The Fight Continues...

I am back in the dirty, dirty South. I have been in Alabama for seven whole months now. The Fight for Reformission has taken an odd turn for me. I am back in a church job. I love it. I am the youth pastor. And being the youth pastor I went to Youth Specialties: National Youth Workers Convention, recently (last weekend). It was encouraging and challenging. I plan on writing about the whole thing on my other blog.

As for the fight for reformission, I am disciplining myself to read and write weekly. My friend Mike Godfrey will hold me accountable. And I am a wee bit afraid of what he might do to keep me accountable (I think he may have pictures of me without my gotee or something). So I am going to delete the previous posts and start from scratch.

Viva la Reformission!

The Reformission Lives

Alright blogosphere cats and kitties, I am back.

The fight is on. It has changed venues and will now be broadcast from Madison, AL. This is an interesting place to fight for reformission. It means having to fight along side a new pastor, new students, and people who are in many ways not anything like me. WOOHOO. I think that it is interesting to have a heart for church planting and yet be back in youth ministry. I think that it actually enhances my ministry with students. My hope is that God will use me not only in the student ministry but to come alongside the servant leaders here at Hope Church in this community and see it radically transformed for the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.

The Fight continues...only a little differently.

Being Poor, No, Really Poor

I guess, for whomever may read this (which judging by comments alone - not too many) you may think, "why is this entry entitled Being Poor, No Really Poor?" Well, the thing is I am poor. I make less than the National Poverty income base. We are living from paycheck to paycheck. My wife and I are living with a friend's family (that's the only way I can be on the internet). It 's pretty frustrating at this stage of my life. But I am learning to be content in all things. Whether feast or famine. Christ is all I need.

More on the Radical Reformission when I can find the time (two jobs, I gotta get some sleep).

The Radical reformission

I have decided to re-read Mark Driscoll's Radical reformission. And here I will attempt to answer the questions and hopefully spur some dialogue.

Personal Part One

Thirty years ago our country was celebrating it's bicentenial. Love was free and drugs were cheap. My parents were married only a short time before they got their boy in blue. My sister would come along a year later. The marriage bliss ended way before the divorce came eight short years later. I don't remember going to church except for weddings and an occasional VBS, when I was little. The churches I remember where old and the cookies were the ones you can get in Vanilla or chocolate with creme in the middle. I remember the smell of taverns more than I do the smell of pews ( mostly because after my parents split we lived above one that my grand parents owned). I don't think I thought that it was a bad thing then. It was just our reality.

When mom got sick, dad was eager to take us. It's debatable (not worth any time but...) that it was either because he loved us or that he didn't want the child support to go to his parents. Church life there was up and down. There were remnants of a Hungarian catholicism from step-side of the family. With mini-peta statues, ceramic Mary's and crosses all over. We went to Lutheran church, and somehow ended up in a United Methodist church. My step mom chose it because it was pretty and quaint. Ohltown United Methodist in Mineral Ridge, OH. It sat near the reservoir. We mowed the grass and kept up the landscape for the church so my sister and I could go to summer camp at Camp Asbury near Hiram. My dad worked a deal with the church so that my sister and I could get half off of camp. I think that the church made off better than we did. I remember listening to Eazy-E and N.W.A. and other "Gangsta" rap on my tape player as I push mowed. Not the Wal-Mart clean versions either. Nope, Donnie Marabi, my boot-leggin' jewish friend (he had a bar mitzvah, I wasn't allowed to attend because my Dad thought it was weird), gave me a copied tape of N.W.A. and Eazy-Does It. I felt guilty mouthing along about b's and hoes as I mowed around the church - kinda. I think that listening to these men rap about women in a graphically pornographic nature perpetuated my increased desire to have impure motives with myself and with ladies in my life. I was feeding the dragon and I didn't even know it.

My relationship with my dad was minimal. He worked a great deal and played bluegrass/country music when he wasn't working. My step mom's brother lived in the house we lived in (it was his). We were out of place and really more of a nuisance. Soon we would have a new baby brother and then a baby sister. My dad's new family was growing.