X-mas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving

We as many of you may have, looked through the newspaper ads with awesome deals on some of the things my kids wanted. So I decided to enter the experience of the 6 am day after Thanksgiving shopper trying to get the coveted deals "while supplies last." My alarm went off at 5:30am and I showered. First mistake: No one else "wasted" time showering and they beat me to the stores by 30 minutes. I then grabbed a banana and a bottle of water and headed for Shopko which was supposed to have a couple of games my kids wanted for about $10 less than their normal price. As I drove out of my neighborhood I only spotted one other car on the road. "Oh this is gonna be sweet!" I thought as I dreamed of walking out of the empty store with all the deals and having only spent $20. As I got to 144th St and Industrial Road the traffic had definetly thickened up a bit. "Well maybe I'll have to share a bit" I thought. As I pulled into Shopko's parking lot I was in AWE! It was full all the way to the back of the lot and cars were parked along the periphery of the lot along the grass. I quickly found a parking space though left by one of the unshowered ones. I made my way into the store and was confornted by a wall of people with shopping carts overfilled! Every cash register had lines with at least 20 people in them. I made my way through the crowd and back to the toy department. One particular deal in the board game aisle had drawn me here so I found that aisle only to find the space where the game should be sitting empty. It was only 6 am, but I had been beat to the punch. I started to quickly move for the front door of the store but before I got there I came to the realization that the same fate would meet me at the door of the other stores I had marked to hit at this late hour! And then there was HOPE. On a shelf near the front of the store had been laid by some other overwhelmed shopper who had given up the very game I had come for. As I picked it up I made my way back toward the toy department. If I was going to wait in these lines I might as well make the wait worth while by picking up a few more regularly priced items. Second mistake THIS IS HOW THEY GET YOU! They draw you in with the lure of a great deal and then in the dispair of the long line trick you into buying the rest of their stock which is actually marked up from the regular discount prices. I found a few and made my way toward the cash registers. All the lines were equally long so I just picked one. And I waited for 20 minutes to make my way to the front. It was kind of funny after all this effort I got one deal and 2 other items at regular price, no discount at all. The longer we waited in line you could see pre-buyer's remorse all ready setting in as people set items they realized they didn't really want that bad on the shelves and hanging racks that our line wound through.
I don't know if I'll do this again. I could feel the life draining right out through my feet as I waited in line at the cash register, but it was fun to get to expereince another of America's great traditions.

Wake up call for a DARE officer

At least 50% of my responsibility at the Police Dept is teaching a 10 week drug abuse prevention curriculum to 6th graders (12 year olds) at their schools. This program is called DARE. As a DARE officer you are definetly a superhero in line with Spiderman, Batman, or Superman in the eyes of the kids. And I was faced in two ways with how my "celebrity" status has begun to blind me. The first was that sadly Wednesday 4 of my students were caught shoplifting items from a store in our town. It shouldn't have surprised me, I guess but we just finished talking about making good decisions and saying no to people when they try to get us to make bad decisions. I guess sometimes experience is a better teacher. Scratch that, experience IS a better teacher. The second way I was awakened to my blindness was that same night I worked overtime running traffic stops on the "Click it or ticket" Federal grant, a program that pays police officers to work extra hours to just write tickets for seatbelt violations. As a DARE officer I haven't done many traffic stops lately. I was caught quite by surprise when the motorists that I stopped were less than thrilled to see me, so unlike when I teach the kids who are very excited to see me. They were no more impressed when I explained that I was doing this as part of a national program to boost seatbelt usage.
Being a DARE officer is fun but it doesn't mean my kids won't make mistakes and my "celebrity" status only works with students, teachers, and maybe their parents.

The Lord's Prayer

Growing up in contemporary evangelical protestant non-mainline denominational churches (was that enough big qualifying words) I remember feeling that it was part of our "tradition" that we didn't value the Lord's prayer and even kind of scoff at "believers" from mainline denominations that did value the prayer. Empty words read as a magical incantation are meaningless to me. But I have to admit the Lord's prayer has finally become meaningful to me. It really is a good summation of foundational thoughts for the day. Things to base your day on...
OUR Father - Not just my father but the father of my enemies as well
who is in heaven - A place as beyond my comprehension as God is
hallowed be your name - You and everything (people, animals, the earth)you are attached to deserves respect
Your kingdom come - Not mine, not my church's, not my work's, not my country's, but yours
Your will be done - again not my will be done, help me to give up control
on earth as it is in heaven - we are to work to bring about God's will on earth and make it more like heaven
Give us today our daily bread - We trust you to provide us with what we will need today and remember that as much as we may think otherwise you provide it all.
Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors - Daily we will make the incredibly difficult decision to forgive those who have hurt us just as you forgave us when we hurt you.
Lead us not into temptation - Help us to look out for temptation and not blame you when we stupidly decide to wander into it
But deliver us from the evil one - And help us out of temptation when we do stupidly wander into it
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. - (This doesn't appear in the earliest manuscripts from the first and second century, of which there are only a handful, but does appear in most late manuscripts, of which there are a lot. So NIV says it doesn't belong because the earliest copies of the Bible didn't have it and the KJV say it belongs because the greatest number of manuscripts has it.) You are the source and purpose of everything.

I want to teach it to our kids but I keep going back and forth between whether to teach it to them in the King's English - Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name - which may be so foreign as to mean nothing,
or in today's english for kids- Our Father God who is in heaven, your name is clean or special/has a good name/your name should be respected - which may be understandable but not connect them with historic christianity. It is kind of cool when you walk into a church of another tradition and may feel completely lost during the whole service but are still connected through the Lord's prayer.
By the way what is a modern day equivalent of hallowed? Do we have a modern day word that better comunicates holiness?

Our church

Curious, but has God laid it on your heart/mind to start a business or ministry lately?
-Nom De Plume

Yeah a church. I had thought a business for awhile, especially after reading "New Way To Be Human" by Charlie Peacock (I think you would like his book and the way he does church) but I don't think it fits as well with where God seems to have positioned me. So I'm thinking more along the lines of a church, little different though in that there would be no paid staff and no building owned. I have felt that during the last year and even today I feel God is purposely not giving me vision on the project while he helps me work out what it is I believe again and I get my life vocationally in order. We have been meeting on Sunday mornings with my brother and his kids. One of us teaches the kids a lesson (currently working through Genesis) and then afterwards we all pray together and then the kids play in another room while we read a chapter of scripture together and discuss it. It has been really interesting. Some weeks we adults have learned more from the kids lesson than from our chapter of scripture. Preparing to teach a passage to the kids has stretched all of us, and I can say for myself, I've really enjoyed teaching my kids scripture myself. Its kind of like all of us are responsible for everybody else. Some weeks we call church off or reschedule if someone is sick. Twice we, all 4 adults, have run races together on Sunday morning. The absence of some traditional church things has been interesting too. I'm ready to reintroduce communion (Mental Note: I need to remember to mention that to the others). I think that would be a cool way to discuss a different aspect of our salvation and Jesus' sacrifice, communion that is. No music hasn't seemed to bother any of us. Personally I needed a break from "shiny happy people" worship. The times when we have visited churches recently the absence has made me appreciate their music more.
That's kind of the readers digest version. At some point I anticipate we will start working on trying to include others and grow. I guess we will do that when I feel like God gives me the OK and gives me the vision for it. Until then this is kind of nice!

Kurt

LOST season finale

LOST is starting to lose me. Their story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, the characters are making strange decisions. This "mini-season" just seemed like a rope-a-dope to carry us over to the actual season which starts in February. I think ABC is dragging it out to try to hook us on other of their shows. It seemed kind of funny to me that we are watching a show about psychology, and that this season it is even set in a labratory environment and then they are going to cut me off and tell me that if I watch next week I can get a sneak peak of next season during the breaks from their new show "Daybreak." It's like ABC is "the others" my TV is the cage and they are trying to break me by getting me to watch Daybreak to earn a fishbisquit worth of LOST. WELL, I'm NOT going to watch it just to spite them like Jack, Sawyer, and Kate. Maybe their marketing gimmick will work. I hope they don't kill LOST by not really airing the show for like a year(I don't think the mini-season counts). Didn't the new episodes stop like last April or May...and they don't start till Februaury. I guess we'll see. I hope I still care.

Falling

I, as many of you may have, heard that Ted Haggard, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, an important nondemoninational fundamentalist evangelical organization that ties together smaller and less powerful denominations as well ordaining non-denominational evangelical chaplains, was outed by a gay prostitute. The prostitute says they had sex and used methamphetamine. As much as I have heard Haggard admit to is to getting a massage from the prostitute and buying but not using the meth. MSNBC quoted him as saying, “The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem,” Haggard wrote. “I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”
As I read of this my initial reaction was to use this unfolding story as fuel to the fire of my leaving the "professional" pastorate. Earning the entirety of your living from a church congregation slowly but certainly chokes pastors to death. Your family depends on your paycheck and benefits. If you upset your congregation by being honest about your struggles with sin or your doctrinal struggles they may kick you out, taking away you paycheck and benefits and leaving you with a black eye that could make rehire extremely difficult. Most often there is no encouragement for the pastor to confess his sins or to struggle with his faith. But how can he be healthy without being allowed to do either? They can't. I've talked to them firsthand. Many of them become liars. They keep their struggles to themselves and lie to their churches. Their sins do not get conquered, but thrive in the dark. Their doubts do not get worked out, rather they stop thinking very hard about anything, which hurts them and their congregations. If a church is to be healthy its leaders must be healthy, honest, and free. After rethinking things, this doesn't have to be an argument against the professional pastorate. After all if you compared the number of pastors that are caught in sin to laity that are caught in major sin, statistically I don't imagine there would be a huge difference. They are made of the same flesh. So maybe it seems worse than it is. The media does seem to give a lot of coverage to evangelical when they self-detonate sexually.

It does seem that the higher profile the pastor that the more outrageous the sin though. In fact it occured to me today how much pastors and rock-n-roll front men have in common. They both face immense pressure to "produce" usually through public "performances" several times a week. Their unbalanced lives produce immense stress, physical, emotinal, spiritual, & relational. Some are able to surround themselves with supportive people who can help them overcome. Others turn to drugs, alcohol, and/or relationless sexual encounters to bury the stress. In the end it seems like the most healthy thing to do would be to set down their power and influence, step back in to obscurity with the rest of us, and regain balance in their lives for their own sakes. But as we learned in the Lord of the Rings, once power is taken up by one person it becomes nearly impossible for them to set down of their own will. The election brings this to mind as well. In the end I realize now that Ted Haggard's fall doesn't prove what a sham the professional pastorate is, it isn't. But it does point out a major fault line in the professional pastorate that I don't believe can be fixed without a major overhaul. If the professional pastorate is to continue and thrive elder boards and church congregations must start appreciating their leaders as people that have short comings and doubts, now...today. And they must work through the uncomfortableness of this and some how create environments that encourage confession and allow doubts to be worked through.

Echo?

OK So what the heck is the deal with Mr. Echo!!! What was the point of his character? What plot point was revelaed or lesson learned from his story? Prior to his death he still didn't even make peace with his brother? And then that stupid black fog that makes ratcheting, clanking sounds threw him around and killed him and his last words are "You're next." Boooooooo! You just know the explanation for the fog in the end is gonna stink too. J J Abrams you're loosing me. I believe the next episode is the Fall Season finale too! In the first week of November! Boooooo! Somebody save me. Make sense of some of this...