Vacation Day 3-6

To all of you who became incessantly worried when my daily vacation updates ceased lol (Here's to you Wood!)

Monday we went to the beach. I have this disease. It is the "Extreme Caucasian Boy Disease" or E.C.B. People with E.C.B. apply, reapply and lather themselves with suntan lotion and still end up lobsteresque. ECB is an embarrassing disease because everyone on the beach can see that you have the disease the moment your shirt comes off. Your non ECB wife is sittin' there all tan and hot in her new hair cut and there you are, ECB, overweight and covered with manly chest hair. There is no cure.

Tuesday we went to the beach again. Nothing overly exciting. Just beautiful weather. The nice thing about going to Hilton Head at the end of August is that there is virtually no one there. Everyone was heading back to school. After the beach we got dolled up and went to a bed and breakfast in Savannah. This was the absolute highlight of the trip for me. I love history and nature and the two really hit it off in Savannah. We stayed at Bed and Breakfast Inn in the Egyptian Room. Here's a note for you men. If you are ever looking at room options for a bed and breakfast...pick the one with the floral design that you think is gaudy. I saw all the rooms in this place online and chose the Egyptian room because it had some cool color schemes (by cool, I mean more manly.) We climbed to the top floor of this b&b and passed "Magnolia" and other female sounding rooms and we finally arrived at our getaway resort. We walked in and Shaina says, "You picked this room?" DOH! We had a nice stroll through Savannah, ate at a quaint little restaurant and then had some gelato at Gelatoohhhhh's.

Wednesday, we went to Mrs. Wilke's for lunch. It was fantastic. Go there. It is a one of a kind dining experience and they are only open from 11-2.

Thursday was another beach day and then we took the dogs to a little doggy park and then took them to the beach at high tide. We had four full size dogs...not fru fru dogs, no ankle biters...300 pounds of canine. Boone, the 120 pound Yellow lab played in the ocean for nearly an hour. When we got home we watched a movie and Boone yacked....twice...a puddle of seaweed and saltwater that covered half the living room carpet. It was the most amazing vomit spectacle I've ever witnessed.

Friday, beach one more time and then the return trip which saw us arrive at 3 a.m. Saturday morning. it was a great trip. more to come on some other things that are happening.

Vacation Day 2

We went to church at Live Oak Christian Church today. It was a good time of worship. The pastor preached for his second time since being hired to replace the man who planted the church. He did a solid job. Good times were had by all. The worship leader did "Only You" by David Crowder. That song had flown off my radar for a long time. I like it alot.

My mom, sister, Shaina and I decided to head to the beach this evening. We loaded up a 6 week old baby and four good sized dogs and went. We had our hands full. Shadow, my dog since I was 17 had her first encounter with the ocean in years. She drank the salt water, peed and pooped in the water and then threw up 4 times while we were on the beach. It was hilarious...at least for us. Woe to the unsuspecting early morning jogger who takes the illadvised step into half day old yack.

I enjoy the free time to simply rest. I am going to add 1 Peter to my reading goals for the week. Yesterday I read in chapter one that we are filled with Living Hope. Those words have stuck with me...Does my life resemble hope for those who see me? Does yours?

Vacation Day 1

Got to my sister's at about 3:30 this morning. Slept from 4-10 and then just chillaxed. We did some swimming, hunted for sharks teeth (this is not a skill of mine), and wrapped the night up with Cheeburger Cheeburger.

The restaurant is great. Onion rings great. Burgers great...stomach afterwards...ick. lol.

I am going to get a shower, settle down for the evening and read some more of Mclaren's book. It is getting really good.

Going to church with my sister tomorrow morning and then maybe over to Savannah for Late Church. (www.latechurch.net I could get used to this.

beach reads

I have three books that I want to delve into in a week. They are very different books, but none of them really deal with church growth or any other seminary reading. Mclaren's book "Everything Must Change" is one that I have mentioned on here before. I haven't touched it in a week. It seems like it will get better soon. It is riddled with theory, systems and structures. More on this in my next post. He does bring up the major global crises of our day and believes that the ethic and example of Jesus will catalyze a solution.

The Shack is fiction. I haven't read a fiction book in years. (DaVinci Code was the last one I read) I just wanted something to get lost in. It's on the NewYork Times Bestseller List. I really don't know what it's about but it is supposed to have a Christian bent to it.

A Problem From Hell is a book I picked up about a year ago and just haven't had a chance to look at. It examines our country's foreign policy and suggests that we have had the exact same response to every worldwide happening of genocide...We have gotten our people out and let it happen. This is not a Christian book but it deals with some controversial moves that today's global empire has made. This will be an interesting read.

What is the best book you have ever read?

softballs, baseballs and beachballs

This past Tuesday, our church softball team's cinderella run through the playoffs struck midnight. I'd like to say that if there wasn't a home run fence, we would have won, but that'd be lying. I think our 21 errors on defense may have contributed to our defeat lol. It was a good ride and I got to know a few guys through playing. Our offseason workout program has begun...I ate 3 pieces of pizza last night...I did curls as I lifted them to my mouth.


On Wednesday, my buddy Scott and I went to the Indians game. After their amazing run last year, we decided to go in together and buy a 6 pack of games so that we'd have good seats down the final stretch. It turns out the Indians have had a horrible year, plagued by injuries, traded away key players and have pretty much given up for this season. But anyways, the game was great. At one point in the 8th inning, the Indians were up 7-5. They only had 5 hits in the game at this juncture and all 5 of them were homeruns. I am pretty sure that would have been unprecedented in baseball. Cliff Lee pitched Thursday and got his 18th win. Any baseball fans out there? Who should get the Cy Young Award?

I have had a ridiculous week. It ended last night with a team of us taking welcome baskets to a new development at the edge of Wadsworth. I drive by it everyday and just felt like we needed to do something. We found out there will actually be 106 houses in the development (there are 20 now.) We need to go back to the drawing board about how to welcome so many people to our community. It was a really good night though and I am proud of the young adults who stepped up (and out of the comfort zones) to go meet total strangers.

Today has been a day I have waited for. I don't work at the pizza shop. I have a couple hours of church stuff to wrap up and then its off to the BEACH! Shaina, Shadow, my mom, and I are leaving around 4 p.m. to go to the Hilton Head area for a week to see my sister/brother-in-law/new baby nephew! This is the first time in my life where I just NEED a vacation. It's not that I want to get out of what I'm doing. I just need to detach. You know what I mean?

We are driving through the night, so if you read this between 4 p.m. and 4 a.m. pray for us!

rock it.

What song are you most likely to have playing on repeat in your car/ipod/computer?

Hillsong United's "Mighty to Save" has been my go to song the last week or two. Yes...it rocks my face off.

What's with the Translations of the Bible?

I want to spend a couple paragraphs explaining as best as a guy can who doesn't understand all the complexities of the issue but has a little light to shed on this important question.

A few different people in the last few weeks have had an epiphany of sorts and recognized that the NIV (and other modern translations) are missing verses in the NT. Where the NIV skips a verse, The KJV has the verse there. (For instance Matthew 17:21).

Many people make the claim that the modern translations are faulty or less accurate...or not the Bible because these verses are "deleted". Therefore the KJV is the only acceptable translation.

Here is what happened:

In the 1600's, the translators of the KJV set to task to translate the Bible to English. They did the best that they could with the resources they had, but their sources that they were translating from were LATE. Some of the texts were from 1000 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. In some more peculiar instances, they didn't have access to Greek at all and had to translate from the Latin Vulgate what they thought the Greek said.

What has happened in the last 400 years is that we have discovered over 500 sources that are MUCH OLDER than the sources used in the KJV. Some of them date clear back to 200 c.e! What scholars discovered in all of these ancient manuscripts is that certain verses were not present. These verses were inserted (Added) to the original manuscripts by scribes. (Keep in mind that the scriptures were copied by hand to be passed on for centuries...there were no computers, thumbdrives, etc.) The KJV (to no fault of the translators) translated these verses that were not originally present in the text. The KJV is an inaccurate translation because of this. It has verses that are not part of the original manuscripts.

The NIV, NASB and NRSV are all utilizing these BETTER RESOURCES in translation. Therefore verses that weren't there originally have once again been removed to try to capture the authentic, true nature of the scriptures.

So Which Translation is the Best?
The NIV is an okay translation. It was translated by a team of conservative, evangelical scholars. This results in a slight conservative, evangelical bent on some passages.

If I recall correctly, the NASB is very wooden in its translation. It tries to translate the verse, word by word. When a translation does this too rigidly, a lot of the nuances of the text are missed. If there is a euphemism or pun in the text, it misses it. The NASB sometimes misses the heart of what a text is trying to imply.

The NRSV is the best translation available. It was translated by a scholarly group that consisted of evangelicals, pentecostals, roman catholics (i think?), and jews (?). This eliminated the bent to one type of bias. They also sought to maintain the heart of what a text was saying while maintaining its integrity as well.

Is this helpful? Would you add anything? Disagree with anything?

Olympics

I have had a chance to catch some of the Olympics when I get home at night. It actually works out well, because the timing of some of the really cool events works out to be around 11 or 12 our time, which is generally time that I am free haha.

I used to think gymnastics, particularly men's gymnastics were for total pansies. I'm changing my mind on this. The stuff that they are able to do is phenomenal. I think my favorite thing to watch is the high bar. There is such a great deal of risk in that event. If you miss, you are toast.

If you had tickets to one event for the Olympics in Beijing, what would be your top choice?

Really? Wooowwww!

I am pumped. Do people say that anymore?

Stoked? Amped up? exuberantly positive?

I had a staff retreat yesterday with our church staff. We went to Lakeside. It was certainly productive. I feel like we have a clearer more effective approach to ministry in the works that will (hopefully) increase the lines of communication, empower God's people, and limit the number of meetings I have to attend (always a plus).

Anyways, stay tuned to hear what the Lord is doing as this moves forward.

My name is Ben and I'm a workaholic

<----Lori (a.k.a. Wags) is the funny kid in the green!

Shaina and I had dinner with a good friend of ours last night. Lori is raising support to go on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. When I was a senior at Mount Union College, she was a freshmen. My friend/co-leader, Jess and I empowered a group of freshmen to run with the ministry that we had started from the ground up (really God started it...cuz by golly we had no clue what we were doing.)

Long story short: Lori and others took over the ministry and did a phenomenal job. The group doubled (maybe tripled?) in size from where we had left it and they made disciples. It gets me all warm and fuzzy just thinking about the work they did for the Lord.

Anyways, she called me out on something last night. She told me that I needed to do what I was called to do/passionate about and not fill needs that I saw in areas outside my calling. It's sorta funny because I spoke at Mount Union on that very topic a couple years ago. Practice what you preach right?

I have this knack for getting excited about ministry. I might even be a tadbit visionary. I get ideas, many of them outside of the box of typical ministry. Some of them I keep my mouth shut about, but when I do speak up, sometimes people like the ideas and say "Let's do it!" and I say "Woohoo" and when the job responsibilities get divided I take on too much. I have been working insane hours at the church. I love it...but I also love my wife...I love the guys that I play basketball with...I love my dog Shadow...and I love my sanity.

I need to cut back. The problem I have always had is that all of these things that I am doing are good things. It'd be different if I was choosing between mentoring 6 guys or living in wreckless sin...That should be a no-brainer (though it's not always that easy). But when it's mentoring vs. mission trip planning, I choose both. haha.

What do you need to let die in your life so that you come more alive?

Jesus wept.

What would happen if we were concerned solely with what concerned God? (Not that God is a worrying God...that's bad theology). But what if we wept over what God wept over?

My pastor posed an interesting question to the staff a few weeks ago. If aliens came into our church and had to diagnose the world's condition by only what we did in our church service (what we prayed about, what we talked about, what prayer concerns were in our bulletin...) would they think that the world was in all that bad shape?

1. God weeps when neighbors like Russia and Georgia enter violent conflict because they are too lazy or unmotivated to truly be peacemakers.

2. God weeps when a giant portion of the world is devastated by a tsunami and those who are most able to help are the least willing to help.

3. God weeps when Ugandan children are kidnapped and the boys are forced into militia ranks and the girls are used as sex objects for the kidnappers.

4. God weeps in the Sudan when genocide takes place and no one intervenes.

5. God weeps when dominant countries impose sanctions on other countries to try to get them to "shape up" all the while eliminating these country's citizens' access to healthcare, nutrition and the right to life.

6. God weeps when racism and sexism rule the day.

7. God weeps when someone believes violence is the only proper response to a situation.

8. God weeps when people work 50 hour work weeks, make thousands of dollars and come home to their sedated life of tivo and internet, neglecting their families...neglecting a world that is in despair.

9. God weeps when a 20 million dollar church campus is constructed right down the street from the homeless, the impoverished, the desperate.

10. God weeps when someone's ideology of freedom comes from stars and stripes rather than a cross and a crown.

Are we the church weeping?


I bought a book along with my school books for an upcoming class

What's the point?

I read a pastor's blog over the weekend who is frustrated that some of his churchgoers have left the church with the reason that they do not find themselves 'being fed' or that the church was giving them the 'depth' that they wanted.

What is the point of the local church? What should a person look for when finding a church? Should we approach church in a western, American consumer mindset? In other words, should I find the product that best suits my needs until the product becomes less adequate (or another product becomes more desirable?)

Lookin' for feedback on this. What should we the people of the church expect our church to provide for us spiritually/holistically?

Mad props to Mrs. T.

5 YEARS. That is how long my lovely bride will have been married to me as of Saturday August 9. Let me just make it clear that I'm wild about her. From day one, she has sacrificed. She has spent all 5 years working her tailbone off to keep us afloat as I journey through school.

Even with the two jobs she is working now and the many heartaches and frustrations, joys and hilarities that we've endured along the way, she still makes time for me...takes care of me when I get my eye poked out or do a number on my ankle playing basketball.

She is a ridiculous cook (which complements me, the ridiculous eater.) She always plays and sings when I have an idea for church or the edge, even if I ask her the night before...or the morning of.

She's worked at a shady car dealership, a ghetto wendys, a cheapskate fruitfarm, a drama-filled Kohls and a not-so-honest pizza shop.

Her laugh makes me laugh. Her hurt makes me hurt. Her "food on the tooth" trick makes me want to give up pacifism. And I LOVE HER MORE AND MORE EACH DAY.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MRS. T.

FROM...MR. T? I PITY DA' FOOL.

The Cinderella Story

Last night, our 2-9 church softball team entered their first game of the Wadsworth church league postseason tournament. Double Elimination, winner gets to Heaven first or something.

We, being the 9th best team in the whole league, got paired up with the 10th best team for our first round game. (They were 0-9...There are only 10 teams).

We beat them and got to play again later in the evening against another team, this time the number one team who was 9-0.

All of a sudden wouldn't you know it, we were spectacular. haha! I don't think we had a single error. We had guys making jumping catches, diving catches, bounce off the pitcher's leg to the short stop who flipped it to second catches! We hit the ball hard and scored runs! It was the night our dynasty began. We homered 'em in 6 innings 14-1.

The 2-9 Wadsworth U.M.C. softball team is now 4-9...in the winners bracket...ready for some more shock and awe. lol.

wow

Spend an hour and hear this! It's the "Fruitcakes and Ice Cream" message by Louie Giglio.
http://www.northpointministries.org/player/player_large.jsp?occurrenceID=3109

If you don't have the time for the whole thing, fast forward to when he is reading from the journal (about half way through).

Everything Must Change

I decided after finishing my church planting portfolio that I was going to read one of the books that I had purchased to just read. This has become increasingly difficult to do over the last few years as I have had dozens of books assigned through the seminary, and have had to read other books to prep lessons for various church teaching opportunities.

So I decided to be selfish and just read one that had sparked my interest. Brian McLaren is frankly not well liked by many traditional evangelicals, but his views on postmodernism and the emergent church are important and often times accurate. This book has been good so far. The chapters are short, which I thoroughly enjoy. I can read a chapter before bed, at the dentists, on the john, etc.

One line that stuck out from the first few chapters: We spend an awful lot of time worrying and arguing about whether God likes a contemporary style of music in worship or if He prefers the piano or organ, but what we need to realize is that there are so many more issues that the church should be focusing on that are causing harm and injustice on a global scale. (Paraphrase). Stay tuned to find out my take on the book as I get further into it. Have you read any books that have smacked you upside the head?

P.S. McLaren is coming to this conference in the Dayton area. Anybody want to go with me? www.ginghamsburg.org/changetheworld It sounds like a really tangible way to bring the Easter Kingdom into this Good Friday world!

zzzz.

I got home today from a good day at church. Put my dirty clothes in the clothes basket, kissed Shaina before she went off to work and I went down into the mancave otherwise known as our basement. I turned on the tv, which was actually the first time I'd done that in weeks. I watched the bridgestone invitational golf tournament at Firestone in Akron. And by watched, I mean I saw like two shots and then passed out. I slept for a couple hours.

I got up made some pizza and watched the rest of the golf tournament which was a really good tournament (found out that my buddy was going to give me a ticket to go with them today but didn't ask because he knew I was preaching! Oh the cost of following Jesus lol!).

I did NOTHING. I sat around until 7:00 at which time I went and played a little basketball. This is the closest to a sabbath rest that I have taken in probably a month. What are your thoughts on the Sabbath? Do you take a Sabbath day weekly in which you just rest and delight in the Lord?