Church and Sweet Tea

This article is the first in a series that will be my effort to respond to two people who visited my site searching for answers to why they were “tired” and “weary” of the church.  

        One of my best friends is David Smith. He is a missionary, sharing God’s love with the street kids of Lima, Peru. I try to see him whenever he comes home to visit. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go and spend the day with him back in our old home town. His grandfather recently passed away, and one of our stops was to visit his grandmother. I have always claimed them as a third set of grandparents. It was a great visit, and we took a stroll down memory lane, looking at several photo albums from my high school years. As a family friend, I was in several pictures, and so were several others from our church youth group. We recalled the wonderful times we shared with our youth group. We were a very close community. Continue Reading »

One of my favorite features of this website is the statistics program. It keeps track of how many people visit the site, which pages are viewed the most, what cities (and countries) my visitors are from, and even what search terms people enter to find my site. I was surprised by two people that came to my site this month by entering Google search terms. One person searched with the phrase ”I am weary of the church” and the second one searched “Why am I losing interest in the church.” These two people visited my blog looking for answers to serious questions, and looking at the current content, I know that they did not find what were looking for. This is not just a blog, but a method of evangelism, a tool for teaching, and a place for Kingdom building. You never know who is reading, and what they are searching for. I will write a reply to those two people in the near future.

     Seeing as most of the people that read this blog are fellow bloggers themselves, I thought I would just put this thought out there: Christian blogs actually reach people. If someone is visiting your blog looking for Christ, will that person find Him there?

 For fellow Wordpress bloggers, I suggest these plugins:

• Stat Traq Keeps statistics on who is visiting your website
  
• AutoMeta Puts hidden tags into your webpage that allows search engines to find your site easier.
  

     We’ve been praying for rain and on Tuesday, we got it. It rained most of the afternoon.
There were also some rumbling storms that came through, with those beautiful, yet terrifying lightning strikes (see the bottom of this story for some pictures of lightning’s calling card). At one point, a thunderstorm came through, and the thunder and lightning seemed to be getting closer and closer. Then there was a bright flash and an immediate boom that made everyone in the house jump. We looked out the window, expecting to see a tree down in our yard, but we didn’t see anything. A few minutes later, our security company called me to let me know that the fire department was at the church and wanted me to come let them in. The church took some electrical damage, but it could have been much worse. I am thankful that we had proper electrical wiring. Let this be a lesson to Trustees everywhere: Ground wires, GFCI outlets, circuit breakers, and power supplies are all good things. I never thought of it before Tuesday. I’m glad somebody did!

     Even with all those precautions however, we took some damage. Continue Reading »

     I have not updated my blog in quite some time. It is not that I have lost interest in writing. The reason I have not posted any new articles is because school has really kicked my rear end this semester. Classes were tough, and going through the semester with a newborn and the responsibilities of serving a church made school even more tough.

     I have good news to report, though. I have passed my first year of seminary. This semester pushed me to the limit, but I made straight B’s. I am pleased. I am relieved. I am glad for summer break. So, I look forward to updating my blog more often over the summer, but for now, I will celebrate my accomplishment and rest. One year down, two to go.

     My earlier post comparing the Zelnorm recall to our spiritual health has seen a lot of web traffic over the past few days. I realized that I left off an important fact that people may be looking for:

The company that produces Zelnorm is refunding out of pocket expenses for any pills that you would like to return. At nearly $200 for a month’s supply, it adds up quickly! Their number is (888) 669- 6682.