What we're doing when we blog

A day at...

I'm leaving in a few minutes to take a group down to Valleyfair for a day of rollercoasters, rides, etc... This is an annual gig. Every year we do this as a summer kick off. Every year I say to myself "why are we doing this right now?" We leave in 3 days on a 12 day mission trip. Couldn't this be timed out better?

Oh well...it is what it is...

And I love rollercoasters!

Onto another topic for just a moment...is anyone else just absolutely amazed and somewhat dismayed by what qualifies as news today? The Michael Jackson story is another sign of the decline of our civilization. Not that it happened. But in how it is being covered and in how people care. It blows me away... We live in a world with really significant issues, and the amount of resources being spent on watching this event is incredible. It actually makes me a little bit sad. Actually, anything on the over of People Magazine does the same thing.

A sigh of relief

The process is complete. Yesterday, after a 2-hour interview I was unanimously approved by my candidacy committee.

It was an interesting conversation. It was a reminder to me that much of theolgoy is about semantics. Language is everything.

The committee was made up of:

• 1 urban pastor.
• 1 suburban pastor.
• 1 elementary school principal.
• 1 hospital chaplain/cpe supervisor.

Each person had their own agenda and their own language to describe it.

Yes, I know that the end result of the suffering is the resurrection, both for Christ and for the people of God.

Yes, I know that grace always comes first in the equation of God's forgiveness, and that the action of suffering, death and resurrection are not necessarily linear events in God's timeline.

But it's more about how the question is asked than anything else. At moments I wanted to shout "what answers do you want from me?"

But overall it went very well. The difficult questions were minor in the scheme of things.

I am thankful

Musings of an Emergent Postmodern Negro: Emergent and the issue of Race

Musings of an Emergent Postmodern Negro: Emergent and the issue of Race

Interesting stuff...these are important contributions to the conversation.

T-79 minutes and counting

My final "approval" interview for ordination begins at 10:30am down at the synod office in downtown Minneapolis. I'm sitting at Panera right now. My plan is to be reading everything I've written in the past 6 months in the process so that I can discuss and answer questions.

I'm stalling.

Once I get past today, assuming I am approved, the process is basically complete. How weird is that? One year ago the idea of ordination was just a question I was keeping comfortably in the back of my mind. Now, it's moved beyond a possibility to a probability.

God's Spirit works in strange ways.