Dumb Sign

Dumb signs make me laugh.  Check out this one I saw in the grocery store a couple days ago:

Don’t get me wrong, I like Food Lion and shop there regularly.  But since when is $5.29 a “Great Price” for a 12-pack of soda?!?  Shouldn’t they be trying to hide the fact that their Coke products are ridiculously expensive, rather than highlighting it?  Why does this sign even exist?  I won’t pay much more than $5.29 for a whole case (24 cans) of Coke!

Speaking of which, this makes it even worse: Right nearby this sign was another one pitching whole cases (“cubes) of Pepsi products for only 70 cents more.  I’m sure the Coke people appreciated that.

Published in: on March 19, 2008 at 5:09 am  Comments (3)  

Why We Won’t Do Fundraisers at Church

After church at CrossWay on Sunday two excellent things happened: First, we had a wonderful Mexican meal, taco-bar-style. It totally rocked. Second, we had a productive leadership meeting.

In the leadership meeting we agreed to adopt a policy regarding fundraisers. The decision: not to do them. There are five main reasons we reached this decision:

(1) People are so skeptical and cynical about churches today. Many believe that the church is just out for their money. Sure, they’re wrong, but that doesn’t matter. We live in a society where we’re guilty until proven innocent. Authenticity is so absolutely important, so we want to help people be confident that we are never after their money. When they’re driving down Route 50 and see something going on in front of the church, we don’t want them to wander if it’s a fundraiser or a free fair. We want them to know it’s our gift to them. We must be consistent in the message we send. So for the sake of being a consistent witness, we will not do fundraisers.

(2) There’s no biblical precedent for raising money outside the church. The church in Scripture is always the giver, not the receiver. In the Bible, the church is always funded by the people of God.
(3) We trust God. He’s our Source. He’ll provide for everything we need.

(4) Being givers instead of receivers is a great way to live out the gospel. And living out the gospel opens doors for verbalizing the gospel. It’s unlikely that a stranger will come up to a Christian and ask, “How can I be saved?” or “How can I begin a relationship with God?” or something like that. But a stranger that has just been blessed by a Christian will often ask, “Why’d you do that?” The answer to all these questions is the same: The grace of God. He has freely given us Jesus Christ. Freely we have received, freely we will give.

(5) Blessing people is fun!

Published in: on March 4, 2008 at 5:45 am  Comments (4)  

Stuff from the Past Few Days

Haven’t blogged much lately.  Here’s what’s been going on:

  • Carolyn was away last week for three days and two nights.  She attended a conference in Towson with the other kindergarten teachers, and really enjoyed it.  She said the conference was informative, interesting, and beneficial, but what she talked about most was the food.  They ate at some really good restaurants!  I’m thinking about becoming a kindergarten teacher.  Seriously though, their dining experiences spilled over to my advantage when she came home with an Amish cinnamon roll and some candy fruit slices for her husband.  Sweet!
  • It felt really weird to be home alone at night.  So I watched the first three Rocky movies in one night.  I would’ve watched more if I could find them.  Hey, it actually turned out to be good research.  I’d been studying the movie Rocky Balboa, which is the sixth and final installment in the Rocky saga, and there were numerous thematic elements in it that made a whole lot more sense when placed in the proper context of the entire Rocky story.
  • Yesterday at CrossWay we had a ton of visitors.  Mostly out of town folks who have had some connection with the church, although there was at least one new local family.  It was definitely one of those services where God answered prayer!  We’d been having some problems with the technological stuff, so we got here early to try to work them out.  Even when it was time for the service to start, we weren’t sure how it would go.  But God helped us out, and Josh did a fantastic job in the A/V booth!  Several people commented afterward about how smoothly it went.  When I mentioned that to Josh, he said it’s because they couldn’t see what was actually happening behind the scenes!
  • We had the third week of Hollywood God at church.  The movie we used was Rocky Balboa.  The message of the sermon was the same as the message of the movie, which is summarized by Rocky in a conversation with his son: “It ain’t about how hard you hit.  It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward–how much you can take, and keep moving forward.  That’s how winning is done!”  Many people are living in defeat not because they’ve been beaten, but because they’ve given up.  The Bible encourages us in 2 Timothy 4:7-8 and Hebrews 12:1-3 to focus intently on Jesus so we can go the full 15 rounds.

  • On Saturday we had a church work day.  We had some real troopers come out and work their butts off!  It was only scheduled to last two hours, but most of the people stayed over four hours.  And we got a lot done!  Josh totally overhauled the setup for the music team, and it looks great!
  • After church yesterday we went to Ledo’s with Carolyn’s parents and James & Faith Wenger.  James is the mentor that our conference assigned me, and we’ve been meeting for several months now.  They live in Baltimore but came out here to visit.
  • After lunch we came back to the church to paint.  We’d been painting at Steve & Linda’s house, but our group has grown to include Grace (from church and the Training Station) and Mary-Michele (one of the Training Station teachers).  It’s stunning how talented they are!  I had no idea that Grace even painted, but she brought in a painting she’d done that probably belongs somewhere in the Smithsonian.  I was totally floored.  We painted together for several hours and had a lot of fun together.  Big news: Carolyn finished her first painting!  And she even said I could post a picture of it on here!  Actually, the deal was that I could post her painting if I also posted my Brett Favre painting.  That was an easy deal, especially since I don’t know if the Brett Favre painting will ever be finished (heheheh….).  I just can’t get the face right.  Her painting will appear here soon.
Published in: on February 25, 2008 at 11:07 am  Leave a Comment  

Super Bowl–Hey, What’s Up With the Roman Numerals, Anyway?

What a Super Bowl!  It was an amazing game.  Probably the best defensive Super Bowl game I’ve seen.  Only problem was the outcome.  Two facts haunt me:

  • The Giants won the Super Bowl.  The Giants?!?  Are you kidding me?  What happened to all the talk about the Packers, the Cowboys, the Patriots, even the Colts?  It bugs me that a team that Dallas beat out in their division by three games–and beat twice!–won the Super Bowl.  It bugs me that the team  that knocked Dallas out of the playoffs after such a great season won the Super Bowl.
  • It just doesn’t seem right that a team can have the best season in NFL history… and lose the Super Bowl!  To go 18-0 and then lose the Super Bowl with 35 seconds left in the game just doesn’t seem right.  I watched the game with my father-in-law, who’s a big Pats fan, and I felt bad for him even though he’s got that cool New England nonchalance about him.  I can’t imagine having my team dominate the whole season until the last 35 seconds of the Super Bowl.  Mm mm mm (insert slow head shake).
  • Okay, a third haunting fact: Daryl is a Giants fan.  And I’m spending about 10 hours with him today.

A few cool things about it though:

  • It’s pretty cool having a guy lead his team to win the Super Bowl one year, and having his younger–and much less touted–brother win it with the underdog team the following year.  I have to admit it was kinda neat watching Peyton’s reaction up in his box to that last-second touchdown.
  • The Giants earned it in the postseason.  Beating the Cowboys, Packers, and Patriots all in a row… unbelievable.  No team in history has ever played on the road like they did.  Overcoming an 0-2 start to go all the way is pretty impressive.  And the way their defense played last night, especially the way they dominated the best quarterback in the league, along with his offensive line, was downright inspiring.
  • I always enjoy seeing a New York athlete silence his critics.  What’ve you got to say about Eli now?
  • The Super Bowl we watched couldn’t compete with the super bowl of chili & nachos I had.  Carolyn’s mom hooked us up with some serious nachoage–complete with avocados!  And Carolyn made some spicy chicken BBQ stuff to also go on nachos.  It was most delectable.  And the chocolate cake… there just ain’t no words fer it.

Even so, I look forward to a Cowboys-Patriots rematch in next year’s Super Bowl, since it didn’t happen this time.  (Press the “Comments” link below to leave a sneering remark.)

(By the way, I’d offer up a link to an article on the game, but I can’t find one worth linking to.)

Published in: on February 4, 2008 at 7:50 am  Comments (3)  

Shrimp Sweeter Than Fudge

Writing that last post about the basket of goodies made me realize I forgot to write about what Carolyn did tonight.  As soon as she got home, she went right into the kitchen and cooked up this delicious shrimp & rice dish.  She doesn’t even like shrimp!  Man, God totally blessed me with the best wife ever.  She took some of my favorite spices and hot sauces and cooked the shrimp in them.  I wish I could upload a link to a taste sample for you.  Maybe someday technology will get to that point.  But for now you’ll just have to be envious of my sublime supper experience.  Carolyn doing that for me–especially after a long hard day at work!–was even sweeter than the fudge I mentioned in that last post.

And tomorrow for lunch: the leftovers.  Yesssss……  Leftover-lunches rock.

Published in: on January 8, 2008 at 12:24 am  Leave a Comment  

Sweet!

Jenna the Media Woman from SonRise Church seriously hooked up Carolyn and me for Christmas.  She gave us a massive basket of sweet stuff: cookies, caramel popcorn, all kinds of fudge, brownies, chocolate-dipped pretzels (one of my favorites!), and tons of other stuff.  The fudge is just unbelievable.  There’s no way to describe how totally delicious it is.  Ahh, and the diversity!  There’s chocolate fudge, vanilla fudge, peanut butter fudge, butterscotch fudge, popcorn shrimp… oh wait, wrong list.

Thanks Jenna for the amazingly tasty gift!

And I should also take this opportunity to point out that Jenna is the one who suggested I create a “Food” category on this blog, as much as I write about it.  So it’s only fitting that I gladly place this post in the “Food” category in Jenna’s honor.

Published in: on January 8, 2008 at 12:15 am  Comments (2)  

Outback Elders

Last night we had an elders meeting at Outback.  Now that’s what I’m talking about!  That’s how elders meetings should be.  Forget this sitting around a table at church stuff, talking about the leaky toilet and the need for a new mulch job.  Bring on the grilled chicken with swiss and bacon sandwich!

In all seriousness, that really is how elders meetings should be.  Good food and a festive atmosphere is important for church gatherings.  Look it up–it’s in the Bible!

In addition to some excellent food, we also had some great discussion about church stuff and personal stuff.  Josh & LJ are both passionate about God’s calling on CrossWay, and I love sitting around with them talking about ministry and leadership.  I would love to be able to hire these guys full-time some day, so we could spend a lot more time talking, planning, praying, and serving.

And eating at Outback.

Published in: on December 19, 2007 at 6:14 am  Leave a Comment  

Jesus & Lima Beans

I wonder if Jesus had a favorite food.  What if there was a food He didn’t like?  That’d be weird, since He invented it.  But I wonder if Mary had to make Him eat His lima beans in order to get ice cream after supper.  He might have sat there thinking, “I just knew creating this stuff would come back to haunt Me.”

Published in: on December 5, 2007 at 11:34 am  Comments (2)  
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