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....

It's New Years....So it must be time for resolutions....

I resolve to attempt to blog more often (please, pick yourself off the floor and stop laughing...Sorry Jen if I scared Lucca).

No, seriously, I want to try and do this a little more often. It is my hope that in the upcoming year, this spot will be a place for my general ranting's, mumbling's and other odd thoughts. I want to write about ideas that are more then just spiritual or church related, but also may be political and social. With that said, please remember that I too am only human (I know Cindy, hard to believe), and that some of my ideas (ok, most of my ideas) may be off kilter just a bit. All I ask for is a little grace now and then.

I have finally updated most of my links (so that they go to the right place!) Here is a quick rundown of who everyone is:

Cindy Holda - That's my wife...Interesting thoughts about life as a pastors wife.
Jen Fleming - Cindy's Sister...Interesting thoughts of someone living in the middle of the post modern world...Fair warning, this site could be raw!
Jordon Cooper - Pastor in Saskatchewan - great post modern thinker...Probably one of the greatest blogs in the entire blog universe.
Mark Priddy - Good thinker on what Christian community is about. He started, and is currently involved with an organization called Allelon.
Mark Riddle - Radical thinker on what the church, especially youth, should look like. Can be raw, but he will really make you think (and laugh).
Todd Hunter - Old AVC head, now on staff at Allelon. He has had some of the greatest influence on my thinking on what it means to be a follower of the Way.
Winn Girffin - Dr Winn...Old Vineyard theologian...Now with Allelon. He will make you think.
The Ooze - Great website for post modern Christian thought.
Vineyard - DeKalb Blog - This is new...An area for discussion and thought within the Vineyard DeKalb community.
Vineyard - DeKalb - The church's website.
VCF - NW Georgia - My sending church...It's always good to stay close to family.
Vineyard USA - Ma Vineyard

Look for more stuff to be added in the future.

If I don't blog before then, have a Happy New Year!

Ok, Ok, so it's been awhile since my last blog (thanks for the friendly reminders Jen!). You know, I find it utterly incredible that I seemed to have more time to blog when I had a 9 to 5 job. I'm not sure if that means that I was better at time management while working or that I just was a slacker...Go figure.

Not too much new going on these days. Still trying to get into a new building...still trying to learn how to be a pastor...still trying to keep sane! I'm planning to post a little more often then before but.....no promises!! :)

It’s 9:00 at night. I’m sitting in the student center at NIU. I’m supposed to be working on my sermon for Sunday. Instead I’m blogging. I think my priorities are screwed up.

I was flipping through the stations on my radio on the way here and I started listening to a Christian call in show. I usually hate these Q&A shows. The hosts normally have some type of agenda…and normally you can figure it out within a few minutes. This show was no different.

This guy (sorry, I never did get his name) was telling everyone that the “church age” was over. He was claiming that all the churches were in sin (not just the denominations, but the local congregations). They were spending too much time creating their own theology to fit their specific needs and desires. These theologies, in his mind, went totally against the word of God. He felt that because of this the church was run by the devil, and that the reference to Babylon in Revelations was in reality speaking of the church. The only solution was to leave the church (or the local congregation as he put it.) Only true “born-again believers” would see the blatant error the local congregations were walking in and therefore should they should leave, as soon as possible.

Here is the funny part. Once you left, he felt that you should not try to create a fellowship (like a house church); instead you should just stay by yourself. He claimed that Hebrews 10:25 supported this theory. Go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait…

I didn’t see that there either…I think he is making his own theology up! The sad part is that people were calling them, telling him what a great idea it is to be a believer all alone. What a sad thing. Everything that I have studied lately points to the congregation, not away from it. My thoughts are that Christianity is about community, not about a solo thing. Acts makes that totally clear. They were in one heart and mind, they met at the temple, and they met in their houses. I would entertain the idea that the big church thing we have in the west may not be biblical, but the fellowship definitely is. I think we, as evangelicals, have really got this personal salvation thing all messed up. Yes, the decision to follow Christ is ours alone, but once that decision is made, we move from the world of the individual to the world of community. “Love one another”…how can we do that if we are alone. Even the desert fathers in the early church lived in community. Granted, they spent a lot of time in solitude, but they also spent a good amount of time in community. So much so that if one of them was missing from a community meeting, the community went out to them to see if they were ok. That doesn’t sound like a lone gun to me.

The idea of being a Christian without community is an idea straight from the pit of hell. I believe that Satan promotes this to get to us one on one. Granted, with Christ, we can stand up to him. But alone, we are apt to start believing some of the lies that he tells us. It is through community that we “sharpen each others swords”. It is in community that we keep each other in check. It is by ourselves that we start to believe things that my not be God. Anyways, being by ourselves is just out right lonely…who in their right mind wants to experience the things of God all by themselves…it is a whole lot more fun sharing with other what God is doing with you, and observing what God is doing to the people around you.

I’m done ranting…back to sermon writing…

Today was my kids’ first soccer game. Life was interesting! Ben’s game was first. Because he is five, they don’t keep score (dad’s on the other hand do, Ben’s team won). Watching little kids run up and down the field with a reckless abandon, not even caring if they are going towards the correct goal will put a smile on anyone’s face. Nathan’s team won a nail bitter (being seven, they do keep score) 2 to 1. Nathan did pretty good, he actually got to kick the ball once! Emily’s team is a tad more professional, being 10 and all. Her team also won, 5 to 0. My little Emily got to plat goalie. This is the first year playing organized soccer, so when the ball came to her, she stopped it from going in the goal, but then was not sure what to do next. Some guy next to me started yelling at her to throw the ball out quicker, and then went on to tell all the parents there that this team needs a new goalie, one who is more aggressive. He then boastfully went on to tell everyone how when he was a baseball coach of nine year olds, he had his team throw at a fellow teammates head so that he would become more aggressive. Needless to say, I wanted to corner kick him right to the next county (in Christian love, of course).

For those who are counting….the Holda Soccer record is 3-0.

For those of you wondering, I just added my sister-in-law’s blog to my list (jen.fleming). In case you’re wondering, this is not a Christian blog. On the other hand, this is definitely a postmodern blog. You know, we Christian leaders love to put out these great brain farts on how church should look, and what we should do to develop community and relationship. Some of us pride our self on being postmodern and being able to think and create like a postmodern (even though many are not). You want to know what a postmodern outside the church thinks about and how they relate to other people, read this blog. If you want to understand what makes them tick and what ticks them off, read this blog. On the other hand, if you get offended really easily and off colored language makes you uncomfortable, then read Mark Riddle’s blog. At least you can get your undies in a bundle by someone who is a pastor.

Oh well, tomorrows Sunday and I need to get up early. Be back later.

I started a series in Acts this week. I was praying about what I needed to preach, and foundational issues kept coming up. I preached on Sunday out of Acts 2…the unity section at the end of the chapter. It was an amazing time because I felt that my message was completely uninspiring. It felt incredibly dead. Fortunately, God showed up and people got affected during ministry time. The really funny part is that people have been calling me this week to tell me how much they liked my sermon…go figure!

Cindy and I started to change some stuff around during the service. We are trying to do this via little steps. This week, we moved the room around and took a coffee break between worship and the message. The break was funny. I have been in churches for years that do this, but this was their first time. People were a little uneasy at first, but they decided that they really liked it. I hope the same attitude occurs when we do other major changes.

We have been having power problems at the house for the last couple of weeks. It seems like anytime we are running a major appliance (air conditioning, dryer) and the water heater turns on, the mains in the house blow. I didn’t think much about it at first (other then to tell the landlord and hope he fixes it), but now I’m starting to wonder. The black out in the northeast got me wondering if this is prophetic somehow and the Lord is trying to tell me something. Not too sure about that, still praying. (btw…Rick Joiner has some interesting thoughts on that).

Oh well…more later…