Sledgehammers, Cute Babies, Cosby, and the Devil

What’s happening:

  • We’re halfway through the Revealed series at CrossWay.  Last Sunday I preached about the devil–the dragon of Revelation 12.  It just worked out that it was the day after Halloween.
  • Carolyn and I have watched every episode of The Cosby Show.  We just finished the eighth and final season.  Now that’s good television!  I don’t know how long it took, probably about three years.  Being able to watch an entire show like that is one of the advantages of Netflix.
  • Several churches in our community came together last Saturday for our annual Harvest Fair.  This year we had about 1,300 people.  The size of the crowd grows every year.  Laura Marie was dressed as a flower for the first half of the night, then switched to her pink poodle costume.  She was absolutely adorable!  This year was especially cool for me because I got to smash a pumpkin with a giant sledgehammer.  If only I’d known several months in advance, I could’ve grown my hair long in the back and on the sides to complete the Gallagher effect.

  • It’s picture week at the Training Station, and they were kind enough to take our family portrait.  Our first one!
Published in: on November 4, 2009 at 11:04 am Leave a Comment

10 Years–And 11

Last Saturday marked two significant anniversaries in my life that I didn’t blog about.  It marked 11 years since I became a follower of Jesus Christ and 10 years since I preached my first sermon.  October 17 is always a significant double milestone for me. 

Thank You, Jesus!

Speaking of anniversaries and thanking Jesus, tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of Carolyn and I getting engaged.

Published in: on October 23, 2009 at 1:19 pm Comments (6)

Fowl Tape

Conversation overheard on the Training Station playground yesterday:

Ms. Sharon, looking at toy with little plastic piece broken off of it: That’s okay, we can fix it with duct tape.

Three-year-old girl: Eeeeewwwwww!!!!  Duck tape!

Published in: on October 21, 2009 at 5:13 am Comments (2)

Stuff

Stuff:

  • We’re almost halfway through the series “Revealed” at CrossWay.  It’s going well, but I wish I had another two or three months to prepare for it!  Guess I’ll always feel that way.  Sermons are like paintings–it’s hard to reach a point where I can say, “It’s finished.”
  • Laura Marie is eating “solid” food!  Doesn’t look that solid to me, but I guess it’s solid compared to milk.  She really likes the peas, green beans, and carrots, but the sweet potatoes seem to be her favorite so far.  It’s so cute to watch her eat with a spoon!
  • I’m really pulling for a Yankees-Dodgers World Series.  That’s the classic matchup, and it hasn’t happened in 28 years.  Unfortunately the Phillies don’t seem like they’re keen on the idea.  And the Angels aren’t exactly one step away from elimination.  We’ll see.
  • Cheez-its rock.  And now they have some made with whole grain, which are even better.
  • Greg Cooper, the youth pastor at Ocean City Worship Center, is leaving soon to become the pastor of a church in Columbia (Maryland, not South America).  I’m sad.  Happy for Greg and his wife Heather, but sad for the community, the Worship Center, and me.  Greg is such a tremendous asset to our community.  His absence will leave a hole in our ministry to the teenagers in this area.  He’s also a lot of fun to hang out with and very encouraging.  Today we’re having our last hurrah at Plaza Tapatia, which I think is the only place we’ve ever met for lunch except for one time in D.C.  God bless you, Greg and Heather!  (Sniff sniff.)
  • Autumn is totally the best.  I love the smell.  If I ever took two months off, I think I’d take all of October and November and just sit on the back porch watching the trees, drinking Vanilla-Macademia coffee, and listening to the wind.  And maybe reading a 19th-century Russian novel.
  • A couple days ago I finished reading Monster by Frank Peretti.  It was really a great read.  I’d forgotten what an amazingly talented writer Peretti is.
  • About a month or so ago, Carolyn and I started having a community group at our house.  We talk, pray, read the Bible (we’re going through the Gospel of Mark), and eat.  It’s wonderful.
  • Speaking of Mark, I’ve been studying it for a couple months.  It’s been great to slow down and really spend time in Mark.  It’s been spiritually invigorating.
Published in: on October 20, 2009 at 9:51 am Comments (4)

My Vast Wealth of Knowledge

Yesterday on the playground I found a dead, dried out bug in a spider’s web on the playground at the preschool.  There was a four-year-old girl standing there, so I asked her if she knew what happens to a bug that gets caught in a spider web.  She shook her head, so I told her that the spider eats the bug’s guts.

Her eyes got wide and she looked at me, impressed, and said, “How do grownups know so much?”

Published in: on September 30, 2009 at 11:38 am Comments (2)

The Christ of Daniel

I never thought I would find myself sympathizing at all with the religious leaders of ancient Palestine who opposed Jesus.  But today I read a study note in my Bible that really helped me to see some things from their perspective.

In the Book of Daniel, the Bible teaches that the Babylonian Empire would be succeeded by the Median-Persian Empire, followed by the Greeks and then the Romans.  After Rome, the Christ would come to demolish the kingdoms of the world and establish His own eternal kingdom.

At the time of Jesus’ ministry, Babylon had fallen.  So had Media-Persia.  As had the Greeks.  And now the Roman Empire was at the height of its power.  So the religious Jews expected the Christ to overthrow Rome as Rome had overthrown Greece, Greece had overthrown Media-Persia, and the Medes and Persians had overthrown Babylon. These kingdom had been actual, literal, political kingdoms, so they expected the same from the Striking Stone of Daniel.

Instead, the Romans killed Him.  Of course, the Jews did have something to do with that.

I’m not trying to justify these religious leaders, who after all were the ones who were supposed to recognize and proclaim the Christ.  And, of course, there are plenty of other Messianic passages in the Old Testament, especially those about the suffering Christ in Isaiah, that they apparently disregarded completely.  I’m just saying that for the first time I can understand why they might have been confused about Jesus’ identity as the Christ.

Makes me feel sort of creepy, like a heretic or something.

Published in: on September 29, 2009 at 10:01 am Comments (2)

Revealed

Beginning in October at CrossWay Church we’re doing a seven-week series on the Book of Revelation.  It’s called “Revealed” and will use seven powerful images from Revelation to see what this book about the last days can teach us about living in this day.  I’ve been looking forward to this one for months!

Published in: on September 22, 2009 at 12:27 pm Comments (3)

Return of the Podcast

Woo hoo!  After being out of commission for several months, the CrossWay Church Sermon Podcast is now back in action.  I’m trying to catch up on uploading the backlog.  Unfortunately some recordings didn’t turn out.  But at least now we can start getting the weekly messages back online.

However, this did present me with a difficult challenge.  A couple weeks ago I preached a message called “Born Again.”  After preaching my heart out for half an hour, I got to the very end of the sermon and committed one of the worst verbal faux pas of my preaching career.  So I was faced with the question: Do I leave it in there for the sake of keeping it real, or edit it out?  I decided to leave it in there for two reasons.  First of all, it would have been tricky to edit it out without there being an obvious gap in the message (I know–I tried).  Second, there is something to be said for the integrity of keeping a message intact, embarrassing blunders and all.  Otherwise it’s kind of like a photograph in a magazine that has been tampered with in PhotoShop.  Anyway, just a warning for any downloaders of that sermon!

You can access the podcast site by clicking here or clicking on one of the podcast links on the right of this screen.

embarrassing

Published in: on September 18, 2009 at 5:01 pm Leave a Comment

And On the Fifth Day, God Made the Itsy Bitsy Spider

Kids are great.  Yesterday morning at the Training Station, Ms. Grace led the first Bible Story time for the new school year.  A couple highlights:

Ms. Grace: Today I’m going to tell you the story about how God made the world.
Three-year-old boy: ‘Cause He’s magic!

Ms. Grace (near end of Bible Story time): Okay kids, we’re going to do one more song…
Four-year-old boy (doing motions with his hands): “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”?

The kids had fun, but I think the highlight for them was when the trash truck came by and they watched through the window as it emptied our dumpster.  They were pretty excited about that.

Published in: on September 17, 2009 at 5:28 am Comments (2)

Community

Last night our church started a new community group.  A community group is where a lot of church really happens.  Rather than a larger, impersonal setting with lots of people, it’s a smaller, more personal setting.  It’s where life-on-life relationships can really happen.  Community groups have played such an enormous role in my own life that I’ll forever be completely sold on their tremendous value.

We started small, but that’s okay.  In fact, that’s kind of the point!  Carolyn and I host the group at our house in Ocean Pines on Tuesday evenings.

One of the things we talked about last night was how the point of this isn’t just to have another routine Bible study and prayer group.  I don’t want us to get in a rut where we all show up and act polite, shoot the breeze, eat brownies at 6:35 and pray at 6:55 and run through a list of prepared questions.  Instead I picture this group really being a community–getting together for dinner, having game nights, going to movies, being honest with each other, sharing our struggles, and being there for each other.  It can’t be just about that once-a-week meeting.

For the Bible study portion of our gatherings, we’re reading little by little through the Gospel of Mark; and instead of me asking all the questions and sharing my thoughts, I’m asking other group members what questions and thoughts they have.  For most of the history of the church, people came together to the Scriptures to discover together how we can learn and live the Word of God.  Nothing like a community group to really be the church, grow together, and practice all the “one anothers” found throughout the Bible.

I’m so excited about the new group!  I’ve really missed being part of a small community over the summer.

Published in: on September 16, 2009 at 10:35 am Leave a Comment
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