Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

wordpress heaven

have you wordpress people seen this site? it has a ton of themes that look really good. makes me wanna move over to wordpress, almost..

babies everywhere!

yesterday i got word that one of my oldest and best friends steve had a baby boy, john davis (they actually went old school and didn't find out the sex). earlier in wekk my little bro calls with news of them finding out about their upcoming child being a girl. yesterday the call was that they decided on a name (madalyn rose).

this evening, my ole partner in crime jenny had her little boy (glancy taylor). those of you in east nashville might know jenny as the ice cream lady (pied piper creamery). if you are a frequent ice cream person then you won't see her for a week or so, maybe month. you might even see us richardson's, erin volunteered us to be scoopers so that the east nashville neighborhood didn't have to go without their "trailer trash" fix. i would be resurrecting my high school employment skills, which might be traumatic, but for my buddy, anything.

jenny and i met in '94 as college kids doing short term mission work at mountain top. we were friends instantly. i spent many of our camp breaks at her folks house taking the other half of her little brother's bunk bed. it wasn't long i was officially unofficial son to the piper family.

for those that are curious, the name glancy comes from one of the camps that we both served at. jenny had some great times and great relationships there. one older gentleman, named jasper, even proposed to jenny he loved her that much.

one way to find a youth leader

i get emails every so often about new job openings. generally under the guise of "if you have friends to recommend" which i sometimes do, most often not. i also get emails about how to go about finding a new youth leader. this seems to be some group who actually listened to an idea the youth probably came up with. tip to jason

methoblogger down!

hey all methoblogger friends,

i come out of a short computer sabbath to find out that jay's world has ended. apparently his isp service accidentally canceled his account. so, you can't find the methoblog or his personal blog at this time. we are not sure how long it will take to get everything back up again. from what i know their most recent back up, that doesn't have kinks in it dates back to july. this will probably mean that we are going to have to do the redesign again and also ask folks who have gotten plugged in the last few months to check in and possibly sign in with the site again.

in good news. as it looks the blogroll is still functioning, allan will be posting the weekly round up. we have many capable people in the rest of the methoblogosphere that can pick up some of the slack highlighting new posts from friends (the primary purpose of the aggregator & site).. and john is still crazy.

update: the methoblog is back up and being reconstructed. jay is asking everyone to set up a new account with the site as we begin rebuilding.

may you be blessed for your blessing

i have my problems with war, but also my problems with pacifism. i struggle in this middle ground where people i know & love and people i don't know & may give lip service to loving, have sacrificed for me over the years so i can at least have the opportunity to live in this middle ground. for that i am most grateful for all our veterans & active soldiers.

on this veterans day recognition, or armistice day, i want to recognize my little bro & his folks from the 278th National Guard Armored Calvary. thank you for your service to our country, allowing me the freedoms i have, and helping to bring home my brother safely during ya'lls last tour of duty. may you all be blessed for the blessings you give unto us. may you one day be able to beat your sword into plowshares and spear into pruning hooks, that we may not take up war anymore.

my "little" bro, my hero

ps: for those following this as a family site. shawn & tiff's new arrival in march will be named Madalyn Rose Richardson!

rather disturbing

it's been awhile since i really looked at godtube. this is probably the kind of video that will keep me from really taking it seriously. tip josh

what a blast!

  Licorne 2 
  Originally uploaded by Pierre J..

follow the picture for more pictures of french army thermonuclear tests. it is weird to see this is beauty and know that it is killing of beauty. tip jordon cooper

what does google read

so what does google read to become.. a new verb. the primary everything for the internet? mitch has the scoop

look me up in atlanta

any friends going to atlanta next week for the national youth workers convention then look me up. i will be there as part of youthworker movement and hopefully interviewing many of the fine people there for the podcast. so if you are in atlanta for youth ministry stuff or maybe you actually live there, then give me a shout.

my new parenting book

erin & i don't have children, yet, so i am considering this book my first official parenting book. at least within our married life together.

in the past i have been schooled in the matters of children and development, taught parenting classes, even delivered a child (simulated) when i was testing out for my emt. so it's not the first training book i've read. i probably will re-read all that stuff (maybe not the delivery stuff, it's just gross) when life comes around to human children. till then, i share what promises to be the best parenting book for our family as it is today.

i don't talk about them too much, but we have two wonderful dogs. coe (pronounced, co-ee), named after my friend who was murdered a year or two prior. she's been with me since '97. crimson, our delinquent teenage daughter, who has been with us since erin & i started dating almost five years ago. they are such an integral part of our lives, i'm not sure what we'd do without them. so i pick up some wisdom to better know how to treat our children.. a parenting book

the monks of new skete have been on my radar for a few years now. i have two books of theirs currently, i guess after today, three. i love their way, the integration of wisdom from so many voices, and a gentle spirit in presenting their understandings. this is a training book and a big book at that, but for those parents of dogs it looks to be a fine read.

the glimpses of light, found on myspace

as a youth pastor, or pastor in general (i guess, i've never been a church pastor), there are many discouraging moments where you just wonder if the people in your charge get it. they do stuff or say things that make your eyes roll and you cry out, "good grief!"

it is with that we smile and celebrate the small victories. one of our youth community has started this series of blog postings on his myspace (not sure if that link will work for you). the general title being "troubles and conflicts concerning Christianity and religion in general," i know, simple enough. his questions are great self-reflections and certainly in line with what many his age are experiencing. so i was pretty stoked to see another youth from our community give some great responses. this is just a piece

I believe my faith is worth nothing unless i question it, and thats the amazing thing about faith. While it is constant, it reshapes, weakens, strengthens, and is always different. Faith to me is believing without having to see physical or scientific proof of whatever it is that created you and me.

The ideals of most people these days have become very hollow, shallow and full of nothing but fluff and filler. I can walk in to most church services and get only this from the message "God sent his son to die for you"

it is the same thing that is spit out to most Christians continuously and while our faith is being tarnished we remain silent in our pews. Yes, Jesus died for us, but it does not stop there. It isn't all about spiritual highs, being committed to God is literally being committed to the living enigma that designed every single living thing around you and knowing that you are still a piece of filth.What I mean by that is once we commit to God we tend to get a big head and think we are more worthy of grace and love than the atheists,satanists, the gays we prosecute(for who knows why),the abortionists, and the sinners in general. We get the idea that you accept God into your heart and thats it, just make sure you show up on time on Sunday. That in fact, is why most people really don't have any strong reasons to support their belief. God is alive, and most people treat him like some uncle from out of town they never see (totally stealing that analogy from Blue Like Jazz) or a picture on the wall.

If people would open their eyes and see the small ways he works throughout the world through good and bad, we might begin to understand why not only we believe in him (for even demons believe in him) but why we FOLLOW him. If you put your heart where your mouth is, then you will know what it is you believe.

boo-yah! well done!.. and where he started reading blue like jazz.. not my doing, but i'm pretty stoked by it. maybe they are getting it..

google juice prayer stations

hey all, would you do a shameless favor. i have this one post that keeps appearing in google rankings for "prayer stations" i'd like to change that. help a brother out and link to the prayer stations index that i put together a while back. make it easier for folks to find stuff in this site. i don't care to make it to number one in google, i already have that. i would just rather people find the information they are looking for faster.

so give a link shout to "prayer stations" ideas or whatever and link to this prayer stations index page.

will samson in nashville

will samson dropped in today to our little emergent cohort group. the entertaining part was that we got booted from our normal spot at the flying saucer. oh well, we got the non-garden garden area to have our little chat. the one problem is that the garden is pretty noisy, so as i looked over the group i wondered if they were having to work so hard to listen and understand that there was little energy left for developing some challenging questions for our group. oh well..

for those in town he is speaking at saint b's in green hills tonight as part of our cohort ministry. come hear about justice in the suburbs. things i am pondering from this afternoon, inspired by will's thoughts, continued on with my own ramblings.

• if 'i think therefore i am' is true, then our ideas make up our identity. to question or tell someone their ideas are wrong is not just questioning their thought but questioning their identity as a person.. no wonder people get so defensive..
• people want to hear of, read of, and maybe act on this idea of moving into the urban environment to make a difference to the poor and marginalized there. but, the flaw is that not all can move into that area physically speaking and to do that would deny that poor marginalized folks are not in the suburban context one lives in now.
• the suburban construct of 'moving up' that we enhanced living by moving out of the city, then this house is a staying point till we can move to a bigger house, to an even bigger house. something i can resonate within my hendersonville community. i've heard that everyone's goal is to move to where they can get onto the lake.. hmmm.. erin & i have already discussed (and will probably discuss further) how we can raise and shape our family within the home that we currently live in. it's super small for the family numbers we are talking and todays idea of what a house needs.
• we need to seek justice because it is our way & our conviction, not so that we can have one-up or talking points to share with people to convict them at every moments notice.
• politics are okay.. political processes, not so much. too often people only get involved in politics is when it effects them (which someone framed later, that is with all things) then they get involved and passionate. which, from my understandings, it is probably too late to affect change at that point..
• a vow of stability.. getting into my monastic rule here. saying, this is where i am to be because God is doing things here, over this is a stepping stone till i can move to____. staying within a system (church/education/political) so as to affect change and reshape over trying to go out and start a new thing. new thing is easier, cheaper, but work the current systems to make them work, instead of just making new systems that will inevitably butt heads and probably become stalemate.

maybe the apocalypse is upon us

with things like this, the apocalypse must be upon us. i like one of the commentors statement

"its tubby's fault"

myspace geek not geeky enough

i am not sure what i was expecting, but as i listened and then skipped through this announcement of google's upcoming open social i found myself saying.. "huh" to the myspace ceo guy who introduced their partnership with the app. (fast forward to around 51st minute to see what i am mentioning, the first 10 minutes is good to get an idea of the open social premise). not quite what i would expect, maybe tom.. i hope this doesn't mean more pirates fighting ninja's and zombies..

not so smart youth ministry games

when you have been involved in youth ministry for as long as i have you begin to wonder about some of the games. i have almost sworn off games, but they are good for team building or some metaphor type teaching moment. still, i get confused by some games.. honestly, is this really a good idea for a game? i loved this quote

Two students and one Campus Life volunteer swallowed fish. No student was singled out or forced to participate, and no student was harmed.

now. this game i would just want to play just for my own enjoyment to see it happen.

article tip to old friend jeremy who teaches in lincoln

random linkage

• shopocalypse.. for real? i don't know
• a very cool video on what worship is/isn't
• the rock star worship leader
• andrew shares the reveal... i like diana butler bass's perspective as well
• someone is mad at "fundamentalist" youth specialties.. i've even commented
• lifeway has figured out the solution for the decline in youth in church... or do they just think they have?
  
• wanna see my lame charge conference report?.. i wasn't prepared to completely delete it.. so i put it on google video
• giuliani has the blessing of the prophet... self-proclaimed as he may be
• i continue to be impressed by natalie... if i hadn't actually met her, i wouldn't believe her to be real
• "The African is in no respect inferior to the European." -john wesley
• has hillary clinton's united methodist church moved "so far left" ??.. i'd think not. i'm pretty proud of a church that has room for a hillary and gdub.

zombeatles

this is for you john. thanks newscoma

what if you don't love yourself?

this was a question i was pondering last night. we had our charge conference, for those non-methodisty folks, it is essentially a state of the church meeting; what we did this past year, what is going well, or not so well, visions and ideas for the future. our pastor put forth a fab presentation on our vision for the coming years plus some action steps. one action step comes from scripture.. you might have heard of it before.

Love God, Love Neighbor, Love self

when i was looking over this a new question came to me. "what if people don't love themselves?" "how do we expect people to love their neighbor if they don't love themselves?"

so the ideas swirled around. so much is brought out today that the need for cultivating a child's self-esteem, diagnosis's of depression seem to be greater and greater (the use of drugs in modifying behavior is seems endless), campaigns to help people feel good about themselves, suicide rates increase, anger, yearning for social status, divorce, dealing with sexuality, or self-destructive behaviors. with all this, and more, for a person's self to potentially deal with and come to love about themselves. am i out of line to suggest that most people in our lives have little love for self that they can't possibly know how to extend love to neighbor. maybe the love they extend to their neighbor is the same type of love that they have for themselves?

i know for me, i express to teens that they need to love their neighbor. i have some ideas on how that looks, so maybe i can love my neighbors as myself, there is a point that i do love myself.. some days more than others. to expect the mass population of the community i am blessed with, they might not be to a point where they can love themselves, to love a neighbor, or to even love God or be loved by God... now that is tragic

bachelor blogging

the wife is away for a few days in atlanta for a business conference thing. so i am bach-ing it. potential for a whole lot of posting..

a new day revolution

stopped in last night, amid some pretty fancy storms, to davis-kidd in green hills to catch up with sam & his nashville book signing. when i got there i think there were just three or four folks, by the time the thing was over we might have had 25-30 folks. standing room only. saw rob there, but didn't get to chat. had some fun butt picture jokes with lynnette. otherwise had a great time, bought my copy, looked at buying some other friends books, but figured i'd wait again till i can get from cokesbury with my 20% pastor's discount.

if you haven't already gotten your copy of new day revolution you need too. the premise is very cool. set up is different than the normal, 'make change' book. you get some excellent music as well. beyond that, make sure to sign up with cool people care.

this is about right

tip allan

what goes around comes around

since i've been talking so much more about college football this fall than ever before i might as well share this.. hahaha!

i have few kind feelings franchione after leaving bama in the manner he did. not telling the players by face, but over a conference call, just tacky. he talked of the team first but took off after a number of players put off surgeries that could have extended playing career, but eliminated their college career (due to rehab timeframes) because of the team. they believed in what he was selling, but he didn't even believe in it.

gone fishin

  gone fishin 
  Originally uploaded by gavoweb.

just some weekend pictures from our family reunion. they come from my cell phone. so nothing spectacular quality wise.

my evening

i'll be heading over to meet up with sam & his peeps for his recent book release signing. won't be there too long, did i mention that wifey is not feeling well?

suing the church

local folks are wondering if there will be more suing of churches that are not affiliated with larger denominations..

emerging church tv

someone had the fine idea of doing a blog on all things emergent church & youtube.

emergingchurch.tv

home from jury duty

for about 3 hours i served my duty to the great metropolitan government of nashville (as did tom). yup, jury duty. i actually got there crazy early because i forgot to reset the home clock. erin & i were working on the cell phones all weekend. got there no problem, got in no problem. i was one of the first jurors to show up which was uneventful. as is normal with me i took in some observations.

• people don't seem to be so uptight like at traffic court or similar such. i guess cause they know they haven't done anything wrong. still most folks don't seem to want to entertain talking to each other
• some people must be hold overs from last week. there is a group that seems to know each other and are much more interactive with each other... one noticeable part, they don't ad-hear to those unspoken spacing rules, they actually sit in chairs next to one another.
• there was a femullet in the crowd.. a really good one at that. i thought they were extinct, but this is a thing of beauty. the lady actually has some nice straight blonde hair.. unsure why she insists on the femullet. unless she truly is a business in the front, party in the back kind of person.
• i got called in the first random group of 30. our case had a kidnapping charge to it, but from the sounds of it this was going to look more like a domestic dispute.
• this court stuff takes a loooong time. not nearly as long as in new york.
• i never got called into the jury box. it took a bit for us all to get a jury for the case. seems like if you had any unsolved crime that happened to you (ie. broken into your house and they never caught the sucker) that was grounds for quick removal. the lady next to me & i joked that they were trying to stack the deck with middle aged white me.. which we were not. that seemed to be the 'random' trend for picking potential jurors after first 12 got sifted through.
• after the jury got filled out i expected we were going to get thrown back into the pool. but, seems that all the weeks cases got taken care. so everyone in our leftovers got to go home. all celebrated!
  

now home from jury duty to help take care of sick wifey. to all you citizens of nashville, "your welcome."

bummer...

bummer... we stayed in it, but my team just couldn't get over the hump of beating lsu this year. one thing though, lsu doesn't have the full package to be a consensus number one. too many penalties, turnovers makes for some chink in the armor. still, they are probably going to kill whomever they face in a bowl game. at least with this win you won't have to see les miles go on some lame rant about his team again.

haha! you tell em'

haha! you tell em' dixon.. i get so annoyed with the newest catch phrase for church marketing

the fuzzy social network

hanging out with my niece & nephews this weekend for our annual family reunion weekend. so far i have learned of this new fuzzy social networking site. it's called webkinz, all the niece & nephews have this stuffed animal called a webkinz. they come with a little login identity (ala a cabbage patch). the login gets you into the webkinz world where you take quizzes, decorate a room, and can trade codes to go play with your other friends. even have them over to your room. we've been decorating today one of my 5 year old nephews room. his room is looking more like a college dorm. typical guy...

no grand pontifications, but look for stuff like this to be the next myspace & facebooks

praying for my past

i have mentioned it before that my first experiences in Christian leadership were through mountain t.o.p. a short term missions experience for youth & adults. i spent 5 summers through the early and late 90's as a staff person. one of the places i spent a large bulk of time was camp glancy, in sequatchie county tennessee, inbetween jasper and whitwell (pronounced whi-wll). one of the cool spots that we helped serve was a town called orme. orme was nestled up on the backside of a plateau hill east of south pittsburgh. you accessed it through a winding mountain road, or a back road that took you into alabama. when you got to town you went to wayne's house. wayne knew all the people in town and who needed help. he would also give you a sundrop, which was the nectar for the summer.

i read this article, via ken, that orme is experiencing some serious consequences from the recent drought we've experienced. not that i can help it rain either, but i am praying for my friends in the little community of orme.

always finish with a quote

one of my all time favorite movies is american history x. not sure why, probably because it ends so badly and that seems more real to me than most movies out there. or it could be the happy thoughts of the complete transformation of soul, ideology & passion of a man. that's pretty cool. the movie has nothing to do with this post except to reference that towards the end of the movie the younger brother is writing an essay, he says his older brother (the two being the central figures) always said "always finish with a quote, someone else has said it better than you" or something to that effect. it just came to mind...

so in my adolescent response to willow creeks recent repenting. i'm going to quote diana butler bass, who i feel actually finds words to the source of some of my shallow thinking.

"We made a mistake," says Hybels: "What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self-feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

Notice what Hybels says is missing: intentionality, practice, and vitality. Or, as the Leadership blog put it, "Spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. These basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage."

To point this out is not "I told you so." Rather, this is a profound development in North American congregational life. When one of the nation's leading programmatic churches says that programs do not work and that their vision of spiritual maturity was "wrong," we best all sit up and take notice.

For more than a decade, a quiet renewal has been spreading across American religion and is changing the way faith is experienced and practiced. Willow Creek's self-doubt is indication of that change.

halloween fun

last night we had over some buddies for halloween which is our first real social tradition of the richardson house. that and maybe the menu, chili & grilled cheese.. with the assorted crackers/chips and salsa and hummus dip.

we chilled out on the front porch chatting while the little kids came through with their costumes. there most definitely was a run on ninja/samurai and pirate outfits. we hoped to see a collision of ninjas versus pirates before the night ended. that could make a good movie..

our favorite scare was the "demon." we were having a nice chat with a little girl when some teen kid comes crawling up on all fours in a total black outfit. spooked us.. he didn't have a bag, so in asking the demon about where to put candy he said he just had to eat it between houses.. that can't be good.

the craziness of the evening happened when we noticed the police helicopter flying around the neighborhood. then noticed the kids had disappeared.. "should we head inside?" then police driving down the streets. the helicopter lights even went down our street, that's a first. one of the neighbors stopped a cop to get the 411. apparently a little boy got lost & they were looking for him. probably not our classy act was making some jokes that sounded kinda like "oh yeah, he's in here eating our food." cops and helicopter went away about 30 minutes later & with no news reports today, i assume all is well.

the trick or treaters thinned out and the neighborhood started to fall asleep. lights turning off, neighbors packing up the hayride and decorations. we called it a night sometime afterwards, fun food, good conversations, laughs, and some handfuls of candy to boot. good times