A debate that should be had....

I really REALLY hesitate to write this post but I feel overwhelmed at this point and feel it is necessary to write. Many of you are aware that the Southern Baptist Convention met this past week in Louisville KY. I live in Louisville and work for the Kentucky Baptist Convention so this event held some significance to me and to this area. This year there was a lot of talk/excitement about a motion/resolution called the Great Commission Resurgence. Basically they have in a way piggy backed off of the Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s but with the focus on fulfilling the Great Commission. This is a good thing in concept but like many things a concept is always good but putting the concept in to practice is where the rubber hits the road as they say. Hang with me as I am going to get to the point of this post soon. As a KBC staff employee I am quite proud of many of the ministries and services provided by the state convention. No one can question the impact of Disaster Relief and Youth Evangelism just as an example. Are there things I would change....YES. So for me evaluation is always a good thing and if change comes from it then it isn't a bad thing. I have a saying(and I don't remember where I got it from) but it goes like this...."Sometimes change is good, sometimes change is bad, and sometimes change is just change." The GCR task force has been challenged to make change a good thing and not just change!

Now to the point of this post. If you follow the SBC at all you would be quite aware that alot of things get brought up that don't necessary represent the majority of Southern Baptist. Often as well we can be seen(and rightfully so) that we argue quite a bit among one another. Weather it be on specific theological points such as Calvinism/Armenianism or something as simple as something like what translation of scripture we use. These debates are not bad in and of themselves BUT they have a huge potential to become something horrible and down right dividing for the churches of the SBC. Why does it have to be that way? It doesn't! The biggest strength of the Southern Baptist(excluding missional work) is our cooperation(or at least it should be if it isn't right now). So the debate that needs to take front and center has nothing to do with who is right or wrong with regards to non-essential doctrines and everything to do with how can we all better cooperate to see the expansion of the Kingdom! A personal story might help to clarify what I mean....3 years ago God called Crystal and I to leave our church and placed us in to Sojourn Community Church. Sojourn is an openly Calvinist church and I personally am not. Sojourn Community Church has been nothing but a blessing to Crystal and I and I am truly thankful for a body of believers that isn't afraid to tackle the hard issues yet wrap their arms around you and walk forward in cooperation on Non-Essential doctrine. The point of this story is just that....we are cooperating Oglethorpe for the gospel. I am blessed by the teaching at Sojourn and am VERY grateful for a church that defines what is essential for cooperation. The following is a quote from the Sojourn website that I think is important:

In ESSENTIAL beliefs, we have UNITY.
In NON-ESSENTIAL beliefs, we have DIVERSITY.
In ALL of our beliefs, we promote LOVE.


You can read the points that Sojourn says are essential for being a partner(member) and I think is pretty good starting point if not the final destination. So I believe that the debate that needs to be had is one of defining the essentials so we have a frame of reference to base all our debates on so that we can lock arms in the expansion of the Gospel. Isn't that what we should be about?

My attempt ....

...so after reading Cheye Haste blog this morning about her square foot gardening I decided I should post about mine. This is not a "im better than you thing" but merely it is something I am proud of, much like her, and I want to share. My desire to start a garden began a couple years ago with a short conversation Crystal and I had about how little we truly understood what things where like for our parents and grandparent. Both of my grandfathers had been HUGE gardeners. My dad and mom both grew up gardening. My "papa-grew"(my dads dad) would get some much stuff "granny-grew" would can so much food they could feed the whole family(7 kids and 2 adults) for the entire winter. Papa-grew worked as a school teacher, a pastor, and a gardener. This was truly a man who spent his life living out the providers role for his home. The arts of gardening and canning are becoming a lost art to my generation because we go to Kroger and get canned veggys and fruits. So I wanted to learn a little bit about what has been a large part of my family history and an added bonus was it was alot cheaper and as we are coming to find out now a whole lot more tasty. I started last fall with turning over the soil and prepping it for the winter frost. I have worked weekly on it since the final frost of the year up here and I REALLY enjoy it. I am growing in a traditional garden method of rows and mounds and am pretty satisfied at this point with my progress. I enjoy it so much I am thinking about doubling my size from a 10'x15' to 10'x30' next year. Crops this year are: Lettuce, Broccli, White Onion, Cucumber, Squash, Zucchini, Ocra, Green Peppers, Roma Beans, Celebrity Tomatos. Pics below.

Mothers-Day isn't just for Moms

Ya know every year mothers day rolls around and it goes just a fast. This year however did take on a new meaning for me as a man. I absolutely adore my wife. I would not/could not be the man I am today without her. She is an absolutely amazing woman or God, Loving wife, and AWESOME mother. Sawyer and I are both so blessed by her. The traditional "mother-day" is a time to reflect on moms and show our thankfulness to mom. Now I didn't get to take Crystal out or buy her a big fancy present(I would have but she had already picked out something she wanted) but I did spend some time in reflection. As I look at the way she handles our family I am consistent amazed at how much this woman can take on. She is a full time mom, works 20 hours a week in marketing, does the laundry, cleans the house, puts food on the table, feeds the baby(Im not blessed with the right equipment for that job being that Im a man) and puts up with me just to name a few. Now no one of these items is overly difficult but you pile them on top of one and another and HOLY COW! All that and she probably doesn't sleep 6 hours a night. Now all of that has made me fall ever more in love with her. The final thing that consistently amazes me is how much of herself she gives vs how much she gets in return. Crystal and I always joked before we had sawyer that we knew then we weren't ready for children because we both were too selfish. When we decided to have children it is because we both came to a point that we became ready to try to take away the selfishness of our lives. Is it easy.....NO but it is worth it....YES. I am amazed every night when after I bathe Sawyer and she feeds him and puts him down she comes in to the living room and just about nearly collapses. She has given everything she has that day to our family. Not just me, not just sawyer, not just work, not just home but to everything. There is nothing left in the tank. She is always absolutely beat and yet she finds energy for me! I won't begin to compare my wife to anyone else because my bias would shine but lets just say i don't know anyone that works harder than Crystal. There might be women that work just as hard but no one works harder.

Being Torn....

...I can't explain how much I love fatherhood. It is the most enjoyable thing I have every had the blessing to be a part of. Sawyer is so much fun and he is learning and growing more every day. BUT one of the things I have learned about myself is that I need and cherish "my" time. When you are newly wed you can spend a lot of time with your wife but you can still get away. Crystal and I have always been pretty good about that. We love each other and love to spend time with one another but we also both cherish our alone time. Well in the first few weeks of sawyer's life I began to get quite grumpy and short. I felt bad and I didn't know why. I have figured out why. I was spending all my time with sawyer when i got home, which isn't a bad thing, and didn't get any time to myself to recharge my own battery. Well since figuring out this fact I have been sure to take time to myself. I get up between 5am and 530am and read and watch tv and drink coffee and just be me. If I don't get that time I can tell. One other thing I do is play some music with a group of guys. It is a BLAST! we get together every Tuesday and just jam for a couple hours. It is a big time of just relaxing and letting the music just flow. BUT this takes away time from sawyer and Crystal. So I am torn! I absolutely love spending time with them but I also need to get away a little to be the best man I can be for them when I am there. anyone else have a situation like this where to be all that you can be you have to get away a little bit?

ps I am formulating a post about some religion/legalism things....be on the look out

Some times it just pours

Well I'm finally getting around to blogging about crystal and I'sweek. It was one high intensity week. We are both worn out mentally and physically. So let uss take it from the top.

On Monday we received a call from crystal's mom telling me she just saw a close friend of ours father was killed in an tragic accident. I did not know the man but I know his daughter and son in law well so the news was just guy wrenching for us and I can't imagine what it is for them. But I will say before I move on that this event has helped me and crystal to keep the rest of the weeks events in proper perspective.

On Wednesday I was in a meeting when crystal called me. I ignored the first 2 because it is just rude to answer your phone in a meeting but by the third call I knew something was up so I answered. Crystal told me the front door of our house was open. Neither crytal nor I ever go out the front door so we knew something was up. Wanna guess??? If you guessed a break in you guessed right. It is the most violating experience I have ever been a part of. The thieves broke down our back door and stole about $5000 worth of stuff and damages. Doesn't appear to be a professional job as they broke down our back door but where nice enough to unlock the front door and storm door on the way out with our stuff in our pillow cases. The biggest hassle is the hassle of having to change bank accounts and credit cards. But in all we are thankful as it could have been worse. It was just stuff. The blessings of people from my work,our family, and friends has just bee overwhelming. We are ok now and just needing to get a new back door which is all the major damage that was done. They did really make a mess of our house but nothing that couldn't and hasn't already been cleaned up. Thank you to all for your prayers and encouragement!

Finally on Friday we found out that crystal's grandfather has to have heart bypass surgery on Monday. This has been one rough week but God is sufficient and good. We are thankful for the blessing we have received and for the way he is coninually providing for us!

Hard to be this productive......

.....today at work I had what we in IT call a non-expected outcome to a solution provided or aka "a screw up". I was working today on an agent(small little program) that would send out a weekly reminder to our building about our accounting reports being updated. This agent was to run once a week and should send out less than 100 emails. A nice, easy programming project....or so I thought. I wrote my agent, changed the program from one that ran against an event(ie a mouse click) to a schedule. There is one final setting to change before creating a simply mail agent and that is to tell it what data source it should run this agent against. YOu have 3 options:1)All documents in the database, 2) All new and modified documents in the database, 3) None. Since I didn't need this agent to run against anything I set it to none.....or so I thought. Apparently when I was starting the programming I missed a small little detail which is when you change the type agent from a script agent to a simple agent the "none" option disappears and the All documents option becomes active. I missed this critical piece of information! So when I saved my new agent that I was so proud of I was greeted about 5 minutes later with my blackberry vibrating and it wasn't stopping. Then I noticed it was still counting up and all the messages coming from my agent that I was so proud of. So as I am working try to figure out what happened I was helped by Troy and Michael to discover that critical change. So what happened was a reminder email was send to every person in the building from me for every email in the inbox of one of our accounting ladies. By the time we stopped the bleeding the agent had sent out some 600+ emails to all 100 people in our building. Doing the math that would be 60,000 emails in about 5-10 minutes. Think you can be that productive?

You be the judge...

The mornings are Sawyer and I's time. After Crystal leaves for work we play a little, I get him dressed, sometimes we sing, sometimes we chew on our lion, and then I get him ready to go to the babysitter. Now once he is packed up and ready to go I load in him the car along with all of my stuff. Then when I get in I general pull out the iPod touch, switch to the songs view and select shuffle. Now I do this because I have a lot of music and a lot of different types of music. Normally the first song that comes up is the artist I stay on in the morning. Sometimes Sawyer sleeps to my music, sometimes he starts talking, and sometimes he screams. NOrmally vie these responses I can tell if I should change it or turn it down if I really want to hear the song. Well this morning the first song that came up was......Free Bird. You heard right....the time honored southern redneck anthem Free Bird. The song that all people all over know that when it starts you pull out the lighter, hold it high and proud, and strike it(Does anyone know why we do this...?) Soon as it came on I said to Sawyer, "Son, this is a classic!" to which he responded to me this morning with an ....."UUAAHHH!" Now this wasn't an cry, it wasn't sad, but it certainly wasn't happy either. Do this mean my son isn't going to respect the classics?? or worse like R&B? Please tell me it isn't so! What do you think?