Reboot?

It's been haunting me that I haven't done anything on here in a couple months. I had high hopes around my birthday of pretty much telling you about my life in my twenties. So much for that. I haven't been to the gym in at least 3 weeks either. Just like everything else, you have to fight for your blog time. You have to intentionally make time for it, otherwise it won't get done.

I think it's part of the way "the matrix" is set up, to keep us all so busy with our lives that we become like robots--eat, sleep, work, watch the kids, watch TV, play video games, etc. All the while getting more disconnected from our hearts, and yet at the end of the day there's a slight pain in the soul that says, "if I had just 30 mins to myself I could write something meaningful." Underneath the desire to write is the desire to be ALIVE. To be aware. To be alive to God and aware of Jesus in every moment.

You'll know I'm fighting for it if I keep writing...

The Twenties: Decade in Review: 21

At the end of the previously mentioned summer, I turned 21. A friend named Matt, who had worked with us over the summer, met up with me at a local restaurant, where I ordered a "Red Dog" beer. I didn't know what I was doing, was clueless about beer, and hated the taste of it. But I drank the whole thing because I didn't want to look lame around my friend.

Around the same time, the college made me move into a dorm room with a freshman (I was a senior). It became a apparent almost instantly that we had nothing in common. After a couple months, he moved in with a friend so I had the room to myself. It was fun. It was a little weird being a senior living with mostly underclassmen, but I had no prior experience to compare it to, so I enjoyed it enough.

To be honest, this was a tough year for me. I was incredibly infatuated with a couple of women, struggled with adjusting to life on my own, found a few good friendships, and a few that I kept up even though I knew they weren't very good ones. Without realizing it at the time, I turned to being insanely busy to help feel a bit less lonely (which of course didn't work). Besides keeping a full schedule of 16 credit hours of classes, I:
--worked in the kitchen 8-10 hours a week, sometimes in the middle of the night
--became the worship leader for all chapels, which met 3 times a week
--acted as head of the team behind "More Than That", a student-led additional worship time meeting on Wednesday nights.

Of course, even with all that, I procrastinated with many games of ping-pong, interesting conversations, and Mariokart marathons. Through it all the loneliness and inner struggles lingered on. I had a lot of acquaintances, but only a few real friends. Unfortunately, I was blinded to their reaching out because I was so infatuated with others (let this serve as a warning to the reader to be applied in your own life).

Despite the struggles, I got a ton of good experience as a worship leader, I had a lot of laughs, and a lot of relational experience. I had always been an honor-roll/dean's list student so I graduated with about a 3.8 GPA in early May of 2001. A week after graduating, I payed $500 to UPS my library ahead of me, packed my Ford Festiva to the gills (You shoulda seen it!) and drove to Oviedo, Florida.

I had already decided in my junior year of college where I would go to seminary. I didn't know anyone when I moved to Florida, the seminary had found me a place to rent a room for $200/month. I moved in with a retiree who smoked cheap cigars in the house, and his huge black lab, and my fellow rentee, a Taiwanese RTS student. I applied to all the local retail stores for a job, and the first to call me was Publix (the one at 419 and Lockhart). I started working in the meat market, where I'd work for the next four years to put myself through Seminary.

I tried one Sunday attending an OPC church I'd heard about, but it was completely on the other side of town, and my host, Dick, mentioned his son Chuck was a pastor at nearby Willow Creek PCA. I attended in the morning and at night (like a good Reformed Dutchman...) and liked the evening crowd because most everyone was my age or a few years older. Nearly everyone was associated with the seminary in some way. I found a community where people accepted me as I was, I felt like they instantly new who I was, faults and all, but genuinely wanted me to be part of them. Thus began my journey with Willow Creek at Night and Sojourn.

The Twenties: Decade in Review: 20

20. On the eve of my birthday, 1999, I was just starting my junior year of college in Grand Rapids, MI. I was living at home, just coming off of a summer of doing construction all day every day, building and repairing homes. That year was about transition, as my parents began to follow God's leaving to move again into foster care, somewhere away from Michigan. It was interesting having just the four of us at home, no foster kids.

I was torn between hanging out with the crowd at Reformed Bible College (now Kuyper) who were conservatively minded theologically, and those who were into what we called "Praise and worship music." I sort of hung out with both, tried to do my studying or hanging out with friends in the evening, and not spend so many nights at home.

Soon after the end of the school year, we had sold our house in Rockford, I moved into the on-campus apartments, and my brother graduated high school and drove to Clovis, NM, to live with my parents on a 6000-acre ranch. That summer I worked with my Uncle and my Grandpa building homes, returning in the evenings to hang with the few students left on campus over the summer. We often watched movies or played board games. I ate far too many $1 totino's pizzas. It was my first few months of life without parental authority nearby.

Aidan is One!

A year ago today, God gave us our firstborn son. Aidan Michael was not our first pregnancy, but he has been worth the wait. He has brought much joy into our lives. He's helped us grow as individuals, largely in that we've had to face up to the challenges of parenthood. I must say we've been blessed with what most people would consider to be an easy baby. But still, we've learned to sacrifice our time, energy, desires, and free time, for his sake.

I've grown a lot in the past year as a man, and I attribute a fair amount of that growth to being a father. I know and trust that in the months ahead, more growth will take place as each stage of Aidan's development presents new challenges. More and more I have a desire for our family to be more structured with regard to time and time management. There are things that my parents did growing up that I want to incorporate into our family life--taking what I had, and making our own version of it.

So while I look to the next year of raising Aidan, I thank God for the past year, for the amazing and incredible gift of a son who is so cute, entertaining, and full of joy.

Happy Birthday Aidan. Daddy loves you.

5 things my teams did yesterday that you might not know actually get done

1. Move about 300 chairs out of the way in classrooms to make room for Grace Fellowship classrooms.
2. Go through all the seats between services and take out all trash, put a Bible and an invite card on every seat (yes, you are supposed to take those cards WITH YOU and GIVE THEM AWAY!!)
3. Shook 300 hands and gave out 300 worship guides.
4. Set up almost 100 feet of pipe and drape, 4 trade show kiosks, 20ish tables, two plasma TV's, 20ish signs, 3 carts worth of toys, and much more...AND...took it all back down and packed it all up again.
5. Loaded a 16x7 trailer in less than 5 minutes.

In Answer to a survey from Seminary

Today I filled out an online survey from Reformed Theological Seminary, where I received my Masters' degree. I kept getting emails encouraging me to do it, and kept deleting the emails, but finally gave in today, and decided to let my voice be heard. At the end, here's some comments I put:

I hope RTS and other seminaries will move toward ecumenism and training men and women to lead churches and ministries that are effective in bringing the gospel to our society. I fear many churches are like little country clubs operating much the same way they did in the last century. We're focused on keeping things going, perpetuating the status quo, because that's all we're trained for. We're so focused on right doctrine...but it doesn't necessarily lead to right practice in the lives of not only our congregants, but also our leaders.

I hope RTS and other seminaries will learn from some of the emerging "new Calvinists" like Mark Driscoll and Mark Chandler, and dare I say, be willing to reach across denominational boundaries and learn from today's leaders like Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick, Ed Stetzer, and Francis Chan, to name a few. I hope practical theology found in the writings and conference speeches from men like these will be brought more into seminary training.

My current ministry position is "administrative director." I have had to learn nearly EVERYTHING from the ground up--how to lead teams and volunteers, how to run an office, how to do budgets, how to do bookkeeping, how to run a portable church,...

I've been so thankful God called me into the direction he did. I love the church I'm a part of, leading and growing as a follower of Jesus alongside new Christians, young Christians, and those from other denominational backgrounds. Gone are the days of pastor do-it-all. Let's move into the future bringing the best of what the Reformed faith offers and humbly offering it to the world and the church, helping the bride shine as bright as She can for her Groom, Jesus!

Don't Squander Your Freedom

233 years ago today the declaration of independence was signed. A thought came to me this morning that I would like to share with you--I was reminded of a passage in Galatians 5:

"It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom" (v. 13-14, MSG).

I think this can be applied to the individual and to this country of America. Paul originally was directing it toward the newly converted Christians in Galatia. They were abusing their freedom by just doing whatever they wanted, thereby becoming slaves again to their sinful ways, their idols, their addictions. Ultimately, when you've been given freedom in Christ, who set you free from sin, it's not so that you can just keep on sinning and not worry about the consequences. You must act responsibly and beware becoming enslaved again.

We live in a great country and God has for these 233 years given us amazing blessings and incredible privileges of freedom and global influence. Our freedom as a country was won through hardship, death, and war by thousands of soldiers and their families. We've been given this freedom. Yet we are indebted to credit card companies, to banks, and to other nations because we want to just do whatever we want. We've made the mess that leads to recession by just buying whatever we want whenever we want it. Now we're not ALL to blame as citizens, because many of us try to be good citizens who are morally, judicially, and financially responsible. That's the kind of living that's worth dying for.

As Paul's words apply individually: "use your freedom to serve one another in love....Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom." If enough individuals lived by this, it would be true of us corporately, and we would continue to enjoy freedom for many long years to come.

I'm thankful that we live in freedom, thankful for the incredible blessing it is to live in the United States. Thankful to Jesus for the freedom from sin that He won for me. I did not pay for either. Thankful people live responsibly, lovingly, so as to enjoy freedom.