Things are changing

I made this announcement after both services at Noelridge today. I didn’t read from a script, so this isn’t verbatim, but is the gist of the message I had for the folks.

After much prayer, thought, and discussion, I have come to the decision that the best thing for me and my family right now is that I step back from my role as the worship leader here at Noelridge. Now, that’s not a fun announcement to make, but let me explain a little bit.

The key factor playing into this decision is time. This hit home the most to me when I recently realized that my current life schedule of work and ministry is the same or busier than it was seven years ago when we moved to Cedar Rapids. However, in those seven years God has blessed us with two little girls. And while Becky’s schedule has changed drastically since the girls were born, my schedule hasn’t changed at all. And it needs to.

I also want the time to be able to get involved in community things. My entire social life and structure has been within the church, and that’s not good. I need to have the time and freedom to be able to be involved in the “real world”, to reach out to my community. You have also entrusted me with a role as an elder here at Noelridge, and I want to make sure I have the time to do that well.

Let me emphasize that we are not going anywhere. Noelridge has been a great blessing as our home church for seven years now, and our desire is very much to stay here, I will just be in a different role. Sunday mornings will look at bit different; we have many other talented musicians in the church here who are capable of helping with music, and we will be calling on them. Worship team may also look different for a while, we’re still having discussions on that.

So thank you for letting me lead these past years, and for understanding as I move to fulfill responsibilities in a new season of my life.

It is a big relief to get this off my chest and officially announced. I’m looking forward to see how God will use the folks in the church to fill in and minister in different ways.

Spartan Fund Run 5K

Last Saturday I ran in my first-ever 5K, the Solon High School Spartan Fund Run. They had a few hundred folks show up, many to do the half-mile and mile walks, another 83 for the 5K, and mabe a few dozen for a 10K. My sister Rebecca had agreed to run it with me, so we got up early and headed down on the 30-minute drive to Solon.

The race was done well; the organization was good, the t-shirt design was pretty decent, and they had procured a bunch of donated food which was good as a late breakfast after the run.

The one thing this 5K had that I hadn’t trained for was hills! I didn’t realize how flat my neighborhood course is until I got out there and had long uphill climbs at both the beginning and end of the race. And the last half-mile not only did you have to go uphill, but you were running directly into a 15 mph wind. But, we toughed it out. There were 83 competitors in the 5K, and I came in 53rd in a time of 31:12. Rebecca came in 69th in about 35:00. (Reba, leave your exact time in a comment and I’ll fix it here.) I didn’t get under 30, which had been my goal, but at least it was a good test.

I think I’ve got the bug; I’m looking for another race around here yet before the season is over. The one that’s reasonably close and on a day I could make it isn’t a 5K, though - it’s a 5-mile. I’m not sure if I’ll be ready for that by November 12 or not.

Don't know much about... anything!

Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.

Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.

Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.

There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.

My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.

This 'n' that

This weekend wasn’t too busy, but I wasn’t on the computer, so no blog updates.

Rebecca and I ran in the Solon Fund Run 5K on Saturday and did OK. I didn’t hit my goal of sub-30-minutes; I finished in 31:12. I’ll blame it on a 10 mph headwind and a long uphill the last half mile. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’m looking for another race to sign up for yet this fall. I’ll do a full post with pictures when I get the chance.

Watched a bunch of football over the weekend, the Hawkeyes won, setting up a bit showdown with Ohio State in a couple of weeks, but the Huskers couldn’t score the upset over USC. Not that I expected them too, but it would’ve been cool.

Now it’s Monday and back-to-work. I’m going to start working on some new stuff, though, so that should be interesting. Gotta brush up on my C++ coding skills - haven’t used them since school!

Oh, and I’m looking forward to next weekend - I’ll be heading up to Minneapolis along with Pastor Richard to the Desiring God 2006 National Conference. The list of speakers:

  • David Wells
  • Don Carson
  • Voddie Baucham
  • Tim Keller
  • Mark Driscoll

And of course John Piper. I can’t wait.

Last training run

Well, my last training run before the Solon 5K on Saturday. I woke up before my alarm this morning (no small feat when the alarm is set for 5:10 am!) and headed out on my usual 3.2 mile course. It was a beautiful early morning, chilly and brisk, the sky bright, clear, and full of stars.

For not having run much the past two weeks, my times were ok:

Mile 1: 7:38. A nice brisk pace. Mile 2: 9:59 (total: 17:37). Slowed a bit here, was starting to feel it by about the last 1/4 mile. Mile 3: 10:38 (total: 28:16). That long hill the last quarter mile gets me every time. Total time: 30:39. Didn’t quite get in under 30:00. :-(

My goal for the 5k on Saturday is to get in under 30:00. Should be a fun test.

It's Wednesday, but Saturday's coming

I told myself that I should run a good three times this week in preparation for the Solon 5K on Saturday. After all, I didn’t get much running in last week while we were on vacation. I was good on Monday, ran 2 miles, felt decent. I intended to run again this morning, but after not getting to sleep until around midnight, 5 AM for running was just too early. Maybe this afternoon or tonight. I’m thinking today, maybe tomorrow, and then take Friday off to rest. We’ll see how it goes.

Otherwise, it’s been a fairly uneventful week thus far. Monday night we were home - first Monday night home since softball started back in May! Last night Becky did supper with some friends from church, so I had a night at home with the girls. Then last night I screwed up the Master Boot Record on my basement PC, so I spent the remainder of the night trying to get it wiped and re-loaded. I think it’s pretty well wiped now, so hopefully the Sony Recovery disks can do the rest of the work for me.

Your update for the week

It’s gonna be a slow week here on my blog. I’m in town today, but tomorrow we’re leaving town for a few days of much-needed vacation. We’ll be leaving the kiddos with my folks and then heading to Wisconsin Dells for two nights. It will be glorious.

Sunday night’s concert went well; we played about 80 minutes of music and, from what I am told, it sounded quite good. The recording we made wasn’t so good; we don’t have a compressor in the system and the signal was so strong that many of the songs we just overloaded the recorder. Still, I guess it’s better than nothing.

If I get some time tonight or tomorrow I’ll post some of the pictures my sister took, and maybe a recording of one of the songs.

Park Concert coming up...

This coming Sunday night my brothers Aaron and Andrew and I will be doing a concert for my church. Noelridge has annually had a church potluck in the park on Labor Day Sunday; for the past several years we’ve had the Faris family (talented bluegrass types from Kansas), but now they’ve moved up in the world and we can’t afford them any more. (Good for them!) So as their amateur replacements, the Hubbs brothers will be providing the musical entertainment this year.

I’m looking forward to this immensely. I have blogged before about the fun of playing music with my family, and this is no different. The music will be stuff that we’ve goofed around with before but never really performed; stuff by Caedmon’s Call, Derek Webb, Andrew Peterson, Andy Osenga, and others.

I only have a couple of more tasks in preparation: I need to try to drum up an electric piano we can use for the night (I know who to call, I just have to make the call) and I need to practice. I need to practice a lot.

What: Noelridge Park Church potluck and concert in the park Where: Noelridge Park Pavilion When: Sunday, September 3rd, 5:30 PM Bring: a dish to share and a lawnchair.

Today's lesson: Air Conditioner drain lines

I may be reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I miss the obvious. I have known since we bought our house that there is tubing running from the furnace across the floor and under a wall into a drain below the bathroom sink, but it never dawned on me why it was there.

Yesterday morning it became clear. I went downstairs for a shower and found the bath mat sopping wet. And more water standing on the floor. My initial reaction was to think that the sewer pipe had gotten clogged again; I’ve had to snake it out twice in the last 3 years. But no, my mother-in-law wasn’t here, so that couldn’t be it. I cleaned up the water as best I could and then headed to work, but not before mentioning it to Becky who was up early with Addison.

Becky investigated further and found that the water was coming from that drain line. And that drain line carries the condensation that builds up on the air conditioner coils which are inside the blower there in the furnace. It ended up that the drain line had gotten totally clogged up, and finally the water had started leaking. So she turned off the air conditioner, cleaned up the rest of the mess, read up on the topic on the internet, and then called me to discuss the issue.

My initial reaction was to say “hey, let’s just stick a bucket under it and empty the bucket occasionally.” Then she told me that according to the internet the a/c can produce 5 - 9 gallons of water a day. I wasn’t expecting that. So the bucket idea was out. We ended up hitting Lowe’s (so nice to have a Lowe’s only 3 blocks from our house!) on the way to WT practice last night and picking up some new tubing and a few screw-on connectors so I can have a way, outside of cutting the tubing, to clean it out again if the need arises.

The other complication was that the previous owner of the house built a nice little wall around 2 sides of the furnace to hide it from sight and make a nice little hallway. Unfortunately, the drain pipe was on the back side of the furnace, towards the wall. So I spent a bunch of my repair time last night with my upper body shoved through a 15" x 18" hole I cut in the drywall. It probably would’ve made a funny picture, but thankfully Becky left the camera upstairs. I’ll put up a cabinet door or something over the hole so I can get to it next time if I need to.

By 9:30 last night I had it all fixed and the mess mostly cleaned up. I checked it this morning and the line was still draining nicely. All in all it only required a few hours of sweat and about ten bucks worth of parts. Not too awful, as home repairs go.

Oh, and I watched the water drain after I turned the a/c on last night. Five gallons per day is an understatement.

All sorts of wacky stuff

Or at least what counts for wacky in my world. I realize my life is pretty calm compared to some of the rest of you.

  • I ran 2 miles this morning. And actually ran the whole thing, didn’t walk at all. My time was 19:14, which isn’t awesome, but is tolerable. I’ll shoot for the 5k distance again tomorrow.
  • I witnessed something last night at our church softball game (the last one of the season :-() which I had never witnessed before: the two umpires getting into a shouting match with each other. In our league, each team volunteers a player to ump the game before (or after) their own game. It’s usually very low-key. But the field ump made a call last night and the plate ump over-ruled him, and they got into it. Then towards the end of the game the plate ump ended the game and walked off the field, when the rule clearly states that we could’ve started the 7th inning. Grrrr… but it was a good game, we played well and won.
  • Evening shows like this one make me wish I lived close to Nashville. The closest any of the Square Pegs will be getting to Iowa this year is when Andy P plays in Omaha and Lincoln, NE. Not close enough.

Well, I guess most of that wasn’t wacky. But it was stuff, though, you can’t deny it was stuff. One outta two isn’t bad.