On my mind today

This Sunday is the next step in our series on "Building the Church."  This week is "building the church by building our children."  Nothing scares me more than speaking on the family.  Allow me to explain. The life of a pastor is one that can be challenging for the pastor himself.  It can be unbearable for his family if he's not careful.  For me, I can manage expectations others have for me.  Those expectations are some that I signed up for when I began to serve as a pastor.  But the expectations for my lovely bride and our son. . . . that's a different story.  I convinced Julie to marry me based on the presumption that I was going to be a professor, not a pastor.  She grew up in a pastor's home - she knew better than to marry a pastor!  Furthermore, our son Joshua didn't have a choice.  By virtue of being adopted into our home, he bears the burden of those expectations too.  People expect us to be perfect, having all the pie...

It's nearly time to get Julie a different vehicle so we spent yesterday to go car shopping.  We made four stops and the first three were awesome!  They welcomed us a showed us exactly what we asked for and more!  Gracious and welcoming, it was tremendous!  McRae Ford, Bacon Chevrolet, Toyota of Tyler - I can't say enough good things about how they treated us! But then we made a fourth stop.  It was getting later in the day - I think around 2:30 or 3 PM.  From the time we set foot on their parking lot, I knew this was going to be different than it had been.  No one had asked us for any information up till now.  This guy wanted everything except my mother's maiden name.  Everyone else had started with showing us the vehicles we asked for.  This guy started with us in his cubicle.  Everyone else - that we didn't already know - called us "Mr and Mrs Wood".  This guy - well younger than us - called us by our first names (it seemed...

Last week, I posted on Facebook about the Supreme Court entertaining the arguments related to same-sex marriage.  I got this response:  "I really don't understand this argument. For years there have been things that are legal that Christians did not support. How is this different? I am not trying to be rude, I really don't get it. I do not see how something someone else does effects  my Christianity. I do not understand why this one thing will bring about the downfall of the church. My father is a minister, and there are many people he turned down for performing a ceremony. It only becomes discrimination if you turn down only one sort of people. It is discrimination, by the very definition of the word. I don't want to be attacked, but I really would love an explanation that isn't built on the old testament. And frankly, I do not see how an argument from the New Testament could be better. The bible has much more to say about indebtedness but I do not see any argu...

This is Joshua's first year of organized sports.  He turned just a week ago.  Thus, it's time for T-Ball.  We signed him up weeks ago.  I didn't really want to be the head coach since I know so little about teaching real skills in baseball.  But when I realized that there were 68 kids signed up and 3 coaches, I knew I'd better do something to help insure he has a good experience.  So here we are - all set for this weekend and I'm doing what I guess all T-ball coaches are doing - praying that they at least know how to get from home to first!