Bono’s words; not mine:

“We’re watching what religion can do. And you know, I think it’s anathema, and see — religion takes ideas. Religion often reduces the size of God. God is so big. It’s a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.
I don’t doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It’s religion I’m doubting.”
–Bono of U2, on Larry King Live 12/1/02.

More pictures are up from Roy’s birthday party. There’s also a story there somewhere.

I think Roy was surprised for his birthday party at Longhorn. Alot of people showed up for it. It was good to be a part of it.
I’ve noticed that Paoli Peaks is expecting to open the weekend of December 14th. This is the earliest I can remember them being opened. Usually they shoot for a Christmas opening since everyone will be on Christmas vacation.
Really not much else is going on. I’ve got to figure out if I’m going on this mission trip to El Salvador by Jan. 11, which by coincidence is when I’ll be skiing (weather permitting). I still don’t know if I’ll go. I wish there were more people who I knew better who were going. The people who are already going are already pretty tight knit and I’m not sure how they’d react with an extra person in the group. Why do some people go year after year while other people go just once? I haven’t figured that out.

To be quite honest I don’t hang on every word of every sermon. But who does really? Unless it is a really good preacher who I haven’t heard in a while. I found myself doing this mind wandering today. The subject was “Thanksgiving,” a subject which has probably been worn out over the past few days. Not that I’m not thankful for what I have. I am grateful for what I have.
Then again, both services…AM and PM…had me around families with small children….loud small children. Probably should have used the nursery or training room.
A friend and I have been having these ongoing discussions about people who don’t return emails. That is slightly annoying, especially when you know the email is valid…the person checks it frequently…and when you ask a specific question. You tend to take it personal when someone doesn’t bother responding. However I rarely use email to communicate anymore. It’s more IM with me. I’ve come to find out most people are really too busy to bother with email…unless they want to forward you some lame joke.
I suspect Tennessee will be going to the Peach Bowl, which is played on New Year’s Eve at 6:30PM. How this will play into the church’s New Year Eve’s party is unknown. Probably someone will request we show the game on the big screen. The Peach Bowl is cool. It’s been around for a while and most people have heard of it. It’s not like some stupid bowl like the Outback Bowl which just came about so the restaurant could throw their name around…and so 2 mediocre teams could play each other for the excitement of their locality.

I left a huge stack (at least 10 or 15) youth directories in one of the classrooms at church. After class was over, all of them were gone. I know there wasn’t that many kids there who hadn’t gotten one. How did we loose so many directories? Did the teachers just throw directories out to EVERYONE including one time visitors who were there visiting relatives for Thanksgiving weekend? “Here, kid, have a directory which cost the church $3 each to print up. We know we’ll never see you again, but we want you to have this directory which you’ll toss in the trash as soon as you get home.”
I hate to see money go to waste. I guess I’ll have to hire armed guards for the next set of directories Kevin prints up.

• Bathrooms When our group leader brought up the bathroom situation, someone in the meeting made some remark about how bad it smelled. They suggested we just dig our own hole. I’ve been around some bad bathrooms before. Last time I went down the Ocoee on a whitewater rafting trip, the toilet at the rental place was stopped up. Pretty nasty.
  Then again, the bathrooms in El Salvador couldn’t be any worse than the best squatter bathrooms in China. As long as they have bowls….
• Logistics of packing We are told we can bring our own 2-man tent, but I don’t know how that will fit in a suitcase. Would I be sleeping outside or indoors? The previous year’s pictures I saw showed people sleeping outside in tents. Also we are told to grab the pillow from the airline. Those pillows are pretty small and I’m not sure it would be that comfortable. Although I’m sure working all day dishing out pills and doing head scrubs would make me tired enough to sleep on anything.
• Showers They use a camp shower with one gallon of water. I guess I’m not used to showering with such little water. I ought to try using just one gallon of water and see how long that lasts. Not that it’s a big deal anyways….
• Unbiased advice from others My brother-in-law went to El Salvador a couple of years ago and he recommended NOT doing it, at least based on the trip he was on. He said it was miserable at times with the sand storm. So now I’m not sure if these die-hard Latin American Missions people are just telling me part of the story just to get me to go. I don’t want to go if it is going to be extremely difficult.

I realize that things might not be wrapped up in a neat little package. It will be hard at times. Things will be inconvenient. I’m prepared for that. I just need to really take things into consideration before I make my decision.
Yesterday I helped Todd Burka setup his webpage. Initually he just wanted to host MP3s on there. I told him to ask around and see if there were any restrictions for him storing that type of stuff on his webpage. Somehow I don’t think UT deletes old webpages, since this one is still online a good 2 years after Jeremy graduated.

There are several factors which need to be considered when hiring the education/involvement minister. This person has to be willing to work behind the scenes….not necessarily be able to preach…but willing to get up in front of people. I guess they are looking for a cheerleader; someone who will get more people involved at church. We’ve had several of our heavily involved families to move away. The Speights and Allisons come to mind. Now we need more people involved at church. Too little people are doing too much of the work.
What we are trying to avoid is the situations we experienced earlier….when there was friction among the ministers at church. One wanted more of the spotlight than the other. It was a bad situation in general.
I find myself very self conscious around new people. Especially new people whom I’m trying to impress. I find myself worrying about those little idiosyncrasies which I do in normal conversations. All of this is ironic since I keep this lame web log which reveals all of my shortcomings.
It’s Thanksgiving week. At Lipscomb at times they would close the dorms for the weeklong Thankgiving break. You had to get special permission to stay throughout the break. I always felt sorry for the international students who had nowhere to go during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Being away from home during the holidays must have been tough. Plus the school was always deserted at that time. I remember during Christmas break, when I didn’t have a computer with internet access at home, I’d go up to school and play on the computer at the dorm room. It was always quiet. I only did it if I had nothing else better to do.
Woodmont Hills Church of Christ Distributes $100 Bills.

The youth directories were a big hit. We handed them out at the youth devotional tonight. Everyone seemed anxious to get one. I’m glad to have made a small contribution to the youth ministry. Hopefully the directories will be useful.
I went to the El Salvador mission trip meeting. I have to decide by January 11th if I want to go to. Mostly it will be a medical mission trip. Handing out medication. Head scrubs for lice. Pulling teeth. Gospel meeting at night. It would be a lot easier to decide if I knew whether or not I was going to have a job in April. I think it will be rough work. But the same people go year after year so it must be fulfilling in some way or another. We’ll see…
The church is going to hire a education/involvement minister. Maybe it will take some pressure off of David and Phil. Hopefully they can get someone who will have a strong desire to make things better and work well with our current staff.

At church we mail tapes of the Sunday morning and evening sermons to 20+ people every other week. David Shannon must be a big believer in the tape ministry. We’ve added alot of tape receipients lately. Mostly it is friends of David…sometimes people who are from Gadsden (where he formerly preached at)…sometimes its other people David corresponds with. In order to reduce the number of mailouts we are asking receipients to renew their subscription by letting us know they are still interested in receiving the tapes. We are putting a postcard in the mailouts with our contact information. It’s probably a good idea. In times past we have had some of our shut-ins pass away. When their relatives cleaned out their house, they found lots of unopened envelopes with tapes inside.
Somehow I knew 107.5 The River radio station was not cool enough to play Sting songs. While driving and channel surfing this week, I heard that familiar guitar riff from “Every Breath You Take” on 107.5. Without even a second thought, I knew it couldn’t be The Police, but rather that 2nd rate Puffy remake, “I’ll Be Missing You.” Sure enough, I was right. By playing only Top 40 hits, The River has become lame.
My mom is getting a new range today. Her old one is from 1965 (I kid you not). GE doesn’t even make replacement parts for it anymore. So I’m sure she will be happy to get this new one.

Finally got the church youth directories done. I was over at Kevin and Amy’s printing business until 10PM tonight. They must be irritated for me staying so long. They wouldn’t ever say that they were irritated, even if they really were.
The directories look nice. In living color. I’m glad they turned out so good. It should be a big hit at the youth devotional tomorrow night when we distribute them. In order to get more kids to go, we should tell them the only way they will get their directories is to come to the devo.

I help out in the audio visual ministry at church. My job involves displaying the lyrics to the songs on the big screen in the auditorium during worship services. Lately I’ve had some middle schoolers ask me if they can come up and help display the songs on the screen. The display runs on a computer browser, so most of the kids are familiar enough with the internet to know how it works. I don’t mind them being up there. I just don’t want it to become the hang out place for middle schoolers. I don’t allow more than one up there at a time. If they decide to come up there, they will work and learn something about the visual screen. They will not be allowed to come back for several months. I don’t mind them wanting to learn about how the screen works, I just don’t want it to turn out to be something they do in lieu of sitting in the auditorium for worship.
Apparently word has gotten around about it. Without even advertising it, 3 kids have already asked about coming up there. I guess controlling things on the big screen is pretty cool, even in middle school.