Back up your blog

MMI shares about how Slice of Laodicea’s blog was accidentally deleted by their server. This is an important reminder to all bloggers to backup! I can’t imagine losing all the content I’ve spent hours writing and producing to a goober’s itchy finger over the delete button.

Aim lower; think smaller…

I’d love to know your comments about this video… Since our church has thousands of kids (it feels like that when we’re all together), it’s a wonderful reminder and encouragement to continue being strategic in family ministry and discipleship.

Our Story, ruining the Metro

This entry will be a little different from most of the others in our story, but it’s such a “moving” story, and one previously unwritten, that I thought it might be appreciated here. It occurs during our tenure in Garland, Texas, and it happened on an ordinary day.

Kevin Wieser and I had left the church in separate cars, heading for our favorite eating establishment – Uncle Wings. This incredible dinery was deceptively named, for it was not a KFC competitor. Uncle Wing was a Chinese buffet restaurant, nestled into the corner of a small strip mall less than a mile and a half from the church.

It was part of our daily routine to eat together and usually consisted of the normal..

“So where do you want to eat?”

“I don’t know. Where do you want to eat?”

Insert a long list of suggested restaurants, including Grandy’s, Chili’s, Black-Eyed Pea, Wendy’s, Golden Corral, etc. Finally, one of us would hit on one each of us felt like stuffing our stomachs in, and away we’d go.

However, on this particularly fine day, we had taken separate cars – Kevin in his maroon Nissan something-or-other, and me in my mighty fine roadster, a 1991 red Geo Metro. If I played my cards right, I could almost shift into fourth gear between stoplights on the way to Uncle Wings.

I was never really that self-conscious about this car until after this day.

We ate and bantered back and forth about fantasy football, church and the dream of DJ-ing a morning comedy radio show together. We are still rather funny (to us) when we’re together, and we had dreams of blessing the entire metroplex of DFW with our wit.

We concluded our meal, and I jumped back into the Metro for the obligatory, testosterone-induced drag race down Avenue B to see who would make it back to the church first.

I had barely shifted into third when my… (At this point, I’d advise the squeamish and mothers with small children reading over their shoulder to please be ready to minimize the screen) stomach made a strange, rumble-gurgling noise. It was almost immediately accompanied by an intense discomfort immediately behind my belt.

I’m sure I turned pale, and I can distinctly remember saying, “Whoa.”

I have an affectionate term for stomach cramps that lead to power dumping (yes, this is the screen minimization part). I call them “crap waves.” I don’t know how else to describe them, but in random conversations (with both men and women) over the years, I’ve discovered that I am not alone in this experience. Others have their own terms for these gut-knuckling, forehead-sweating, on-and-off grips of bowel pain that precede a hasty trip to the toilet where one remains until a significant amount of groaning and unusual noise takes place over a period of time. (Is that a bland enough description?)

Anyway, this sudden bowel concert concerned me greatly. I knew what it hinted at, and I was in the middle of post-lunch traffic on one of the busiest streets of Garland. And I was driving. Not good.

Well, I instantly formulated my strategy: Intermittent relief by controlled farting. I felt I could make it to a bathroom in the church (somewhere high on the third, unused floor at this time of day) if I could just let out a couple of relief-producing farts. With that thought, I slowly leaned to one side to aide in the gas passing, and… the explosion happened.

I don’t know how to say this delicately… I pooped my pants. Bad. The runny, voluminous kind.

I’m sure I uttered a completely appropriate expletive and regardless of the traffic danger, veered to the far lane, and made a quick block so that I was heading toward home in less than 15 seconds.

I drove the next five minutes to home with my left leg straight as a rod, jammed against my floorboard to keep my heinie elevated above my seat. I didn’t want to mar the Metro’s fine linen upholstery.

Upon arriving at our house at breakneck speed, I envisioned doing a General Lee slide into the curb in front of my house until I saw our neighbor out mowing his yard. I had to settle for a nonchalant parking job and then exited the car as normally as I could, walking slowly up to the house so that I would not attract attention to myself.

I thought I had done rather well, until I stepped soggily into our bathroom and looked at my pants over my shoulder in the bathroom mirror. They were brown. So was my shirt about a foot up my back! I realized that my cool, “No-I-haven’t-just-crapped-on-myself-it’s-your-imagination” walk up our front sidewalk had been a farce. I was a walking, gushing advertisement for laxatives.

Anyway, I threw those clothes away in a trash bag and took a long shower. Eeeeew. I still get chills thinking about it all.

I finally got changed and headed back out to the car, thinking the ordeal was over. I was going to be late for staff meeting at this rate. When I opened the car door, the smell hit me… Then I saw it. My entire seat was stained brown – and it was damp.

I spent the next half-hour cleaning my car up. Thank goodness my neighbor had gone inside. (He was probably calling his friends and describing my Cool Crap Walk to them.)

When I finally made it back to church – late for staff meeting – Kevin looked at me quizzically and whispered, “Where did you go?”

I refrained in embarrassment from saying, “In my pants,” and sat silently through most of that meeting, pondering the betrayal of my bowels.

It was at least a couple of days before I could bring myself to go back to Uncle Wings…. and my Metro finally sold later (not because we were trying to get rid of it or anything…). We didn’t tell the buyer that it had become affectionately named the Crapmobile.

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Survivor Men

Sam and Zac McKinstry spent the afternoon together. I never saw them until they came loping into the house, dripping in sweat.

“Where have you been?” I asked, curious.

“Riding bikes on North Main,” Zac said.

“Where on North Main?” I said.

“On the road,” Zac said.

They both snickered and then proceeded to the kitchen to eat an MRE, which Zac had brought with them. I stood there, scratching my head, wondering when I had begun to let rugrats get the best of me in conversations like that.

Zac and Sam both love the outdoors – Zac probably more than Sam, cause he lives, eats, and breathes the new shows like Survivor Man and Man vs. Wild. I think the McKinstry family have been living off MRE’s for the past few weeks, cause I keep hearing them describe various meals they’ve had. The most intriguing thing about an MRE is watching a plastic bag boil food without melting itself.

I sampled the Vegetarian Burger and tried to swallow some “cinnammon bread,” and in doing so wondered if they make PeptoBismol packs for the soldiers.

A weekend of service

Whew! I’m sitting here on a Sunday night reflecting on a busy, fulfilling weekend which our family and friends, many from Journey, spent in service.

On Friday evening, about 15 of us volunteered to work the concession stand at what is always the busiest home football game of the year for one of the local high schools, the Billies. Since they were playing their rival Warren, the stands were completely packed on both sides. It’s a surreal experience to realize that in many places, Friday night high school football is not as big a deal as it is here. However, in our locale it is a cultural icon.

From the moment I entered the concession stand with Carolyn 30 minutes before game time to the moment we shut the doors as the game concluded (Monticello got blown out), we felt like it was piranhas at a buffalo river crossing. And we were the buffalo. It was simply crazy – but fun.

We got up Saturday morning for a work day at Journey. It was the first work day we’ve had there since late mid-June, I think. After moving into our new facility and remodeling it, we’ve simply been too busy to take care of a lot of minor projects and cleaning. We had a herd of workers show up and help with everything from cleaning 15+ years of mulch out of the roof gutters to building shelves in a closet for the praise band. It was awesome to see so many be so enthusiastic and helpful about menial things.

After church today, one of our members cooked a major gumbo feast for everyone as a fundraiser for our upcoming Denver mission trip. It was delicious! Sunday afternoon, another church member went out to help make plans to hook water up for a family that has been attending Journey who doesn’t currently have it.

Finally, tonight we had a small group leader meeting back at Journey, and every family that is helping lead a small group faithfully showed up. We had a wonderful, laughter-saturated and prayer-filled time of sharing and preparation. Then we watched a portion of a video about biblical interpretation that was fantastic.

Right now, the kids are in the living room, cleaned and ready for bed, shooting Hot Wheels all over the place and laughing the heads off. I’m signing off for the evening and the weekend!

Must have application for the Mac: Quicksilver

If you’re a Mac user and haven’t yet discovered the simplicity and ease of Quicksilver, then you might as well convert back to a PC… No, not really. That would be ridiculous.

However, I’ve found that Quicksilver is a can’t-live-without piece of software (and it’s free!) for the Mac. In just a quick keyboard shortcut (mine is command-space), I can launch any program, find a contact, schedule an appointment, and generally do anything! It’s much better than Mac’s built-in feature.

Go download and try it out today! I’ve got mine set to load with my Mac, so it’s always running. You can do this by going to System Preferences->Accounts->Login Items and then clicking on the “+” icon below. Navigate to your applications folder and click on Quicksilver. (download and install it first) Voila! You’re ready to roll!

There’s also some great video tutorials here!

Update (9/8/07): There’s a great list of essential “hacks” for Quicksilver here on Engadget.

Gumbo lunch fundraiser for mission trip…

You’ve got to see this!

Star Wars geek clone

I was a little weirded out reading the Short Fat Kid’s Merlin Mann’s Tumblr entry and seeing my Star Wars toys pictured there. I quickly ran to my closet and breathed a sigh of relief. Mine are still there. SFK is just my geeky clone.

It’s been fun playing with them all over again with Sam when he saw the new movies in the last few years. He now has his own collection of the toys, and mine are back in the cigar box. I even kept the cardboard back to them all. My old X-Wing Fighter is a little beat up now, but Sam gave it some good playing time.

Ghandi on Christianity…

Hamo takes off on this post. He uses the following quote by Ghandi to ask some profound questions:

“It is my firm opinion that [the West] today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan. And Satan’s successes are the greatest, when he appears with the name of God on his lips. [The West] today is only nominally Christian. In reality, it is worshipping Mammon. ‘It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus really spoke Jesus Christ. His so-called followers measure their moral progress by their material possessions.”

-Gandhi (Speeches & Writings of M. Gandhi: p.336, Feb. 14, 1916)

Then he poses some significant questions. I’d be interested in knowing what you think and how you feel this might apply to your own life.

iPhone price drop

Welcome Taylor and his shaved head back to the blogosphere! It seems he made a rash promise to his Ever-Right Wife that if the iPhone should drop in price at any time, he would shave his head. Although on closer inspection, this shot looks like Mr. Adobe has played with it some, I still laughed out loud.

For all those wondering if I’m disappointed… I’m not. You may recall, I received one as a gift and also made some money off a second one we bought. I just hope my dad doesn’t find out. And like Taylor said, I’d highly encourage you to get you a 4GB iPhone while the supplies last!

By the way, for those of you wondering what Taylor looked like before…

Update: Holy cow! I just saw that Steve Jobs has posted an open letter on the Apple site offering existing iPhone customers $100 off their iPhone price (if they bought it from Apple or an AT&T store!). He eats humble pie about the price drop. Very cool!

Our Story, blessings and rebuke, 1992

It was a rather glorious day in Tolar, Texas that May. Our families, friends, and the small church I was ministering with came together to celebrate with Carolyn and me our marriage and what we felt was simply victory. It had been a long, hard haul to May 1992 through cancer treatments, long-distance engagement, scholastic crunch and emotional upheaval. However, we had arrived, and with Kevin Wieser and Scott Duvall tag-teaming the wedding ceremony, we both euphorically said, “I do.”

We drove out of town that afternoon and didn’t return to Tolar, Texas. Rather, we had already moved some things to our new home in Garland, Texas where I would begin serving as a youth intern after we returned from our honeymoon. We went to Eureka Springs and simply had a ball. We laughed and played and ate and, well, honeymooned.

The previous March, Kevin Wieser had begun preparing First Baptist Church of Garland for a new youth ministry intern program. I was to be the first. Thankfully, he had more interns after me, so I guess it was a success. It was amazing how God worked out all the details of our ministry transition. Kevin ran a few articles in the church bulletin, and before long, an amazing couple, Barry and Dina Barlow, responded. Barry was going to be relocating out of town for a year to work and Dina and their daughter would be living with him there. That left their gorgeous town house home sitting empty.

Upon our return from Eureka Springs, we settled into what for us was a palace. It had everything we could have dreamed about, including a hot tub on the back deck! Due to the Barlow’s ministry vision, we not only didn’t pay rent, but they sent us $100 a month to help with the upkeep and to “pay” us for house sitting for them! After the previous several months, we felt overwhelmed by the kindness of God in our lives. We began to make significant friendships in the church as well as see incredible spiritual fruit being developed in the lives of the youth.

I think everyone who knew us at the time and got to visit were amazed as well. In spite of our hardships, we truly were overwhelmed with love. I John 3.1 was a deep reality to us:

“How great is the love that the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God!”

Kevin and I laughed our way through youth ministry in those days. I started playing fantasy football with him, having to teach him everything about the sport. I’ve been in that league with some of the same guys for 15 years now! One moment in particular defined my youth ministry experience there and taught me a lot about humility…

As I recall, it was relatively early in that first summer. Kevin told me he had a job for me to do, so I asked what it was.

“I need you go out to the parking lot and clean the rocks out of the volleyball pole holes,” he said.

“You’re kidding?!” I said. He wasn’t.

“I’m not doing that!” I said, indignant. I was “above” cleaning rocks from holes, I felt. After all, hadn’t I just left an associate pastor/youth ministry position? Did he not understand that?

Nope.

I went out to the parking lot to clean rocks out of holes.

Somewhere over the years, that event has become one of my fondest memories because it was a lesson from my Lord. If He, being Messiah, could wash His disciples feet as an example of being a servant, I could certainly clean rocks out of volleyball pole holes.

A few short weeks after our arrival, Caro and I got to go to Falls Creek Camp in Oklahoma with the youth group. It is Arkansas’ Siloam Springs on steroids. It was huge, massive… and rustic. But we had a blast! Totally. We were in love with our youth, our church, and the great God who allowed us to serve Him in this way.

Enter marital strife.

Caro had begun working at Nation’s Bank (now Bank of America) as a teller upon our arrival in Garland. It wasn’t long after that until it was time for us to “tithe” on our first paychecks. If you’ll recall, I had spent a lot of money on a ring, a Macintosh, and junk, assuming that I would be receiving several thousand dollars from the sale of my business in Arkadelphia. When that didn’t happen, my credit card companies did not graciously call me and offer to wipe my debt clean. Rather, the monthly payments on my cards seemed to prohibit our ability to tithe. Rather than rehashing the whole story, you’re going to have to go here and read it for yourself. Then come back here. (There’s also a version of the story here.)

I think one of the reasons that Carolyn may have been so insistent on giving was that she had received so much from the Lord. In hindsight and after years of experiencing profound provision from the Lord, I’m fairly certain that the Jeff of those days is indeed dead. I don’t mind sharing the story with folks simply because God taught me such a strong lesson in that rebuke that it changed my very nature and character. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still growing – but whether to tithe/give was forever answered that year.

Carolyn and I had been through so much in the past year and a half of our relationship. Those happy days at First Baptist Garland enabled us to settle down and begin to enjoy life. Things were extremely hectic, working with youth and living in a metropolitan area, but for the first time, we discovered the joy of routine.

Sometimes life is like a roller coaster and other times, it’s like a… box of chocolates.. wait, that one’s taken… like a west Texas highway – straight, flat, and predictable. We had put up the amusement park barf bags and were simply learning to drive between the lines.

It was nice… until the explosion…

To be continued…

By the way, you can see the “Our Story” Flickr album here.

Apple releases new iPods

In a flurry of activity today, Apple released new iPods which feature WiFi! Very cool. Here is a highlight of the announcements. For more news, go to Apple’s news page.

• 8GB iPhone drops in price by $200 to $399!
• Apple unveils iPod Touch – an iPhone-ish device without the phone.
• An all new iPod nano (phat!)
• A new iPod Shuffle which holds 240 Songs and features remixed colors.
• You can now access the iTunes Music Store via WiFi.
  
• Create your own custom ringtones in iTunes
• Apple and Starbucks exclusive partnership.
• Formerly the iPod Video = New iPod Classic now comes with up to 16GB storage!

On Walgreens toilet paper

I’m so exited that we have a new Walgreens in our town, but I learned something important this morning. Their version of premium toilet tissue is not premium.
Click here to listen

Powered by Jott.com – Try it at 1 (866) JOTT123 –

Do a church a favor… use Goodsearch

I’m excited to be able to inform you here first that Journey has been approved as one of Goodsearch’s charitable organizations! That means that if you’ll designate Journey as your charity, every time you do an internet search, Journey will receive a penny! That adds up!

Click on the graphic above to search on Goodsearch, and please consider making Goodsearch your default internet search agent.

Here’s the code if you want to paste the graphic above on your site:

<A href=”http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=834233″ TARGET=”_top”>
<IMG src=”http://www.goodsearch.com/_gfx/gs-church-120×60.gif” WIDTH=”120″ HEIGHT=”60″ ALT=”GoodSearch: You Search…We Give!” BORDER=”0″></A>

• Use this link to add Goodsearch to Internet Explorer’s toolbar.
• Use this link to add GS to your Firefox toolbar.
• Change your computer’s homepage to GS.

The danger of daughters and skeet

On Saturday, we took off to my grandparents’ house in Hamburg with some good friends, the McKinstrys, to attempt so dove hunting and if that failed, shoot skeet. I hadn’t been down to the Noble homeplace in several months, and it’s always like walking back in time. The place simply echoes with memories. As I watched our kids, Joshua Henson, and Zac and Alex running around the yard and woods, I imagined myself, my sister and cousins in their place.

They quickly began bombarding each other with magnolia buds (nature’s hand grenades), climbing trees and exploring. Had it really been 30 years since I did the same thing?

Nestled back in the pine woods of Ashley Country, Nobles have lived there since 1847 – not necessarily on that plot of land, but “thereabouts.” We had a blast that afternoon, but the following images were the result of a misguided effort to allow Adelyn to throw skeet for me…

Emerging controversy… fun or foolish

I just had to laugh when I saw the opener over at teampyro this morning…

The primary point of this post is to really bring all the people we have had consistent adversarial interaction with out of the woodwork to see if we can’t make a comment thread go past the 1,000 mark—because after all, we get thousands of readers every day. Everyone should have something to say for himself.

They go on to ask some pointed questions about the emergent movement, many of which I’ve addressed at Notes before. However, I just don’t feel like chewing on sawdust today. I think the bigger question for me, in the mood I’m in, is simply… why in the world would Dan and the guys want to deal with 1000+ comments on Labor Day?

However, tucked away in some very funny graphics and tongue-in-cheek pander is really a great post. They reiterate their defense and stand on scripture:

Sixty-six books chock-full of revelation. So much that most professing Christians (to our shame) have never even read it all.

It’s refreshing, really, to see a group of guys so passionate about the truth of the Bible and it’s life transforming power over those who submit their lives to its author. I still have a lot of doubts as to whether the “emergent” movement actually exists and can be point and counter-pointed. Yes, it has its prophets, but its difficult to paint such a broad stroke of criticism when speaking of them. It’s like denominational churches… you just never know what you’re going to get from one church to another – unfortunately.

However, the post is worth the Labor Day read, if for nothing else for thoughts like this:

And if the most central issue of the Bible—how can man be just before God?—has been misunderstood by basically every one of the holiest, godliest, most consecrated and devoted men of God for centuries; if, that is, our most elder brothers in the faith have, every one of them, answered that question wrongly, and only a specialist engaging in specialized sub-category studies can unearth the true answer to this basic question…

…it makes you wonder not only why God wrote the Book, but why He made such a poor job of it.

And you might as well leave a comment while you’re there…

Our Story, a voice in the whirlwind

I honestly don’t remember a lot of details about that long school year, 1991-1992. It was my first year at seminary, and I was apart from Carolyn, who was undergoing radiation treatment every day for nine and a half weeks. She was also trying to cram four years of college into three and prepare for a marriage to yours truly. There were so many people who carried us during those hard months.

It was stunning to receive hope, care, and prayer from some of the most unlikely places. I think as soon as the words, “Jeff, it’s cancer,” left Carolyn’s mouth on that dark day for us, our Lord began to marshal spiritual and earthly forces in our favor. While we would be drug through an extremely trying and intense hardship in our budding relationship, we would not face it alone.

I can remember receiving cards in the mail from extended family and strangers, all affirming their love and prayers for us. Carolyn received the bulk of the notes, calls, and encouragement, much of it coming from churches and people neither of us had ever met. On our hardest days, we were always shocked to discover that someone, somewhere was “watching our backs” in prayer.

We had more than one person who took this thought from scripture and apply it to us:

“As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you.” (1 Samuel 12.23)

There were many dark moments. Most of them were the result of the uncertainty of our future and the betrayal of our emotions. The radiation treatment took its tool on Caro several times as she was simply overcome with total spiritual and emotional exhaustion. I can remember more than one late-night conversation in which she would call and as we were on the phone, her mood would literally swing from steep highs to deep lows. There were several tearful conversations in which she would relate in emotional anguish that she just didn’t “feel anything” for me and that perhaps we should not proceed with our marriage plans or relationship.

With me in Tolar and her in Arkadelphia, it was an emotional roller coaster. There were a few times in which we hung up the phone that evening in tears, neither of us knowing if, after a night of sleep, we’d be “together” the following day. Every next day, however, we rediscovered what tender spiritual salve was found in God’s mercies, which are “new every morning.” We discovered the soul-healing power of our relationship with Jesus Christ in those days, and it was on the immoveable foundation that our relationship together was built, brick by brick.

We also learned in those hard days that our emotions simply couldn’t and would never be adequate to carry us. Love was not something to be “felt” or to be “in” but love was something to commit our life to. We found in those days that there were many moments in which we our feelings failed us. However, with a clarity that is only born in trial, we learned that true love is not just a commitment but a Person. When we laid all our cares and being before our loving God in prayer and helpless surrender, we would find strength, in the moment to move forward. At times, God’s strength appeared in our ability to face the future with a determined smile and joyful attitude. Our friends and family often expressed amazement at how we were handling things. At other times, God’s gracious strength was provided simply to enable one or the other of us to go to sleep that night rather than stay up and “waller” in our emotions (those in south Arkansas certainly know what wallering is; for the rest of you).

In the middle of it all, we went through premarital counseling (and boy did we need it!) with Scott and Judy Duvall, and we set a date for our marriage of May 30, 1992. Caro was also set to graduate on May 10. As we entered the spring semester, I also began to talk with our mutual friend, Kevin Wieser, about the possibility of going to First Baptist Church of Garland, Texas to serve as a youth ministry intern under him. He had recently begun serving there as the youth minister.

While it seemed like forever at the time, Caro concluded her last radiation treatment, and CT scans showed no enlarged lymph nodes anywhere! Her incredible Christian physician, Dr. Larry Mendolssohn declared her cancer-free, and we celebrated. Caro had driven out to visit at one point that spring with a friend of hers, Missy (whom we tried to set up with a friend of mine from the children’s home), and we had a wonderful, hopeful weekend as we laughed with each other and our friends, as well as made plans for the next several months.

As May rolled around, in true Noble fashion, we not only had a graduation but a wedding to enjoy, and after a series of conversations and prayer, we had decided to join Kevin in ministry in Garland. So we were preparing to begin our new life together in a new city, in a new home, and with renewed hopes.

We had no idea how God would bless us and rebuke me in the next few months.

To be continued…