Dropping off the face of the earth.....

So, I haven't posted in awhile. I have really been sick. For two weeks now I have been hacking up a lung....at times with a fever.....although I seem to be feeling somewhat better now (I'm only coughing ever 2-3 minutes instead of every 2-3 seconds.) Traditionally, it takes me a long time to get rid of one of these things.

I have a lot of things that I want to be posting on, but I haven't felt up to it. Coming soon, a book review, and some other interesting stuff (perhaps some pictures from the upcoming golf outing!)

More later...

Deja vu

There seems to be a new discussion in the blogsphere about pastors plagiarizing other pastors sermons. See Scot McKnight here and Out of Ur here.

The main gist of this is the idea of pastors using other pastors sermons verbatim. I have never done this, but I know those who do. I heard the comments from other pastors about how crazy their lives are. How demanding their jobs are and their congregations are and how they do not have enough time to come up with an original sermon every week. I know the resources are out there...and sermons are easy to get (they are sold on the internet...the complete sermon from your favorite mega-church pastor - all power points included.)

I think one of the reasons that pastors do this is that the idea of buying someone else's sermons in marketed to them. I get catalogs in the mail a few times a month offering subscription services. I get e-mails offering me sermons. It has been so well marketed that it just seem natural...everyone must be doing it. (I speculate that is why there seems to be an increase in pornography today...it is marketed as normal.)

All this brings me back to a story from when I was interning to church plant. Rocky and I went to a Church Planting conference once. There was this well respected pastor / church planter speaking at the conferees, giving all of us future church planters some advice on how to survive the first year. One of the suggestions that he gave was to subscribe to a sermon service. With all the stress of the first year of planting, your life would be made easier if someone else was preparing your sermon. I had never heard of something like this, and it excited me (since I had never preached in my life and was terrified of what it would be like). Rocky and I left the session and climbed into his truck. He then turned to me and said "If I ever catch you using someone else sermon, I will go to where you are and kick your...." (the last word, although not very "pastoral", got his meaning across well.)

Like I said earlier, I have never preached someone else's message. The closest I have gotten to that was repreaching one of my own (to a different audience). That message fell flat and I swore I would never do that again. Now, I have borrowed other people's thoughts from stuff I have heard and read, but I tend to give credit when I do that. I try to be original, but I read a lot, and I am influenced by the scholarship that I read. With that said, the sermon that I present I crafted (with the help of the Holy Spirit).

I think that the excuses that pastors make are valid....this job is odd. To do it well means that you are working almost 24/7 (more on that concept later). Everything is pulling at you and at your time. And a good sermon takes time to write (for me 8 to 16 hours to write one sermon...including study time). What is a pastor to do? My first thought is that we need to prioritize our life better...and our church needs to understand that. I have writing / study time. I have to put it into my schedule or else it won't happen. My wife knows I need it, my secretary knows I need it, my board knows I need it. If I don't get it, they won't get any teaching on Sunday (that might be a good thing every now and then)

Enough of this rant. It is 11:27pm on Saturday night. I finished my sermon for tomorrow about 90 minutes ago. Time to get some sleep.

Really tired

I'm really tired these days. I should be working on a sermon for Sunday, but I just don't have the energy....I'm feeling run down. It's been awhile since I wrote anything original on this blog. I just have not had the energy to do it. I had to put my mom in the same wing of the nursing home as my dad eariler this week. Over the last few weeks she has developed dementia as well. There are a lot of reasons why this happened, none of which really matter. The nurse told me today that it is incredibly rare for a person to develop dementia as quickly as my parents did, so rare that she could not even imagine the odds that both would develop it at the same time. That would be my parents...always going after the long shot.

Some one last week told me that the Lord never gives us more then we can handle...it just seems at times he trusts us more then we want to be trusted. I'm assuming this is one of those times. I feel like the stress of this all should be getting to me. That I should be more emotional or upset or freaking out or something. But I'm not. I'm just trying to get everything done. I'm guessing it will all hit me later. Right now, I'm just really tired...

George Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

Just too funny...

Sour Deluxe

Got this e-mail from my sister-in-law:

Hi everyone....

Sorry for the mass email format... I'm calling in a favor ;) My awesome boyfriend Greg's band Sour Deluxe is participating in a contest to be a part of Lollapalooza this August in Chicago. The first round consists of a voting process by the fans, and the top 100 bands from around the world move on to the next round. It would be totally awesome and truly outrageous if you could help them out! You can vote once every 24 hours, and voting ends on June 30. They are currently in 25th place, and really need our help to stay there and move even higher on the list. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the band, and if you could devote 10 seconds of every day from now to the end of the month it would be a HUGE help. Do you have multiple email accounts? Even better!!

Follow this link to: http://www.freshtracksmusic.com/lolla2006/showartist.aspx?aid=50069&sgn=Indie+Rock

and click on "vote", then check your email to confirm your vote. If you know anyone who would be willing to support local Chicago rock, then pass this on to them as well.

So...click on the link and help Jenny and Greg out.

nuff said......word.

Exercise and me

I started cycling today as a form of exercise. I have tried running, walking, and the "Y" at one time or another over the past year, none of which have stuck. As I was pondering this last week, I remembered that back in college, I used to cycle a lot. So much so that for a few years there, I was in fairly good shape. So today, I pulled out the old bike, and started to ride. It was not as hard to start off as some of my previous exercise attempts, and it felt like my heart rate started to rise. Hopefully this will stick and I will start to see some change in my life.

Coming out

I have a confession to make. I really get into the World Cup. This is something that I have kept in the closet ever since the World Cup was here in 1994. Like most American's of my age, the only background I had in soccer was P.E. class. I'm not even sure that my High School has a Soccer team! But that all changed in 1994. I found the entire World Cup thing to be totally fascinating. And ever since then, I have somewhat followed it. Now, I am no where near as fanatic as most fans are around the world, but at least I'm paying attention (that is better then most Americans!) For what it's worth, I also follow the Chicago Fire and I have been to a few non-AYSO soccer games in my life (mostly college).

I remember a few years ago when I was in Atlanta, there was this guy who went to our church (his name escapes me) who was from South Africa. The rugby World Cup was going on at the time and he was really into it. So much so, that he would drive into Atlanta every morning that the South African team was playing to watch the games at a rugby friendly pub (they were usually on at 4:00am). He really got into this and helped me to see how global this thing was....how it was like the entire world coming together....in a way that was bigger and more meaningful then the Olympics. That was rugby....I have come to find that soccer is even more so. When this thing is going on it feels like the entire world is coming together....not out of peace and love, but to try to beat the snot out of one another on the field. I really get into that...and I enjoy watching the game as well.

So, for the next month, I will be rooting on team US (by the way, you know, we really have a shot this year, although Brazil, England or Germany probably have a better shots) and watching a lot of soccer (or is it football) with the rest of the world. Perhaps later this year, I might even go to a Chicago Fire game.

There, that feels so.....so....liberating.

Monday, Monday.....

I'm sitting here this morning waiting on the heating and air guy to show up and tune up our HVAC units. He is (was) supposed to be here at 7:00 am (it's 7:10 now).

Yesterday was interesting. I was planning on preaching on the last part of our vision statement, the geographical area of our focus (neighborhoods, cities, nations an the world) and the Lord just interrupted me. I preached on it, but without notes, using a totally different scripture then I was initially supposed to. During morning prayer, I really felt like we were supposed to do something different....I was given a different scripture to preach from (Joel 2), but did a similar sermon. Not sure how it went (did get some positive feedback from Cindy, Jeff & Theresa), but all in all, I felt pretty good about it.

Got to go, the heating and air guy is here....

Church Shopping

This is just too funny, and too true....

Ten Bucks.......

......if you walk up to Cindy and say "Shave my poodle."