personal
- Blessed Be Your Name
- Be Glorified In Me
- Unfailing Love (a new Chris Tomlin song… very good, very singable)
- Draw Me Close
- Knowing You
- I Will Praise Him Still
The day I became Fred's hero
I don’t know what triggered this memory today… but I might as well tell the story while I’m thinking about it.
I was in my third year at LeTU when I got asked to be the pianist for some special music during chapel. Now, this was not an unusual request; by this time in my college life I had become the de facto college pianist, doing lots of special music, I was lead accompianist for the singing group, etc. On this particular day, though, the musical content was going to be a bit different.
My friend Mark Holmes, a phenomenal tenor in the Singers, was slated to do a special, and he was having a hard time deciding what to do. Finally, in a move worthy of a bad college movie somewhere, he chose to sing a “Christianized” version of the classic Johnny B. Goode. As I recall, the lyrics were totally cheesy; the chorus ended “go, Johnny, go - go preach the Word.” Yikes.
So anyhow, I had been recruited to play the piano to back him up; we also had a good drummer, a bass player whose name eludes me, and then Fred playing the guitar. Fred was a couple years behind me; he was tall and redheaded, with a beard and ponytail completing his wanna-be rock star image. He was pretty much a goofball when it came to music, which made him fun. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to prove his electric guitar prowess on this dubious semi-cover, and so our band was complete. We practiced a few times, and got it polished enough to be acceptable at the musical abyss that was LeTourneau.
The morning came for chapel and we were slated to do special music right before the message. We revved it up and did an energetic (if not totally polished) rendition, just as we had practiced. What I had not practiced, however, was coming down on a glissando down the keyboard (that sweeping motion where you just run the back of your fingers down the keyboard) and hit a black key the wrong way, and, lo and behold, the black part of the key just broke off. I’ve never seen it happen before or since. The wood was probably kinda soft in that key, and I just torqued it the right way. It’s the only time (to my knowledge) that I’ve ever caused damage to a piano by playing it.
When we were packing up our gear after chapel, I picked up the key and tossed it over to Fred. You’d think he had died and gone to rock-n-roll heaven - he thought it was the most cool thing that somebody had broken a piano while playing a song. I think every time we did music for chapel after that the subject came up, always with amazement and laughter. Fortunately for me, a little bit of Elmer’s wood glue was sufficient to fix the piano so the next pianist in line could have their E-flat.
The epilogue to this story is the memory that this wasn’t the last time I played Johnny B. Goode in chapel. A year or so later, an instructor at the school (also a talented guitarist, now a co-worker here in Iowa) was up for special music, and he chose to do Johnny B. again. He did the original version, complete with the word “hell”, which raised a few of the stodgy faculty eyebrows. :-) He introduced the song this way:
“Last week, a Romanian choir came and sang some traditional songs from their homeland. This morning, I’d like to sing a traditional song from my homeland.”
This time, I managed to keep the piano in one piece.
A nice weekend
Normally I don’t do a lot of “here’s what I did with my weekend”-type posts, but it was a nice weekend, so since I need to update the blog I figured I’d just have to. Oh, first things first: my brother Ryan has decided to start a blog. Don’t know how much he’ll maintain it, but I’ve added it to the list of links on the right.
Anyhow, to the weekend. Friday night we got a babysitter and went out on a date. Nice to have some time to just be with the two of us after a busy week. We went to Chili’s and had ribs for supper, then went to Barnes & Noble to browse for a while. I bought a 2-disk CD album of Thelonious Monk and his quartet, Live at the “It” Club. I’d not listened to any Monk before, but a friend recommended him because of my love for Harry Connick, Jr. I was not disappointed. 2 1/2 hours of live club performance from 1964, digitally remastered so that it sounds great. I’ve been listening to it for the past couple evenings and it’s excellent. Forgot to bring it to work today so I guess it won’t make its way onto my iPod until tomorrow. So, after B&N, we went down to our favorite little coffeeshop and each had a cappucino smoothie. I sat and improvised on the piano for a while and Becky sat and read a book. What a nice way to spend a Friday evening!
Saturday we got up early and worked on an outdoor construction project. Becky has been planning on building some planters back behind the garage for the past several months; the landscape timbers to build said planters have been sitting on our patio for the past 6 weeks or so. Finally we had a free weekend to build. Finished those up by early afternoon. They will be really nice to have.
With the long weekend we got to enjoy Monday off as well. We did a bunch of cleanup in the morning, in preparation for having several friends over in the afternoon. It rained non-stop from 9:00 until 1:30 or so; we were afraid it might be too wet to spend time outside, but no, it dried out nicely and was beautiful. We invited Steve & Amanda and their kids, Ginger came as well (Daniel’s off to Amsterdam today flying freight), and then a new couple that just moved up here, Jeremiah and Rebecca. We had a great time getting to know them - they seem like a lot of fun, hope we can get to know them better. What I wouldn’t give to have them end up making Noelridge their church home… but they’re looking for a home in Monticello (30 minutes away) to shorten Jeremiah’s commute, so I wouldn’t place good odds on them coming to CR for church… oh well.
Now it’s Tuesday and I’m back at work. I’ve got a project certification plan document to update today. Fun fun. But it was a great, refreshing weekend. Thank the Lord for these times to kick back a bit and relax.
A little less wise
Thursday morning I had the delightful experience of having 4 wisdom teeth removed. It’s the first real dental work I’ve ever had to have done, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. But they needed to be removed, so I dutifully reported to the oral surgeon’s office at 8 AM, prepared for a weekend of pain and pills.
It’s actually been a lot better than I feared it would be. Thursday was still pretty much a loss, but I wasn’t in a lot of pain. Friday I felt pretty good. I probably could’ve gone to work on Friday, but I’d already prepared everybody for my being gone, so why mess things up for them? :-) It’s now Saturday morning, and my mouth is still pretty swollen, but I keep popping the ibuprofen, and other than that the pain is mostly gone. I’ll have to be careful what I eat for the next several days, but I can live with that.
The only thing I really needed to get done this weekend was mow the lawn, and so I’ve been figuring that by today I’d be ready to get out and mow. Well of course last night it had to rain, and it’s been threatening rain all morning, so I don’t think I’m going to get it done. Maybe tomorrow. I guess I could go outside and help Becky with her flowers…
This is probably the most boring random journal-type blog entry I’ve written in some time, but I guess it’s been slow enough that I don’t have much to post about. Either that or I’m just slow enough that I can’t think of anything… :-)
new horizons in wife appreciation
Becky went to a women’s retreat this weekend. She left Friday afternoon and didn’t get back until Saturday night. It was my first real extended time of getting to “kid wrangle”, as Steve puts it. (Of course, he’s got three kids, so my one probably doesn’t really count…) I have gained an entirely new appreciation for the things my wife deals with on a daily basis.
I had 28-or-so hours that Becky was gone, and had one real task I needed to complete: the back yard needed mowed. That was just about all I got done while she was gone. Well, not quite all. I did get over to church to finish debugging the problems with the projector… and didn’t get anywhere. I’ll talk through it with tech support today. And I did spend a couple hours while she was napping Saturday afternoon watching the Cubs game. So I could have gotten a couple other things done. But still.
There’s this whole issue of how much stuff there is to remember with a kid; you have to remember to take the diaper bag everywhere, and to remember to refill it when it’s empty. And remembering to check (and change) her diaper often enough that she’s comfortable and not overflowing… And remembering to take the opportunity to change her diaper at the “family room” on the one end of the mall before walking all the way to the other end. And remembering to use the facilities before you leave home since it’s a real pain to try to park a stroller in the restroom next to you when you’re out… And remembering that mealtimes aren’t nearly so flexible for Laura as they are for me… 7, noon, and 5 are pretty well set in stone. And on… and on… I assume you’re getting the idea.
Laura and I had a good time while Becky was gone; we spent a lot of time together, and that’s good. I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I’d like to. But I’ll tell you this - we were both sure glad to see her get home. :-)
[a nod to Prof. Peter Schickele for a title I could play off of…]
boredom
This has definitely been one of those boring weeks, especially as far as work is concerned. As I wrote about before, I have been assigned to be the team lead for a new project. It’s not a particularly big or long project as our projects go, probably me and one other software person for 12 months. It’s becoming less scary as I get into it further; I’m understanding exactly what needs done, and I know I can handle it… I’ve done most all of it before.
The bad part this week is the boredom; we’re in a planning phase where our plan isn’t due until the end of this month. My project lead was on vacation all of this week and will be all of next week, too. I need her input to finish planning. So what do I get in the mean time? I have a bunch of half-finished spreadsheets that need her input and approval before I can finish them. I’ve had most of those done since the early part of this week. So I’m sitting here now posting on my blog, inflicting my boredom on you readers who are probably now bored reading this.
I hate having nothing to do. If I have tasks to work on, I’m a happy camper, the day goes fast, I’m ultra-productive, things are good. When I don’t have stuff to do, I go crazy. Time drags. Listening to music doesn’t seem to help. I can’t exactly sit here and read a book… although maybe there are some technical journals or FAA publications or something that I can read. Yeah, that’d be exciting. :-)
I don’t even know if I feel better after having complained here about my boredom… but it least I spent 5 minutes doing it… less than three hours until the workday is over….
random Saturday thoughts
So, it' 8:30 on Saturday morning and I’m sitting here in the dining room watching Laura finish her breakfast. Her normal schedule is 16 oz of formula in the morning, but she’s drinking out of a 7 oz bottle. That means the real trick for mom and dad is to notice when the bottle’s getting empty so we can refill it before she throws it on the floor. Then she’ll eat her Cheerios, so I guess she’s doing like I do and having her bowl of cereal in the morning, she’s just having it separately whereas I put my milk and Cheerios together. :-)
I think it’s going to be a fairly slow Saturday, which will be nice. Just some odd tasks to complete around the house, and I need to go to the music store and buy a new microphone boom since mine at church has totally stripped out and won’t hold my mic up. Oh, and I have to type up the powerpoint slides for tomorrow’s church service…. such are the hazards of getting a new projector.
Well Becky just got up now so I suppose that means it’s time for the day to start. Thank God for weekends. :-)
are you trying to teach me something?
Within the last 7 days I’ve heard three separate sermons from the same passage. This doesn’t happen all the time. Well, for starters, usually I don’t even hear three sermons in a week. But the Moody conference last week gave me 12 general session messages to choose from. And when I get three in the same week, I think it’s time that I sit up and listen a little more closely.
The third sermon of the bunch was from a guest speaker at our church on Sunday. It honestly wasn’t even that interesting, was pretty shallow. But, it got me turned back to that passage. The other two messages were from D. A. Carson and Tony Evans. Now those will get your attention. :-)
The passage in question is Ephesians 3:14-21:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Tony Evans laid it out this way: Paul is praying for us to have more intimacy with Christ. Intimacy provides capacity, and the capacity provides power - God’s power. In other words, if we are lacking intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is diminished. On the other hand, if we pursue intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is increased, “more abundantly than all we ask or think”.
D. A. Carson, though, had the illustration while teaching this passage that will stick with me the longest. His question was this: why does Paul pray that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” when he’s talking to Christians, who presumably already have Christ in their life? He told this story, which I’ll paraphrase in the first person:
“When my wife and I bought our first house, it was what they call a “handyman’s dream”. You know what that means… it needed a lot of work. There was black and silver wallpaper in the bedroom. The previous owners had two dogs who were rarely let out - there was still dog poo in the corners of the house. The walls were dingy. It needed lots and lots of work. When we bought the house and moved our stuff in, it was ours, we lived there, but we didn’t really inhabit the place yet.
“But as we continued to live there, we starting working on the house. We knocked down a wall to expand the kitchen. We painted. We took down the black and silver wallpaper. We cleaned up the dog poo. Had we stayed there longer, we undoubtedly would have built on an addition when the kids were born. After some period of time, we could step back, look at the house, and say, ‘wow, we really live here.'”
This, Dr. Carson says, is the difference Paul is talking about in Ephesians 3. When we first accept Christ, our lives are a lot like that handyman’s dream house. There’s black and silver wallpaper on the walls. There’s dog poo in the corners. (“Dog poo” is an exact quote from Carson, by the way. :-)) Christ is living there, but He doesn’t really “inhabit” the place in the way that Paul means. What God wants to do is to clean us up, to do that painting, take down the wallpaper, and remodel the place so that our Christ is really inhabiting our lives.
This illustration was the most striking, insightful picture to me from the whole conference. I want to let Christ continue transforming my life, until it just radiates from me that “Christ lives here”. With three sermons in a week, I think God was trying to tell me something. I hope I’m paying enough attention.
Moody Review: Gary Haugen
Gary Haugen spoke to us last Tuesday afternoon at the pastor’s conference at Moody. Gary is the president of the International Justice Mission, a Christian organization dedicated to providing “investigation strategies, legal expertise, and cutting-edge technology to rescue individual victims of injustice and abuse around the world.” His topic: God’s priority for justice, and how his organization is working in that area.
A little background on Gary first; the guy is a pit bull. He’s rather a small man, but his physique and flat-top haircut would lead you to believe he’s done a stint in the Marines. (That’s purely conjecture on my part, but you get the image.) He grew up in a Christian family, graduated from Harvard Law, went to work for the Department of Justice, and was the head of the UN task force that went to Rwanda to investigate the genocide back in the 90’s. He’s obviously seen a lot in his time.
Gary described his work in Rwanda briefly; harder than sifting through the dead bodies, he said, was having to interview the ones who survived. He then told us about people who have been subjects of persecution and injustice in various places: an african man who was randomly shot by the police and then jailed so he couldn’t talk about it; a 9-year-old girl sold into slavery, forced to roll cigarettes 12 hours a day; young girls sold into prostitution rings; our stomachs were turning after just the first description or two. I think we often choose to forget or ignore these brutalities, here in the USA. And in a sense, I can understand it. (More on that later.)
Gary then walked us through several scriptures that point out God’s concern for justice, for protecting the innocent and “defending the orphan and the widow”. Key among his texts was Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, o man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Justice is mentioned first. So why do we ignore it so often? I need to examine this in my own life.
I’ve always had sort of a built-in repulsion to “bleeding heart” presentations or pleas. Partly, I suppose, this is due to my engineering nature; I want the bare facts, not all the emotional things that can cloud the issue. But I think there’s another side to it; it’s not that I don’t care about the people; it’s more that I feel overwhelmed. What can I do? And so, if I can’t do anything, I’d much rather forget about it than be nagged by the reminders of a hopeless problem.
What Gary did on Tuesday was remind us that it isn’t hopeless. There are people who are doing good work. His mission is one. I may have to think about supporting it in the future. And prayer is our number one tool. Too often I forget to pray; I just get caught up in the helplessness of it all. Thanks to God for being the Helper of the helpless. There are no helpless situations with Him.
Home!
I got home early this morning… 1:45 AM. It’s sure good to be home. Everything’s pretty much the same as when I left, but the grass needs mowed again… oh joy. :-) But today starts a 4-day weekend for me, so, no complaints.
Moody Conference, Day 4
It’s Thursday afternoon and the conference is winding down. There’s only one general session left, and while there is anticipation to hear the speaker (Tony Evans), there is still the sadness, weariness, and relief that accompanies the end of a conference. How to describe it? It might be akin to the feeling at the end of a week at bible camp, at the end of a retreat, or even at the end of a college school year. Sadness because these past few days of enjoyment, learning, and fellowship with brothers will soon be over. Weariness because none of us have gotten enough sleep over the past few days. At 6:30 AM on Tuesday, the dining hall was full of breakfasters. By this morning, it was only half full at 7:00. Relief because I know within the next 12 hours I will be back at home, sleeping in my bed, with my wife at my side, and my daughter in the crib in the next room. Relief in getting back to a routine that is more “normal”, even if it means that I will again become the feeder instead of the one being fed. I think similar feelings accompany all endings; we look back with fondness and lingering regret even as we look forward, knowing that we won’t really be happy if things stay the same; life is made up not of stasis but of change. Memory provides the anchors that give us a mental, emotional, and spiritual stasis even in the midst of life’s perpetual motion.
Even for Thursday afternoon, the student center is still noisy with activity. Only the tenor of the noise has changed, from the buzz of Monday’s anticipation and the rumble of Tuesday’s discussion and rumination, to Thursday’s dull roar of completion and the rattle of luggage wheels crossing the tile floor on their way to the cars in the parking garage across the street. Still the people are here. Students reading. That software vendor finishing up a late lunch before taking down his display and heading home. Two young mothers sharing a table with three three small children and a double stroller. There are two men in a booth behind me who have been criticizing the worship band that’s been playing at sessions this week. “You can’t even hear yourself sing when they play.” “You don’t know whether you’re singing off or on.” “It’s only really good when you’re singing with the pipe organ.” It appears that some things never change.
There have been so many good teaching moments over the past several days, and so many ideas for writing, that I’m going to have to just write some short drafts of them right now, and then flesh them out as I have time over the next few weeks. It’s hard even to know where to start. We have heard from a huge cross-section of evangelical teaching. Ravi Zacharias, the Indian philosopher and logician. D. A. Carson, the intellectual professor par excellence. Gary Haugen, one-time leader of the United Nations team that investigated the Rwandan genocide. James MacDonald, the pastor of Harvest Church here in Chicago who at first glance would have you think that Tony Soprano, or better yet, Michael Chiklis’s character from The Shield had taken to preaching. Direct. Hard-nosed. Bang-on. Colin Smith, his Scottish brogue beginning to be tempered by 15 years in the States. Sam Solomon (I suspect somehow this was a pseudonym), an Afghani who warned us of the evils of the system of Islam. Joe Stowell, the long-time president of Moody, passing the torch to his recent successor. Each of these deserves an essay in their own right, and then separate essays for the things I learned from them.
I hope that, months from now, I can point back to this week as a defining point in my life this year. That sounds very dramatic, and I don’t mean it to be. But this conference has challenged me to a renewed passion for Christ, a renewed desire to lead in my family, a renewed desire to make a priority of the Word and prayer. I have been too dry for too long; when Erwin Lutzer warned this morning of the pitfall of losing clear focus, and neglecting the disciplines, I felt at the same time the prick of conviction that I have done so, and some small (though I keep thinking misplaced) comfort that I am not alone in that struggle. I get so caught up in the things of ministry that the time in prayer and the Word get neglected. I think of it this way: how many hours have I spent in the last month working on church stuff? I’ve worked on two websites, set up a blog, installed a new projector, led worship for an outdoor Sunday service, led a worship team practice or two, and that’s just what I can think of from the top of my head. I have spent hours and hours on good stuff like that. But how many hours have I spent in the Word and prayer? Honestly? An hour? Two? Certainly not more. I say this to my shame, and in the sadness that an active, busy life of ministry can be the mask for an inner man that too often is missing meals and not getting rest. I need to change some priorities. God help me as I try to get things balanced better.
This post is meandering more than the well-formed post would; I wander from observation to insight to self-examination and back again. Hopefully I didn’t lose you halfway through it; I guess I should remember that if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve read it. If you’re my friend and you read this, get back to me in a couple weeks and see how I’m doing. My only trouble with being consistent is being so on a regular basis.
Moody Observations, Day 2
Amber liked my attempt at a descriptive writing post yesterday so I thought I’d give it another go. Just more observations from the Moody conference.
The stupid wifi still doesn’t work. All I want to do is just sit here and write directly to my blog, but it doesn’t work. Arrgh. I’m back in the student center at Moody, at another one of those square tables that host mid-day meals, conversations between old friends, and students with backpacks full of homework. At the table behind me is an Army chaplain with oak leaves on his lapels, that makes him what, a captain? It warms my heart to know that he’s taking the time to minister to our servicemen.
Across the room to my left is the Moody sales table. Either they stocked up on Conference polo shirts this year, or grey isn’t a popular color - Richard assured me the shirts are usually sold out by Monday afternoon; it’s Tuesday afternoon and they still have quite a pile left. Maybe their color choices aren’t always the greatest; they have t-shirts for sale left over from last year that are a not-quite-so-nice shade of brown… but they’re only $3 so I might just pick one up anyway. You can also buy coffee mugs, baseball caps, and some various books and literature. Sadly, for their sales prospects, I don’t drink coffee and it’ll take something more special than a pastor’s conference to supplant the Cubs on my baseball cap brim. Maybe the t-shirt is the right call.
Display booths on my right advertise products attractive to those in ministry: graduate school, online bible courses, bible study software, a publishing house. The representatives at these sales booths are worth a closer study. I don’t think I’d find it a fun assignment to have to man a booth like that. There are two across the room from me. Both are men in their late thirties or early forties; both are somewhat overweight and dressed in their best professional oxford shirts and sweater vests. Both are browsing on their laptops, eating lunch. Maybe I should see if either of them have gotten wifi to work… When a customer approaches, you can see them go into this “Christian sales” mode. It’s somewhat weird to me, because I typically think of salesmen as pushy, annoying, caring little about you and what you want, and more about how they can manipulate you into buying their product. But with these guys, they’re restrained, trying to be helpful, obviously in sales mode with their product, but at the same time remaining mindful that the men they’re selling to are their brothers in Christ who need enhanced ministries, not just a cool (expensive) software program. I wish there were more salesmen like them. I’d love to buy a car from a guy who had my best interests in mind rather than his own… but that’s a totally different subject. :-)
It’s quieting down now that the next general session has started. There’s a round table with five guys around it and the remnants of their lunch still on it; apparently they’re skipping the session to continue the discussion - a good idea if you ask me. There are several guys sitting around singly, like me, taking time to read, write, think. There are still some t-shirts for sale… I think I’ll go buy one. At $3, they’re a steal, even if they are brown.
Moody Conference Day 2
It’s 1:10 PM and I’m skipping a general session to sit and write. Richard described this conference as “trying to get a drink of water from a firehose”, and he’s not much wrong. So far today we’ve had general sessions with D.A. Carson and Gene Getz, and I went to a workshop also with Dr. Getz. And that was all before lunch! This afternoon there’s another general session and then a workshop before dinner. As I already said, I’m skipping the general session to do some writing, mostly because if I don’t take the time to write things down, I’ll start forgetting… and I don’t want to forget. It’ll be much more valuable for me to cement some things in my mind rather than just go soak up some more things that I won’t have time to remember.
Last night was Ravi Zacharias. He is brilliant. In the areas of metaphysics and logic, few are his equal. His topic was “Questionable Questions: Four questions skeptics ask that point to Christ”. I’ll write a separate post just on his message. Very impressive. Had a snack, decided to skip out on the late movie (National Treasure) since I’d just seen it last weekend, and went to bed.
One other thing I don’t want to forget from last night: we had a pianist providing special music. His name is Anthony Burger, and he usually plays with the Gaithers. His style is very showy, which means I don’t like it much. He plays with an instrumental track, it makes me think that Liberace got saved and started playing Christian music. But the last song of his set was Handel’s glorious Hallelujah Chorus. The power of that music drove away my discontent with the style of the presentation. Within the first few measures of the song, all 2000+ men in the auditorium stood to honor God in that great tradition of the Chorus. All the guys that knew parts were singing along. Words to not do it justice. Being in a room with 2000 men who want to worship God and having such a majestic chorus to do it with? Amazing. Fantastic. Superb. I’ll shut up now. :-)
This morning we had our first general session with Dr. D. A. Carson. He is probably the most “intellectual” speaker of the week. He apologized at one point early in the presentation for ending a sentence with a preposition! Just that kind of guy. He is a research professor at Trinity Evangelical School of Divinity, which means they basically retain him just to do research and write books. That being said, he’s a very good speaker as well. His ten-dollar words and presentation had John’s eyes permanently glazed over, but Richard and I loved it. I’m really looking forward to hearing Dr. Carson again tomorrow.
As Dr. Carson’s session dismissed, I headed off at a trot to get to the workshop with Dr. Gene Getz on Elders and Leadership in the church. It was a very good session… he reminded us that we need to stop assuming that the “form” that we’ve practiced with in our culture for all these years can substitute for the “supracultural” principles of leadership. There are the principles, which are universal. They transcend culture. Then there are the practices. They have to be customized depending on the culture and circumstance the church is in. I will have to take some time to digest it some more, but I think we can gain some things that we can implement at Noelridge. Dr. Getz then had the second morning session, where he taught on the importance of godly leadership in the church. Nothing super profound, but still encouraging and challenging.
The music times here have been pretty decent so far. Don’t get me wrong, the band is quite good. I always have a little trouble not being critical with bands, I guess they stick out to me more because I’m the musician. They’ve had a good balance of both old and new music; at the second morning session we sang Matt Redmond’s Blessed Be Your Name and followed it up with It Is Well With My Soul. Nice. I wish the worship leader were a little less showy and a little more of a musician, but I get the feeling that it’s just style, not heart attitude, so I can look past it.
Richard and I are going to be slackers tonight; we’re going to a Cubs game. The Astros are in town and Roger Clemens is pitching. Now, that probably means that the Cubbies will lose, but then, what else is new? It will be a little chilly tonight, but should be a great time. I love Wrigley Field. It will be a good break from the fire hose.
Moody Conference Day 1
Monday, May 23rd 3:30 PM
Richard picked me up at the house at 8:20 or so this morning. Said goodbye to Becky, Laura, and Becky’s parents and headed out to Chicago. We picked up Sam and John on the way and then traversed I-88 in a purple Chevy Blazer to get to Chicago.
It’s my first time at Moody and it’s an interesting campus. Land is obviously at a premium in downtown Chicago, so the campus feels a bit cramped. I’m sitting in the student center writing this, where I can view the registration area and various folks milling around, waiting for dinner and the start of the conference’s activites tonight. If only they had wi-fi access… I asked before I came and they said there was wi-fi in here, but I guess they were wrong. Or maybe they have it turned off… who knows? So, I guess I’ll have to resort to dial-up back in my room.
You can see the whole cross-section of evangelical church leadership just here in the student center. At the table next to me is a guy in jeans, a t-shirt, and a University of Wisconsin baseball cap. He looks typically midwestern. Across the room is a group of several black guys dressed to the nines - suits, ties, very slick. One of them is probably 5-9, 325, wearing a lime green pinstriped suit with the lapels turned up. Stylin', I guess. Basic attire seems to be jeans and t-shirts, which is nicely relaxed for a pastor’s conference. I had a fleeting image of guys whose idea of “casual” dress was an open collar and loafers with their slacks and jacket… I am happy in that regard to have been (at least for now) proved wrong. Here next to me a few minutes ago was one Institute staff member talking with a few friends from out of town. They were discussing the latest Star Wars movie, so I tried to ignore them since I haven’t seen it, and won’t see it until our break on Wednesday. If I wasn’t going to the movie Wednesday, and if I’d brought my basketball shoes along, they’re having an organized 3-on-3 basketball tournament on Wednesday afternoon… that could be fun. Oh well, maybe next time I come.
We had a late lunch this afternoon at a goofy diner called Ed Debevic’s. The highlight of this place is the waitstaff that is intentionally rude to the diners. Our waitress was sullen, cynical, and had us nicknamed. Grey-haired Sam was “Pops”. John, the youth pastor was “Sparky”. I’m not sure she had a nickname for me - I guess I was beyond description. Our waitress was actually pretty tame compared to the other guy who was serving. There was a booth with two younger-ish women across and down from us a bit. At one point, they must have complained or something about their rootbeer float. So, the waiter grabs it off the table, carries it three booths away, sets it down, and yells at the top of his lungs, “Well how’s this, will you enjoy your rootbeer float better when it’s over here?” They weren’t quite sure how to respond. Once the waiter had left, a guy from a neighboring booth went over and returned the float to them - they were a bit too cowed to retrieve it themselves. Later, they made the mistake of asking for extra napkins. He walked away, shaking his head. Then, in a loud voice from behind the counter, he was laughing at top volume, and holding his head in his hands. “More napkins?!? For the love! More napkins?” Then they got their napkins.
Well it’s almost 4:00 now and the stream of men coming into the student center has continued uninterrupted. Across the way, Gene Getz, who is one of our general session speakers, is greeting some friends and mingling with the crowd. The Wisconsin fan is still sitting there, hasn’t moved or spoken since I sat down. Two guys behind me are discussing the future of Moody Broadcasting. Just another day in the big city. Dinner is in two shifts, and ours starts in half an hour. Like I need it after the cheese burger from Ed’s.
longest... day... ever...
Wow, the day is getting long and it’s not even 1030 yet. I’m in a wrap-up mode at work; I’m taking vacation next week, and when I get back I’m transitioning to a new project, so I don’t really want to start on anything new. I had some prototype stuff to work on, but whenever I try to code-generate for it, the program blows up. (The code generator, not my program…) So, that’s going nowhere fast. I am sooooo not motivated to get stuff done. If I wasn’t burning a week of vacation next week, I’d take this afternoon off. But I can’t just keep burning vacation willy-nilly or I won’t have any left…
After work this afternoon I’m going to install the projector that you’ve heard so much about over the past weeks. Hopefully the long-throw lens will come today so I can actually test the whole thing out. But even if it doesn’t I’ll at least get the wiring and mounting done, and adding the lens will be trivial. I can’t wait to get it working…
Seeing as this is a very random post I’ll also note here that on our afternoon off from the pastor’s conference next week I have tickets to go see Star Wars Ep 3 on a digital projection screen. The picture quality for digital projection is supposed to be awesome… the two guys I’m going with saw Ep 2 there a few years ago and are still raving about it. I had thought about going to Wrigley and trying to pick up a ticket to see the Cubs, but I probably can’t afford that… so I’ll stick with Star Wars.
Well I guess I’ll have to find some more quasi-work to justify my time here until I can leave at 1500. Who knows, I may even post here again.
here goes nothin'
Yesterday afternoon my manager walked in and asked me if I’d like to become a software lead for an upcoming project. It’s a move up, of sorts, though probably without a pay increase.
For the past 6 years, I’ve been just a software engineer, which means that I just get assignments to do software changes, and I do them. It’s been a fine job, I’ve learned a lot. As software lead, I would basically be responsible for making sure all of the software changes get done for the project, making sure they are done correctly, solving any of the difficult technical problems, setting up the development environment, creating the releaseable software… wait, I guess that’s stuff I’ve been doing at least a bit of in my current position. I guess my last few years have served me well. :-)
The one thing I am not looking forward to is moving from a Windows-based development environment to a VAX-based environment. Not that I’m scared of moving away from GUI to command-line - heck, I prefer command-line; but I hate having to learn a whole new tool set. Oh well, it’s the one development environment I haven’t worked with yet in 6 years, so it will broaden my knowledge. Or something like that.
It’s a little scary moving up to this position, but not too bad. I had originally been told that I was going to be the project engineer, which would entail a lot more document-writing and paperwork. That was much scarier. This will just be a good move up the chain. I think I’m starting to look forward to it…
Music, family style... for real.
Well, the long-awaited Sunday finally got here and I got to play keyboards in the worship team at my family’s church with my brother Andrew leading. It was awesome. It was his first time leading a worship band but he did a very good job. The set list was something like this:
Somewhere in there Andrew and Ryan (another of my brothers) and I did a special number, the old Steve Camp song Love That Will Not Let Me Go. It was fantastic.
I really enjoyed getting to play keys and sing backup on the team; I’ve been leading my own team for so long, it was fun to play second-fiddle. It was also really neat to see my brother pursue a dream of his, to lead the team. I’m sure he’ll be doing it again… and maybe one of these days I’ll get him to come down here and play on my team. :-)
Call me Mr. Fix-it
No, this isn’t a home-improvement post… It’s more of a dealing-with-being-a-man-and-an-engineer post. :-)
One of the things I’ve had to learn over the past almost 7 years of marriage is to resist my instinctual impulse to “fix” everything. It’s different than at work. At work, my job is being presented with problems and designing solutions. At home, it’s not so much that way. When my wife comes to me with a problem, most of the time she doesn’t want me to design an elegant solution to her problem… most of the time she just wants me to shut up and listen, sympathize with her pain/frustration/whatever, and give her a hug. Once the emotional part is over then she’s enough of an engineer, too, that we can both work out a good solution to the problem. Still, it’s dang hard to shut my mouth sometimes.
Another one lately that has prompted this internal “you don’t have to fix it” reminder has been observing a recent brouhaha played out at least a bit over the blogs and comments of my sister, my brother, his girlfriend, and some other assorted players. The big brother and engineer part of me wants to dive right in, take sides, give lots of advice, try to fix everything up so that they’re happy again. But then I think back to my high-school years… I had undue amounts of girl-anguish, people that I really disliked, frustrations with life, and the like. But nobody needed to come fix them for me… I needed to live through them, learn from them. God used them to work in my life.
I was reading in Lamentations this morning (kinda painful to read, to be honest) and I was struck by how the prophet says God allowed all this pain and anguish of His people so that they would learn a lesson and repent. Read it again sometime. It’s a short book, but there’s a lot of painful descriptions there. Life would not have been fun for the Israelites who lived through the fulfillment of that prophecy. But then in the same little book, we get the reminder - God’s mercies are new every morning, great is His faithfulness.
So Andrew, Rebecca, Amber, if you’re reading this - I’ll give my two cents' worth of advice right here, and be done with it. :-) Love God and pursue Him above all else. As far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Live life one day at a time, and remember that today is only one day of maybe 30,000 in your whole life. There’s plenty left to be lived.
a busy month...
Well that personality thing was kinda boring, wasn’t it? You, reader, deserve a real, human-written post, and I am now here to give it to you.
My day was brightened this morning when I realized that, after this week, I will only have 5 more days of work for the month of May. Vacation is a glorious thing. :-) This weekend I’m taking one day off to go to Wisconsin for my sister’s high school graduation. I’ll come back on Monday and work Tuesday through Friday (May 17-20) and then I’m taking the next week off. Four of us from church are going to the Moody Pastor’s Conference in Chicago. (No, it’s not for moody pastors - it’s for pastors, and it’s at Moody. :-))
Now, my readers of a Reformed theological persuasion might be wincing at this mention of a non-Reformed institute and conference, but I am much looking forward to it; the conference opens with a message from Ravi Zacharias, and is bookended with a closing message from Tony Evans. I am sure that the middle presentations will be excellent as well. So, that runs Monday evening through Thursday evening. Then it’s back home for Memorial Day weekend. Whew!
Sometime in there, I’ll try to get the new projector installed, too… I’m ordering it today.
Well that’s the fun news and calendar update from Chris' s life. I hope you enjoyed it. :-)
making music, family style
OK, I’m excited. I just finished talking to my brother Andrew. He is almost 19, has been playing on the worship team at his church (Richland Center Fellowship, Richland Center, Wisconsin) for a while now, and has the opportunity to lead the worship service in a couple weeks… on the Sunday that the rest of the family is going to be visiting!
We have a musical family. Dad was a music education major, Mom minored in voice, and all of us 5 kids play at least 1 instrument, some of us several. We did occasional special music and such growing up, and I really miss the chances to do stuff with them. We know so much of the same music that it’s ridiculous.
Quick picture to paint: we’re all home at Christmastime, and I’m sitting in the living room just goofing around on my guitar with Caedmon’s Call’s Hands of the Potter. My brother Aaron (age 21) is working on installing a cat door in the porch door, I didn’t even think he’s paying attention, and as I get to the chorus, he just kicks in singing the backup part. It was way too cool.
Anyhow, Aaron is off in Panama doing missions, but Ryan (age 25) and Andrew and I will all be around on that Sunday, and the plan is that we will all help out with the worship time, playing and singing. This is exciting for multiple reasons; first, to get to play music with those guys again is a treat. Second, I’m the worship leader of a church of 150 or so rather subdued worshippers (God’s “frozen chosen” :-)). We’ll be leading at a church of 400 or so more energetic types. Thirdly (and maybe this should be first, priority-wise), I get to help encourage Andrew in his quest to head down a similar path as I’ve gone down, to use his musical talents as a worship leader. That will be the best part, for sure.
I suppose I should get back to work now, but excitement like this needs someplace to be poured out, even if it is just to a window in WordPress. :-)
softball starts tonight!
Our first softball game of the season is tonight. I’m soooo much looking forward to it. It’ll be nasty conditions for playing - probably 50 degrees and a 20 mph wind. But that’s not the point - it’s just great to be out playing.
I’ll have the additional fun of getting to umpire the early game - in our league it’s recreational enough that we don’t have paid umps, instead each team that plays the early game supplies somebody to ump for the late game, and vice versa. I enjoy the umping at least as much as the playing…. weird.
Hopefully Laura doesn’t freeze tonight out with us; if she’s getting cold, it’ll be up to me to keep track of her so Becky can keep playing. The joys of spring softball in Iowa - we had flurries here this morning! :-)