Husband. Dad to 5. Student Ministry Pastor. Follower of Jesus. Yatta yatta.

Archives for March 2008

MCLAREN, EASTER, AND SINGING

Tonight I’m up for reasons I won’t go into… but to kill the time, I’m going back through my long ignored list of bloglines. As a pattern, there are some blogs I read weekly, but some just get stuck in my blog roll for a once a month visit or something. These are mostly some of the more technical or theological blogs that I’m interested in the subject of, but that I don’t share a personal relationship with the author.

One of those is the Emergent Village blog.

Well tonight I noticed a post for an Easter Message via song from Brian Mclaren on that blog and I braced myself before hitting play on the embeded video.. cuz for various reasons, there always seems to be hype and controversy surrounding Brian Mclaren- and I assumed this would be provocative too. I expected it to be some sort of music montage with a message of him speaking or something.

I was wrong on both counts. I can’t imagine one Christ-follower who could honestly have anything but praise for him in this song he wrote about the life of Jesus and the message of Easter. Ok… I have one rant. “Can every pastor in the world play a guitar and sing except me!?!?” Ok.. rant over.

Here’s evidence that Brian McLaren has musical talent too.

BIKES, BOYS, AND DIRT JUMPING

Well, one of the perks of moving to this house in San Diego almost 3 years ago was the empty dirt lot next to our house that we sorta inherited. It is about 3/4 of an acre of non-buildable land per the city and as a result, is a great exploration space that I’m sure my kids will see as symbolic of their boyhood years in the future. They, along with the other neighborhood kids, have claimed it as their own personal sandlot where they’ve been known to dig for treasure, fight battles, and more recently- build bmx jumps. As a result, there seems to be a constant supply of shovels and bikes in the back 40 these days.


We also have a set of jumps around the corner in the dirt off to the side of the main road. A group of dads, teens, and men who are just big kids inside have turned a barren/brush filled roadside into the land of all things dirt and big air focused called the Cuyamaca Jumps. Most of the jumps are too big for my boys (like some are 7 or 8 feet high) and usually we just go ride around them and watch other kids jump.

That was until this past Saturday when the “just-watch-others-go-big” days passed us up. My older two have now earned their flying wings (and accompanying flesh wounds) and thanks to some instruction from our newest Berry Family recruit- Matt who has stayed with us for a few weeks now and took my boys to jump school with his new bike- they are now flying in the land of all things dirt jump.

Here’s 3 picture collages to see the proof I speak of…

EASTER

Easter was a kick. Started pretty early and was at church until about 1pm. I loved church. Read: “LOVED it”. It was so fun, exciting, and inspiring. Made me want to live more intentionally for Jesus and do a great job as a youth pastor at Journey, just so that I can hold up my end of the deal. I love the fact that I can invite a student or their parents to come and know they will all have a great time. So cool and so challenging.

After church we headed back to our house. My parents are here in town. We had the neighbors from down the street up for an egg hunt with their youngest kids and then dinner with everyone after. When we add the Cleaves family, a college room mate of one of their children, and Matt (a former student who we have taken in during some tough times and has been living with us for about 2 weeks now) and you end up with 14 people for dinner. So much fun.

Here’s some pics:


GO-CART BUILDING

Today was my first day off in a while. I slept in. Had a cup of coffee. Picked up my parents from the airport, and then sat down to be lazy when TJ said, “Can you help me build a go-cart?” I thought about it and said, “What are you going to build it with?” He said, I don’t know. Spare stuff.?.?

So, we went out into the garage…

  • 2 bike wheels off a busted bike.
  • 3 lengths of 2×4
  • 1 wood crate
  • 2 training wheels
  • and some nuts and bolts later…

we had a go-cart to rival the land of go-carts.

TWHATTER?

I’m lost. What is up with Twitter? I mean really, who has time to tell the world what they are doing every second or to check up on their friends? And since when do I want to constantly answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” all the time for my friends via the web? I thought it was weird enough that you’re supposed to update a status on facebook answering this question, but do we really need another social networking site dedicated to just this one function? I think twitter is either a voyeuristic niche market or maybe for the technologically bored…. but what is the draw here? Am I missing something?

I can’t see myself ever updating my status hourly so people know what I’m up to. This seems crazy to me.