Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

hear the voice

hear the voice

friday, jonathon, dixon & myself were a part of a focus group for "the voice." i must say, i'm pretty excited about this project. i am not the best sales person for this project, as i am not confident in giving it the due inspiration. but it is very cool, i am looking forward to incorporating this into part of our youth ministry at hfumc.

the focus group was primarily directed to how to use this project in supporting emergent youth ministries. which got me thinking.. i consider me to be somewhat emergent minded, however, what does emergent youth ministry look like? any thoughts...

i think i'll expand on this while i'm at the umerging colloquy after the honeymoon.

profiles of the wedding party: megan & andy

grooms man, andy piper, the youngest of the bunch. andy is like a little little brother, although i pale in his size now. when i first started my ministry career as a staff person at mountain top. i served with andy's sister jenny. on our breaks between camps i'd go to nashville with jenny and stay at her folks house and sometimes sleep on the bunk bed in andy's room. he and i became buds playing video games and even going out to the movies. it was some sorta big brother relationship thing, me being 19 yrs old him 12. that's where it started

since then i have, along with everyone else in his life, have watched him become a huge guy. we've maintained our big bro relationship, but it has increasingly become just a regular friendship. for two or three years straight we spent a lot of time together playing volleyball with various leagues around nashville, mostly with some iraqi men's group that rented his church's gym. that was some fun times.

along with andy, jenny, becky and their folks elaine and curtis have been my nashville family. when i first moved to town in '00 it was elaine who would pick me up off the side of the road when my car broke down. i would go out to eat with curtis and andy after church and watch the titans play. elaine helped me get a couple of jobs and still throws me some work every now and then. they have been really good to me treating me as one of their own. i don't know where i'd be without them.

maid of honor, megan lane, erin's best friend. megan has been erin's best friend since childhood, while never actually living within any real proximity to each other. i think the closest was about an hour and half drive. megan and erin met while in high school doing conference and jurisdictional events and leadership stuff for the umc. after college erin went to the university of south carolina and megan the university of tennessee, so one of the many weekends they get together is the ut/usc football (which i've gotten to take part in a number of times, it was the first time i met megan too). they have all kinds of fun stories to tell, but they are not mine and i wouldn't be able to tell them nearly as well, so i'll refrain.

megan has been all over the states, but now resides back in knoxville, although we'd love it if she moved to nashville. megan got to town yesterday and has been out and about helping erin with all kinds of last minute details. which, reminds me, i should be doing my share.

a new slate for the 11th bishop of the diocese of tennessee

we've just gone live with a new slate of candidates for election to the 11th bishop of the diocese of tennessee. you may recall this is the 2nd go round for this as both jay and i have helped be a part of the process.

i haven't had a chance to look over the candidates thoroughly, but i did notice that most seem to be more local than the last slate of candidates. by local i am saying all have south ties. there are five candidates, so i'm not sure if that makes it easier to agree on one candidate, versus the three presented last go round, with the one added in by petition.

the window for petition nomination is open as of noon for the next two weeks. so maybe we'll have a few more candidates to talk about after the first week of october.

some people who i will bet are going to be talking about this are the folks at titusonenine & maybe my bud thunder, he's been begging for the slate for days.

blogger shout out to my "disabled sports fan"

my buddy david is bloggin more so i feel like giving a shout and encouraging everyone to drop by his space "slatefan: a disabled sports fan's view." david has been an avid myspacer for years as i have, only this summer did he jump into true blogging software. i razzed him the other night about not blogging more, so he's been a blogging fiend since.

his take is more on sports, and wrestling, he and i talk wrestling occasionally as we wait around for youth to show up on sunday mornings or evenings. he's one of my faithful youth minister and as him mom would say the greatest ambassador to hendersonville.

yes, david does have a disability, so he has trouble typing, but you can get the gist. he understands that, but most of all, i like to say "he gets it" not about being disabled, but what it means to live, love and care for people. david never met someone he didn't like, he loves the young people of the church & community whole heartedly and prays for them constantly. he really does get it and we'd be a whole lot better off in this world if there were more david slate's.

profiles of the wedding party: sonny & clare

grooms "man," clare charles, yes she is a woman. clare is one of my cousins from england. actually, she's not, but i always thought she was. as the story goes her mom is/was an orphan and was hired by my grandpa to watch after my mom and her sisters. my mom and clares mom were close in age so they became more of best friends than a nanny-child relationship. thus when all us kids came along sylvia (clare's mom) was just like an auntie and clare & her bro jonathan were cousins as far as i knew.

somewhere in '96 clare and i struck up a friendship beyond what us cousin's had enjoyed to that point. we were pen pals for a number of years and then once the internet became a means, we did the chat stuff across the pond to each other. she's come over here a time or two spending a few weeks of vacation with me & my friends, doing whatever it is that we do.

she's a charming person, people just love her. evidenced by her random jobs, one selling phone cards to aborigine people in australia when she ran out of money on one of her world explorations. so when it came to figure out who would i'd like to stand alongside of me this day, and represent the family, it was a no brainer. she's one of my best friends, especially within the family, she's a huge fan of erin & me, and she's woman enough to pull off standing alongside us guys.

to be said: erin says this is a horrible picture, i'd agree, not the best shot i've ever taken. for those asking, what will she wear? she'll be wearing a matching dress to the bridesmaids, but in black. the envy of one of the maids of honor, more on that later.

grooms man, brian "sonny" sondeen. brian is another friend from childhood, he and i grew up in boy scouts together, along with my brother. the three of us were really the only youth our age in scouts and there was this big age gap so we spent about three years rotating all the leadership positions in the troop doing all the camping trips we wanted and making memories then. towards the later half of our high school years brian became more of my circle of friends through skiing and other activities we did. if you see him you should ask about 4wheeling while in a snow storm.. that's a good story.

brian has always remained close as has his wife michelle, they have a cute little guy name evan. when it comes to people staying faithful to others he's gotta be one of the best. i'm not his only friend that he is this way with, he's my info on all the folks we used to hang with at school and into college. he's just one of those endearing persons that everyone is glad to be around. the best thing that i can say that i've done is shawn, tiffany, my dad, and myself drove up to new jersey the weekend after September 11th to see he & michelle get married, that was something i won't forget and well worth the effort to be part of their day. we're excited to have them part of ours.

profiles of the wedding party: shawn & shorty

best man, shawn richardson, some of you may know my brother from his blogging days when he was in iraq. not much since then in the blog world, but he's my little bro. we grew up together, fought each other, got in trouble together, fought fires together, did our emt years together, worked many jobs together, graduated college, and even shared a checking account at one time. at one point we were known as "the richardson boys" we even had a corresponding email. when shawn got married a few years ago people asked me how i was going to handle being on my own now.... to that i just said i've been their third wheel for years, i didn't see marriage changing that.

shawn's been my bro and best friend in so many ways for as long as i can remember. fun part is that we do so much similar stuff but we are way different it makes those family dynamics come out big time. love my bro, he's the best ever! a no brainer for a best man

groomsman, chris short, also known as "shorty." chris has been one of my best friends since 6th grade. we sat next to each other in class, got know each other through street hockey and hockey trading cards (which is funny cause we still tease him on trying to steal some cards to this day). we spent our young teen years playing hockey, skateboarding, bmx, golf, and skiing. i like to claim that i taught chris how to play golf, which i can hang my hat as he's a certified golf pro. currently he's on a hiatus from pro play, but is anticipating a return.

many of our stories together have something to do with getting into trouble, not because we were especially bad, but that we were really bad of getting away with it. so those stories stay hidden away from blog. i remember days of riding skateboards & bmx bikes all over south jersey, delaware & maryland (i'm being literal too, 40 mile days were commonplace). we started our 'ski trip' tradition before we graduated high school, which.. well i can't share those stories either. one story i can share, is that chris tried to teach me surfing. it was an annual south jersey umc event, i went down with the church and hit the shore. chris taught me to get past the break and how to come back... 2 hours later i made it past the break and said, "this is hard" to this chris said, "it's even harder since there is a hurricane down of south carolina, these waves are big!" yeah, thanks chris!

the picture is the three of us, shawn, chris & me at prom '93. shawn is junior and before his long blonde hair was cut off for military duty.

profiles of the wedding party: j norm & davey

grooms man, jonathon norman, or stphransus for you blogosphere friends, is one of my oldest friends since moving to nashville. we actually met in '97, at camp, but he doesn't remember that too much, so we won't count that.

jonathon has been my buddy and partner in crime and wreaking havoc in the youth ministry world for over six year now. we are church geeks in that we take monastery pilgrimages together and get excited over church architecture, and theologians people have never heard of. over the years we've become family friends too, love jennifer, jonas and abby. erin & i got to welcome abby when she first came into the world. jen doesn't mind when i drop by the norman house late at night (although i have to have some reason). we're excited to have jonathon represent his family as we start ours.

grooms man, david (davey) young, is one of my few close friends from college. davey and i spent two years together as the only males in the college of human environmental sciences at the university of alabama. we were majors in child development, so that meant lots of girls who wanted an mrs. degree. the guys, however, had to have promise to make money so we were left to give out project advice or play around with the 2-5 year olds in the cdc.

the crowning achievement of college, and our wesley foundation, was winning the floor hockey intramurals one year... how sad, i was a goalie back in new jersey because i couldn't handle a puck, but put me on a team in the south and watch me score goals. my nj friends still laugh at that, my ua friends still talk about that.

davey moved to nashville and lived with shawn and myself for almost two years. he had to move to houston to do be a child life therapist at texas children's hospital, but are still good friends and he's my research analysis for all things bama football. just ask him anything about bama football if you have a couple of hours. &:~D

the big question

so i keep being asked "are you nervous?" let me answer this for everyone.

no, i'm so ready for this day. i can't wait!

blogging methodists future

shane is back, but he's pulling the plug on wesley daily. can't say i blame him, that had to be a lot of time and work (especially to format my posts). andy has posted over at bloggingmethodists a few questions about the future of the methoblogosphere and how that particular blog can help out. type in your adivce.

heretics guide to eternity - putting the book down

i mentioned a few weeks back that i was engaging and seeking to blog about spencer burkes new book "heretics guide to eternity." since then i haven't been the best reader. been kinda busy with a job and wedding. but i've made it a little over two-thirds of the way through the book and thought i'd share some thoughts.

spencer basically frames out a case that the church, the institutional church, using the word "religion" does a pretty poor job of showing and giving grace to people. there is also the case that religion & the institutional church are too bogged down with dogma to be radical in the way people should see, hear, and feel the body of Christ in todays world. grace becomes an overwhelming theme in this book, i like how he puts together an ideal and practice of grace, what is funny is that i didn't resonate with his language of the institutional church, but his presentation of grace was much to my understanding of wesley's view of grace. most certainly if people who followed wesley acted out the points of grace within their own people or people of the world. so, although i can agree with much of what spencer has to say, it felt like reading over and over things i've already known to be true. these things i've known to be true i learned through the institutional united methodist church, so i'm not willing to debunk (as i've claimed many times before) to throw away the institutional church... at least not the one i'm a part of or the vision i have for the institutional church. his critique on 'religion' as a general i'm not too fond of, as it gets old.. i use it in my 'church/religion' category on this blog to highlight the oddities of the church, but i also accept that as part of my religion that there are people and things that happen that don't make much sense to me, but i extend that grace to allow them to do their thing, even if i cannot stand what it is they do.

there is a blurry line of universalism. spencer is pretty clear that he's a believer in Christ and his salvation, however, he does question the point of 'the only way' being through the Christian church. this is where a lot of the 'heretic' part comes into play. his definition as i remember it was someone who challenges and dreams what the church is and can be... i like that, but i also read that in brueggemann's "prophetic imagination." a book i thought spoke a whole lot better to where things are today and challenging and dreaming of what the church is and should be.

where i am now, i'm a bit tired of the book. i don't normally put books down, but i have. i always feel that there is some nugget of knowledge down the path that i should get to that is just wonderful and worth waiting for. however, i got the third section and it was about grace again, so i feel compelled to spend my time else ware. my book mark will stay for maybe another day, but for now, it goes on the shelf & i share my parting thoughts

for those looking into reading this book. it's not my top read, but it's not bad. spencer pulls quotes and thoughts from all over, which i found quite refreshing. the overall of the book is something important for the rest of the church to read, but i'm feeling it will best be served to be a message spread by word of mouth and action.

for those people you have around you that need some buttons pushed and comfort-zone stretched that are short on grace and stuck on "my church is the only church, enough said," then this might be a good book to put into their hands.

i noticed that spencer has posted reviews of his book on his blog. i'd also suggest scott mcknights review, he does more of a biblical breakdown of the book in 1, 2, 3, 4 posts.

the growing umc

john b has shared a bit about how the umc has actually grown. john, this church hasn't grown, it's actually shrunk.

the new king of beers

a Christmas promotion of ads will have a Christ image within the foam of a beer..

A MIRACULOUS image of Jesus Christ in the froth of an almost empty pint of beer will be used as an advert to encourage more Britons to go to church this Christmas.

“For many, Christmas is just drinking and partying and God is excluded, yet many young people are interested in finding deeper meaning and exploring faith.”

deeper meaning in a beer?

i guess since you can see Mary on a underpass & Mother Theresa on a cinabun then i suppose people can create a face of Christ in beer foam

honeymoon reading

next week is wedding day & then off for the honey moon. i'm not sure how much i'll get to read before the wedding, but i'm thinking with the plane ride and some down time (ie. not sleeping, eating, or suntanning) that i'll do some reading.. of my selection though i can't figure out which book or books to digest for the next two weeks.. a little help please?

comedy central blocks the voice of lot

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy

fred phelps is at it again blasting john stewart and stephen colbert for toying with prophetic voices.

disclaimer: if you are not familiar with westboro baptist, i suggest you start possibly here, or just google them. harsh language is used in this video.

my new toy

after months of pain and anguish i am finally upgrading my phone. the only thing that has saved the current phone from a death against a wall is that i still need it's information. after the new toy comes in we shall see how long old phone lasts.

new phone has all kinds of bells and whistles that i probably won't ever figure out. but it looks cool. i can say that i can do all that. it's got the video cast feature, which nashville doesn't have coverage yet (but knoxville & memphis do, what gives?). the sales guy said it's supposed to be here next month. we shall see.

it does have a typepad for text messages, which, i'm doing more of these days. that should be much better than the dial pad, although i was getting a whole lot better these last few weeks.

a glorious day indeed! now i just have to wait to get it all charged up and ready to go. till then i still have to work with the phone & it has to wonder if it'll live another day

ouch ko!

this one has to hurt

tuesday randomness

• come follow me and i will teach you to surf for people
• did barna actually spend money on this research? we know this...
• mike rayson isn't happy with September 11th email forwards, or specifically this one
• i'll live to be 75.1 years old.. that is if i stay in tennessee (strangely, that isn't too good)
• i'm glad i didn't waste my time watching this, i did consider it for 2 seconds though
• cool, i think people look goofy with those things on anyways
• awesome! now, only if i could remotely afford one
• i wonder how cool these commercials will be?

god as commodity

this morning while driving into town for a youth ministers bible study i read a sign on someone's bumper (i can't call it a bumper sticker, as it took up the whole bumper and looked more like some painted detailing). the sign said something like this:

Get God! Talk to me to find out how to get an endless supply!

certainly not the most harmful thing in the world, but i thought to myself, "have we gone so far and made God a commodity.. wait, we have done that, but now we've gone so far and named God as a commodity." so i'm left with that thought, what are the phrases and things we say or do that commodify God into our capitalist society framework? i pull into our church parking lot this afternoon and see on our church sign:

Do you have a church?

it's semantics sure, but in some level isn't this Christ's church, not ours? do we not throw out in some of simple catch phrasing bad theology of the nature of God, the church, and the Christian life?

the most simplistic sayings of "get God" even can imply in our consumer culture that you purchase of acquire God. so to this, i wonder, how does what or what language does one use to change this phrasing to properly represent the nature of God, Christ & the Christian life?

i hope this doesn't invade my youth room

i hope someone doesn't see this and think it should be the next youth ministry gadget. i don't know if i can stand it to have a bunch of short attention span teenages spinning around looking at each others light up shirts. thanks eric

sunday photoblog: light the way

"seat's taken"

my first reaction was scenes from forest gump. "seat's taken" over and over again.. but this scene just blows me away. a girl who cannot ride the bus because she is not baptized?

"They say all the places have gone to children of faith," she said.
"The bottom line was 'is she baptized?'
"I said she was too young to make that decision for herself."

apparently it is not an isolated incident.

i wonder, as a united methodist... we have an open table for communion, would we open our bus doors (provided we actually got institutionally involved with the educational processes of our children) to those that are not of our faith or denomination?

what example of the gospel is this to push people out (the sheep if you will) to make room for those who are supposed to shepherds?

would you lay down the power?

i stumbled onto faithfuldemocrats.com for the first time today. surprisingly enough senator from tennessee roy herron was on the featured article piece. i don't keep with politics as much as others, but i can resonate with some of the things that senator herron said.

Abortion and gay marriage are two terribly important issues.  But are there not more than two important issues confronting this country? 

i too always come back to this one. it is like the trump card to all things argument. why? as we were talking about yesterday with the cohort, in some ways we talked about this, that the Christian faith is about laying down your power or submitting yourself to the power of loving someone over yourself. this gains a level of power, but not that power that we are accustomed to or see as power in the cultural society we live in today. funny enough, thomas mentioned the next scripture that senator herron followed up the prior comment with.

And should we not heed the entreaty of Paul to the Galatians for unity:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female" -- and he might have added "Republican or Democrat" -- for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

i haven't been the biggest reader of Saint Paul lately, but i am familiar with this scripture. thomas' mentioning this was that it's not about race or ethnic divides, which is the common conception, but it is about a power system that will no longer exist but people who see each other in a love, that is beyond the human concept of "what can you do for me love," and neighbors.

unfortunately, the democrats don't have the power right now. so it's up to the republican's to see this way. if the democrats were to gain the power of the congress & presidency, would they then be willing to lay down the power for the sake of the policies that senator herron outlines?

my cynic self says no... but my hope says that both can someday

the publishing house fight

yesterday at the cohort meeting there was a contingent of abingdon press folks and thomas nelson. so i wondered, who would win in a fight? no surprises here

a day of conversations

the only thing normal about today is that i drank about the same amount of coffee i do on a usual thursday. thursday is my clowns meeting. this normally starts a day where i relax and pray, listen, imagine, read, practice all those spiritual disciplines i encourage youth to be involved in.

today was way different

this morning for our clowns gathering, it was jason & jonathon having prayer time and a couple hours of conversation. good times, i don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but i know when i had to leave at 10:30am for a meeting jonathon and i actually tried to plan stuff in the last five minutes.. why do we do that?

ran from edgehill studios (coffee house) to bongo java east nashville (another coffee house) with an edgehill studios coffee in hand.. is that allowed? i met up with erin and the singer to our band for our wedding. had to talk about some of those special songs, plus the ones we don't want any part of in our wedding. yes, we nixed your "paradise by the dashboard light" request.

after that it was off to our monthly cohort meeting (i was supposed to have another lunch appointment, but due to the wedding meet up it got to make the cohort). ran into jc, we were the first there and started talking some. once everyone showed up and things got going, wow! not only did we have 25 people (that is a lot and reminds me that i'm glad we are not meeting at alektor anymore). we had some intense, but i don't know how productive, discussion on race, racism & all the systematic structure systems that keep people in places of power or without power... i think i'll try to ponder this a bit more, or just let one of the folks who actually recorded the cohort meet up replay what was said. i'm not even sure exactly what i said, so rather than sounding stupid and recanting my saying that i was brilliant and only to be show that was neither brilliant or on topic.. i'll just refrain and say, it was way cool, quite intense, and leaves me with no answers... wait, i never have answers at the end of these meetings.

motored over to our conference office to meet with our conference youth minister. she's one of my youth ministers so we were discussing our curriculum pieces for the next few months. that didn't take long so i just sat around and talked to the pastors that showed up at the office. my old pastor joe shelton showed up, he's retired now, but was asked to pastor the wesley foundation at tsu. we talked about those dynamics and i listened to some of his stories and he some of mine.

i stayed around the office for a junior high and senior high retreat design team meeting. this retreat has always been our weakest of events through the year. it lacked an identity and had little purpose to the overall ministry. our ccym has for the last two years discussed reimagining it. i was there to give a suggestion for a concept change to the whole event. instead of doing the main speaker and worship band, i proposed that we develop with the help of mentors a retreat model that gives the spiritual worship to the community. the leadership would open the weekend with worship, but then give it over to the community from there. through the weekend there would be workshop/training/teaching sessions times where small groups would work on various elements of worship; design, arts, singing, teaching, etc. their charge would then be to practice these while they lead the community in worship through the weekend.

there were some logistic issues and apprehensions. it's not done, probably because it has logistic issues, you can't just do this, it takes planning. it also take people who are willing to release power to the community so that God's movements do not rest on what we think people need to hear or learn but what the community actually feels a need to respond to.

the design team decided to take on my retreat concept, some logistic pieces change it to help make it successful for a weekend retreat. now, we'll see how it all comes together, i think it will be wonderful

os2 blogger buddy

today at our cohort meeting matthew reminded me that my friend adam has a blog. adam is one of those guys who was one of those youth, never mine, that i've gotten the priviledge of watching grow up. he's finished school now and is off in utah as a os2 missionary there. he's super funny and his blog posts reflect that.

little did i know, when i reported on this story of children protesting in favor of polygamy did i even think that i knew someone eating a snowcone there... oh this is just too fun

a new way of going thrift shopping

wanted to throw some pub to the folks at the simple way and their venture called a "another world is possible" one of the things they do is selling t-shirts that are recycled from thrift stores to minimize environmental impact as well as not to foster sweatshop labor.

i love their statement on the website. "another world is not only possible, she's on her way. on a quiet day, if i listen carefully, i can hear her breathing."

i don't know, i wasn't there

i don't know, i wasn't there, but i have an idea. i was just perusing a posting at christianity today that was pulled from scum of the earth church. their thought, that the emerging church is more alike to 80's youth ministry than anything.

I see it all as ‘80s youth ministry grown up. The emerging church movement is as varied as the youth groups of the 1980s. Youth pastors tailored their ministries to the kids God put in front of them. The Presbyterian Church in the suburbs had a totally different tack than the inner-city storefront church. Youth pastors adapted a missionary mindset depending on the "tribe" of kids they were reaching. Those various tribes each had their own music, slang language, dress codes and even moral codes so each youth ministry looked different.

i don't know if the youth ministry of the 80's has an influence on the emerging church.. i wasn't really in youth group till the later part of the 80's. however, i've always said churches like vineyard are youth group churches. boomer churches that wanted a youth group feel that was centered more around a contemporary music set than a set theology.

so i don't have any problem with this analogy, except to say.. i am, as a youth minister, trying to seek out different ways to "do" church & subsequently youth ministry far away from the ways it was profiled for me in the 80's. the conversation of the emergent church is one way, my life of monastic practice, and an immersion into the community & missional life of the church.

i saw that there was a disconnect with the youth being separate from the congregational body of the church. before what i thought was needed was cool music, a secular analogy, and some damn game that had nothing to do with anything. today, it's getting involved in choir (not just youth choir), being liturgist, multi-aged bible studies, surrounding with adults, a youth gathering that is liturgical in nature, teachings of the traditions and stories of the church & scriptures. all this to allow youth to find places into church life that are familiar, meaningful, inspiring.. far from lame

the church can adapt, but a whole new church isn't needed. not if we see our ministry of the church as full participant into the life of the youth. but then again, i don't know, i wasn't there... at least in the 80's. maybe i should revisit this is 2026

are these two the same

i have come to understand more and more in my life that words are very meaningful. thus, choosing the right words is important (not something i always exemplify here, i know that). ever more powerful is putting the right words into a phrasing. so it is when i read news articles (or articles saying they are news) that i get disturbed when i find words put into phrases that i do not think work together, but only bring about harmful results. latest example has come from this article.

The Prime Minister, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi, has lauded the firm stand the Anglican communion has taken against homosexuality and other perverted practices.

the emphasis is mine, i did that to bring attention to what i take issue with. i will say that i take issue with it as it wasn't illustrated as a quote from one person, but a synopsis of what they said. so let the word smithing begin.

i can accept the on going conversation on homosexuality within the church (i use "conversation" because that's how i like to think my approach is, i know for many it is a done deal or an all out fight). i can't accept, and others should not either, the throwing of homosexuality into the same world of "perverted practices." if you were going to do this, at least have the courtesy to expand on what those practices are, ie. wrongful suing, not holding the door for someone.

huh?

the dictionary would define "perverted" as to turn away from what is right or good. only one translation that i could find actually mentioned sexuality, most mentioned justice as a cite example.

wanna take a stab at practices?

in the context of this sentence we are to assume that homosexuality is a "perverted practice" but what does that mean? by the definitions we could assume it to be the same as not holding open a door in this context. better use would be to say sexual perversion, that might reference on a medical terminology. however, even then it is shameful to group it into the same practice of neophilia? they are not the same

how cool!!

how cool, jen lemen is back. i caught her on the tail end of her blogging days a couple of years back, but got enough to know that i liked her and look forward to future days. i love her new look too

asbury leadership change?

according to josh, president greenway has resigned his post as president of asbury theological seminary. i'm sure we'll know more later... asbury bloggers get on your news horses!!

who is in charge of changing seminary wikipedia page?

should this be true, i wonder what direction the educational institution will go? from my outsiders understanding, asbury was pretty conservative (still is) in teachings and practice, yet very practical. under greenways leadership i had heard that it had developed some progressive tendencies and theologies. could the change be due to a conflict of old & new school thoughts?

Update (again, via Cole):

From the Asbury Communications Office—

This is to announce that Dr. Jeff Greenway is on an indefinite leave of absence effective Sept. 1, 2006. This leave of absence is with pay and without presidential duties. This leave in no way reflects improper behavior or indiscretions. The President’s Leadership Steering Team, consisting of the Vice Presidents ‘and the Associate Provosts’ offices with the assistance of the Chairman of the Board will carry out the administrative functions as per normal operations.

The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees will convene Tuesday, September 5 for the regularly scheduled fall meeting. The Executive Committee will address any necessary administrative issues at that time. Any decisions or additional information will be communicated to the Asbury Seminary community in a timely manner.

tuesday randomness

some quick thoughts from around the world...

• kurtis blow taking the hip hop church on the road, do i need to expand on this?
• uh, buddy, you ain't Jesus
• just tear down the old thing and put up one of these
• you better watch out, posing as a pastor! these guys are going to find you and beat you up!
• roman empire, whatever! Saint Gregory the Great didn't have to deal with FoxNews!
• "let's get together and tell stories, let's just hope the church doesn't find out" oops, they did

blogger buddy

a new friend, brett has started up a new blog... he had an old one (so he told me), but this is a new look and start up. he's the funniest young adult methodist local pastor serving shiloh umc in tennessee. heck, anyone who has allowed a dinosaur into the sanctuary (and i don't mean old folks) is has got to be cool.

:: the johnny foreigner ::

beat up, full & needing a nap

my bro threw me a cool bachelor party this weekend. a bunch of friends came in from out of town, did a little hanging out as people gathered then we went off for a camp trip filled with laughs, campfire, food, and a caving adventure. home now, people are back on planes and their ways home. i'm home now with new pictures, a sore body, and a full belly.

my flickr photos

good bye miss cindy

you were a light unto this world, giving your many gifts to the people & children of the church and the community. many times you were pushed down, but you got back up and smiled your way through, generally followed by a joke of some nature. a faith that was unshakable, a heart that was unbreakable, you brought inspiration to so many.

on wednesday you left us all, there was to be no more fighting. to joe and children, thank you for sharing your wife & mother with us. we will never forget her

Cynthia MCHENRY
August 30, 2006
Age 47 of Hendersonville, August 30, 2006. Preceded in death by father, Wayne Johnson. She leaves her husband, Joe McHenry; son, Kevin Callas; step-son, James McHenry; step-daughter, Susan Simmons; mother, Joann Johnson; brothers, Dennis, Jeffrey and John Johnson; sisters, Dianna Miniat and Heather Johnson; 2 step-grandchil-dren, Timothy Minton and Anna Cook. Services will be 2 p.m. Saturday, September 2, 2006 at First United Methodist Church of Hendersonville, Rev. Michael Williams officiating. Interment to follow at Spring Hill Cemetery. Visitation with the family will be Thursday, 2 until 5 and 7 until 9 p.m., at the funeral home and Saturday, 12 Noon until service time at the church. SPRING HILL FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY, (615) 865-1101.

related article: my breast friends

weekend oddities

i just don't know what to think...

• i'm all about a good poop joke, but tom, this is rediculous... thanks john
• i can agree with being against abortion, but common, she's 11 years old!!
• first pluto is not a planet, now the pope is recondering evolution.. it's the end of the world as we know, and i feel fine! maybe you're just messing with the youngsters
• church of lds explains its views on homosexuality through it's website. not it's missionaries?