BigJolly says…..

writing or anything else the past couple of days.

SU’s birthday was Monday and we went to the remote to celebrate. She’d had a very, very bad day at her plantation, one of those days where your self-esteem is attacked and you’re left thinking you are worthless. We’ve all had those.

I did my very best to try and make it all better, never a good thing. Sometimes you just have to let people live life for themselves, for lack of a better way to say it. Anyways, at some point I screwed up and was in too deep to extricate myself from the situation. She left angry and crying.

It isn’t the first time I’ve done that and each time I tell myself never again. And then step right back into it. It’s not like I tried to piss her off or went with any intention of doing so, it just happened.

So’s, I haven’t felt much like saying anything. CH, LB and I had a good Bible study recap on Tuesday night but it still didn’t pick me up. And I’ve only done one day out of four this week thus far. Letting the guys down.

Watched the Repub debate Tuesday afternoon, got a kick out of seeing ol’ Fred stutter and stammer. He might just be the nominee, shows you the power of television and of style over substance. Posted over at LST about it and the Ron Paul acolytes came out in droves. He’s got his own cult going.

Brought my camera to the plantation today, the A100. Made me want a macro lens, I haven’t purchased one since I moved from the Nikon system. Found a dragon fly to take a few pics with but a true macro would have given me a flatter field. Interesting bug, a bit of purplish color to it. And I liked the wing pics but again, a true macro would have been better.

Wishin’ I was there.

as though time passes quicker each day. Hard to believe the weekend is already past and a new week has started.

The house is coming together very nicely. The colors that SU picked really work to both relax and make you feel like you are in a special place. Very nice.

Class was okay yesterday. I don’t think it was one of our better ones but there were some good points brought out. One of the newer guys felt comfortable enough to talk about himself in a way that was both revealing and positive. That’s always nice to hear, a sprinkling of negative intertwined with positive faith results.

The pastor’s sermon was again about the spirit world. Truthfully, I don’t remember everything about it but his emotions stood out as he talked about the role his grandmother played in raising him and laying the foundation for his acceptance of Christ.

Almost had a disaster in church. One of the ladies that went on the weekend women’s retreat was asked to talk about it. And did a fine job, it’s always interesting to hear from someone that is “a face in the crowd”. By that I mean someone that doesn’t usually speak in front of the church. Anyways, after she finished, she attempted to come down the front of the stage, where there are no handrails. Her heal caught in the carpet and she went tumbling down four steps, hitting hard. Luckily, only her pride was bruised but we really need to learn from that.

Lunch with Pop at Dinner Bell. Pleasant enough but it was one of those days where we had to work to keep on positive tracks about certain people.

I found a NY Times article yesterday that bugged me. Used to be I would instantly rail about stuff like this but these days I’m more apt to think about it for a long period of time before saying anything. I made copies of it and gave them to the guys in class, I want to hear their opinions of it next week. It’s another look at how far some in the church are going these days in an attempt to be ‘relevant’.

Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.

My immediate reaction is similar to this quote in the article.

“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”

I mean, really, why do churches feel the need to do things like this? It’s funny that SU picked up on something right away. James Dobson’s group, Focus on the Family, is quoted in the article as saying that they haven’t formed an opinion on it yet. Please. He’s got time to play politics every day and rail against homosexuals, etc. but no time to think about a growing trend by modern churches to purchase adult rated material and market it to young kids. Get real.

Study after study has found that there is a definite link between extended playing of violent video games and violent behavior.

Playing violent games increases aggressive behaviors, increases aggressive cognitions, increases aggressive emotions, increases physiological arousal, and decreases prosocial behaviors. These effects are robust; they have been found in children and adults, in males and females, and in experimental and nonexperimental studies.

Is it okay to promote this type of activity in church to reach young boys? I don’t know but it seems rather odd to me. I found this in my library while thinking about the article.

Driven people are seldom driven to be good. They are driven to win. That’s true of even ministers. We set our sights on being successful — larger attendance, larger staff, larger budget — often on the assumption that being successful and faithful are one and the same.

During my early years here at North Coast, I took failures hard. Whether we were struggling with a lack of unity, lackluster worship, or stagnant growth, I assumed the blame, sure that God was sorely disappointed with me. I strove to get my act together, pray more, study more, sin less, increase my faith and vision — hoping then things would turn around.

The result was a lot of sleepless nights, a battered sense of self-worth, and a joyless ministry.

Then one day I came across a passage in Proverbs that became a catalyst for a radical change in my outlook: “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord” (Prov. 21:30–31).

The key insight was this: I wasn’t ultimately responsible for success or failure. Though I’d read it many times before, I’d never actually applied this verse to my ministry. While I could certainly sabotage my ministry, thereby guaranteeing failure, there was nothing I could do to guarantee victory. That was out of my control. My job was simply to prepare the horse for battle the best I could. It was God’s job to decide who won and who lost the battle.

This revolutionary insight called for a drastic change in the goals I set and the way I judged my ministry. I had to stop asking how successful or unsuccessful our church was and start asking how faithfully I was preparing it for battle.

Among other things, that meant shifting from a focus on numerical growth to spiritual health. For example, home fellowship groups are key to our discipleship emphasis. We want to have 70 percent of our Sunday morning attenders involved in them. So now, whenever the percentage drops below that, we stop all communication with visitors — something we’ve done twice. We get tough, because we do not want to grow faster than we can assimilate people. The goal is a horse better prepared for the battle: not more people attending North Coast but more people growing in the Lord and doing ministry.

Briscoe, D. S., Larson, K., & Osborne, W. L. (1993). Measuring up : The need to succeed and the fear of failure. Mastering ministry’s pressure points (21). Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books.

bit out of sorts. But working my way through it.

SU and I had a very nice date last night. Something about that girl just makes me feel better. Got home too late to watch a movie though. Oh well, there’s plenty of time for movies.

Work was okay, nothing special happening. Pretty slow right now on the revenue side, have to make sure that labor and expenditures remain at a minimum. The home office wants to adjust labor rates to make us more “cost effective”. They just don’t get it and I don’t feel like forcing it on them. Cost accountants have ruined more companies than any other internal position. They can’t see the forest for the trees. And they count trees that don’t exist. Why they can’t see that our margins are at historical highs with lower selling prices is way beyond me.

SU is out tonight at the annual church women’s retreat. So I headed out to Anderson Fair to catch whomever was playing. Guy named Steve James, billed as a guitar player in the old style. He was a lot of fun and can really play the old style. Lots of quick slides, you couldn’t really see him put the slide on the fretboard he was so quick. I snuck the little Olympus DS-30 in and recorded the show. Half of the fun was watching his body language and listening to his stories. Good show.

Steve James Live at Anderson Fair (podcast)

[audio:steve_james_live_anderson_fair_10-5-07.mp3]

Update: I managed to get something out of a picture file. That place is so dark and flash usage would spoil the atmosphere. The little Lumix tried but I really could have used the Sony A100.

distant mood lately. Not much seems to pique my interest or get me going in another direction. As usual, I’m not sure why or even when this particular mood set in.

The plantation is running smooth as silk, maybe this is the time to turn it over to someone else and look for another challenge. Or perhaps add a product line or two. Hard to say, just have to follow my instincts.

1 still seems to be sluggish, I hope she’s taking her meds as directed. She has another appointment in two weeks, I think this one is for a CAT scan or maybe an echogram. Hero will be coming home in about 8 weeks now, I’m sure that is weighing heavily on her mind.

SU just keeps rolling along. She stays so busy, I could never keep up with her schedule. She’ll be out this weekend for a women’s retreat and then next week she’s headed back to the valley.

She told me last night that my problem is too much Bible study and not enough fun. Perhaps she’s right. Or perhaps the Bible study is forcing me to confront some things that need confronting and I keep refusing to confront them. That was a heck of a sentence.

Seriously, I keep thinking that there is something different that I need to be doing, along the lines of Isaiah 1:17. The problem with doing that is that you get roundly criticized and ostracized by mainstream groups. One of the questions that Blackaby asked in the study yesterday had to do with the effectiveness of churches.

He pointed out that if you ask people that attend church, especially the mega-churches that are becoming so prevalent today how they are doing, they will respond that God is blessing them and they are growing. Actually, what they are pointing to are buildings and programs. But what effect are they having upon their communities?

For instance, I live in the Houston, TX metro area. Crime is out of control, alternative lifestyles rule the day, abortions are a matter of convenience, divorce is greater than 60%, homeless people are abundant, poverty is next to a mansion, etc. How can we possibly say that our churches are effective reflections of Christ?

Anyways, that’s bugging me. And I’m not exactly doing much about it.

the remote kitchen tonight. SU’s test results came back negative, no malignancy. Good news. Like I said, there is a commandment somewhere about women not getting sick, I’m certain of it.

After that, we came home and watched a movie. It was our third movie in about a week. I finally filled my queue at Netflix and Bam! Just like that we had movies again. First one we watched was a subtitled Russian movie titled Sacrifice. Sucked. ‘Nuff said.

The second one was another subtitled movie, Sugar Cane Alley. Excellent film. Tells the story of a grandmother struggling to make certain her grandson does not follow in the footsteps of the rest of the freed-men cutting sugar cane. What is nice is that it didn’t follow the normal formula of focusing on the abuse that the workers faced but rather on the integrity, grit and courage that it takes to rise above that. Highly recommended.

And that bring us to tonight. A beautiful story about Alzheimer’s disease, the love of a man for his wife, a man searching for redemption for perhaps not being the husband he should have been and the strength of a woman recognizing her situation and making a tough decision. Titled Away From Her, it is a tearjerker and love story of the first order.

We had to wait until we received the test results to watch it. Fortunately, the results were of the good kind. Not sure I could have handled this movie otherwise. But it really is a wonderful tale, well made and very realistic. Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease, we see a lot of people suffering from it. Heart wrenching. Again, highly recommended.

passed by. Turned out to be a very good weekend all around. Managed to get a couple of things done around the house, we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Need to purchase a new dining room set and a few decorating touches, install the shower door and hang pictures. Then we’ll tackle the upstairs.

Class was very good yesterday. We discussed finding God’s will and it went very well. At first I felt like I was bombing out but then the guys started picking up the slack. Didn’t come close to finishing the material but I think I was able to make the points that I thought were important.

We discussed six myths about finding God’s will and my favorite was the Misery Myth. Some people think that unless they are absolutely miserable, they could not possibly be following God’s will. Nothing could be further from the truth! God wants us to be happy and fulfilled. If we are following the lead of the Holy Spirit, we cannot be anything but!

I gave a dumb example but it was the only thing that popped up at the time. Lots of people take on tasks at the church that they are unprepared for, unequipped for and not called to do. But they take on these tasks because they see a need that is not being filled, or they think that they “should” be doing it or they see a little glory in it for them.

And they are completely miserable while doing it. We must remember that we are, as Paul described, members of a body. It is as if a hand were to jump into a shoe and be comfortable walking up a mountain. Eventually, you might get the job done, but it will be a chore and take far longer than if the foot was in the shoe and the hand was pulling a rope or something. Yeah, I know, dumb but I got the point!

After church we went to Monterey with Pop and B2 for lunch. They are now stocking Coca-Cola bottles from Mexico, they are so much better. It was a nice lunch and I like that B2 has now become the regular fill-in when the pianist or organist is out.

LB was called in to work on Saturday and we missed our normal time for the weekly recap. Made up for it after church Sunday night. We stayed and met in our classroom for about an hour and a half. These studies and the weekly recaps are great for us. I can see change and stability in each one of us. CH is doing very well and LB is learning a lot. I get the feeling that LB is being called to a bigger task within the church, just don’t know what it is.

This spider set up shop by our window Friday. SU wanted me to remove him and kill him but I talked her into letting me take a picture the next morning. As luck would have it, he was completely gone Saturday morning! Web and all. SU thought I went ahead and got rid of him but I didn’t. Then lo and behold, he was back Sunday morning in a different location, this time with a much bigger web. Cool.

I found this quote this morning while preparing for today’s class. It fits very well with the direction I’ve taken lately.

“The story of all of history is the story of Christians understanding that God enables them to change things. The story of all of history is the story of Christians either standing in the gap and remarkably changing their societies for good, or Christians walking away from their responsibilities and seeing havoc wreaked throughout all of culture. That is history. And so, if we understand anything about that at all, we know this: There is great hope for the future. This nation is not lost. We don’t have to turn back the clock in order to turn back the tide. Instead, all we have to do is do our job.”

— George Grant

Kettler, S. C. (1993). Biblical counsel : Resources for renewal : An annotated topical bibliography of works containing biblical counsel for persons seeking lasting solutions to life’s problems. Includes indexes. (561). Newark, Del.: Lettermen Associates.

And that direction stems from these two passages of scripture. I’ve been meditating on them night and day for weeks.

^{Isaiah 1:10} Jerusalem, your rulers and your people are like those of Sodom and Gomorrah. Listen to what the Lord is saying to you. Pay attention to what our God is teaching you. ¹¹ He says, “Do you think I want all these sacrifices you keep offering to me? I have had more than enough of the sheep you burn as sacrifices and of the fat of your fine animals. I am tired of the blood of bulls and sheep and goats. ¹² Who asked you to bring me all this when you come to worship me? Who asked you to do all this tramping about in my Temple? ¹³ It’s useless to bring your offerings. I am disgusted with the smell of the incense you burn. I cannot stand your New Moon Festivals, your Sabbaths, and your religious gatherings; they are all corrupted by your sins. ¹⁴ I hate your New Moon Festivals and holy days; they are a burden that I am tired of bearing. ^15 “When you lift your hands in prayer, I will not look at you. No matter how much you pray, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood. ^16 Wash yourselves clean. Stop all this evil that I see you doing. Yes, stop doing evil ^17 and learn to do right. See that justice is done—help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows.”

^{Ezekiel 22:30} “I looked for a man from among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one.

very real deal! 2 called via Skype from Italy today, way cool. Especially the free part, going computer to computer. After a few minutes, we had some problems because of a cheap headset I bought for the house, so she called the house phone at 2 cents a minute. Great quality, just as good as a regular land line. Sweet.

She sounded great, much better than the last call. Still doesn’t care much for her host family but she seems to be having a great time otherwise. And learning an awful lot about the world. She’s headed for Paris to meet up with a high school friend that is going to school there.

Oh, and methinks she’s a chip off the old block!