Upon seeing this magnificent work of art done by yours truly several things should become immediately obvious:
1. I was really REALLY bored.
2. Thomas has a whole lot of sidewalk chalk.
3. I’m a horrible artist.
Monthly Archives: June 2006
A Few of My Favorite Things
The smell of a freshly mowed lawn.
The subsequent feel of freshly cut grass on my bare feet.
Hot coffee in the morning.
The look on Thomas’ face when he’s surprised.
The look on Bethany’s face when she’s surprised.
A clean house on a rainy day; must have a blanket and a book/movie
The smell of a baby’s head.
The crackle of a campfire at night.
The feel of clean sheets on a chilly night.
Singing “Amazing Grace” in church.
What are some of your favorite things?
The Color of Money
Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?
The above passage from the Bible, along with several others (Matthew 6:23-25; Luke 16:13-15; 1 Timothy 3:2-4), points to the idea that the love of money is something that should be avoided. I agree.
Unfortunately I think many of us have the misconception that to love money you first must have money. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I would argue that most of the people who have a problem with lusting after or “loving” money are those folks who don’t have a lot of it.
Just some food for thought.
Get Your Worries Here!
This is my first post highlighting various stupid church signs I see in my region. More often than not when a church sign is used to display some witty idea or phrase it ends up being an embarrassment to the church. Often times it becomes a stain on Christianity as whole. I therefore believe that church signs should never be used to “convict” nor “encourage” but should only be used to convey information such as worship service times and event information. At any rate, here’s the most recent stupid church sign:
This is not a fake, it’s real church sign, not one of those signs you can make on certain sites. Even though it’s not a church sign per se it serves the same purpose. When I first saw this atrocity on my ride into work I cringed at the fact that a Christian group was putting themselves out in public like this.
First of all, to say, “Download your worries” is to imply that you would like more worries and they have plenty to spare; just go there and get some. Or maybe your worries are old and updates are available, they’ve got those too. I assume they meant “Upload your worries” which technically would be a more accurate phrase to represent the concept which they’re trying to convey; that is, take the worries you have and put them somewhere else (i.e. give them to God.) But to say “download” is the exact opposite of what they mean. Someone really didn’t know what they were talking about when they put this sign together. At the very least if you’re going to use computer/internet jargon to communicate a biblical idea use the correct terminology.
Second (sigh) I should “Get online with God?” I mean, come on guys. Get online with God? That’s the conceptual equivalent of a swimming pool brimming with Cheez Whiz. As Christians we are supposed to have God Himself dwelling inside of us and this is the best you can do?
I know this was a harsh post, but someone needed to say it. Maybe I should call the campground and tell them what I think.
I Feel Unvalidated
Thanks to an article on Life Hacker I finally got around to uninstalling the crappiest Beta ever: Internet Explorer 7. Now I can see the horrendous manner in which ie6 renders this site. I can’t stand that kind of imperfection; really, I can’t. So I went in and hacked up my stylesheet a little (only 3 hacks) so now it displays virtually the same in ie6 as it does in all the other browsers that know what the heck they’re doing. Once ie7 becomes the standard that ie6 is now I’ll remove the hacks.
The only problem with using ie6 hacks is that now my stylesheet doesn’t validate and yes, I know I could create an [if ie] conditional stylesheet but it’s not worth my time for three hacks. Of course, how many of you actually checked to see if it did validate in the first place? Not many I’ll bet. Most of you are just concerned with whether my blog “looks” right to you. I say that not in a condescending way but in a way that acknowledges the fact that the vast majority of people don’t care one iota about valid code or web standards or anything else on the backend of blogs. What most people care about is 1) content and 2) aesthetics. How that content gets there and what’s behind the aesthetics is inconsequential. For most people, all that matters is it’s there and it works.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we as bloggers shouldn’t care about web standards, I’m just saying that most people don’t care about them. And lets not forget that for whatever reason any part of my blog with comments on it, such as individual posts, doesn’t have valid XHTML either. It’s probably my own fault that each comment vomits non-valid code but hey, whaddaya want? I’m a professional youth minister, not a coding guru. That’s a grim truth I’ve been faced with after being accepted into 9rules. Many of those guys are like demi-gods compared to me. They do things with code that I didn’t even know were possible. At any rate, I hope to pick up a few more readers now that Open Switch displays correctly in ie6.
What are your thoughts on web standards, valid code and ie6 hacks?
Out of the Box Functionality
To the untrained eye Thomas may look cute and innocent but I assure you that although he is supernaturally cute he is anything but innocent. When I see him do the “happy dance” wherein he giddily bounces up and down while waving his hands in the air after accomplishing some amazing feat I’m overcome with a desire to squeeze him until he pops. But all those good feelings go away when I see him charging head-first at my crotch.
Yeah, evidently Thomas has developed some twisted sort of joy in seeing his daddy writhe in pain on the trampoline clutching his massacred groin. Honestly, I just don’t think he yet draws the connection between the impact of his forehead upon my person and the tears rolling down my face. Someday he’ll learn not to hit daddy there. I’m trying to teach him now but the learning curve is a little too slow for my taste.
Dear God,
I know that the current operating system which you install in all new kids includes such programs as “breathing.exe” and “extretingwaste.exe.” But would you be so kind as to include the priceless program called “dontcrushdaddyscrotch.exe” in the rest of my children? I know it’s an open source program and you won’t see any royalties from it but I think it could greatly improve the functionality of children “out of the box” as opposed to me having to install it myself later (drivers are almost impossible to find.)
Your faithful servant,
Ben
P.S.-Thanks for the great sunrise today 
Denial Is Not Just a River
The longer I’m in full time ministry the more I see things for what they really are. Lately I’ve read a lot about “worship wars” and how some folks are of the opinion that we should continue to only sing classic hymns in Sunday morning worship services. After all, they argue, the church is not in the entertainment business. Others believe we should adopt a contemporary style in our worship to more closely meet the tastes and wants of pop culture. The arguments from both camps are somewhat sound. Both are unquestionably rational. But I think the latter is much more intellectually honest than the former.
In my view there are two sides to Christian ministry. One is that of doctrinal and theological soundness. Our teaching in church must always remain doctrinally sound regardless of how the world changes around us. We must continue to preach the Truth and raise our children in the way they should go. The other is that of pragmatism. That is to say we as ministers must actually get people into the church building before we can share with them the Good news.
Theoretically (indeed, biblically) the reason a person should be seeking to attend church should have nothing to do with what style of worship they have. Instead it should have everything to do with the amount of love the believers have. The fact of the matter, however, is that the vast majority of people do choose a church based largely upon the style of worship. This, to me, is the main reason that churches should adopt a contemporary style of worship. Who cares why people are in church so long as they are there, being exposed to God’s Love?
I once heard a person complain to me that I shouldn’t offer free pizza at youth events because there’s the chance that some youth will just come for the free pizza. My response was, “You’re telling me that you’d rather have the students out on the street than have them in church?” That was possibly the most absurd complaint I’ve heard to date.
Our job as ministers is to first and foremost share the Love of God with everyone. Pragmatically speaking, we should employ whatever means are necessary to see our primary objective fulfilled. Whether that means free pizza or contemporary worship is inconsequential. You can’t minister to people who aren’t there; you must first get them into the building, then you can minister to them. To deny that fact is foolishness. To quote Gray’s Anatomy, “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, it’s a freakin’ ocean.”
Just Like Daddy
My brother and his wife know how much I love my Chuck Taylors. Recently they bought Thomas a matching pair of them and you really can’t imagine how excited he was to have a pair of shoes just like daddy.
New Found Respect
The concept of World Changers is this: get a bunch of folks (250+) who don’t know each other from around the country together in one location to fix the homes of other folks who can’t do it themselves. Of course, there are certain eligibility requirements that must be met before you can have your house worked on for free. Age and relative health are certainly factors to be considered but financial resources are also considered. Long story short, to get World Changers to work on your house you have to be 1) old, 2) poor 3) or sickly; or any combination thereof. The homeowners my crew helped out this past week fell into category #1.
The 250+ folks I mentioned above are divided up into crews of 6-15 and sent to work for a week on a couple dozen homes. My crew was called, in a witty play on words, the “Level Heads.” It was more or less an accurate description.
The problem with the residence was two-fold. First off, their bathroom floor had water damage so severe that the only thing keeping them from falling through the floor was the two layers of sheet vinyl flooring. The particle board underneath the vinyl was so rotted that after I pulled up the vinyl I could poke my finger through the floor to their crawlspace. Normally a floor installer would walk away from a situation like that. But not us, oh no, we were in it ‘till the end.
After I found out I was the only one on the crew with any experience installing vinyl flooring (I actually have quite a bit of experience) I was saddled with the responsibility to revamp this bathroom. The other task with this residence was the addition of a bathroom onto the master bedroom. I had very little to do with that part, most of what I did dealt with the Pandora’s box in the existing bathroom.
After tearing up a good part of the sub floor (picture1, picture2) we realized that we were in this for the long-haul. The floor joists were stable but the supplementary supports of 1×4s were rotted and needed to be replaced. We ended up cutting new 3/4” plywood to replace the rotted particle board.
My dad is a professional floor installer; the best out there. He taught me everything I know about floor installation and he’s always been a stickler for perfection; he also taught me to be the same. This is where my dad needs to stop reading. You hear that, dad? Stop! The problem with my desire to do a perfect job here was we were dealing with local government funds and didn’t have the money to afford 1/4” underlayment to put over the 3/4” sub floor. The new vinyl would be installed directly on top of the sub floor; screws and all.
It really was an atrocity to have to do a less-than-perfect job. It went against everything my father taught me but we did the best we could with the resources at hand. I had to keep telling myself that compared to what they had before, this new floor would be infinitely better. At the very least, I said, they could “use it” without fear of breaking the floor.
Like I said, we didn’t have the ideal materials so instead of putting down 1/4” underlayment I had to float the whole floor. For those of you not privy to floor installation terminology that means I had to use a sort of liquid underlayment to make the sub floor smooth and even. I was only able to get it smooth and even to a point though because in some places there were 1” gaps and 1/2” drops. I did the best I could though and really ended up with a nice finished product. In fact, after putting the vinyl down you could barely tell where the sub floor was uneven. Dang, I’m good. (picture3, picture4)
To finish it off I put base shoe around all the edges which isn’t shown in the pictures. It had been a long time since I got that kind of satisfaction out of my work. Thanks, dad, for teaching me to do something so few people can. I have a new respect for your work now.
Mission Trips Suck
The title to this post is meant to be read with one’s tongue firmly planted in one’s cheek. I love mission trips. But after coming back from our most recent trip to World Changers in Franklin, North Carolina I’ve realized that they’re one of the most difficult things to do in life. It’s not the work, or the time away from family (even though those are terribly difficult.) It’s the leaving to go back home that makes them suck.
I spent all last week wishing, waiting and wanting to come back home to my wife and son only to find myself on Friday night yearning to take all my new-found friends on the bus with me. They’d be like pets, only, bigger…and more expensive…and they’d be people, not animals…and they could have all the food and water they wanted, not like the set dietary amounts my current pets have now. But still, I’d get to wake up with them each day just like I had done for the past 7 days. That’s what I wanted; that’s what I desired.
To Garret, Emily, Austin, Courtney, Mike, Debbie, Tim, Judith, Kevin, Lauren and Melody I have to say that I miss you all more than you know. I developed bonds with y’all that I can only hope will still be there when we see each other in Heaven one day. I sincerely hope that we’ll see each other again before we leave this world, but if we don’t rest assured that I’ll see ya ‘round.
I think I’m going to sue the World Changers organization for poor business practices. They advertised that I’d go on this trip in order to change the world (or at least a small part of it.) But what they didn’t tell me was that it would be me who would be changed. The ol’ bait and switch, that’s what I got duped into. Suckage. If I’d have known that I would have actually grown through this experience I would have vegetated at home reading my way through the 9rules communities.
It’s good to be home though. I hate being away from my wife as she’s clearly the better half of me and completes me like no other. I also hate being away from my son as there’s no one else who can bring out the kid in me like he does. I mean, permanent markers and toddlers go together like jam and jelly, don’t they? Yeah, that’s another story for another time. The fact remains that I missed them like the day is long and am over-happy to be with them again :D.
Yep. Mission trips suck. But not really.
A Mission Trip Teaser
I’m too completely exhausted to write about anything at the moment so I’m giving y’all a small glimpse into my week with this photo. More to come … I promise.
We’re Back in Business
Right on. We’re back in business. The reason there were no pages or individual posts here was because for some reason there wasn’t an .htaccess file in my root directory. I made one (‘cause I’m 1337 like that) and now we’re all good. So comment away folks. I’ll be writing my first posts recapping my trip tonight.
I’m Back
Well, I’m back from my trip. Thankfully the front page of Open Switch is still working, it’s just the databases that aren’t working correctly. I was seriously hoping that this would have fixed itself when I was gone, crap.
Tonight I’ll be working with Media Temple to get everything copesthetic and hopefully by tomorrow everything will be back to normal.
I promise to write about my trip as I process the emotions and events surrounding it. For the time being all I can think about is those friends I made. I wonder what they’re doing right now. Some are driving back to Kansas, others are driving back to Florida. One is enjoying her new husband after spending the week away from him. Life is never the same after mission trips, is it?
Borked
Well, the DNS seems to have changed over during the night but my blog is borked for the time being. Unfortunately I don’t have time right now to fix it because I’m leaving for the week in 10 minutes. Hopefully it will fix itself while I’m gone. Sorry for the inconvenience.
How to Prepare a Bible Study
Based on my experiences in ministry so far it seems to me that many people think it’s difficult work to put together a good, accurate and poignant Bible study. While I do believe there’s a great deal of responsibility placed upon the shoulders of the teacher in terms of dealing correctly with God’s Word, the task itself is not difficult so much as it just takes a little time. In this post I’m going to write briefly and simply about how to plan a Bible study from scratch.
Up front I do realize that there are hundreds or even perhaps thousands of books out there which are chock full of great pre-planned Bible studies. These books have some merit. But I firmly believe that the Bible study which you personally plan and comes from your heart will be much more meaningful to your audience. This is my reasoning for taking you through the process from scratch as opposed to planning a Bible study based around a series or some other preset topic.
Step one – Personal prayer, study, reflection and meditation
Make no mistake, great Bible studies will be a natural out flowing of your own spiritual life. If your spiritual life is dry and dead then so will your studies be. There is a one to one correlation here. Don’t neglect your own spiritual life.
What usually happens with me is as I’m having my daily quiet times (during which I pray, read and meditate) I’m usually inspired to address a particular area of my life. It’s from these inspirations that most of my Bible studies come. Occasionally an idea for a study will come as I’m reading my Bible and something just “jumps” off the page at me. But usually it’s quiet inspiration that ideas come to me. At least, that’s how it works in my life. For you it may be completely different.
Step two – Research and more study
After you’ve been inspired to prepare a study on a particular topic or issue the next step is to do your research. This will obviously be the most time-consuming part of planning your study. How you study is more important than what tools you study with (though I will talk about tools in a minute.) Instead of getting into an explanation of what Hermeneutics is and how to avoid certain exegetical pitfalls I’ll impart to you a simple, easy to remember process for good Bible study. It’s called inductive Bible study. The goal here is to read as little into the text as possible.
- Observation. Simply read the words, observe their literal meaning. Don’t try to interpret what they figuratively mean yet, don’t try to analyze the passage or topic; just observe. You’ll also want to make sure you’re asking yourself some basic questions about the text. Ask yourself, “Who wrote this?”, “To whom were they writing?”, “Why were they writing it?”, “What were the current events at the time of the writing?”, “What was the cultural context?” Remember, context is everything. Understanding all these questions is going to be vital to correctly understanding what the original author intended as he wrote, which is the next step.
- Interpretation. What did the author mean to convey in his writing? This is where it can get hairy. Here you try to take all you learned in observation and interpret the writing in light of that information. It’s in the interpretation of the Bible and its passages that theologians begin to show their differences. I would venture to say that interpretation isn’t as vital as observation. If your observation is thorough and accurate then you’re more likely to interpret well. Then, when someone does disagree with your interpretation, you can fall back on the fact that you “did your research first.”
- Application. It’s from this step that you will get the actual content of what you’re going to present to your audience. To learn spiritual truths is a great endeavor, but to leave them unapplied to everyday life is to leave them incomplete. Truths find their fullness in application. Observation and interpretation are useless without application. What I do here is I’ll ask my audience to give me three specific real-world examples of how they could specifically apply what we learned here to their personal lives. The key in this step is specificity. If you study John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son; that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” and all you get out of it is “God loves me” then your application is lacking. Be more specific such as: God loves me more than my parents, more, even, than I love myself. There’s nothing He wouldn’t do for me to know me personally. It’s that kind of specificity that will lead to meaningful application.
So, that’s the skinny on prep work that goes into a good Bible study. But now you may be asking what kind of tools you will need to accomplish this. Here’s the list of my main tools, with a short explanation of why I like them.
- 1. A good study Bible. I use a Life Application Study Bible but any one will usually do. Bar none this is the most important and most used tool in my arsenal. Everyone who plans a Bible study needs one.
- 2. A Bible handbook. A Bible handbook is like Cliff’s Notes for the Bible. I use a Halley’s Bible Handbook. They’re also great for getting a grasp of what the culture was like at the time a particular book was written.
- 3. A Bible dictionary. I use a Holman Bible Dictionary and I highly recommend it. The use for this is basically to gain further insight into biblical culture, biblical writing genres, biblical characters, timelines and it has a ton of pictures showing you what life is like in the modern-day Middle East.
So you see, there are really only three basic tools that I use on a regular basis to plan good Bible studies. Also, you’ve seen that the study process is fairly simple too. I believe that anyone who wants to can prepare a great Bible study. The only thing keeping you from it is time.
Step three – Delivery
Delivery is the least important step (relatively speaking) but if we were all to be honest with one another we’d find that it’s the step that proves most troublesome. All psycho-analysis aside, delivering a great Bible study is relatively simple. The key to great delivery is discussion.
Discussing with your audience is simple if you have a small group. Remember that your audience isn’t just a bunch of empty pots waiting for you to fill them up. They are people who have pasts, experiences and ideas they bring to the table. Take advantage of this by getting them involved in the study. Not only will it keep their interest level up but it will make your task much easier.
If your audience is too large for discussion, such as is the case in sermon delivery, then you must put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Anticipate and plan for the questions they’ll ask in their minds as you’re presenting information. Granted, this is an extremely challenging thing to do and many public speakers are never able to master it; I know I haven’t.
In conclusion, planning a quality Bible study is simple to do but takes an ample amount of time. I hope some of this post has been of use to you personally. If it has been helpful to you drop me a comment in the form below to let me know. It’ll make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside ;).
World Changers 2006
This coming Saturday, June 17th I’ll be leaving for Franklin, North Carolina with my youth group for a mission trip. The name of the organization with which we’re serving is called “World Changers.” I’m fairly excited about the trip, but a little apprehensive as well.
First of all I’ll be spending a little over a week away from my wife and son. That’s gonna be real hard for me. Secondly, I’ve never been on a mission trip. As with anything you’ve never done before, it’s a little nerve-wracking doing it for the first time.
Our mission will be to repair and rebuild roofs and other superficial structures on the homes of folks who are impoverished. Or to use a less PC term: they’re poor as dirt. It’ll be interesting, me up on a roof with a tool belt on, pants falling down as I bend over in the hot sun. Yeah, I expect to scar people for life on this trip not only with my plumber’s butt but with the whole public shower situation.
I wrote earlier this year about the atrocious shower room that the guys will have to use for the week. True. Scarring. Potential. I’m just gonna go ahead and set up psych consults for my students now.
At any rate, internet access will be intermittent at best while I’m on this trip so if I don’t regularly post between the 17th and the 24th don’t assume I died or anything. I’m just up in the Hills sweating my plumbers butt off.
Easy Button
There are certain things in my life that I wish had an “easy” button. Just press the “easy” button and it gets done. Here are the major things I wish had an easy button (click image to view full size):
What things do you wish had an “easy” button?
