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First, pretend that you’ve read my blogs from last week about our family getting sick in Ohio, how we had a great time, how we are home and well now, how I contemplated overcoming my gun phobia, and various other holiday musings.

1.  Now, back to the present.  God showed up in a tremendous way at church yesterday.  I found out Saturday I would be filling in as worship leader because Scott caught a stomach bug.  Scott’s wife, Kelsey, is our children’s pastor and she brought the heat with her sermon yesterday.  Anyway, this was my first time leading worship with some of the new guys in the band.  Practice was a little shaky, some of which was due to my scratchy throat and recent illness.  Once the services started, all worries were set aside and God blessed our efforts.  The second service in particular was electric.  There are just some songs you know will get people going.  Days of Elijah is one of those that gets Denton going.  Praise to the Lord for His goodness and working things out.  His plans always do.

2.  Thanks to Handbrake I’ve been able to put some movies on my Ipod.  When you listen to a movie through headphones you pick up so much that is missed in the theater.  My love for The Karate Kid went up about 10 notches after watching it on the Ipod.  I have been trying to find the soundtrack ever since.  I never realized that there is music from start to finish.  I also had never noticed something interesting during the beach training scene.  When Miyagi and Daniel return to the truck there are two men who have placed their beer bottles on the truck.  One of them is wearing what appears to be a Washington Nationals hat about 20 years before the team was created.  It could have been an old Washington Senators hat, but it’s interesting either way.  I remember leaving the theater and trying out all the new karate tricks after that one.  Sadly, Marketplace Cinemas is no longer with us.  Lots of memories there.

3.  I had three goals for Thanksgiving week:  stop drinking Mountain Dew, read two books, and spend lots of time with my kids.  One out of three isn’t bad when you’re chilling with the kids.  Of course, the two seconds I left Drake alone he busted his lip.  He is turning into a daddy’s boy for sure.

4.  I got to see about 8 minutes of the Clemson-Carolina game Saturday.  It’s hard getting out of anti-Bowden mode.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was a Clemson fan again and they played well.  Now, who will the new coach be?  I’m just happy it won’t be Lane Kiffen.  I say give Dabo the job.  He finished 4-2 and only lost to two of the top teams in the conference.

It’s good to be back at the office.  Hope everyone has an awesome week.

Well, yesterday we made the trek to Fredericktown, OH for the annual Robinson family Thanksgiving.  Karen’s cousins, aunt, and grandmother live here so it’s always a fun time.  I’m hoping to spend some quality time with the kids this week(which means blogs will be short), catch up on some reading, quit Mountain Dew cold turkey, and finalize some long range discipleship plans.  I feel like I’ve been traveling non-stop for a month, but it’s all good.  

Thanks to everyone who prayed for my grandfather.  He came through surgery well and they have inserted a pin into his broken hip.  He is a tough customer for sure.  Please continue to lift him and my family in prayer.

We had another great service at church yesterday.  God’s spirit has been evident and Charlie is in a good preaching groove.  It feels like we are clicking on all cylinders on Sundays with new families each week.  Now comes the part of inspiring people to use their gifts and get involved.  I’ve got an idea I’m going to pitch concerning this which I am “super” excited about.  More on that later.

Finally, I had a pretty bad scare yesterday as we were driving through Ohio yesterday.  It occurred to me that I never confirmed whether or not a ticket I got a few years ago here had been paid.  I faxed the form twice, and I remember seeing the amount debited from our account.  After all of my experiences with the police(real, mistaken, and staged) I broke out in a sweat as I thought about the prospect of spending Thanksgiving behind bars.  It was a George moment for sure and a reminder that some stories get better and longer with time.  “No, no, no sir.  That ticket has been taken care of”…I think.

So, let’s recap…

Flew up to Wesleyan HQ Monday for a Tuesday meeting about Student Leadership Development.  Meeting was all day Tuesday and it was Matt and Deb’s anniversary.  They scored some great Pacer’s tickets and so we headed to Conseco fieldhouse for the game vs. the Hawks.  So, we are on the 7TH ROW and Larry Bird is sitting diagonally from us next to the tunnel to the Locker Room and Locker Room Restaurant which we have passes to.  With a few minutes left in the game we make our way DOWN TO THE COURT and around to the tunnel where we got in line and got Larry Bird’s autograph.  Pretty amazing stuff.  He even said,”You’re welcome” to Matt.  I sweat thru my 50 pound Costanza coat I was so nervous.  Then we went to the restaurant, saw some more players, and grabbed some grub.  Then on our way to the elevator a skirmish ensues.  There was a guy in a suit who reminded me of the foreign guy in the mummy movies(the good guy) except he had long hair.  The suit guy had bumped into another guy who was greatly offended that suit guy didn’t apologize.  Things had settled down when drunk guy says to suit guy “Why don’t you take off that wig?”  Suit guy is lead by his two female escorts(who were drunk and probably THOSE kind of escorts) into the elevator where he starts taunting drunk guy to “Get on my elevator.”  Drunk guy did and off they went.  All this time Deb has moved behind some stranger, away from the action, while I’m trying to get on the elevator.  We take the next one up and decide to follow the other group to see what happens.  Matt said,”I haven’t seen a good fight in a while.”  Sure enough, a hundred feet or so in front of us, the group is outside and suit guy and drunk guy are throwing down.  It lasts for about two seconds before security arrives.  It’s then that I think I hear “And Can it Be playing”, but Deb assures me it’s Auld Lang Syne, the New Year’s Eve song that no one knows what it means.  This was the “cotton” and “Tito Ortiz Darius Rucker” moment for this trip.  Sometimes my brain doesn’t compute the correct information or the information correctly.

Now, back to Student Leadership Development, I’ve been thinking about all the kids who have passed through my youth ministry in the last 11 years.  Sadly, I dwelled on the ones who went the wrong way more than those who are serving God and the church joyfully.  I think it really hit me this morning how badly I hurt for the ones who are searching for meaning and purpose in all the wrong places.  Some of them had the deck stacked against them, but many of them were from loving Christian families.  It reminds how hard being a parent is and how stuff happens despite our best efforts and intentions.  Many of these went to a Christian college, but that doesn’t gaurantee Christian faithfulness.  You can find bad company and trouble pretty much anywhere.  In some ways, I look at their failures as my failure.  I ponder whether their disobedience stems from a hidden disobedience on my part.  I know dwelling on this for too long isn’t healthy so don’t worry, I’m fine.  This happens every time I start looking around on Facebook and Myspace.  I usually don’t like what I see.

Finally, a prayer request.  My grandfather fell and broke his hip yesterday.  He was in the pasture when it happened.  He got back on his four wheeler, drove up to his house, called 911, then drove to the end of the driveway to wait on the ambulance.  They are doing surgery today which is always tricky but especially with an 89 year old man.  This isn’t the first time he’s gotten hurt while alone and somehow made it back to the house.  One time he broke his pelvis.  He doesn’t seem to have the “quit” gene that so many of us are hampered with.  Anyway, please pray for his recovery.  Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Let me preface this by saying that these thoughts are my own and don’t reflect the views of Denton Wesleyan Church, any Wesleyan Church, Pendleton High School, Chichester United Wesleyan Church, Central First Wesleyan Church, Mull Meadow Farms, or anyone else I know.  Let me also say that I am a youth pastor, not an architect.

If I were going to build a multi-million dollar chapel and fine arts building I would….

1.  Make sure that there were enough bathrooms for the number of people the building would hold.

2.  Put in a floor that doesn’t crack like a Clemson QB under pressure or look like a 30 year old sidewalk after a month.

3.  Design a stage where you can actually hold fine arts events like plays.  This would include things like a curtain and a good sized backstage area.  I’d make it so nice that community groups would want to use it and I would let them for a reasonable fee.  It would also be nice if the drummer didn’t have to set up in a different area code.

4.  Install a sound system that could be managed by anyone, but heard by everyone.  I would design it so that when a person had to go to the bathroom they wouldn’t say, “Hey, I can hear things better through the speaker in here than I could on the front row.”

5.  Install a projection system that didn’t rely on anything created by Microsoft.  I would also make sure that the software we used for worship was not older than what we had been using before.  Technology is meant to move forward not backwards.

6.  Install enough stage lights and position them so that no matter a person stood on the stage they could be seen.  This would especially be helpful for someone standing on the front of the stage.

7.  Install movable seating but never set up 800 chairs for an event hosting less than 200 people.

8.  Realize that God can move anywhere at anytime even if the building is not perfect.  I would do everything to make sure it was perfect though even if that meant construction delays to raise the necessary money to finish the building perfectly.

Tomorrow’s post will be “If I were going to host a Christian college event for potential students”

On a different note check out this story and video and some of the worst mental mistakes in the history of college basketball.  There will also be a post coming up about my trip to Indy, the Pacers-Hawks game, Larry Bird, and a fight that surprisingly didn’t involve any NBA players.

Jakob, Aaron, and I went to Crave(formerly known as Winter Weekend) at SWU this past weekend.  It was my first visit to the new Hobson Chapel and Fine Arts Building.  Got to see lots of old friends which always lifts my spirits.  A band from the Asheboro area, Bannister, lead worship and did an amazing job.

As I right this, I’m sitting in Spiritual Formation office at Wesleyan HQ.  Ive got a great opportunity to work on some new ministry stuff with Scott Simmons and some other great folks.  Deb got us tickets to the Pacers-Hawks game tonight and the seats in Section 16 are awesome!  Today is Matt and Deb’s anniversary so for them to spend time with me is a huge thing.  I could just tell Deb what the surprise this weekend is.

Spent all day yesterday on planes and in airports.  That’s always a draining experience.  The new Indy airport is really nice, and I love all the moving walkways at Detroit.  It’s tough being away from my family 5 out of 6 days, but we will get to spend the week together in Ohio for Thanksgiving.  Now, if I can only talk Karen into letting me make the hour and a half trip to the football hall of fame in Canton while we are at her cousins’.

I am pumped about the upcoming youth room renovation.  We came up with some new ideas.  Now we just have to get everything ready for New Year’s Eve.  Did I mention that the Giant Ball drop is coming to Denton?  Make sure you check out www.soulgloyouth.com for updates.

I have lots on my mind today.  Lots of things I want to say.  If you can’t blog something nice then blog something else.  Yeah, something like that.  Maybe I’ll take the gloves off tomorrow.  Have a great day.

Me and a couple of guys from church are heading down to Crave at Southern Wesleyan University this weekend.  This event used to be called Winter Weekend and I’ve been to a lot of them over the years.  Being at the church across the street from campus meant that I could pop in to the various events/concerts, etc.  I’ve done a seminar or two for them over the years.  Now that I live hours away, the decision to go isn’t as easy.  Most of the kids in my new youth group didn’t know what the event was so I had to drum up some excitement.  That’s easy for me because it’s not just a campus visit but a trip home.  I have more reasons to go than just the event itself.  That’s not true for everybody.  So, for what reasons, outside of alma mater loyalty, would one have to go to this event?  I’ve taken kids to Indiana Wesleyan’s version of Winter Weekend(held in March) three times.  The first time we went because Third Day and Dawson McCalister were going to be there, the second time we went because my wife’s cousin was a student, and the last time we went because two of our kids from Central were there.  The trips were we knew people there were better, but all three were fun.  Last night, one of the guys asked me who(band/speaker) was going to be at Crave.  I told him they were going to be good, but that he hadn’t heard of them.  As we looked at the schedule, he just said,”There sure is a lot going on.  Are we going to be busy the whole time?”  I told him we would have plenty of time to hang out and for me to show them around my old stomping grounds.  They seem be excited to sit in on classes and Deal or No Deal.  It strikes me that most of the stuff we’ll be doing is stuff we could do here in Denton.  I know it’s the experience of being at and staying on a college campus that is the point, but I’m sitting here 6 hours before we leave asking myself,”If I wasnt from there or didn’t go to school there would we be going this weekend?”  There are other youth groups from our area going and I intend to ask the youth pastors why they went.  I’m sure loyalty will be a major theme.  What about people who aren’t loyal to their alma mater or aren’t familiar with SWU?  What reason would they have to go?  I guess the point I’m trying to make is this:  If I have to choose between campus events, I will drive 8 hours more to attend one that has marquee names and isn’t built around dodge ball, freeze tag, Monopoly, and open gym.  Now, we are going to have the time of our lives this weekend as I introduce kids from my new youth group to students from my old youth group. And I hope the speaker and band this weekend become marquee names. There may be some cards involved as well.  Besides, we all know that college life isn’t about what’s on the schedule.  It’s about the relationships you build.  I just hope the heat works better than Childs Hall circa winter 1996.