Tourist in Space

Do you know that a woman from Plano, Texas paid $20 million to fly into space as a tourist on a Russian mission? She's in space now at the international space station and is blogging from space. Pretty wild...

Check out her blog at http://spaceblog.xprize.org/.

Creating Culture

For the past few months, we've been concentrating on what our values are as a family. We are still fleshing those out but we know they include: respecting and honoring all people, loving God's Word and following Jesus, and sticking close together as a family.

This week I started thinking about another aspect of leading my family. One of the functions of a leader is "culture creator". So... what kind of culture am I creating in my family? What kind of culture should I be creating? What attributes of family life fall into the "culture" category and what falls into the "values" category. I'm thinking that maybe culture is the "soft" stuff or the fertile ground where values can become increasingly strong.

I'm just starting to think about this. Anyone have insight on the relationship between culture and values in the family or elsewhere?

It's been a while

Man... things are busy. Someone told me this week... "you need to find a job so that you won't be so busy!" :)

It's late, so I won't write much. But I would ask you to pray for me. I had a phone interview today with a church I'd REALLY like to work for and the job is REALLY something I'd like to do. I knew the role there was solidly in my interest area but during the interview today I realized that it is even more in line with my passions than I had thought it would be.

Early to mid next week will be the critical time for decisions on their end concerning whether to continue with me to the next step of the interview process.

Appreciate your prayers for God's direction and for the right doors to open.

Emerge City Church

Our family attended a brand new church plant today... Emerge City Church which meets off Custer in McKinney, TX. It's a cool group. The pastor and his wife moved here from Brisbane City Church in Australia to plant the church. Lots of life and passion. Being from Australia, his message related Steve Irwin to Jesus' disciples. Very cool.

It's great to have these missionaries from Australia coming here to help move the kingdom forward. But, I hope increasing numbers of established local churches will also join in and plant some of these new high-energy, high-influence communities. Churches have life cycles -- we must reproduce ourselves!

The Tower of Babel ---- and cheese dip!

Continuing to look at the stories of the Bible. Yesterday was the tower of Babel - Genesis 11:1-9

The people were building the city and tower for two reasons:
1) to make a name for themselves
2) so that they could have a strong place to live and thus not be scattered

God said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." I don't think God was saying "Oh my God :) ... if I don't do something they are going to get too powerful." I think God wanted to rescue people from thinking that they could do things without Him.

Someone might use this Babel story to argue against having ambition or drive. I don't see it that way. I think ambition is fine. It's the motivation that was the problem here. These people wanted to make a name for themselves and a place of safety. I think ambition is good if our goal is to make a name for God in our culture and to "be scattered" wherever He leads.

Jesus was certainly driven but it wasn't to do his own will but the will of the Father.

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On another note...
A while back our favorite favorite favorite Mexican restaurant of 30+ years closed it's doors and the owner passed away. We didn't think we'd ever get that chili con queso (in Arkansas it's called cheese dip) or salsa (in Arkansas we call it hot sauce)again. Well... a few weeks ago my dad's friend gave him a recipe for the cheese dip and hot sauce. So... when our whole extended family converged on central Arkansas for a mini-reunion last weekend we made a big deal out of cooking the dip and sauce and trying it together.









Stirring flour and butter into roux...


Stirring in milk...


Melting in Velveeta and adding spices...


Stirring... stirring.... stirring... heating.... turn up the heat.... stirring... stirring... will this stuff ever thicken up????

YES! Finally thickened up!!

We bought chips from a local mex restaurant and heated them in the oven to simulate the restaurant experience.

And............... it was GOOOOOOOD!

I wonder how I would have felt on the ark

For personal Bible study lately I've just been revisiting the stories of the Bible and doing SOAP on them (read S-cripture, Observe, Apply, Pray)

Yesterday I was on Noah and the flood.

I wonder what it would be like to be floating on a big boat for months with family and a gazillion animals. I would imagine that everyone was ready to find some land and get off of that ship. The thing that caught my eye upon this reading of the story was that Noah didn't disembark on the first muddy hill he saw sticking up out of the water. He waited until the "earth was completely dry" and until "God said to Noah, 'Come out of the ark'."

Noah did his part. He kept an eye on the situation outside the ark and he did his part in sending out the dove three times to gain intelligence. As much as he probably wanted to rush things, he must have been tempered by a weight of great responsibility. He was in charge of getting the remnant of God's living creation back to safety on land. He wasn't hasty. He wisely waited until the land was completely dry, and then he heard the confirming voice of God.

How does this apply to your life?

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On another note... Getting into tennis again! I've played a few times lately and I'm loving it. This morning I rented a basket of balls and worked on my pathetic serve for about an hour. Getting better... need to find some people to play.

Busy............

No time to post much... but here's a quick update.

-- We are heading back to Arkansas for the second weekend in a row. Some extended family decided to fly in this long weekend so we're going back up there to see everyone.

-- I believe God wants me to find a place of impact working on a church staff again instead of searching for a job in the secular marketplace... looking for a role as media pastor or community outreach pastor... more on this soon.

-- I'm having a fun week shooting and editing a video for a company where some of my good friends work.

Gotta run... have a good holiday weekend.