Guess who met John Piper?

Uh...that would be me.

This past weekend, we went to Minneapolis to visit Bethlehem (Piper's church) and Wooddale Church (Leith Anderson's church...he's the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals).

We went to the Saturday evening service at Bethlehem and were able to say hi to Pastor John after the service. I tried to just shake his hand and not take up too much of his time, but he was very gracious and asked about what brought us to Minneapolis, etc. He enjoyed hearing about Bethany Baptist and mentioned that he quotes Pastor Ritch frequently in his sermons, too.

The first week of sabbatical was very productive. I wrote about one hundred fifty pages combined for papers on my DMin class and finished going through a seminar called "The Nehemiah Strategy." The seminar is designed to help with long-term strategic planning.

I'm looking forward to week two!

Watch this second...

...and skip to about two minutes in.

Feist - 1 2 3 4

This is the song on the new ipod commercials. It reminds me of the "Here We Go Again" video in that the entire thing is a single take...even the end...right?

Sabbatical: Day One

My seven week sabbatical (plus some vacation time) began a little bit before six this morning. I went to the Central pool and swam a mile and a half then came back and had breakfast with the kids. After breakfast, we did a little cleaning and in a little while I'll begin working on some of my DMin papers. My goal is to finish at least a rough draft of my last paper today and begin editing.

A lot of people have asked what we're planning on doing on the sabatical so I thought I'd sketch at least a broad overview of our objectives:

Church Plant: Working on the church plant is the primary purpose of the sabbatical. I will be
doing so by visiting churches, vision casting, studying leadership development, laying out a four-year plan, and spending time daily just to brainstorm.

Personal Growth: I will be finishing some DMin work during this period as well. I'm going to try to knock this out within the first week. There are also quite a few books I'd like to read.

Family: I'm going to try to spend quite a bit of time with the family in the evenings especially. It will be nice to be able to not have a lot of things competing with our schedules. When we're in Texas, we plan on visiting lots of churches but also spending time with extended family. Whitney and I will take a vacation together and then run the White Rock Half Marathon in Dallas.

I'm not really a person who enjoys "relaxing," but I'll also try to decompress at least a little bit.

Don't Waste Your Cancer...

{check out my dad's blog: http://home.tx.rr.com/godputthemy}

This past week, we found out that my dad has been diagnosed with stage 1 multiple myeloma. There's a lot I'd like to say, but I haven't really figured out how to express it yet. It has been very hard to process, but I remain convinced that God has not just allowed this to happen to my dad but appointed it. My dad and I are very close and of course I would not want him to go through this. At the same time, I know that he will use this to bring glory to God in a way that other people would not be able to do.

John Piper wrote an article entitled, "Don't Waste Your Cancer." You can view it here:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2006/1776_Dont_Waste_Your_Cancer/

It is excellent and a great source of encouragement.

I think my dad's blog is evidence that he is not wasting this cancer...please check it out:

http://home.tx.rr.com/godputthemy

As Job says, "Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” and "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

News:UF Student Tasered At John Kerry Speech

Three thoughts:

1. It's amazing how this is presented as a student being tasered for "asking a question."

2. It's a great example of how if you yell loudly enough you can make people believe anything. As he is pushing cops, he's yelling, "I'm not doing anything!" I like how after he pushes the security guy, he will throw his arms up in the air like he did nothing wrong.

3. The actual event lasted several minutes. This would have gone down much differently if I had been in charge of security:

Student: I'd like to ask a follow up quest...ahhhhh....why are you tasering me...ahhhhh...why are you tasering me again...ahhh...why are you laughing as you are tasering me {etc., etc., until he was no longer conscious and we could carry him out peacably.}

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

I had heard about this but someone just sent me this link...wow. In fairness to her, I think she just forgot the question.