On my mind today

I've posted videos of Keith Green before but he's back today, this time in tongue-in-cheek fashion. In conjunction with our ECHO series be blessed today by his "So You Wanna Go back to Egypt!"

Father's Day is Sunday. I realize that may not sound like it, but that's a counter-cultural movement. If you join us on Sunday at FBC, you'll hear me say this again, but our culture has repeatedly expressed the lack of desire for fathers, their leadership and their wisdom. Single mothers are glorified and fatherhood viewed as an uncomfortable and unfortunate position. Spiritual leadership by the father is even more laughable. I contend it's exactly opposite our culture needs. Instead of less fathers, we need MORE! Our role is needed more now than ever before. While we may not have the genius displayed by "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Father Knows Best", we can certainly do better than Al Bundy on "Married with Children." One of the points I'll be making Sunday morning is this: Affirm the value of your children, exactly where they are. In our society that calls for us to live up to some unattainable standard somewhere off in the dist...

Yesterday, Julie and I took our FBC kids to Super Summer at East Texas Baptist University in Marshall. Nothing unusual there. Julie and I both love Super Summer. From 1991-2001, I didn't miss a summer of working with this wonderful ministry. Yesterday was different, however. In the past, when I showed up at Super Summer, it was as a worker. Workers get there on Saturday, prepare all weekend for the students and greet them with great fanfare (that's what you see - and believe me when I say this picture does NOT do it justice!). In the past, I knew everyone else working at Super Summer. Yesterday, I knew only a few. It caused me to look at Super Summer in a new way - or with new eyes. It caused me to see things in a new way. I didn't know where to go, or what to do. I didn't know very many people. Truthfully, the only people I knew yesterday were either my age (which would be the "old" people at this camp) or were the grown children of my friends...

A word of congratulations is in order! Twice a month, several members of FBC work at the East Texas Food Bank in Tyler. Under the leadership of Charles Garner, our workers bag rice and beans for distribution to those in need. It's a tedious job. A literal TON of rice and a TON of beans are sitting on pallets. They must be bagged into 2 lbs. sacks to be distributed. There are 12 bags to the case. In a four hour time span, they bagged and boxed 117 cases of rice and beans! WOW! Now that's a lot of work! Thanks for taking Jesus' command to feed the hungry so seriously!

Have you heard of flash mobs? It's where a group of people decide in advance they will gather at a particular time and then just as fast, disappear. Sometimes they just stand there. Other times, they dance. Like this time. Enjoy the insanity of a random flash mob dancing to MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This." Make sure to pay attention to the people who aren't in on it and their reactions.

I get lots of newsletters, both through snail-mail and email, from churches all over the country. I use them for encouragement, ideas and just keeping up with my friends serving the Lord elsewhere. Today, however, brought a sobering reminder of keeping myself pure. Gary Lamb was pastor of Revolution Church in Canton, GA. A strong church with a bright future, Gary appeared to be a guy who had it won. Appearances are often deceiving. On Sunday, he notified his church he had been involved in a 6 wk affair with his personal assistant and was therefore resigning immediately from the church. Wow. What it speaks to is this: don't focus so much on what others THINK as much as you do on what God KNOWS! If God's not pleased with your life, does it really matter what others think? If you're living in disobedience to God, does it matter if you've found success? Perhaps Gary struggled with a complex of feeling superhuman. I'm especially culpable to that, as most pastors...

After a whirlwind tour of St Louis, we're home. On a note of praise, American Airlines got us home more than 20 minutes earlier than the gate time! On a note of "boo", the people who run the airport security in St. Louis Lambert Airport were not nearly as nice as the people at DFW Airport. Fortunately, we held our tongues - the people I've read who have really had trouble with the security people are the ones who want to hold the TSA to their own printed standards, a mistake we did not make. We smiled nicely, obeyed their instructions and got home. The picture you see is us on top of the Gateway Arch, the iconic symbol of St. Louis. If you go, don't miss it unless you struggle with a fear of heights or claustrophobia. The elevators are about 6 feet in diameter - more like a port-a-john than an elevator. It's quite a view from up there, 630 ft about the city. We could see for miles all around through the portal windows. It gave us a perspective to see ...