The people I work with...

I just heard a guy talking about his new phone... it went a little something like this:

"My daughter (she's 18) got one of those blueberries or blackberries or whatever the F they are, so she gave me this (showing his Razor).

"I started looking around all some of this music she has on here, some of these songs, ever other word's a cuss word (in a complaining voice).

"What is up with that S?"

Can't you really complain about the language in a song if you sandwich that sentence between an F-bomb and an S-bomb?

Apparently so.

My iPod is full!

When I bought my iPod (used) two years ago, I thought the thing was WAY too big for my purposes (and it's only one of those old-school 20 GB ones).

Yeah.. I have 192.7 MB left on it. This is a problem. I'm either going to have to take some stuff off of it, or get a new one...

hmmm...

such a dilemma...

The best laid plans...

So I'm sitting out here on a frac job right now. It's about 24°. It was down in the teens earlier. We were supposed to do two stages (each stage is supposed to take about 3.5 hours, with about 3 hours between stages) yesterday, two stages today, and finish up with one stage on Friday. Well, yesterday the cold weather caused the diesel to gel up on one of our main pieces of equipment. We didn't get started until 12:20 PM (over 5 hours late). Therefore, we only finished one stage yesterday. Today, water transfer's (a third party that transfers water from a pond to some tanks that we pump out of) lines are frozen. So far we're two hours late because of them. Who knows how much longer it will be.

We finally got started a couple of hours late, and this job is going to take about an hour longer than designed. Hopefully the next three stages will treat better, or who knows how long we'll be out here.

I've always been real bad about trying to plan WAY too much. I used to plan out time to be spontaneous. (Does it really count as spontaneous if it's planned spontaneity?) This job has ruined my ability to plan. It's been great.

James tells us about how we should plan our lives. I used to plan the when, the where, the how long, the what down to a T in my life. James warns us to instead listen for the Lord's will and "do this or that." This job was

I'm not saying we shouldn't ever plan for anything, but I think there's danger in planning too much. When we spend a lot of energy in making our plans, we can often tune out to hearing the Lord's plans - especially if he calls an audible.

This job has taught me the difference between planning for and preparing for. I can't really plan for anything in this job, but I have to prepare for just about anything.

How does the difference between planning for and preparing for present itself in your life?

What is a Ham Fighter?

I get asked the question a lot: what is a Ham Fighter?

Well, really, there's no such thing. The name comes from the Japanese baseball team, the Nippon Ham Fighters. The thing is, almost no one in America has ever heard of the city of Nippon Ham, so they assume that "Nippon" is the city and "Ham Fighters" is the mascot.

Not quite.

Too many times what the truth is isn't what people perceive as the truth. David Kinnamon says in his book, UnChristian:

Only one-third of young outsiders believe that Christians genuinely care about them (34 percent). And most Christians are oblivious to these perceptions—64 percent of Christians said they believe that outsiders would perceive their efforts as genuine.

While our outreach to those outside Christianity may be out of genuine concern for them, most often, those same people we are trying to reach don't feel that we are genuine. Just like with Nippon Ham, most people don't understand the truth behind the team's name, so to them, "Ham Fighters" becomes the truth.

With the Fighters though, the difference between reality and perception is the difference between a boring name and a funny name. When it comes to Christians' outreach toward outsiders, the difference is heaven and hell. Because, unfortunately, most people's biggest obstacle to Christianity is Christians. And when we appear ingenuine [sic - can I sic myself?], it make Christianity appear ungenuine [sic - apparently so, since I'm doing it].

How can we community with clarity genuine concern for outsiders to Christianity?

Christmas Gifts

It was a pretty interesting year in terms of Christmas gifts.

My dad always wants me to give him a "Christmas List" of what I want, so that he just has to pick something. The last two years, I've refused.

A Christmas gift should says "I get you," not "I got you a gift." So I've made him do it on his own. Last year that whole concept was a struggle for him. This year, he made strides. He got me a half-dozen really nice goose decoys . He also got me a package of four AAA batteries. The batteries I opened first, so I figured they went to some electronic device I hadn't opened yet.

Nope.

He just got me some batteries.

The gift I got him totally surprised him, I think. He got a new fishing reel I knew he'd been interested in, but didn't really need and definitely didn't expect.

After opening presents at my dad's house, my brother and I headed over to my mom's house to do Christmas stuff there. My mom's husband's son and his wife (Chad and Kelly) came over, along with my mom's husband's mom (Grandma Peach - I don't actually know her real name, we just all call her Grandma Peach).

I loved it when Chad and Kelly opened their gift (in a bag instead of a box) from Grandma Peach. Rather than having one or even a few individually wrapped presents, they had a ton of little presents inside one giant bag. They just kept coming! I kept expecting to see Kelly pull a hat rack out of the bag next. (P.S. - Julie Andrews was a total cutie).

My brother gave my mom's husband (Mike) a bag of ham (okay, not really, it was actually a couple of steaks... but they did have drawings for bags of ham at the Halliburton Christmas party a couple of weeks ago).

A while back my brother asked for some recommendations for books on Godly guy-girl relationships. I loaned him a few, but afterward I sort of thought about it that he already had the best book on Godly relationships. So I gave my brother the best book I know of on how to read / study the Bible.

Mom gave me a scarf. I am so metro. I'm not real sure how a guy's supposed to wear a scarf, so I've been googling it a bit tonight.

Anyway... it was a pretty great Christmas. It's great to give, and I love to give other people the gift of giving (aka, it's also pretty great to receive).

What was the best gift you gave / received for Christmas this year?

Still meandering

Sunday's meetings with people in Tulsa did little to clarify the timing of God's vision He is casting through me.

I am going to plant a church. Most likely, in either Tulsa or Fayetteville, AR. I don't know where yet. I want to know where - but God hasn't revealed that. I'm going to meet with some people from the Fayetteville area early next week. I'm hopeful that those meetings will spark a light to the vision.

Headed to T-Town

I'm headed to Tulsa tomorrow to each lunch with a friend and talk about the vision I have for launching a church. I've had this vision for launching a church (and I'm thinking in Tulsa at this point) for a while, and every time I think about it, God keeps putting the name of this certain person in my head. What's weird is that I don't really know her that well. I called her a couple of weeks ago, though, and told her about what I wanted to do and that God kept giving me her name to be a part of this. Through our brief conversation, I just felt really confirmed that God wanted her to be a part of this. Even though we'd never talked about it before, I came away from that conversation feeling that we share the same vision.

So now I'm going to Tulsa to talk about the vision over lunch and see where she stands on this whole thing. This discussion tomorrow will, more than likely, determine the timetable for the launch.

If things go well tomorrow, then I will probably be looking to move to Tulsa in the Spring with an eye toward a fall church launch.

This is all very exciting, and very, very scary. But I'm probably pretty sure that's what faith is.


I'd appreciate any and all prayers and I leap forward into this.