International Campus Ministry and Baby Showers

This week should be crazy, fun, and inspiring with our friends from Globalscope in for their annual Celebration celebration. Globalscopes does international campus ministry and I have been able to learn about them during my times in Dallas over the past year for our Leadership Network University Ministry Learning Community. Several of their teams are in places (like Spain, England, and Germany) that are even more post-christian than Boson. I’m eager to learn from them!

Saturday afternoon some of our lovely friends (and family) threw Amy a baby shower. We are blessed to know so many great people and feel taken care of and loved on in so many ways!

2 Months To Go…

I’m not the one who is pregnant so it feels a bit rude to say this, but pregnancy is long. I’m getting antsy. I want to meet this kid! Not too early of course, but every day it just gets a little more real.

Last Saturday we went to birth class, which was highly informative (especially for me). Tomorrow is a baby shower for Amy. On either ends of those events are doctors visits.

I have some more time off coming up in a few weeks during which time I will complete the transformation of the upstairs of our home: a new room for mom and dad and nursery for baby.

There is mounting evidence all around: we are going to be parents!

Brian Eno

Brian is a weird dude. But he says some interesting things. Here are a few examples:

“Luck is being ready.”

“For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.”

“It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.”

Call Me, Maybe and Some Thoughts on Minimalism

There’s a popular pop song at the moment titled “Call Me, Maybe” (if you want to see an incredible version of the song, CLICK HERE). When it comes on the car I don’t change the channel (it is rather catchy), but my curmudgeonly (soon to be a dad) self gets all riled up. I yell at the male character in the song: “Don’t call maybe, DO IT. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no!”

I actually used this very point in my teaching this past Sunday (you can listen here).

We live in a “maybe” culture, and the result is cluttered, careless words. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin says: “We choose our clothes more carefully than we choose our words.”

Which, of course, leads to some thoughts on minimalism. For Amy and I this has become our new obsession. We began to have some talks about simplifying our life when  our good friend Ryan alerted me to this blog, which sent me over the edge.

Now, we are adding a child to our family and with such an addition comes stuff. And yet our goal is to simplify, minimize our stuff, and have a more orderly home. Or at least a less cluttered home.

Talking about words this week at REUNION made me think about the beauty of “yes” and “no”. When Jesus speaks about words, speech, and commitments in Matthew 5, I find many connection to minimalism…this is minimalist speech. Doesn’t mean we don’t talk or that we have nothing to say.

But our speech is simple, careful, uncluttered.

This is a goal for all of life, perhaps Jesus was on to something by beginning with how we use our words.

Un-Trust

Sarah posted the other day about trust and I liked what she had to say a lot. Ironic because I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself.

We live with a great deal of uncertainty: when will the baby come…will amy have to work after the baby gets here…how will we balance work and ministry and parenting…will our funding come through (which will help us answer some of these questions)…and there’s several other questions there as well.

I pray a lot when I run, and the prayer I keep coming back to is essentially a paraphrase of Mark 9:24: “I trust, help me with my un-trust.”

One of the thing that strikes me from this passage is that they guy who is asking for help with his unbelief is a dad. The scene in question revolves around his child.

I can relate to that. I know belief and trust and closely related, but it has been incredibly helpful for me to meditate on this father’s cry for help as a plea for the ability to trust. I believe it, but do I really trust it?

And so my prayer these days is help me with my un-trust!

Summer Reading

Summer is a great time to inhale some books. With a kid on the way I feel an added sense of pressure to get as much in as possible because, come September, who knows what reading time will look like! Here are my top 5 books from June:

  1. The Road Trip That Changed the World by Mark Sayars. I did not agree with some of his conclusions in the last third, but the first 150 pages are some of the most interesting cultural exegesis I have read in a long time.
  2. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely. Essentially this is a book about sin and integrity written by a social scientist. His analysis and conclusions about lying, cheating, and stealing will give you plenty to talk about.
  3. Life by Keith Richards. Absolutely fascinating…Keith has a lot to teach anyone who is a leader.
  4. Holes by Luis Sachar. This is a re-read, but totally worth it. I’ve going back through my “children’s lit” section and this is a great book, period, child or not. And, if you don’t like it Ryan will hunt you down and give you the what-for.
  5. The Juvenilization of American Christianity by Thomas Bergler. This is only number 5 because I have actually finished it yet, but so far he has some pretty startling things to say to those of us working with young people.