Today hasn’t started out so well for me. To be honest last night did end so well either. Yesterday I was shown a couple of links to some blogs that were very critical of the Emergent Church movement. Now those who know me know that I haven’t jumped onto the Emergent church bandwagon and in fact have some concerns about the movement. I feel lucky to be in a place where I have the opportunity to dialogue with a number of people about the movement, its theology and doctrine. I have come to realize that there are two very distinctly different groups being discussed. On one hand there is the “Emergent Church” that movement is an affiliation of some very well-meaining pastors who have come together to have a sort of structure to what they are trying to do. Out of that group came the “Emergent Conventions” and a lot of shrink wrapped content. On the other hand is a group of churches who could be lumped into that group except they are churches in mainline denominations who are thinking missiologically in a different way. As I read through a number of posts on these couple of sites I was reminded of the “Conversations with the Emerging Church” conference I attended at Talbot last spring. That conference was a great idea but ended up being pretty discouraging. The “Conversations” ended up being a bunch of Talbot professors reading pre-written talks that were pretty dry reviews of the Emergent Chuch, then the Emerging guys got up and shared stories and ideas about what they were doing. Very little conversation happened (except with one particular professor who’s name I don’t remember but I was very impressed with) My frustration with these blogs is the same as my frustration with the conference. People on pedestals tend to lump everyone together and blast away. There are probably some bab Emergent churches. There are also some bad Presbyterian Churches, Methodist Churches, Southern Baptist Churches and Calvary Chapel Churches. The point being that we need to evaluate each church based on criteria which analyzes its theolgy and doctrine compared with historical western Christianity and doctrine and see where it lines up. Too much criticism is only going to lead the church further down the path of irrelevancy. Can we please all just admit that the state of the Western church is not in a good place. More churches are dying and losing members each day than are growing. Something major has to be done. Are there good things happeneing in the Emergent church? Yes are there things that we need to “dialogue” about so that we can work on transforming? “Yes” Even Jesus didn’t give up on his not-so-smart apostles. He stayed with them and believed in them even when they were dumb or denied him. Thanks for reading.

I’m a bit of a gadget geek. A couple of years ago I got a Treo 600 and really liked it. Finally I could use my phone to keep track of all my calendar and contacts without having to update it with the silly little keyboard. This last fall I traded up and got a Treo 650. The difference are great but the best thing I found during my upgrade was a better way to sync it with my mac. It used to be that I had to sync using Isync and a bunch of dumb workarounds to get the info off my mac onto my phone. I found the missing sync software by MarkSpace. MarkSpace This software is amazing. Now I can sync my address book with my mac and it syncs all of the categories that I have established on my mac. It also syncs all the photos that I take and add to my contacts so I can see what people look like. And, it syncs those photos directly with my address book. Adds them to Iphoto also. The program does a few other great things but those are my favorite features.

So I haven’t been blogging lately because I’m on a family Trip. But, I have been thinking about my last post, my passions and my giftedness. I’m going to start blogging more along the lines of technology and how it is useful to ministry, theology and general life. I’ll get something up by the end of the week.

Tonight I taught at my church to a group of 30 somethings. It was a mix of single, married and pretty cool. The message was from Mathew chapter 6 and specifically focused upon Seeking Kingdom and Righteousness. I was encouraged to speak to people my age and get a good response. When you’ve been a youth pastor as long as me you sometimes forget how to interact with and teach people older than students. Fortunately, I get chances like this. On a completely different note my son Soren told me on the way home that when he gets bigger he’s going to throw me into the pool and make me scream like a girl. Then my younger son Kaije told me that Jesus is in his heart. An interesting ride home.

So I’ve been paying attention to the stats for my blog and I’ve found out that the area that seems to get the most hits via google is when I write things about Technology. I guess it comes as no surprise since the majority of people surfing the web are looking for geeky types of issues. But, I find it sort of disheartening to think that posts about ipods are more read than posts about theology. Then again I think Ipods are probably more relevant to most people than random church stuff. I have a huge desire to reach people within the culture they are in. I’m wondering how I can do that more effectively. Go ahead and post a reply to this. Especially if you are looking for Geek stuff and stumbled on the site. I’d like to know what you think.

Two things come to mind with this title. I spent the weekend out in Joshua Tree National Park with the youth group. It was amazing. We had a great time climbing, spleunking and hanging out. My boys (especially Soren) had the time of their lives. I couldn’t believe he went through the cave. Then last night we went to the Switchfoot Concert at the House of Blues. Cool in that we knew so many people there. Funny that we ran into the pastor that married us 9 years ago and the woman who played matchmaker 10 years ago. Great concert and an amazing time.

One year ago this weekend I preached my first sermon at my new church. It was a message that I had preached before in part because it was a huge chunk of my testimony. The previous times I shared that message I had felt good about it but not as if I had preached something life changing. Something weird happened that morning though. After I got done I had a bunch of people start calling me and telling me they felt called to get involved in Youth Ministry at the church. I take most of those calls with a little grain of salt because often I find that people movtivated by emotional talks and making quick decisions to get involved aren’t necessarily the best volunteers. But, the calls kept coming and we ended up with some amazing people who are great youth workers. The funny thing though is that it hasn’t stopped yet. I had someone call me this week and ask to set up a meeting. I was thinking I’d done something wrong (major insecurity) and was trying to figure out how to handle. The guys were slightly emotional and told me that ever since my sermon last year they’ve felt called to get involved in the High School ministry. Its hard to believe that something I shared a year ago is still having response. Now I know that it really wasn’t me. The Holy Spirit has a huge way of convicting people and keeping things at the front of their mind. I’m just glad that he decided to use that sermon on that day because their are lives of students that are being changed because of that message. On a scary note that should be an encouragement to us all that every message we teach should be thought of as something that could have a profound impact.

So here’s my rant. Since I’ve been so sick lately I’ve done a lot of laying around and thinking. Just two weeks ago we went through daylight savings time. In the fall we turn our clocks back. The end result of this is that it is lighter in the morning and dark when I drive home from work. Now I’m not sure how this started and honestly don’t really care. Here’s the end results for Daylight Savings Time in the Fall for Southern California: It gets darker earlier. It takes away our afternoon surf sessions (or at least makes them pretty short) I now go to Starbucks on my way home instead of on my way to work. When it gets dark I get tired. There is not a lot of useful things I can do at home when its dark. I can’t mow my lawn, go for a walk or anything outside. So I’m stuck inside playing with my boys, watching tv and blogging. And we wonder why we put on weight at the Holidays. Its because we’ve taken away any usefulness to our afternoons and evenings. Now I know that every spring we are super stoked when we go the opposite direction and get an extra hour of sunlight but what if we never turned our clocks back in the first place. Then it wouldn’t be getting dark at 4:30 every day. I just don’t get it and I’m mad. I voted today and it wasn’t even on the ballot. Come to think of it no one has ever asked what I think about it. Don’t I live in a democracy. We vote on all this other dumb stuff but never have I been asked about daylight savings time. To end I just want to state that it isn’t saving me any time at all. And I’m done.

I wish there was a way to describe how my head feels right now. I feel as if someone held me down and filled every hole in my head with cotton. Only before they stuffed the cotton balls in there they dipped them in vaseline. And, that vaseline is slowly dripping out of my nose, eyes and down my throat. Only there was a little bit of oatmeal mixed in that vaseline and its chunky. And my eyes don’t seem to work either. They want to be closed right now. Like Thursday when I slept for 18 hours. Or Friday when I went to bed at 7pm. Or Saturday when I stayed in bed most of the day or today (see above for how I feel today). I just took some sudafed and some tylenol PM. Probably before I finish this post I’ll fall asleep on the couch and nod off………………….

Haven’t posted much lately. I was on jury duty for 6 days in a row and in the middle of it was asked to preach over the weekend. Yesterday I woke up so sick I didn’t want to do anything. After breakfast I went back to bed and slept for 18 hours. Still a little sick today. I’ll post something new over the weekend.