It's been quite a while since I've posted. I guess I haven't had much to say lately. I've been conversing with some Mormon missionaries lately. Our conversations have been great for me to try to figure out exactly what I do believe. There is a part of me that really longs for the structure and answers that the Mormons have. I still believe that their desire to become gods is the quintessential sin, but I have more compassion for their beliefs now. Anyways, it has been a good thing.

Kiefer is growing like a weed. He's hardly even 11 weeks old, and he has already doubled his body weight. It looks like my wife slept with Andre the Giant about 9 months ago. I can't wait for him to start talking. I just want to know what he is thinking about.

I wish that I knew how to play the guitar better. I'm going to go and mess around now.

Thanks for the comments, Tim. I saw you the other day when I went swimming in my old KCC yearbooks. It was a good experience. I wonder why I always have beer goggles on when I look to the past. Its funny. I even long for crappy old Michigan sometimes, even though I hated most of it while I was there. I am lying to myself about how great the past was? Or am I just overly critical of the present? I think that I know the answer.

I saw a great movie last week. Garden State really struck a chord with me. It seemed very real and authentic. I just deleted a bunch of commentary about the movie because I don't want to spoil it or taint anyone else's experience. If you get a chance, check this movie out.

My son is a lot of fun. He should be smiling pretty soon. That will be really cool to see when I'm actually making him happy. He gives me a lot of different looks now, and I can only imagine what he is thinking about me. Sometimes he just looks into my eyes and seems to look right through to my soul. Its as if the eyes of God are in his head.

I feel good today. We had a good staff meeting this morning. My senior pastor wasn't there, and it worked out kind of well that he wasn't. He tends to dominate conversations even more than I do. Without him there, though, I shared a lot my thoughts and convictions about a more simple church. It was a very cool moment. There were some times where I definitely felt the Holy Spirit empowering me to speak. Donna and Larry also interacted with me. It wasn't just me preaching. It was a good discussion that I "led" in a sense. I wonder if our senior pastor will be upset that we had such a good meeting without him. I don't know for sure, but I hope not. I'm excited for all that God is doing amongst our leaders right now.

I am preaching this Sunday. After reading the last two chapters of Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart, I have been inspired to trash my work up to this point in order to do a new sermon entirely. I'm physically tired right now and I don't really feel like working on it today. Tomorrow I hope to hammer it all out and then work on committing it to memory.

My son is getting bigger. Its truly amazing how fast infants grow. He is looking around a lot more. I can't wait until he smiles for the first time. He gives me so much joy.

I am very angry right now. I know that I just had a son and that my life is very different than what it was two weeks ago, but right now, I am just very angry. You see, I just found out that one of my friends is very glad that he is not married to my wife, Kim, because she controls me too much. For some reason, this just infuriates me. I honest want to pummel him in the face. It doesn't matter to me that his wife completely controls him, and that our friendship is nearly non-existent because of her, I'm still mad. I'm not sure why this hurts so much. Maybe its because he keeps calling and inviting himself over so that he can either see my pregnant wife or my new son. I'm pretty sure that the only reason that he wants to do this is so that he and his wife can have a better idea what having a child is like. I feel as if the only times I am contacted by him are when he has something to gain from the situation. I'm not sure why I despise him so much right now. I'm not sure why I can't be more Christ-like about this. Why can't I forgive him for something so seemingly silly? Kim isn't angry about it, why should I be?

My son is beautiful. His birth didn't make me cry like I thought it would. Heck, Pearl Harbor made me cry like a little girl. Right now, my emotional attatchment to him isn't nearly as strong as other attatchments. I have a very strong sense of the fact that I am this person's human father. I have great responsibilities to raise him into a virtuous man. I have strong desires to protect him. He is awesome.

I feel like I'm drifting into another midlife crisis. Why is it that I have to be so obsessed with meaningful employment? Or, if not meaningful employment, well paying employment. I want to be able to provide well for my family and share money with the poor if I cannot have a meaningful job. I want to pull my hair out half the time. But I'm growing it out right now, so I'll wait.

It's been a while since my last posting. Blogging goes in and out of fashion with me like moustaches. I've kind of got a poor man's Don Juan thing going on right now. Its pretty nasty. Kim laughs at me a lot. She finds it hard to take me seriously. Speaking of Kim, she is on bedrest right now. She can't wait to have this baby and neither can I.

About a month from now, I will be a father. It humbles the crap out of me more and more. When I feel Kiefer kick in her belly, I start to realize more and more that he is a person. I start to remember that I was once in that same spot. I really had a strong desire to hug my parents this weekend. We are a close family, but we don't physically express it like some other families. Its odd. I'm hoping that God will give me what I need to have to be a decent earthly father for this kid. I don't know what I would do if my kid rejected Jesus. Can there be anything more painful for parents than that?

Stuff at church is going pretty well. I'm really settling into a groove with my lessons on Sunday morning. It turns out that I have a lot more to say than I once thought. Financially, the church is struggling. We may have to close things down in the next six months. I'm talking with the senior pastor about further developing our small groups ministry into a type of house church ministry. Our biggest financial problem is our building. 70% of our budget goes to pay the mortgage. That's ridiculous. We only use the thing once a week! I'm listening to the Spirit on what I should do at this point.

I'm pretty excited for the Arizona sports this fall. The Cardinals, Coyotes, and Suns made some big moves. It will be fun to see how it all plays out.

Thanks for the comment, Todd. Well, the situation with the woman may be getting better, but it may be getting worse. I'm not sure. She has not come to the Sunday morning programming two of the last three weeks. That doesn't seem to be a good sign. As far as my frustration with her goes, I don't even have any. I'm more frustrated with the helpless feeling of turning young people on to Jesus. A part of me feels that I will be considered a failure if I don't entertain these students and draw a big crowd. For some reason, I feel as if none of them would want to love Jesus if that's all that our church was about. Maybe that reflects something in my life and my relationship with Jesus.

Lately, I feel like I've been talking to a brick wall. I'm not even sure if God is listening anymore. If someone were to ask me about His existence, I would give them the lip service, but I'm not sure if I would mean it. He just seems so far away and so far removed from the lives of His children. Why does He seem to ignore my prayers? Will He begin to answer them if I obey Him more? Does He ignore me because I am disobedient? Does He care at all about the things that I care about? I don't understand His ways. The deceiver whispers to me and I start to believe that I can't love what I don't understand. I know that that isn't true, but it isn't easy.

This one's for you Todd. I am officially moved in to my office. I have internet access and everything. I am practically a networking guru by now. At least, I should be with all of the things that I have learned in trying to get a wireless network set up around here. I haven't had much time to blog or surf in a while. Things are much busier here at the church than when I was an unemployed hack.

We have been experiencing some drama here recently. The woman who was in charge of the youth before me is not very happy about being replaced as the top leader. I have not tried to exclude her from leadership completely, but she is upset that she is not the head honcho anymore. I am doing my best to act Christ-like towards her, and I believe that I have so far. At this point, the ball is in her court and I have resorted to simply praying for her.

I can't wait to get out of my parents' house. I feel that I have regressed from being a man and a grown up in so many ways. Being treated like a child helps me to act like a child. It will be good to be independent from them again. I wonder how our relationship will change once we move out. I've never lived in the same town as them without living with them. Visiting their house and having it not be my house will be interesting.

Randy Johnson is my father. Enough said.

Wow. I just saw the movie "Elephant" by Gus van Sant. What a jacked up world we live in. It was so incredibly realistic that I almost vomited. I still feel a little queasy. It is a fictional account of a Columbine-type incident at an Oregon high school. What scares me most is that I am not shocked that humans behave like that. I would never want an event like that to happen again, but I'm almost positive that it will become more frequent as video games and music become more violent.

I am going to do everything that I can to help my son to not be a bully. The psychological abuse that these kids dealt with that finally pushed them over the edge is preventable. I long for the place where love rules. God, if You want to use Your sons and daughters to save this world, please do it quickly. It seems as if things are getting worse, and not better.

Greg Hubbard had a great post on his blog on April 30th. Check it out here. I once was one of the people who called him to talk about such things. I love that guy.

Well, it is now official. I am the new associate minister at Gilbert Christian Church in Gilbert, AZ. Right now, I don't have a salary, but I am praying and seeking out friends and colleagues to help with that. I am very excited. While working on a DVD for some of my former students, I found myself missing being involved in their lives very much. Now, I could just volunteer at the local megachurch, but then I would be ignoring the calling that I feel towards GCC. It's odd, six months ago I would have never thought to do vocational ministry again. Now, I feel positive that God has called me back into it.

I am so excited about so many things. I am excited to start new relationships. I'm excited to see God change lives. I'm excited to see God provide for my family in a serendipitous kind of way. It feels good to have a more focused purpose. I understand that my general purpose is to give glory to God. But this feels wonderful. I hope that I will remember this conviction when times get tough again. I am sure that they will, and I must use more than my emotions to ride out the storm. He will be with me again. I love Him!

Pat Tillman is dead. I never saw it coming. I knew that he was brave for joining the Army so that he could help fight terrorism, but i never considered the fact that he could actually die. This guy gave up everything for one cause. A cause that I don't even believe in very strongly. I have a much better cause than he did, and yet I show remarkably little passion towards my cause.

My cause is to become more and more like Jesus every day. I act as if I have many more decades in which to accomplish this. Days, weeks, and months pass by quickly, and I hardly blink. I watch the world around me change and wish that I could be a part of it. I want to change the world now. I don't want to start a path that someday might change the world. That is not good enough. What if I choose the wrong path? What if something goes wrong? What if I fail? What if it is different than I planned it to be? Who cares? I just need to go.

God, help me as I try.

Some of us at the ooze have been talking about a possible draft into the military. Actually, there has been a lot of political talk over there as of late. I'm not sure what I think about all of that. I saw today that Ralph Nader has 6% of the vote according to polls. I want John McCain to be our president. He has been a P.O.W. and he knows the horrors of war. If this whole mess is just Bush pursuing his own agendas, then McCain would get us out. If it is a worthy cause, then he will see the job through. But, admittedly, I don't know much about politics. And, when I am in doubt, I usually go with the Arizona connection.

Its funny how much I have grown over the past five months without realizing it. I can remember even one month ago, wondering if I was going to learn anything from some of the pain that Kim and I have gone through. Now, a purpose seems to be coming through from the smoke of the past. I believe I had a "grass is greener" type of attitude towards life outside of the institutional church. I had always struggled with completely writing off the I.C. as something that was wrong. I have many friends and others whom I greatly respect who are involved, after all. I still see a lot of the warts, but I also see a lot of potential. My hang up with people being paid for ministry has lessened greatly. Why didn't I question whether or not it was ok for anyone to profit on anything that they are paid for. It turns out, if there are people willing to pay me to do what I do, it may not be as unethical as I once thought. Granted, some people make WAY too much money for "ministry". But making a salary akin to a school teacher is not as greedy as I once thought.

I think that more than anything, if this ministry gig works out, I will pay closer attention to my time management. It has been said that people on a salary (as opposed to commission or an hourly wage) are some of the laziest people in the world. "Why work harder, when working lighter pays the same way?" Without integrity, a salary can be a dangerous thing.

Wayne Jacobsen is speaking in Vegas tonight. Actually, if I were there, I might be speaking with him right now. But I'm not there and I am sad. Why do money troubles worry me so? Why can't I just be satisfied with what God provides?

I went to a job fair today and got a couple of leads. One is working for Child Protective Services as a caseworker. The other is working for Pulte Homes as a Customer Service Representative. I'm excited about both, but the CSR one sounds more appealing at this point. I'd still like to raise some funds to do a DVD making ministry, but I don't want to ask my friends and family for support. I am going to ask some of the big churches around here and maybe write a letter to Jerry Colangelo. Stupid money.

Oompa, loompa, doopa dee doo. I've got to go to bed early. I'm not happy about that. Randy and I had a good talk today about hell and eternal life. I had thought that he knew where I was leaning on those issues. I was wrong. Sometimes I forget who I have certain conversations with and I don't want to be that guy who tells people the same things over and over. So instead, I'm that guy who always says, "Didn't I tell you this already?" Oh well.

How does God use politics? Does God "need" politicians to make His world run His way? I don't know man. It would be fun to be the president. I wonder what type of person makes a good president. Is it a wise person who sticks to their intuition and sense of ethics/morals? Or is it a person who surrounds himself with wise people and "takes polls" (so to speak) on what the wise decision should be. I would lean more towards the former, but with a little bit of the latter. David Palmer is a good president. I watch too much TV.

Thanks to those who left comments. It has helped to validate my life. I'm only partly kidding. I have had an unnatural optimism lately. Perhaps it is supernatural. I am humbled by the people who love me and pray for me.

I met with the senior minister from a church here in Gilbert today. We had lunch and we talked about their recent church split. It was sad, but not altogether unbelievable. I know what church folk are capable of. We also talked about me coming on board and working there part time. It wouldn't pay much, but I am feeling led by God to investigate it. Really. I almost feel called there. This doesn't help me in my efforts to be a part of a house church, but I really need to relinquish those dreams back to God anyway. Somewhere along the line, I took them out of His hands and tweaked them for myself.

I feel the burden of my calling a lot more lately. For a while there, I was beginning to believe that I had misunderstood my calling. But, the more that I looked into strictly secular work, the more I was convicted that God would rather have my contribution to society to be more in a professional ministry sense. I don't really get this. Its as if my mind and my heart (spiritual ears?) are at war with each other.

God is good and He continues to speak to me. I would be wise to listen.

This is a great article that makes me miss my friends more than ever. What is it about guys that make us love each other so much without being gay? Here it is. Enjoy.

I just found out that one of my friends from high school has skin cancer. It's in stage 4 and it has spread to his lymph nodes and beyond. He was one of my best Mormon friends. We lived about a block away from each other and spent quite a bit of time together during my Jr. and Sr. years of high school. We car pooled to volleyball practice quite a bit during those years. He was recently married and he has a wife who is six months pregnant with their first child.

I can't imagine what he is going through right now. I am hurt and confused right now. I bitch and moan about my finances a lot, but I try to keep a positive perspective about "the good things in life". I am healthy, I have a good support network of friends and family, and I don't have to worry about food or shelter. My friend just got his health snatched away. He may die soon. He's 24. I have seen death in my life, but always at a distance. The deaths of my grandparents in their old age were inevitabilities that didn't surprise me that much. I have have heard about and read about teens and young people dying before their time. But I haven't lost a friend yet.

I don't even know what to say to him. We haven't talked in over 5 years. I'm sure that we would hit it off if we ran into each other, but I'm just nervous about how to deal with this. Is it more loving of me to try to "evangelize" him while he is suffering at this time, or to pray hard and trust God to reveal Himself? Perhaps I can pray that God will lead me to evangelize him. I don't know. I'm still trying to deal with this.

I just had a good IM conversation with Lenny. I miss that guy. I'm excited to see what God will do with him in the real world. He has been a student ever since he was weaned (at five years old! Ok, it was like two, but still!). We are both very excited to be a part of Spiritual communities that we only dream about. Some of the stuff at Apex is close to what we talk about, but of course it is not exactly what we discuss.

I'm going stir crazy in my job hunt. It is difficult for me to pursue two job opportunities at one time. One always seems to be better than the other, but the other is usually the one that is available. So, instead of choosing one, I end up with neither. What a dilemma. I'm still hoping for the underwriting job to pan out. Hopefully it will happen soon. My wife and I are both going nuts living in my parents' spare bedroom. I think that she is going to kill someone soon.

There are a lot of movies that I would like to see right now. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind looks very interesting. The Garden state has me very excited. Anything with Vince Vaughn really gets my motor running. 24 is such a great TV show. I kind of don't want it to end, but I kind of want it to end on top. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson both tarnished their images by not leaving and staying gone. Well, this post needs to end. So be it.

Check this out. This is so funny. Its a video satire of what many people think that Jesus is like. Click here. I loved it. There are three others. Simply put a "2","3", or "4" in the browser bar after "Jesus" where the "1" is now. The third one is my favorite. Enjoy.

Welcome to my little corner of the web. I'm a rookie at blogging, so let me know if there are things that I can do to make it better. This should be fun.