Blog Archive

I leave tomorrow AM for Nashville and the Southern Baptist Convention. I’ve never been before so it should be quite an experience. I’ve talked to a few friends that I haven’t seen in a while that will be there so it’ll be good to catch up with some people. I’m not real sure what to expect, but I’m sure it won’t be boring.

I won the consolation bracket of my tennis tournament today. That’s the first tournament I’ve played since ’99 when I played juniors. Maybe before then, I can’t really remember its been so long. My first match was pretty ugly. The second match I won be Default cause the guy didn’t show up. The third match I played better, I was pretty happy with that one.

So thats today’s update. Nothing too big. Check back soon I’ll continue my series on what I learned at my last church.

I decided this week that I had to start looking for another church. Over the past 6 months or so, our church has been debating whether or not to adopt a new constitution. Over this period, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the way things were being done. I figured it would be a good idea to do a short series of entries on what I’ve learned through the whole experience.

The first lesson I’ve learned is that having good theology does not automatically mean you’ll have a good church. Anyone who knows me well knows that I place a high value on theology. If you go over to the “Papers” page of my website and see that I have advocated repeatedly the need for greater theological understanding in the church at large. But this experience has reminded me that a church can have excellent theology and still face the same problems common to so many of our churches today.

This shows me that being a pastor is much, much more than urging a church to understand and believe what the Bible says. Its also about loving and humbly leading the people God has put under your care. If any of these are missing in a pastor and church leadership, a church is crippled and ineffective.

Pastoring is such a delicate balance. I hope that in my last year of preparation for the pastorate, God continues to show me what it means to strike that proper balance.

Last time, I promised some details on my trip overseas this summer. I’ll be traveling to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a missionary conference being held there. From what I know it seems like the IMB brings in missionaries from different parts of the world for this conference. I’ll be working with these missionaries’ teenagers. It’ll be something like a version of the camps where I’ve worked the last few summers, we’ll have Bible Studies and a worship service every day and then some other activities on different days. I’ll be leading worship and preaching for the worship service plus other stuff to help out I’m sure.
The theme is sanctification and I’m planning on talking about what it is and what it looks like in our lives and Christians.

Probably my biggest worry is being able to relate to the youth on the trip. Most of them have lived overseas for most of their lives so they have very different experiences than the youth I am used to working with. I’m sure this will be a huge learning experience for me. I am really looking forward to getting to see the other side of missions. I really want my church (when I’m a pastor in another year or so) to focus on and really promote world missions. I feel like I understand the theological side of the need for missions, I just have not been exposed to the ‘front lines.’ (Not that I’ll be on the front lines, but I’ll be working with people who live on the front lines.) So I’m sure that I’ll learn more than I could ever teach on this trip.

I’ve gotten my passport and my shots, so most of the basics are taken care of. Now, I’m working on my sermons and the music we’ll be doing. Preparing these sermons is something you can pray for. I’m really hoping I can come up with illustrations and applications that these youth will be be able to relate to.

Thats about all I know so far… I appreciate your prayers and I’ll try to keep the blog updated as I find out more.

I know, I know, its been forever since I updated this thing. Here’s whats going on this summer. Next week (June 6-10) I have a class from 8-5 everyday. June 21-23 I’ll be in Nashville for the SBC Annual Meeting. From June 27th to July 10th, I’ll be gone for a trip to Thailand. There may be a few other items, I talked to Deane Hartzell today about working a week or two for the sports camps Infinity Sports are doing this summer. It should be a good summer, lots of variety, definitely.

I’m also working on a website for my dad’s company, you can check that out at www.additionassociates.com.

Hopefully I’ll get back to Virginia one or two more times before classes start back up in the Fall. We’ll see how things work out for that. I’ll try and write again soon with some more details about my trip to Thailand.

Well the trip to Texas was awesome. Whenever I go back to Dallas, I feel like I’m really just coming back from a long break. It still feels like home.

The conference was really good. Os Guinness did an incredible job. I think the main theme I got out of his talks was the need for evangelicals to recover or discover a theology of calling. His point was that everyone should see excelling at their job as a ministry and not that the only “spiritual” line of work was some type of church or ministry work.

Visiting DBU was great and getting to see all my professors and others around campus. The campus looks good, as always (except for the fact the lake was green and matched the grass, see the Picture Gallery). Dr. Bell and crew are still doing well. I got to sit in on Hermeneutics and it brought back tons of great memories.

Seeing everyone at FBC Cedar Hill was probably the highlight. A bunch of my youth are about to graduate and head off to college at the end of the summer. I miss being up there with them and getting to teach and lead worship on Wed nights. I did get to teach Wes’ Sunday School class on Sunday AM and taught the youth on Wed PM. Both of those seemed to go really well. It reminds me how much I miss getting to preach, but I know I’ll have all the opportunity I want coming up here in a year or so.

Of course the visit to Texas was too short and here I am again in KY. At least the weather has gotten better, its been in the upper-70’s both days since I’ve been back. Hope it keeps up! You never know here, it still might snow before the week is over.

For Spring Break I’m getting to go back down to Texas. (I went to Dallas Baptist University for college if you didn’t know already.) I’ll be reading a paper at a conference. I ‘m really looking forward to that… Not so much for me reading the paper though. Os Guinness is the keynote speaker for the event so I’ll get to hear and probably meet him. That will be great.

I’ll also get to see some of my friends from college and some of my professors. And I’m going back to the church where I was a youth intern for 2 years and I’ll get to see some of my youth which will be awesome! Its going to be a good week. And no homework on top of that! Life doesn’t get much better. I think the toughest decision I’ll have to make is what book(s) to take to read on the plane. I think I’ve narrowed down the choices to Five Views on Sanctification, On Being a Pastor by Alistair Begg, or something in Intelligent Design. I’d take votes if I thought enough people visited the site to make a statistically accurate survey. You can email me if you have advice on that subject. I think its time for bed…

Just when I thought the roommate weirdness level had peaked, new frontiers were forged earlier today. I was cleaning my room around noon or so and my roommate was listening to music on his headphones. Well that might be a little bit of a stretch. I’m not quite sure if it qualifies as music… It’s one of those strange bands that seems to have one member who’s sole purpose is to scream loudly into the microphone at apparently random points during the song. How do I know, you may wonder, if he had on his headphones? Well he likes to turn it up loud enough so that it can be heard fairly clearly across the room. What do I care? They’re his ears, right? It wouldn’t be quite so amazing if they were the over-the ear type headphones. These obviously can get pretty loud. But these are the in-the-ear-next-to-your-eardrum type headphones.

So anyways, I can hear this music (being generous here once again) going on behind me and I figure everything’s ok… That is until I hear him scream really loud like he just dropped something on his toe. I turn around wondering what has just happened to him and to my surprise, he’s just standing there like nothing odd just happened.

I’m not sure if he suddenly got the urge to yell along with the random screamer mentioned earlier. (No, I’m pretty sure that’s not it, it would make some amount of sense.) Maybe he does stuff like this on purpose. That would mean he purposefully makes himself look like an idiot. Maybe he’s just really as weird as he acts. Who knows? At least his weirdness is useful for a few good laughs each day.

At any rate, the roommate weirdness level shot up once again today with no sign of it descending any time soon.

Over the past week or so, I keep coming across the principle of the tightrope. Sermons I’ve heard, books I’m reading, class lectures seem to keep bringing up this issue. It’s almost universally applicable.

Aristotle taught that the way to find the ethical choice was between two unethical extremes. Generosity and prudence in finances falls between the extremes of selfish hoarding and lavish spending. Courage in battle falls between cowardice that refuses to get out of the foxhole and reckless abandon that charges senselessly to sure death. Aristotle called it the doctrine of the mean.

The same principle shows up everywhere in religion. Christians must walk the tightrope between legalism and license; between speaking the uncompromised truth and not being a stumbling block with the way we express ourselves. Christians must find the balance between being insubordinate to church leaders and following them off a cliff.

Its amazing how prone we are as people to navigate toward an extreme on any particular issue. Ecclesiastes 7:18 says, “It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.”

What does this look like in a church? I think it means popular movements and leaders are noted and evaluated, taking the good we can learn from them while leaving the bad. It means preaching doctrine deep enough to dive into but not so deep our people drown. It means being involved in social issues without forgetting its first responsibility, the propagation of the Gospel. It means we love people enough to forgive them, and we love them enough to exercise church discipline when needed. Examples could be multiplied.

May God grant us the grace to avoid the extremes, lest we fall off one side or the other to the detriment of our witness to the world.

It’s hard to believe, but the Spring 2005 semester is about half over now. I took my first mid-term exam last night and have several of them coming up next week. It sure doesn’t seem like it’s been long enough for us to be halfway through, but here it is anyway!

That means it’s time (or past time) to figure out what I’ll be doing over the summer. I have to get a few things done for school. We have to do a supervised ministry project sometime during our time here at Southern and hopefully I can get one or two other classes knocked out of the way so I can graduate in May ’06 as planned. I’ll try and update the blog as far as any summer plans. I won’t be doing camp this summer, I do know that. I wouldn’t be able to get any classes done and I feel like I’m getting a little old for camp, Crosspoint anyways. I was the oldest one on the team last year so that may have been an indicator 🙂

I’m hoping I can work with a church to do some work in Christian education. That’s not really my field of training here at seminary, but I feel like I could make some contributions to a church education program that a “normal education guy” couldn’t do. We’ll see how it works out.

Its off to do some reading…

This weekend I spent the longest continuous period of my life in West Virginia. I know what you’re thinking… But really, it was ok. I went skiing with the youth group of FBC London, KY. It was a great weekend. How could it not be when skiing is involved? Really?! I love skiing and I hadn’t been in 4 years or so. It took a minute or two to get the feel back for it, but before too long I was back to my normal downhill skiing self.

I actually did pretty good. I didn’t fall at all before lunch. I fell a few times after lunch. Only one of them was a really good spill. It hurt for a few minutes, but I was ok. I’ve been a little sore the last 2 days, which is to be expected. But that’s ok. It reminds me that few of the best things in life are painless. Sure, I may be a little sore now, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

We had a great time with the youth. I did the music for our 3 worship sessions. It’s always fun to get out of the seminary atmosphere for a little while and be involved in some “real ministry.” It reminds me why I’m here. it’s to prepare me for when I am out in a church so I can do my job better then. It makes me want to be out there, but it also reminds me of the importance of making the most of my time here.

There are some pictures of the ski trip on the Picture Gallery page.