray
that our government would recognize that the world is
warming and we’re killing ourselves with pollution,
and pray against institutional greed that’s propped up
by corporate tax breaks and stuff like that. haha.
Instead I chickened out and decided to pray for
righteousness and justice in the world. Same
thing I guess, just in less aggressive terms.

I began with “Dear God, thank you
for your Law. The Law given to Abraham and to Moses..”
My intention was to then say something about the law
of righteousness and justice and that God would help
all our leaders to do the right and just thing no
matter what so that our country wouldn’t suffer the
prophetic judgments of Israel in the OT. But right
then the pastor interrupted from the platform with a
pastoral prayer to end the segment. My time got robbed
by the Republicans! They filibustered me into silence!
It’s a vast right wing conspiracy I tell ya! On top of that
now they probably think I’m a Judiazer or something.

— @aol.com wrote:

>
>
>
> There are some underlying currents disguised as
> social injustice here…maybe
> a tinge of racism couched in political
> undertones..republican, far right
> conservative, maybe cross-burning sentiments…
> Overstatements with undertones.
> Doubt if there was a response to Bono’s crusade for
> the poor. Any comments. Be
> careful not to get run over by the Harley on your
> way out of town.
>
>
>
> **************************************
> See what’s new at http://www.aol.com
> > Subject: Fw: the ant and the grasshopper
> To:
> From:
> Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 08:49:29 -0500
>
>
> You have to read all of this one.
>
>
> This one is a little different..
> Two Different Versions! Two
> Different Morals!
>
> OLD VERSION:
> The ant works hard in the
> withering heat all summer
> long, building his
> house and laying up supplies for
> the winter.
>
> The grasshopper thinks the ant is
> a fool and laughs and
> dances and
> plays the summer away.
>
> Come winter, the ant is warm and
> well fed.
> The grasshopper has no food or
> shelter, so he dies out
> in the cold.
>
> MORAL OF THE STORY: Be
> responsible for yourself!
>
>
>
>
—————————————————————————-
>
>
>
>
> MODERN VERSION:
>
>
> The ant works hard in the
> withering heat all summer
> long, building his
> house and laying up supplies for
> the winter.
>
> The grasshopper thinks the
> ant is a fool and laughs
> and dances and
> plays the summer away.
>
> Come winter, the shivering
> grasshopper calls a
> press conference and
> demands to know why the ant
> should be allowed to be warm
> and well fed while
> others are cold and starving.
>
> CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC
> show up to provide
> pictures of the
> shivering grasshopper next to a
> video of the ant in his
> comfortable home
> with a table filled with food.
> America is stunned by the
> sharp contrast.
>
> How can this be, that in a
> country of such wealth,
> this poor
> grasshopper is allowed to suffer
> so?
>
> Kermit the Frog appears on
> Oprah with the
> grasshopper, and everybody
> cries when they sing,
> “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
>
> Jesse Jackson stages a
> demonstration in front of
> the ant’s house where
> the news stations film the group
> singing, “We shall
> overcome.” Jesse then
> has the group kneel down to pray
> to God for the
> grasshopper’s sake.
>
> Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry
> exclaim in an interview
> with Larry King that
> the ant has gotten rich off the
> back of the grasshopper,
> and both call for
> an immediate tax hike on the ant
> to make him pay his
> fair share.
>
> Finally, the EEOC drafts the
> Economic Equity &
> Anti-Grasshopper Act
> retroactive to the beginning of
> the summer.
>
> The ant is fined for failing
> to hire a
> proportionate number of green
> bugs and, having nothing left to
> pay his retroactive
> taxes, his home is confiscated by
> the government.
>
> Hillary gets her old law
> firm to represent the
> grasshopper in a
> defamation suit against the ant,
> and the case is tried
> before a panel of
> federal judges that Bill Clinton
> appointed from a list
> of single-parent
> welfare recipients.
>
> The ant loses the case.
>
> The story ends as we see the
> grasshopper finishing
> up the last bits of
> the ant’s food while the
> government house he is in,
> which just happens to
> be the ant’s old house, crumbles
> around him because he
> doesn’t maintain it.
>
> The ant has disappeared in
> the snow.
>
> The grasshopper is found
> dead in a drug related
> incident and the
> house, now abandoned, is taken
> over by a gang of spiders
> who terrorize the
> once peaceful neighborhood.
>
> MORAL OF THE STORY: Be
> careful how you vote.
>
>
>

Remember that corny song from the 80’s they used to sing at Easter? Who did that song? “He’s alive and I’m forgiven, heavens gates are open wide. He’s aliiiiiive! He’s aliiiive!”

Anyway, I’m alive. That was the whole point of that whole exercise.

Crazy, cuhrraazy last couple of weeks. I haven’t had time to hardly breathe. I’ve written 15 papers, read four books and other various and sundry homework assignments. It’s been nuts. Last week I was in class for 20 hours, not including travel time and homework time. I love it, but early in the week I was stressing big time.

Went to Lake Tahoe last weekend for Mens Retreat. I normally don’t do Mens Retreats but I’m new and wanted to make some friends and the pastor said he wanted to meet w/me up there. We talked a little but he really actually wanted me to meet his Dist Supt. Went to dinner w/him and it was cool. Nice guy. He said he wanted his church planting guy to call me. Haven’t heard from them yet.

Had class this weekend with Dan Kimball as the teacher. The class is about Worship. Dan is one of the playas and pioneers in the emerging church/alternative worship movement. He’s written several books about it and speaks all over the world about it. Totally cool guy. The class was fun. I actually got to go to lunch w/him and three other guys. They were walking past me in the parking lot at lunch time and he just invited me along. That was neat.

He told me about an emerging church right here in my town! Evidently they just started up earlier this year and went to meet w/Dan (he pastors a church about 3 hours from here) to get some advice on how to organize it and such. He gave me the lady’s email address who is the point person (they don’t have a pastor) and so I wrote her last night. She wrote back and invited me to a pig roast tonight which served as their official kick-off event. So we went over there and they had about 100 people there. Most of them unbelievers or post-church people. Wow. They meet on Sunday nights so we’r going to start going there too.

The Underground thing is taking off slowly. However, there are three actual local members who have signed up in the last couple of weeks. We’re supposed to meet for pizza next Saturday night. Hmmmm….we’ll see how that works out.

Oh yeah, pastor said he wanted to get together w/me at the end of the month when he gets back from vacation. He said he wants to talk “nitty gritty’ and find out “what your perfect scenario would be in terms of ministry and see how we can help you”. Again, I’m not sure exactly what that means.

Haven’t heard back from that church where I preached. Did I mention that on here yet? Can’t remember. That went well. They said they like me and wanted me to come back but I haven’t heard from them yet. Talked to my prof, who is their dist. supt., and he said they’re really slow about doing anything.

So, I have so many irons in the fire and have no idea what the hell is going to happen. Who knows, maybe nothing will happen. Wouldn’t that be funny! But, I’m not worried about it. I just keep my eyes and ears open and let the Lord do whatever he wills. It’ll all work out. In the meantime, I just keep changing diapers all day and trying to learn something at school.

In my OT class I’ve been really impressed at how much God was concerned with social justice. It’s all thru the OT.

Gotta go. Tired. Bed. Sleep. Must. I.