On The Road Again!!!

We're on the road for Christmas this year. Because I don't have to preach this year for Christmas services, we are traveling to Florida to spend it with my mom and my family. Right now we are in Atlanta at Kate's brother Kevin's house. We opened presents last night and the kids are well stocked. Kate's mom and dad came down and are taking some presents with them so we have room in our car.

Sickness hit us and other families in Wilmore the week of our leaving. Kate was sick as we drove to Atlanta and it hit Maggie as well. WE are leaving soon to Gainsville Fl where we will stay for the night. The next day we will go to the LEgo store in Orlando where Max will have his fix. We plan on staying in Florida till Thursday. I'll update the blog when i get a chance. Pictures will be posted later.

A Wilmore Christmas!!!

It was good to be back in Wilmore during this Christmas time. Saturday night (12.02) was Christmas in Wilmore. The downtown has free food, drinks, and this year Santa Claus gave out stuffed animals.

We continued to get into the spirit of Christmas with a candlelight service at the seminary chapel. You can see the kids enjoyed it. They did not set anything on fire.


Last Night, we had our Beeson Christmas Party at Bella Notte, an Italian resturant in Lexington. We did the white elephant gift exchange. Below Jim got the singing fish, but later Gordon stole it back.
Alicia was overwhelmed by her gift. I can't tell you what it is but perhaps you can figure it out.

Penny from our last church gave us this outfit to keep Pierson warm. He really does smile like this a lot.

Be Sure to check out my belated Post from 12.2.06 from Thanksgiving. Lots of pictures of the kids.

Chapter One Draft is Done!!!

Forgive my inattentiveness to the blog lately. This week has been about getting work done on my dissertation. As I looked ahead to the next three months of work, I realized I have to sit down and get this thing done. December is the best chance to have sustained work on the dissertation. January we are traveling for five days to Houston. In February I am going to Hickory NC to interview a United Methodist Church that has gone from 140 to 2000 in attendance in 8 years. Upon returning from that trip we are going to Frazier Memorial UMC in Birmingham Alabama for 5 days and the end of March we are traveling to Korea for a week. In addition we have a course on Biblical Interpretation for a week in January, another preaching class beginning in February, and a Leadership Class in February. Each one of these classes requires much reading and papers before hand. So as you can see, the time is short. Therefore I focused this week on completing chapter one of my dissertation and I did that today. It is a good day! Until we leave for florida next week, I will be focusing on chapter two (the major substance of the work).

Today in chapel Dr. Kalas (acting president of Asbury and our fall preaching professor) preached about wisdom. We should seek out wisdom all we can and gain as much knowledge as possible he said. But knowledge is fleeting because it can puff us up. THerefore we need to gain as much knowledge and eloquence of speech in order to explain and exalt a gospel and God who is beyond words and whose foolishness is greater than the wisdom of man. He showed that at Calvary. The foolishness of God is displayed by the love of his Son on the cross. May we take our knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, place them before him to be used to magnify our Great God.

My Grown Up Christmas List

In case there is anyone out there who is interested in getting me something for Christmas, these are a couple ideas that would be of interest to me:

Personal books
1) Left to Tell:Discovering God amidst the Rwandian Holocaust - 14.67 at Amazon


2) Ryan and Jimmy: And the Wellin Africa that brought them together - 11.53 at amazon

3) Incredible You! 10 Ways to Be Happy Inside and Out (Hardcover) - 10.17 at amazon

4) The Archeological Study Bible - 32.99 at amazon


Dissertation
5)The Disciple-Making Church: From Dry Bones to Spiritual Vitality by Glenn W. McDonald (Paperback - Jan 2004) 10.19 at amazon

These are some ideas if you are interested in knowing.

An Inconvienient Truth

Last night, I went to the video store to check out a movie. I saw this movie on the shelf and decided to pick it up. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but basically it is a presentation by Al Gore on global warming. SInce he lost the election in 2000, he has made it his life mission to make people aware of global warming around the world and especially in the USA.

For me, I am open minded and wanted to see what scientists say about the problem. If what 10% of what they say is true (and I believe it is), then we had better wake up. It is dangerous to think of what could happen to the world if we continue in our current patterns. The biggest impact on me was the question, "What will people 50 years from now say about us?" I thought about 70 years ago with Hitler and how many countries and specifically Christians gave into Hitler's ideology. They didn't stand up to the genocide that was happening and history remembers them. How will history remember us? What will be the issue we will be remembered for?

This movie made me remember that our mission of the church is not only to save souls, but to make a difference in the world, to be the kingdom of God in this current kingdom of the world. While I beleive ministers should intentionally stay out of politics for the most part, it is impossible not to speak out on issues that are morally wrong. We have a right to communicate our views but not to try to use politics to achieve our goals in the Christian arena. That is bad for both the state and the church. If you don't beleive me, look at England. They married the church and the state and as a result, both were comprimized and now England is a secular nation with 5% coming to church.

I encourage you to watch the movie and make up your own minds.

Misconceptions of Jesus

Some of my Beeson fellows (Nolan and Aaron) told me of a church that did a four week series on the misconceptions of Jesus. They took old Jesus movies and dubbed over them. Many view Jesus as a person who just gives rules, doesn't have time for people. I hope you take these in the spirit in which they were conceived of, to sarcasticly highly these misconceptions. Enjoy

What am I up to in December?

For the past month or so, I have been focused on trying to complete the courses I have already taken. For my leadership class my final project involved writing up my Dream Church (as written about in an earlier post). My final anthrolopolgy paper involved how to transition the church I was just at or will be going to into a missional church. Missional church is a church that is focused more on being the people of God to those who do not know it rather than just perpetuating a church focused on being good for the institution. I did my paper last week on transitioning the traditional UMC church in my area to a more missional model of ministry.

My final class for the semester was a preaching class with Dr. Kalas. I preached last week a sermon for a special occasion. The sermon I wrote and preached will be most likely my first sermon at my new church, wherever that will be. I thought I would kill two birds with one stone, since the beginning of a new appointment at a church is a hectic time and so I could receive the critique of my colleagues.

I have a little more than two weeks before we leave for Christmas break in Florida. I intend to spend this week reading books on Biblical Interpretation for my class in January. THe following week I hope to complete chapter one of my dissertation on small reproducable discipleship groups. Looking ahead, this month will be the slowest month till the end of March and I want to utilize the time as best I can.

That is what my days look like ahead. I am still enjoying every moment of it but the work coming ahead is daunting. Just taking it a day at a time. I am taking Kate out for lunch today just to enjoy each other. Take care.

A Belated Post - From Thanksgiving Weekend

A Night at the Gym

Kate's highschool friend Michele had a surprize birthday party for her husband Fred when we were in Tennessee. He is a gymnastics instructor and the party was at the gym. The kids had a great time as evidenced below:

Even Kate got into the act.

They had a zip line that went across the gym. Even Anna did this!

Thanksgiving Break Pictures

We went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. On thanksgiving we went to Kate's brother Eric's house for the main meal. His wife Frankie went all out again for us with Turkey, desserts, sweet potato, cranberry sauce. It was great. Below are some scenes from the day.

Aiden was showing his blog to Kevin and Eric. Aiden's blog is www.wandmakers.blogspot.com

Check it out and make a comment.

After thanksgiving we set up and decorated the Christmas Tree at Grandma's house. The kids enjoyed it. It didn't yet feel like Christmas since it was in the high 60's for temperature, but it was fun.

Aiden and Anna wanted to take pictures and these are some of the highlights.