RPON:


Potential injury...it's worth the gamble.


I'm raising my boy right- to be a mac user.


This is my son climbing on my bike in the garage. The bike is just propped against an amp an somehow he got up there without it falling on him.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Soren Kierkegaard

Toby Mac: Heather really likes Toby Mac and a month or so ago she was asking me about his concerts and seeing if he would be in the area anytime soon. So I found the information bought the tickets and last night was the concert.

Family Force 5
Building 429
Thousand Foot Crutch
Toby Mac and the Diverse City Band

After the concert I've decided to go into the rap business. I should be recording my first album here in the next month or so. I'm guessing it's going to go huge.

I also really enjoyed how music was their passion. They didn't make music to pay the bills, they did it because they loved it and loved performing. I had the feeling that every band would make music whether people bought their tickets or not. It really motivated me to think about The Bridge, all the stuff that can really weigh on me and ask some good questions. Truth is I love the church (universal) and I would do this (encourage people in their relationship with God) whether I was paid for it or not. So I need to give my all to it, the hardest part to give is my emotions.

Gone Fishing: I got to go fishing yesterday for the first time this year. We had a good time, caught a few croaker and froze our butts off. An excellent fishing day.

On a side note the weather is completely crazy this year. It was 85 on Wednesday, 45 yesterday and about 85 again today.

Make the bad man stop!

Let's celebrate: Today is administrative assistants' day. Remember the good old days when it was secretarys' day? So as a thank you to The Bridge's most amazing administrative assistant I found on craigslist a used GT mountain bike. Last night I picked it up and this morning I presented to once again our most amazing administrative assistant...myself.

Trust be told I didn't even know today was admin assistants day and it really doesn't matter because I don't have one. But I did buy myself a bike last night for a very very good deal.

Looking for some light Wednesday morning reading?

What do do if your cars hanging over a cliff.

Promise: Yesterday was one of those Sunday's! It was very encouraging, very motivating and I came into monday with energy and passion. We're in the middle of our Doubter's Anonymous Series and this week I decided to change my message to be titled "Where is God when tragedy strikes?" I don't particularly look forward to messages like this. I always feel the speaker is making excuses for God or that the speaker never actually addresses the question.

I tried to not make excuses for God and to answer the question. I think I did a good job. It's always hard to bring a message like this because at first it's not uplifting and it's not encouraging. But in the end I believe people left with hope.

After the message almost everyone stuck around and had coffee and munchkins. This is the first Sunday where there was lots of connection between people and lots of people meeting other people. I believe this was a huge step for The Bridge. Individual lives and faiths are melding together to form one church.

At the shocking voting off of Sanjaya I thought I'd salute him with the anthem one more time!

Sanjaya Anthem

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Guy's Night: When I was a youth pastor we would have "Dude's night". Generally the night included lots of video games, pizza and little sleep.

Now that I'm working with adults we have "Guy's Night". Last night we had our first and went to a Norfolk Tides game. They are our AAA Baseball team (Baltimore Orioles). We had 14 guys show up and aside from it being a balmy 45 degrees it was a great night. Sometimes men just need to hang out. I make sure it's part of my regular routine but I know many men at The Bridge don't.

Can't wait to do it again!

picture by James Lang/US presswire

The Washington Nationals wore Virginia Tech hats during their game last night. Pretty cool gesture.

Sadness: Let me first express my sadness and horror at the news coming out of VA. Tech. I know that when more of the names of victims come out there will almost certainly be families from this area that had a student at tech that is either now wounded or dead. This sort of things sends shocks through me and really penetrates my heart. I empathize with the parents that have lost their children and my heart breaks for them. This sort of things should not happen. Ever.

Numbers: It's weird how numbers work and by weird I mean odd, strange, demented. We live in time where we like to round numbers or where specific numbers aren't important until an event like this. I was at the gym yesterday and when I left my computer and headed to the gym the number said 1 victim dead. Then when I get to the Y the death toll is at 21 and as I pedalled on the bike, in 15 short minutes the death toll rose from 21 to 25 and then suddenly to 29. As I pedaled I was just hoping this was all some sort of misinformation but really knew it wasn't.

Based on the stats at the National Census 7200 people died yesterday in the United States.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

If my math is correct a little more than .1% of Tech students were killed yesterday. In any other situation no one worries about
.1% until something like this happens and it matters the whole world to 33 parents. And in many ways it matters to many millions of Americans. All that to say that every life is important no matter what percentages say.

Money: This sunday we're starting a three week series titled Doubters Anonymous. This week is "I doubt I'll ever be financially free." I've done my research and compiled a sort of list about Americans and debt. I've also done my work as to what the bible says about money and the role it plays in a disciples life. I'm excited about the message as well as for the series.

I hope people find freedom in Christ as we walk through these three messages.

I doubt I'll ever be financially free.
I doubt my relationship will ever be what I want it to be.
I doubt my faith in Christ.

Ultimately these are matters of the heart, that's what's amazing about the scriptures it seems to continue to come back to one thing. What is the condition of your heart and how much of it belongs to Christ?

Books: I'm still working on the Piper book I started probably a month ago. I picked it up seriously for the first time yesterday and just this morning I was reading it and God spoke to me through the text on specifically the topic I'm bringing the message on this Sunday. I really enjoy his words but Piper talks on a different level in which I live.

I just ordered a slew of books from amazon yesterday so right when they arrive I should be wrapping up Piper and then I can continue my quest to 52.

Discipline: I have really not been feeling the blog lately. But it's times like this that I remind myself that blogging is not always about desire but sometimes about discipline. So hopefully starting today I'm back on the wagon.

Movies: Starting this Sunday and for three weeks The Bridge will be meeting at the Movie Theater. It will be an interesting transition but I think if properly communicated it will be a positive transition.

One Track: I've noticed that I'm really one track minded, I think noticed is the wrong word, I've noticed it before but I think I'm finally recognizing the...(problem?). It's very very hard for me to focus on two specific areas of my life at one time. I'm very good at juggling many tasks but they need to be centrally focused around one area. A great example is my hobbies. There was a time where I was really into video games, I wasn't the spastic overgrown child into video games but I just enjoyed playing them in my down time. But now all of my systems sit in a box in the guest bedroom where they have sat since we moved here in November of 2005. At the start of the year I was really into reading and did little else for my hobby. Lately I've been into target shooting which I really enjoy doing. But oddly enough even though I enjoy both reading and target shooting I can only seem to focus on one thing at a time.

Once I took the Ridley Church Planter's profile and the assessor of the test told me I did something that he had never seen done before. I had segmented my life into two sections. One was things I enjoyed while on the job and the other was things I enjoyed doing in my downtime. He wasn't concerned that the things weren't really related...that was fairly normal but he was curious as to why I split them right down the middle 50/50. I didn't have an answer but I think it was some insight as to how I "process" my life.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/04/martin.jesus/index.html

This article was on CNN.com yesterday. I thought it worth passing on hence me mentioning it here.