Doogie Howser Did It, So Why Not Me?

Weekend Blogdate

Basically I didn’t get to the updates to the blog that I wanted to. There just really wasn’t enough time.

And I pre-apologize for the “here’s what I did this weekend” post.

I did sit down Friday night to try and do some work on the template, but it proved to be quite an undertaking and I did not have the time to spend 6+ hours over the course of the weekend to make it happen.

Though keeping with my lot in the house, I spent the majority of the night Friday cleaning. (mind you I’m not a really clean person) I cleaned the bathroom (oh boy) and the kitchen, including the kitchen floor, (which by the way at this point is already starting to get dirty again).

I actually got to bed at a decent hour on Friday night and then woke up, on my own accord (amazing), Saturday morning and took my car over to the shop for an oil change before Bill and I headed out to Fuller for an intramural volleyball game. After a little BBQ there, Bill and I headed back home and decided to go on a run. Why after a morning of Volleyball and 3 or 4 hotdogs??? Don’t know.
*you must note that I have not run any substantial distance in the last 5 months or so.
We planned on running about 6.5 miles (since Bill is training for a Marathon). After about 1.5 I hit a wall. Crap! I’m such a lazy slob. At that point I realized that I was slowing Bill down and told him that I’d take a shortcut and meet him. Basically long story short is that I did make it about 5 miles, at a slower pace than I’d liked, but not to bad for not running for a long time.

After getting home and taking about 15,000 pills to numb the pain. I planned on spending another quiet night at home, the roommies asked me if I wanted to play in a Magic Tournament we were hosting at our house. (For those of you who don’t know what Magic is, it is a nerdy card game of the likes of D&D; (that’s Dungeon and Dragons) or Pokemon.) Having not much else to do, I said yes and in turn spent my evening playing cards, until 4:20 in the morning, in which I finished a really long game against Carlos. We then headed down to LA to go to the Pantry, a restaurant staffed by ex-cons, good eats. Finally got home around 6:30am and went to bed only to wake at 9:30 to head to church to sing in our Gospel choir.

After trying to sing, since my voice was hurting after being up all night, Jamie Lofgren and I had to prep to host our annual church talent show. After crafting many bad jokes and gags, the show was great and well received. I headed out for some late dinner and finally made it home and asleep by around 10:30.

All in all a great weekend. I only wish I had Mondays off since it felt like I pulled a whole other work day on Sunday.

I did finish a book this weekend so expect a book report on Chap Clark’s book Hurt sometime soon. It’s an amazing book if you work or deal with teenagers, go and get it, just click on the link.

Tweaks

I’ll be spending tonight and maybe tomorrow teaching myself more CSS and HTML in hopes of sprucing up the blog a bit. It’s been acting funny when I go to make changes so hopefully I’ll find the root of the problem and then be able to CONQUER it.

Ahhhhhh

It came. The BRAND NEW Jack Johnson cd arrived at my house. How you ask? Two words. Pre-sale. It even came with a DVD.

I don’t think that even if you pre-ordered it today that it would get to you before the actual release date of March 1st. Either way, go and get it. I’m only 2 songs into the album and I love it. What else is to be expected.

I’ve been talking about this for so long. See here and here.

Too bad I won’t be around march 5th, cause check this out(under Feb 21) for a place near you.

Drive-thru Lent

I’m back…and yes I’ve definitely been a MUCHO hobo-blogger. I do appreciate all the concern for my well being. It’s good to know that all of you continue to check the blog.

In my defense, I must say that I left you with 3 entries on Friday that should have held you over until today. (and there were no real comments on any of them, except you Jenny Smith, thank you) Granted I did not warn of coming down with hobo-bloggeritis, the last few days have been sluggish for me.

Now on to a real post.

If you recall my decision for lent (can be read here) was to fast on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

So far it has been going moderately. Fasting is definitely something that if you are not used to doing it, is quite hard to jump into. It has been good in the respect that I have been praying more on the days that I have been fasting and it has helped me focus my thoughts on suffering and the “other”. Though I must confess that I have not exactly adhered to the best of practices when it comes to my fast.

On more than one occasion I have stayed up until midnight of the day I was fasting, on purpose (as I should have gone to bed), to eat something. While technically allowed since my fast begins and ends at midnight, in my mind it is definitely bending the rules to ease the hungerpains. I am definitely trying to hold myself accountable to actually just going to bed on the nights of the fast and then waking up and eating something, instead of staying up just to eat and then not wanting to wake up for work the next day (though I normally don’t want to wake up anyways, I’m just that much more tired). And I must confess that this past Tuesday that I did not hold to my fast. I ate one meal during the day. While I know Lent is not about how much or how little you can or cannot due. It truly has become a way to gauge your commitment towards one thing. I think it speaks wonders about our level of commitment. Christ calls for our total commitment, and here we are pledging to commit to this thing or activity or lackthereof for 40 days and how often we find ourselves failing. How grateful I am for grace.

How are you doing on your Lenten commitments? Leave a comment, what was the commitment and how are you doing.

Holy Cow

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s finally happened. John Bowling has a Blog!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually it’s just a myspace account. We’ll get him to blogger sooner or later.

Jerkstore

< rant>
To: Jerk Store in the White Ford Truck
From:Dude on the corner of Roscoe and Zelzah C.O. Andrew Seely

Freakin idiot, why did you have to gutterball the redlight at a high speed then swerve into my lane to avoid the Postal Truck, but while in the midst of that, totally ran through a HUGE puddle splashing a wall of water onto an unsuspecting guy standing at the corner waiting for the light to change. I hope you read this and feel really really really sorry for that poor guy. Once again you are a, Jerkstore!!!!

PS I was going to catch up to you, but 1 you were exceeding the speedlimit way too much under normal conditions and then it was raining and therefore you were WAY exceeding the limit, and 2 I reached my turn to go home. So this serves as my public disdain for your reckless abandonment and disregard to normal everyday people, you jerkstore.

< /rant>

PS
I’m sure this will get way more comments than my last post. Not that I’m a comment whore, but I’ve noticed recently that serious posts seem to get less comments than lighter posts. See also Adam’s sediment towards lack of serious comments. Also please note the first 6 comments on the last post are from the same person.

Thinking Theologically About Stress

I began this train of thought yesterday and I still haven’t quite worked out all the details. But here are some of my raw and initial thoughts. Mind you, this is a thought in process and NOT fully developed. So don’t rip me to shreds quite yet.

I began thinking about this after receiving an email from a mother who has quite a lot on her plate.

There’s no denying we live in an overstressed world. You are possibly even reading this right now cause you are trying to avoid the stressfulness surrounding you.

The question remains, how is stressed connected to the image of God. Is it a product of who he is? or is it a product of us disobeying His commands?

I’m not sure if there is a definitive answer. Under my examination of scripture I think we can examples of stress, but as for one way or the other I do not know. All I know is that we have to live with it as a part of our world.

Though I do think we need to at least work towards better addressing it, not only personally but also addressing it on a spiritual level.

Heck even Jesus in the garden (Luke 22:44) was so stressed out that the guy sweat blood. Well it might have been more anguish than stress, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The dictionary.com definition of stress is: “A mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences and capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability, and depression.”

More and more we are being asked to do far more than is physically capable of ourselves, not just physically but mentally as well. Work, family, errands, church committees, church functions that the committees set up, personal growth, hobbies, vacations, and anything else you can think of. These days even sleep becomes something to put on the “to do list”. I myself have even “scheduled” sleep into my schedule.

The old saying “just say no”, no longer seems to apply. The mother I mentioned above (I hope she doesn’t mind me saying so, if she reads this) is busy with being the children’s choir director, Sunday school teacher/coordinator, mother, spouse, and church committee member. Stress would be a good answer to the question of “who are you”.

It’s not just mothers and fathers, or even us ministry people, even our youth are being asked to do far more than is good/acceptable for any person under the age of 18. Here’s an example of what my life was like at age 17. And I know it’s been getting worse and even at younger and younger ages. I would wake up at between 6:00 and 6:30 to go to school, go to school, dealing with all the demands/drama of high school, after school I would spend the next 3 hours at volleyball practice, then from school I would try and grab dinner on the way to church where I would be until 8 or 9 or sometimes 10 (because I had a part time job at church) and then finally get home to start on my homework which most of the time wouldn’t get done, go to bed around 12 or 1 to get up the next day and do it again.

That’s at age 17!!!! Sadly enough that is a pretty typical account of most teenagers lives these days, it gets even worse for those who are trying to get straight A’s while doing multiple extra curricular activities.

I don’t think I’m advocating that every member of your church needs to say no whenever they are asked to do something. But what I think I’m trying to get at is the fact that we have accepted what is abnormal amount of stress as normal. Which I don’t think is a Biblical idea. I’m not saying that no one in the Bible didn’t have stressful lives, gosh, look at Abraham, Noah, David, Paul, the disciples, and a slew of other people. Though what I do see is that they managed their stress in a healthy way.

They knew how to say no, to things that were not directly mandated by God. They had the discernment to know when and to what God was calling them. When stress was encountered, usually the first thing they did was pray, see Paul in jail, Jesus in the garden, Stephen being stoned. They did not let the stress consume them. They brought it before the alter and allowed God to shoulder the burden.

We cannot allow the sin of stress to perpetuate in our lives and the lives of our students and congregates. In a culture that breeds stress, it definitely is an uphill battle for us as emergent leaders to begin to battle the evil of stress. I remember years ago the big thing was the disease of “affluenza”, now I would argue it has become “stressfluenza”.

Stop at this point, get on your knees and pray for the healing of the stress in your life and the lives of others. I think in Godly lives it is not possible to eliminate stress, but I think it is possible to narrow stress down to “acceptable” stress that occurs in situations that are directly related to doing the work of God. Pursue God to eliminate the harmful stress that brings us crashing down, and replace it with stress that brings us crashing down to our knees in prayer to a God who knows the stress of the world, as he prayed “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

I’ve been branded as an “imposter”

I have a counter on both my blogs, from Bravenet.com and with that I can see referring sites that visit my blogs.

I happened to click on the Ghetto Blog’s counter and I saw this url: http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~ajmarchu/blog.html, so being a curious little devil, I clicked on it and I saw the heading “Imposter!”, and I read on. (it’s the entry on 2/11/05)(it’s ghetto enough that it doesn’t have links to each post)

Basically it’s a rant about how I’m stealing that idea and how I’m a b00n!!!

Well I’m at least a little famous. Go me. Pissing other people off.

I must refute some of the points that are offered on the above mentioned blog.

“This “ghetto blog” is not ghetto at all.”
– Sure it is, it’s a white board. Come on.
“For one thing it’s a blogspot.com blog which would require like figuring out how to get one of those and setting it up and stuff. That probably requires *EFFORT*.”
– It was the easiest thing, I already had a regular blog so it was only natural not to pay for server space. Ghetto = free.
“And, being a blogspot.com thang it has all kinds of colorful backgrounds (two of ‘em)”
– The template is one of the crappiest available, not like AJ’s blog, and if they had looked, I designed my own template for my real blog.
“Next up, is the fact that there was most likely a digital camera involved there (at minimum a real camera and a scanner). That is not ghetto at all.”
– The digital camera I use is soooo ghetto, it was bought at Radio Shack, for like 10 bucks at an after t-day sale, see this entry for more details.

This final quote definitely clinches it in my favor too: “That said, the posts are done with the non-ghetto digital camera *but* a quite ghetto dry-erase board. So I suppose he’s got one on me there…a dry-erase board is more ghetto than the keyboard that i use to type what i’m typing now. So perhaps he does get a slightly more ghetto feel with all that dry-erase board whatnot but i’m sorry, all that blogspot.com crap ruins it.”

Ha I win!!!!

I, Andrew Seely, reign as the ghetto blog king.

Seriously folks, help a brother out

I know there’s been a lot of debate about the freeipods.com thing. Here’s a legit article about the whole thing. There shouldn’t really be any reason to not give it a try. I only need 2 more people to sign up under me.

So go HERE and sign up.

?s

Here’s a list of questions that I sent off to the church I am applying to. Comments or more questions welcome. (many of the questions come from Doug Fields’ book Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry)

What’s expected of me in this position?

Are there different expectations from different people? (Pastor, youth commission, session, the congregation)

Who would my direct supervisor be?
Would I meet regularly with that person? What would those meetings look like?

What does success look like for this position? / What are the church’s expectations for numerical and spiritual growth? And how would that be determined?

How and when would I be evaluated? What standards would I be held to?

What are some obstacles that may come up in the course of a year within this position?

Am I expected to adhere to a set schedule of “office hours”? Or what would a typical work week look like.

What does failure look like?

Would I have an inflexible day off?

Would I be paid hourly or on salary?