Well there was a slight minor occurance at church tonight. Being somewhat bored, I ventured into the church library and found an old home video tape. It was made for a giving campaign to fund a building expansion. This video was 10 years old and I was interested in seeing it again. So I brought it up the audio visual room. I put in the VCR. During the middle of the Wednesday night class the music from the video started playing over the sound system. I’m sure some of the old people probably thought the rapture was occuring. Quickly I hit stop on the VCR and pretty much sank deep into my seat hoping anyone who noticed it would quickly forget about it. Everyone had a good laugh about it and I’m sure it will be quickly forgotten (as easily as some sermons).
I’ve got a camping trip to Fall Creek Falls this weekend. Fifteen families from church are going. There are going to be 3 tents on our campsite alone, so I’m sure things are gonna get crowded. We’ll have to get out of the camping area for some space of our own. It will be an adjustment.

There is a men’s prayer breakfast at church this Saturday. While I don’t usually attend meeting like this (I hate getting up early), I’ll probably go to this one. The young men who did the church service earlier this month will be doing the devotional at the breakfast. So I feel like I should go and support them.
If it seems like every other post lately has had to do with church or spiritual stuff, it’s because it has. I’ve been going to church retreats and planning for Bible camp, so all of that is on my mind lately.
This morning I woke up at 4:30AM due to a thunderstorm. Like always I turned on the TV to make sure it wasn’t a tornado. Since it was just a severe thunderstorm watch, I went back to bed. But I never got back to sleep completely.

I’m beginning to remember why I don’t do devos much. They usually turn into some type of rambling nonsense, much like this weblog. There’s so much I want to share, but I can never put it into words, especially on a level kids can understand. I’ve got a shell of a devo together for this retreat. I just need to practice it some more. Perhaps I need to join some type of toasters club and learn how to speak publicly. I guess I never got over that time in college speech class when the professor chastised me for mispronouncing Hiroshima. (HERO-shima or Hiro-SHEEMA)???? I got a B on the speech.
This time I’ll be sure and take a sweatshirt/jacket on this retreat. Last time I barely wore any tshirts – it was all sweatshirts all the time. This time the weather won’t be much different, even though it is 2 weeks later.

I’ve got to come up with relay race ideas for a youth camp I’m volunteering at in June. Here are my ideas so far:

• The obligatory potato sack race
• Hard boiled egg and spoon race
• Something having to do with toothpicks and Lifesavers
• Stuffing pillowcases

Anybody got anymore ideas?
And in the reject pile:

• Let the kids drink a gallon of milk as fast as they can
• Mailbox Baseball
• Snake handling

I should remind myself not to take relay race ideas from Johnny Knoxville.

Went to three different churches today. Morning service at Scottsville church of Christ; Evening services at Corinth Church of Christ then after church devo at Fountain Head Church of Christ. I had planned on going to Scottsville and Corinth; Fountain Head was just something extra.
On the way to Corinth Church of Christ a cop pulled me over for speeding. He looked at my license and registration and sent me on my way telling me to slow down! I was going 60 MPH in a 45. I gave him the excuse of not knowing the area and being on my way to church. I am fully convinced that he took pity on me for not having that glaring “Under 21” label on my drivers license. Any other time, I would have surely gotten a ticket.

I stopped by church today to photograph the annual egg hunt. But I came too late. It was raining and they had already had the egg hunt by the time I arrived. So no photographs…..
Bustin Out!….wha?? This is the first time I’ve ever seen the word “Bustin” used on the marquee of a church sign. My guess is that it was some kind of concert. This being Easter weekend, maybe they’re planning on “bustin” Jesus out of the Roman prison.
This is just wrong.….but slightly amusing. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.
I’m going to Ottawa, Canada, in about a week. It’s a business trip, but I’m hoping to see some interesting places while I’m there. This will be my 3rd national capital I’ve been to – the others being Washington, DC (May 1996) and Beijing, China (May 2000). I hope to be updating my weblog while I’m there. Watch this space for updates.

Chreasters that’s what I call people who come to church only on Christmas and Easter. I guess they feel good about themselves since they do celebrate Christianity’s most important holidays, yet they don’t feel the need to attend church on a regular basis.
Easter is coming up. Growing up Church of Christ means never having to get up early for an Easter Sunrise service. I’m particularly thankful for that one. Churches of Christ don’t do anything special for Easter, except for the arbitrary egg hunt. When friends ask me why Churches of Christ don’t celebrate Easter, I usually explain it away by saying we celebrate Easter every Sunday, since the resurrection is so important to us.
Surprisingly Easter has been overshadowed by Christmas as the most celebrated Christian holiday. The funny thing is that I can find more Biblical justification for celebrating Easter rather than Christmas. Neither the word “Christmas” nor “December 25th” are never talked about in scriptures. Yet, we are told the disciples gathered on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7).

Church gets sued by former member who had an unwanted exorcism…Let this be a lesson for churches: Do not perform exorcisms without written consent of the exorcisee, or you could be headed toward a lawsuit.
The best of Burger King religion…have it your way…it’s always troubling when people tend to bend the rules for convenience sake. (For those of you who don’t remember, Burger King had a slogan a while back which said “Have it your way at Burger King now.” “Burger King Religion” is the default term I use whenever someone blatently disregards biblical standards).

Yesterday at church it was father son day on the Communion Table. Whoever picked the servers for the Communion Table made sure that all of them were father and son combinations. Keep it in the family I guess.
Also yesterday during our Sunday night service, we heard from the missionary group who went to El Salvador. From what I can gather, they had a medical mission team (which meant pulling some teeth and head lice scrubs) and then had a gospel meeting later on. Throughout their talks, we showed pictures on the big screen. I am thrilled at actually having some substance to show on the church webpage. Normally I can’t get any response from people in regards to pictures.
You have to be careful about this whole missionary thing. Potential converts may be likely to convert just for free health care (as in the case in Central America) or the chance to meet Westerners for a free trip back to America (as in the case with Russia). The whole thing is reminiscent of a South Park episode I saw. (I don’t normally watch South Park…..I find the show somewhat crude and redundant). Anyways in this particular episode, a missionary to Africa was featured. Converts were told to use English since it was “God’s language” and to take on Christian names. They were also told that “reading the bible and accepting Jesus equals food.”
For many Christians, a mission team teaching the bible, also means Americanizing your converts. This is far from the truth. Foriegn converts should be allowed to continue to practice customs of their own cultures….as long as it doesn’t directly interfer or go against Christianity.
I can’t believe I just did that….using a South Park episode as a guide for missionary policy.

On any given Sunday hundreds of thousands of Americans attend the church of their choosing to worship their God. Rarely do these churches become targets of terrorists or thieves. Yet theft of church property does happen, more often then outright terrorism. Most of the time church property theft is an inside job. And then there were the recent church burnings during the 90s. I believe these church burnings were more targeting rural black churches….probably a hate crime (race related). But who am I to say? Recently there was a suspicious occurrence at a church in my area. Does this mean we all should panic? Nope. Does this mean we might need to make sure we have all of our ducks in order? Probably. However let me go on record as saying I doubt if anything will happen to churches, regardless of increased security. The problem is that some people get all worked up over security and end up spending time and money excessively on a very minute or nonexistent threat.


Ok so my visit to Newschannel5 last night was good. I took a jacket and tie so that I could make some fake photos of my so-called moonlighting job. The Snow Watch map is very intriguing. Some people are pretty gullible. For example, last time I was at Channel 5, I had my digital camera and made some pictures of me at the news desk. I only had on a t-shirt and jeans. I told people that I showed up and they needed someone to do the news, so I did it on my own. And they believed me!


I’m currently watching the sequel to Where the Red Fern Grows. I remember watching the original movie in the gym of my elementary school. Every six weeks we’d have a movie showing. Everyone would pay a dollar to get into the movie, which usually covered the rental fees of showing the movie. Usually it was some Disney Movie like “Freaky Friday” or “Herbie the Love Bug.” Remember this was the days before the VCR, so getting to watch a movie at school is a big deal. It was one of those reel to reel filmstrips which our librarian would change out at regular intervals. Now with the advent of VCRs, movie showings happens so often, kids are often bored of movies.

Anyways, back to “Where the Red Fern Grows.” I was watching that movie again the other day and found out that a kid dies in the movie due to an acciendal shooting. It was the inbred villian in the movie who tries to kill one of the dogs. For some reason I never picked up on this death sequence when I was growing up. It’s amazing they would show this scene in schools today. I figured they would have censored this movie.