Mission Work

For some reason I was just thinking about a friend I know who I haven’t talked to in quite a while.   He’s a single guy who has spent a lot of time on mission trips to Russia.  I found Justin’s blog and discovered that he’s actually in Russia right now.  He dedicates his life to serving others both here in the United States and overseas.  He’s a man full of energy who loves God with everything he has.  How do you serve God?  Are you excited to do it or is it just one of those daily tasks you have to endure?

Is Church Relevant to you?

I’m very much involved with my church and we have a service we call Eleventh Hour that’s been a big part of where I spend my time.  We try to make it not like a regular church service.  It’s held Saturday evenings at 6:00 pm.  We really try to focus on building relationships with people and not try to spend our time “Preaching” to people, but we do want people to know who God is and how much He loves them.  We want people to understand that God wants a personal relationship with them, He doesn’t want us to be drawn into legalism and praying certain prayers and doing certain things to win favor with Him.  God wants a relationship with you; He wants to know you, and He wants you to know Him.

Our Eleventh Hour service is focused on relationships: We sit at round tables and have plenty of time to discuss issues at the tables.  We have plenty of coffee and snacks and plenty of time to just hang out before and after the service.

I’ve come across a great blog called Relevant Christian that really hits me with its content.  I especially liked what was posted today called They Like Jesus…Not the Church which references an article from Outreach Magazine.  It’s well worth reading.

So is church relevant to you?  How do you think of church?  I’d love to hear comments.

Spring Break

Ahh, spring break is here.  For the first time, I’ve taken off work during the same week as the kids.  It’s a beautiful day here in central Ohio: 73 degrees and partly cloudy right now.  I put the screens in all the windows, the bushes are starting to bud and the grass has turned noticeably green over the last week.  My son is outside playing basketball on his new hoop and my daughter is upstairs cleaning/playing in her room.  I decided to go ahead and get some of the patio furniture out so I can enjoy it while it’s nice.

We went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton yesterday.  Wow is it big.  I was really impressed with how nice it is.  And it’s FREE admission!  They have planes from the Wright brothers all the way up to today.  It includes the massive B52 bomber and the impressive B2 Stealth bomber.  It’s a great history lesson.  They also have an IMAX theatre (for a fee) that includes about 3 different movie options each lasting about an hour.  Even our kids seemed to enjoy it at their young ages.

Family Meeting Update

Well, after one week the ticket system seems to be successful.  Both kids ended the week with one hour to spare.  I was a little worried on Monday when our son used 2 1/2 hours the first day, but he quickly realized that he would run out of time soon so he held back the rest of the week.  It’s definitely making them think about their use of time.

Our son Ethan lost a tooth in the middle of the night Friday.  He woke up at 2:45 and tells mom his tooth just fell out.  We told him that it was too late for the tooth fairy to get there that night and that he’d have to wait a day.  Even the tooth fairy has a cut-off time for orders!

One of those weeks

I’ve had one of those weeks where you sort of wish you could just rewind your DVR and start over.  And actually, a DVR does sort of play into the equation.  Part of my week involves something I’d rather not get into specifics on here, actually I don’t even want to get into generalities here either.  So we’ll just leave that alone for now!

Other than the unmentioned above, it’s just been a bunch of little things gone wrong that make me want to start over.  I’ve been late for work the last 2 days, once just b/c I overslept and today I had the heavy rain during a Columbus rush hour to blame.  I’m sure one of my bosses will become aware of this soon.

My biggest problem so far this week has been at church.  I was supposed to go in there last night and record a broadcast from CCN on Creating Innovative Outreach Events.  This is where that DVR comes into play: We don’t have one.  We need one!  I hooked up a VCR to our satellite to record the program.. I put in the tape.. it goes in most of the way but not all the way.. I try to pull it out.. it rips the tape in 2.  Great!  I try another VCR and get the same results.  I nearly threw 2 VCR’s through the window, but somehow I managed to keep the window intact.  The program did not get recorded.  I had to apologize to our Associate Pastor about not getting it recorded.  I hope he’s ok with that.  He was going to show it to a group this morning but I hope he had a backup plan.  Now I’m determined to get a DVR so I don’t have to deal with a VCR tape ever again.

I’ll move on and things will get better.  I think God wants to make sure that I’m counting on Him to reign in my life as opposed to living life by my terms.  God is constant even though my life looks more like the twists, turns, and loops at Cedar Point.

Family Meeting

My wife and I have 2 kids, ages 7 and 5.  Our son, who is the older, has had some serious issues with all electronic forms of media.  He loves to sit and play his Gamecube (or GameBoy, or online, etc.) for hours on end if possible.  Then when we finally peel him away, his attitude resembles Bowser in Mario Party 7.  Actually, it’s much worse than that.

So we decided to institute a ‘ticket’ system that would allow them a limited amount of time watching TV or playing games.  They each received an envelope containing several ‘tickets’.  There are 7 one hour tickets and 6 half hour tickets, totaling 10 hours.  These tickets are good from Monday morning thru Sunday night.  If one of the kids want to watch TV or play a video game, they ask us if they can do it, and then they ‘pay’ us for the time. 

If they run out of tickets before the end of the week, then they’re out of luck.  If they don’t use all their tickets in a week, then we will keep track of unused hours and will consider some sort of award down the road.  Hopefully this will help improve their attitudes by keeping them from staring at a screen for hours on end.  Also, I hope this will help teach them to manage their time better.

I think this will be a fun experiment and I hope it works.  I’ll try and update as I see results from this.

What a great time for sports

I’ve been sitting at the computer working on stuff and I’m sort of half-watching a little bit of Pitt/Louisville and thinking what a great time of year it is for sports.  March Madness is bascally upon us, spring training games have begun, and warm weather is almost here which means I can actually go out and play sports with the kids.  We just bought our son a basketball hoop as an early birthday present.  We actually bought it from a neighbor today and will pick it up in the next day or two.  I think he’s gonna love the opportunity to go out in the driveway and shoot hoops.  I have a suspicion that I’ll have some fun with it too.

We’re looking at buying some Reds tickets and getting to at least one game sometime this year.  We made the trip down there from Central Ohio last year and had a great time.  The kids really enjoyed it and we got to see a great game against St. Louis when the Reds were still somewhat in the race.  Maybe this year they’ll pull it out at the end of the season.  That’s one of the great things about sports: “There’s always next year!”

Watching TV is overrated

I’ve spent more than a week since I decided to severely limit my TV time.  It’s done me a lot of good, and it’s made me realize how much time can be wasted sitting around doing nothing.  I watched a little extra over the weekend, but hey it’s still basketball season.  I’m interested in seeing how well I can do during March Madness.  Maybe I just won’t watch anything but basketball when the tournament starts (except for ‘24′).