It seems like everywhere I go these days, everyone wants to talk politics. I have come the conclusion that I do not like anybody who is running. So what do I do now???

I was surfing this afternoon and found these two links. The made me think. Not sure what happens from here.....

Take back the faith
Pro-Life Democrats?

Thoughts?????? (I wonder if anyone is out there????)

Well, it's Friday night, and I don't have a sermon yet.....I really need to stop doing this....

If you have been following Cindy's blog, you may know that we have gotten a building. The bowling alley from several months ago has come through. We have an agreement in principle, but are still trying to work out the details of the lease. As soon as we get this thing signed (hopefully next week), we can get in and start the build out. I can't wait for that to start. I hoping that it will be a "bonding" experience for the church.

Last Sunday's service was loads of fun. The Democrats showed up again. This time they were doing a rally in the park. About 2,000 of them came at about 8:30 and filled the place up. It looked like the fourth of July (thank you park district for the heads up...not). They were still going strong at 10:00 when our service was to start. Needless to say, we had no parking so our people had to walk several blocks to get to church. Half the church was not there when worship started, and the other half was too tired (that's the excuse that I'm using) to actually do anything. Worship was dead. Really dead.

I'm starting to believe that our time at the park has come to an end (I keep hearing "God has left the building" in the back of my head). We are getting a lot of encouragement from people (both here and in Georgia) that things will get better once we get out. I'm praying it does. I'm not sure how many more days like last Sunday I can take.

Todd Hunter has started to blog again.  He was one of my favorite blogger's, although his consistency was much to be desired (I should talk!).  Check him out.

I spent last week at the MW Regional conference in Champaign, IL. I really wasn't looking forward to it (truth be told, I was looking for any excuse to miss it.) Over the past few years it seems like these have become more and more business and less and less ministry. Well, something has definitely changed. This was one of the best conferences that I have attended in quite some time. It felt like John Wimber was back! It was so refreshing!!! I think we are at a turning point in the Vineyard. There are three roads in front of us and I think we need to make a decision on which road we are going to take in the future. We can either go down the Evangelical road, the Pentecostal road, or the Kingdom road. Nothing against the Pentecostal's or Evangelical's, but I think we need to do what the Lord called us to 20 years ago. Back then, it was all about the Kingdom. That's where I want to be...that's what I signed up for...and that's what I'm hoping the future holds for us as a movement.

Still waiting on news from the building. Supposedly, the owner has our offer...he just needs to make a decision. I praying hard that something breaks. I think this is the place.

Sunday, after the service, two of our people went to the building to pray over it. While they were there, they felt the presence of something demonic one of the sides of the building, so they called us to come and pray with them. When we got there, I felt the urge to anoint the building with oil, so I walked to Walgreen to get some oil. Some strange things happened on the way to and from Walgreen. While I was entering Walgreen, I noticed that there were three people in the park across the street messing around with a djembe. I walked into Walgreen, only to notice that they were having a sale on these shirts. The shirts said "Bowling" on them, had a picture of a guy bowling, and then said "DeKalb" on the bottom. I thought it was funny, a sale on tee-shirts marked bowling...who would buy something like that. BTW..the building we are looking at was an old bowling alley. So I get the oil, and leave Walgreen. I decide to cut through the park to get to the building. The musicians started to beat on their drums stronger as I passed them...almost like a war drum. As soon as this started, something came over me. I started to pray aggressively in tongues, and walking aggressively towards the building. When I got there I started to aggressively pour oil on the side wall, as well as on the doors and fence posts. I ever anointed the building next door. While doing this, I was praying in aggressively praying in tongues. Cindy later told me (as well as the others who were there) that she had never seen me like that before. I'm not sure what came over me, but I think we took something in the Kingdom.

Oh well, back to praying and waiting...I'm looking forward to what happens next.

We made an offer on a building today. It's a good building, one we've been in many times before. One we've tried to get two times before. The offer we made was "aggressive" (which means it was financially good for us). Now comes the time I hate....the wait. For some reason or another, patience was not something that I was graced with. I hate the waiting game.

On that thought, I got a new car the other day (new being so relative). It's an 88 VW Golf. It's a nice car, assuming that your definition of nice is something that needs to be put back together (The interior was missing...made for lots of head room). Once again, here comes the patience thing...it needs to be put back together and I do not have the skill set to do it on my own....ugh!!! Perhaps God is trying to tell me something!.

I'm reading Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. I found this quote in it today...something to think about...

"It is a law of man's nature, written into his very essence, and just as much a part of him as the desire to build houses and cultivate the land and marry and have children and read books and sing songs, that he should want to stand together with other men in order to acknowledge their common dependence on God, their Father and Creator. In fact, this desire is much more fundamental then any purely physical necessity."

Kinda makes you think...most of the above activities separate us from community (celebrating the individual) while deep inside of us, their is a pull to community, centered around God. Is that why even the most devout atheist in times of great distress will occasionally look for comfort within a faith community?

One other interesting quote...

"The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities, but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down the spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything."

hmmm....I think the last sentence says it all....

I'm trying some new pix software...caught the boy's this morning trying to drive the lawn tractor...
 

"...talk of my demise have been greatly exaggerated..."

Ok, Ok...So it's been over five months since I last posted....Would you believe that I have been busy???

You know, it was a lot easier to post when I had a full time job. Then I had all the time in the world to surf the web and post to my blog (while working, of course). Now, I hardly have any time on the computer...Let alone to post to my blog. I hope to get better at doing this.

I have cleaned up some of the links to the left hand side. Amazingly, most of the people I had links for haven't blogged in a while either. I have since removed those links.

Well, it's Saturday morning. This weekend is going to be crazy. Cindy has been gone for the past two and a half days helping her mom with a garage sale. I have been at home with the kids while she was there. Both the car and the Dodge van are dead (or dieing quickly). Cindy took the new van, so, I haven't left the house. Needless to say, I am starting to go batty (this must be why I all of a sudden have time to post!!) We're getting a new car shortly ("new" is such a relative term.) Hopefully, the car will actually run better then the two that currently don't.

I just finished my sermon for tomorrow, and now I need to get the house in order. Cindy's entire family is coming over tomorrow to celebrate father's day and my father-in-law's b-day. The funny thing about it (once again, "funny" = relative)is that most of the family will be at our house before we are back from church. Because of this, we need to have everything in place (so that wandering eyes can't find out messes (LOL)).

Cindy's sister, Jenny, may be coming to church tomorrow. She will be the first family member to hear me preach. I don't know why I'm nervous about this, but I am. Preaching is not supposed to be about performance, so I'm trying to get that out of my head. It's just that I don't want to screw things up (kwim?)

One other thing...For those of you that are wondering...We didn't get the building (see previous post). We are looking at four others though.

More later.

What a week. Three of the kids have been sick...with the forth one getting sick at the end. Cindy and I went to the doctors office yesterday with the entire crew. Since we had to change our insurance, going to the doctors has been a hassle. In our new plan, there are no doctors in the DeKalb metropolitan area. Because of that we have to drive into St Charles, some 30 miles away.

Cindy called the doctor yesterday morning because the kids were hacking up a lung. It did not sound good. The doctors office told us that if we wanted to get in, we would need to be there in 30 minutes (Do the math, office 30 miles away, kids & wife, not dressed...can't be done unless several laws are broken).

Well, 35 minutes later, we pull into the doctors office. After waiting 20 minutes or so to get in, we find out that all six of us have the flu...some worse then others. Then off to Target for the prescriptions. Lets see, $180 in co-pays latter everyone seems to be doing better. I find it interesting that this week I'm preaching on the second part of Luke 4...you know, casting out demons and casting out fevers. One would think that the Lord is giving me personal experience here.

We are taking a group of people through a building tomorrow. This building always seems to come up when ever we do our search. I have been through it twice, and it's not the perfect layout, but with a little creativity (ok, a lot of creativity), it might work. It seems that every time we start looking at this building seriously, something better or more glamorous comes up and distracts us. Those distractions have never worked out, and so, once again, we are back to this building. This also should be a test for the people that we are bringing through. The church will not jump out at you...you will have to literally look through walls to see it. I have never asked them to do that. It should be interesting.

Interesting article on food pantries...from the NY Times, via Jordon Cooper...


For years, public and nonprofit food assistance programs have been reporting a sharp rise in the number of working families using their services. But now, as working families are becoming as common visitors as the indigent elderly at the city's soup kitchens and food pantries, many program officials say an ambitious shift is under way in how food for the needy is delivered.
The conventional answer of a box full of donated canned fruit, rice and beans, and the odd piece of eggplant is being supplemented, and in some cases replaced with new options: complete premade meals for takeout, for example, or frozen family-size portions of chili and spaghetti sauce.
Driving the shift in strategy, experts and providers say, is a familiar social and economic phenomenon: the growing numbers of working poor turning up at the soup kitchens and pantries, in most cases single mothers with children, are so busy juggling jobs, commuting and child care that they have little time to cook the food they are given. "The face of poverty is a working woman with two children," said Robert Egger, the founder of D.C. Central Kitchen and an advocate for rethinking what goes into a charity food basket. The options most of the nation's poor have, he says, are to stand in line for a meal at a soup kitchen or to go to a local church to pick up a box of groceries assembled from donations.


Kinda makes you think about the set-up of a church pantry. Normally you would just have people donate cans of food...stuff that they probably don't want (of course, every person I know would just kill for that old can of Cranberry sauce that you have in your pantry from Thanksgiving, 1975!). Using the above model, people in the church would be cooking meals. That would require thought...hmmmm...interesting....