Reality TV

This is a totally random post but inspired by one of my favorite things to do. I am sitting in my living room watching the 2nd season of The Contender. I love reality TV. Of all the things to watch on TV, nothing makes me more excited than to watch normal peole on TV competing for whatever the prize might be. Some of my favorites include The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Contender, The Ultimate Fighter, So You Think You Can Dance, and (of course) American Idol. Yes, I know that is a really diverse choice of shows. Joni and I love to hang out together and watch these shows (she isn't a big fan of the fighting shows!!) It is the perfect end to a stressful day!!!!

I love Wednesdays...

Without a doubt, my favorite day of the week is Wednesday. You might say to yourself, that is a really weird day to be your favorite. The reason it is my favorite is our mid-week worship service for students. It is so amazing to watch students as they show up (many of them to just hang out with their friends, which is certainly ok with me) and have an encounter with the God that created the universe! I love it!!! It is a time that they can leave behind all of the stuff that is going on in their personal lives and focus on God.

Tonight, the high school worship band (Jeff Hill, Carmen York, Rick Perry, Justin Warf, and Josh Currie) hit a home run! They are really talented people who really love God and have a strong desire to lead others in worship. It is evident that they are passionate about what they are doing!!

JR (www.jrleereveal.blogspot.com) did a great job of challenging us all to be risk takers when it comes to going after those who don't know Christ. It was a great message. I know that God spoke to me in a real personal way and I was challenged to "wake up". It is such an honor for me to serve alongside someone who has such a passion for students and Jesus! JR, you are the man!!

I also cannot wait for school to start back, so that we will get back into our normal routine. I love the break in the summer but I am ready for CrossOver (www.crosspointestudents.com) to kick back off. Only 3 more weeks!!!!

Race Results and Other Stuff

It has been 3 days since I have posted something. I was doing really well at the end of last week and even posted twice on the same day. The race was awesome! The turnout was kind of disappointing compared to the last race. JR, JC, and I (I guess I should use my initials too...) saw a really random thing on the way to the race. There was a man pulling out of the Kroger parking lot with his window down pulling a grocery cart. How weird is that? I guess he needed one of those at his house. We also saw a man with an umbrella hat and a cooler on a 4 wheeler knocking on a post. There are obviously some strange people out before 7am on Saturdays!

I finished the race in under 32 minutes. That is a minute and 1/2 faster than the first! I was so excited. As I crossed the finish line, my whole body jerked and I really thought I was going to throw up! I found out that I finished 5th in my age group. How cool is that!! To be honest, I am really proud of myself (that sounds weird to say). I have come a long way since 309 lbs. Here are the results: http://www.designawish.racesonline.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=site.results&sub_domain=designawish.

After the race on Saturday, I had a pool party for the students that are moving up into the middle school ministry. There are some interesting kids moving up to say the least!! We really had fun!!!

I spent last night hanging out with Brayden, while Joni taught her discipleship class. He makes me laugh! He is now in this "I need to climb on everything" stage. You really have to watch him or he will be diving off the counter face first. He is certainly the coolest kid on the planet!!

Baby Names

Joni and I are trying to come up with a name for our girl who is due Nov. 12. This has been extremely difficult. When Brayden was born, we seemed to be able to name him pretty easily. However, a name is a big deal. After all, they are stuck with it for the rest of their lives. This is why Chauncey, Herbert, and other crazy names are not a good idea. I want her name to be something she does not regret!!

Let me know if you have ideas!!!

Running Again

I did something really unusual for those of you that know me. I woke up at 5:30 (yes, I said 5:30) and drove 45 minutes with JR to run on our day off. We are running in our 2nd 5k race tomorrow at the Pink Palace in Memphis. We went down to get an idea of the course and it was really confusing. The map was horrible! We would be running and realize that we had gotten off track. I hope they have it marked better tomorrow!

If you are interested in the results, you can check out the website (http://www.designawish.racesonline.com). Praise God it is only supposed to be 83 degrees tomorrow!

Superheroes

I was driving to work the other day listening to an ungodly secular station. (By the way, can you tell that it annoys me when Christians think you should only listen to Christian music, whatever that is.) The guy on the radio asked this question, "If you could have any superpower, what would you want?" I did lots of thinking (probably too much) and decided that flying would be cool, super strength would be awesome, shooting webs out of your wrists would rock, but I believe that the ultimate superpower would be to be invisible. Now before you start thinking about all the bad things you could do. Think about how cool it would be to get revenge on those that make you mad. You could walk up and slap them in the face without them even knowing it. How awesome would it be if you could trip those people at work or school who get on your nerves and watch them fall to the ground. Probably not very Jesus-like, but would be extremely funny.

Here's my question, what superpower would you want?

A Wee Little Man

It's Wednesday and I just finished speaking to some of the greatest students on the planet. First of all, I want to say that interns rock and so do all of the people that make Wednesday nights 'happen'. Tonight, we took a look at one of my favorite stories in the Bible. The story of Zaccheus is pretty funny. A wee little man trying to see Jesus. The cool thing is that, despite the arrogance of the religious elite, he met Jesus. He was virtually an outcast from society because people viewed him as a thief. No one wanted to hang out with him. He was obviously searching for something because he did one of the most random things...he climbed a tree. Jesus came by and hung out with him and proclaimed, "salvation has come to your house today".

This story is a perfect example of how our churches operate. The religious elite sometimes get upset when Jesus saves those that they do not even necessarily like. There are 'invisible' people all around us that we pass by each day, not really caring whether they go to Hell or not. It's true about all of us. I'll be the first to admit that I do it. My prayer is that we begin to see the world as Jesus sees it. And as a result, we do what Jesus did..."seek out the lost." I don't know about you, but it seems to me that we have lots of work to do!!!! If we don't go after these people, who will? Will you be the one to tell them about Christ??

Finally, Some Sleep

We arrived back from Elevate 06 late on Thursday night. I was so excited to think about sleeping in my own bed and getting more than 4 hours a night. We arrived home to find out that our air conditioning was out! Talk about hot....it was 86 degrees at night. However, I still managed to get some great sleep!! Camp was amazing this year. Our best by far!! The buses and drivers were great. The food was good and there was more than enough. The weather was very hot and sunny. Tony Nolan was used by God in a great way to challenge us to go deeper in our relationship with God. We had several students saved and many others have a real encounter with God. I appreciate Tony giving up a week with his family to be with us. I really do believe that he is the best student communicator in the country. Seth Condrey also did an awesome job of leading the students in worship. Seth and his team are probably one of the best kept secrets in the whole country. We'll definitely be working with these guys again!!

I also want to thank 2 other special groups of people. Our students are unbelievable! We had no major problems during the entire week. It is so cool to see them really get serious with God and spend some time worshipping Him. Our chaperones were also awesome! Many of them took vacation time from work to spend with these students. I appreciate their desire to invest in the lives of the students!! They made life a whole lot easier for me and JR by taking responsibility for a small group of students.

I am really sad that we have to wait a whole year for camp. However, it's time to start planning for 07.

Elevate

We are 2 days into Elevate (summer camp) 2006. So far it has been the best camp we have done. In fact, it is not even close. Here are some of the things that have made it amazing (not necessarily in order):

1. Students having an authentic encounter with the Living God.
2. Students beginning a relationship with Christ.
3. Other that really worship for the first time in their lives.
4. A great speaker. Tony Nolan is the man!! God is using him in a tremendous way to rock our world. Very challenging and extremely funny!! He has done our camps for the last 3 years.
5. Great worship. This year Seth Condrey and his band our leading our students. All I can say is...WOW!
6. Awesome lights. This year we brought a light guy (Will) with us and it makes all the difference in the world.
7. The best students in the world. I love our students!
8. A nice location. Destin, FL is an unbelievable place to do camp.
9. Great people to work with. My wife is such an amazing woman and ministry partner. JR and Devin are not only staff members in the student ministry, but also our best friends. Our counselors are also unbelievable. They make ministry so much easier.
10. God's hand. Without God, none of this would be possible. He has been so good to us!!

It is the most wonderful time of the year...

No it is not Christmas yet. You still have a few more months to buy my gift. It is, however, time for summer camp. I absolutely love it!! Although, there is a lot of planning that goes into this trip, it is certainly worth it. We leave tonight at 11:30 pm (yes, I said pm). We will drive through the night to get to Destin, FL. It is in Destin that God is going to do some awesome stuff. I have been praying that we would see students accept Christ and grow in their relationship with Him. I really believe that God is going to break through some barriers in the lives of some of our students this week!! It is always so amazing to see what God can do when we get ourselves out of our daily routine and focus ourselves. I cannot wait to experience all of the fun that we are going to have this week (and we will have LOTS!!). Even moreso, I cannot wait to see what God is going to do in our lives this week. I cannot wait to tell you about it!

Pickles are ruining my life??

Ok, so I know that it is not breaking news to anyone that there are weird and interesting people in this world. Almost daily, I read a blog written by Perry Noble, who is the Pastor of Newspring Church in Anderson, SC. I saw this video in his blog last week and thought it was strange and hilarious at the same time (http://mondaymorninginsight.com/index.php/site/comments/pickles_are_ruining_my_life/). Supposedly this lady is fearful of pickles, of all things. Sounds like some has smoked a little too much crack!! At this moment, I am sitting in my garage because Joni and I are having a yard sale. People are actually paying us to haul off our junk. Sounds like a great plan to me! We have made almost $300 today. That's what I'm talking about!!!

Am I Horrible at this?

It is Saturday and I still have not posted anything since the race on Monday night. It was such a great experience! JR and I didn't really know what to expect, especially since it was a last minute decision to run and we haven't really trained (other than the 2 miles we run every day). I really had no idea what to expect from the whole thing. We got there early to take in the whole experience and let's just say that there were some really interesting people. My goal was to finish the race in under 35 minutes. I had run the same course 2 days before in 36 1/2 minutes.

I'll have to say that the race was a little easier than I expected. It amazed me that I ran 3.1 miles and was still able to breathe (although it was rather hard breathing). I finished the race in 33 min. and 34 sec. You can check out the results on (http://www.besttimescct.com/results/Firecracker06.txt). I think this running thing might be addicting. JR and I are already talking about running in another 5k in a few weeks. The next one will be interesting because you certainly cannot use the "It's my first race" excuse. We'll see what happens I guess!

5k....what??

Talk about random ideas. Let me give you a little background info before I tell you about our random idea. JR and I have been working really hard to lose some weight over the past 7 months. Together we have lost over 115 lbs....WOW! I am close to losing 60 lbs in just a few months. One of the things that we have been doing is running 2 miles and lifting weights at least 3 days a week. We have done this faithfully since the beginning of December. I would have to say that we have been quite successful. Now here comes the random idea. We decided last Wednesday afternoon to enter a 5k race which is an annual event in Memphis to benefit St. Jude. We decided just to go for it. So, on Monday night, we will be running in our first event. I have ran 3 miles for the last 2 days. Let's just say my body is feeling it! I have never run that far in my entire life. I am so pumped about the race. Come back later for more info. If you are interested, you can check out the results from the race (http://www.firecracker5k.racesonline.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=site.results). If nothing else, it should be quite the experience!!!