Eureka!

I had my eureka moment! It was in the Becoming a Man seminar that was taught by a 26 year old guy. It was geared toward 20 somethings, but there were a lot of teens in the room, too. There were a lot of really good ideas in the session that were taken from Daniel's life. Josh, the speaker, was engaging and had the quirky nose-wipe going on. I'll have to post my notes from it separately.

Thomas
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No Regrets

I took a leap of faith and traveled to fabulous Milwaukee for the annual No Regrets men's conference. So far, it's a pretty typical conference with breakout sessions on familiar topics. The church (Elmbrook) is gigantico but still homey. I do appreciate the attention to providing natural light vs. artificial.

The teaching and breakouts have been pretty traditional; regular man stuff. I can't say I've had an "a ha!" moment, yet. Still, it's only the middle of the day. Part of me wishes I could attend the discussion later about what we can do to keep this going at home. (I've always been a fan of secret pacts/covenants. Too bad they've lost their allure to men.) All in all, this is shaping up to be a good day of refreshing.

Thomas
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The Church Needs Dudes

I just saw this Youtube video from John Piper's Desiring God website. I thought it was really good in addressing the need for men in the church. I think Driscoll's right that our churches scream femininity and guys run away. How do we get men to come back to church without feeling like we're trying to feminize them?

Blogger's a Jerk

Blogger is being a huge jerk.  It won't paste text I copy into the stinking box for the message body.  It's really frustrating and is making me lose my desire to blog...

WINTER XTREME!!!

Jan. 16-18, we took a group of 8 middle schoolers to Timber-lee Christian Center for the annual Winter Xtreme. We had a blast! Jess and I went tubing and tobogganing, the group played broomball, we heard great music from Remedy Drive, and got a good word from Bill Allison.

It was definitely a challenging weekend. Middle school boys are often very high energy, but we made the best of it by throwing snowballs and swinging from trees. I'm super glad we got to go on this weekend. We had six students respond to wanting to become Christians. I'm definitely looking forward to next year!

Free At Last...

I've been overwhelmed recently by many articles addressing the oversexualization of our culture, media, world, etc. It seems very interesting to me that even many secular authors have been writing on this issue and the effects it is having and will continue to have on kids.

One thing that has always struck me as funny, though, is that there has never been many free Christian resources to help the church deal with and think through these issues. Sure, there's xxxchurch.com, a great ministry started by a couple of guys who now go to porn shows to witness to people (without overt condemnation). Still, there's by a lack of literature to spark discussion among Christians who struggle with pornographic lust.

In to save the day, my hero, Mark Driscoll. Yeah, I probably give the guy a little too much "hero worship" (by no means idolization). Everything I've heard about and from him has led me to believe he's theologically well-grounded, a committed father/husband, and a great teacher, but I digress.

He has recently released a free book in PDF format addressing the issues of pornography and "that M word." I find this a huge step in the world of Christian literature. I know for a fact that there are lots of Christian guys who struggle with this problem and everywhere you turn is another sexual image, so it's with a huge breath of relief that there's finally a free resource to help in the opposite direction. I'm glad he's willing to put his material out there for people to use. Check it out here. If you like it, you can still buy the book and have a copy that you can print to share with guys you may know who struggle with this stuff.

Prayer

At Blackhawk (the church Jess and I attend on Sunday evenings), they're two sermons into an eight-week series called Can You Hear Me Now. It's all about prayer. They're looking at eight prayers from the Bible (so far, Jeremiah's charge to pray for the city and Elijah's prayer for rain). Each week has had a prayer guide for the community-at-large to pray during the noon hour together across the county. It's been a pretty cool experience. This week's emphasis is praying big prayers and being earnest.

If you want to join in on the experience, check it out here.