What I Remember....

A few things but not everything...


The day Ruthie walked into my office down in the basement of the house that had been converted into our church offices and put a bunch of pamphlets on my desk.....

Being the only guy at the shower for you even though all the other guys told me i didn't have to go...

Being interrupted when "Nobungas's Ambition" with Jim Johnson was just getting good....

Wearing my Met's hat and those goofy glasses in our first picture together...

The first time Uncle Jim and Auntie Andrea met you....

When i drove like an idiot to get to the emergency room at Lougheed hospital because of the intersection of a brick fireplace and a lower lip...

Dr. Cho and a pink cast that ultimately became the cast of the World Champion Chicago Bulls...

Coaching (and not very well either i might add) soccer and basketball games with your teams, i don't think we won a single game in either sport but you were a really good player and a good sport....

How excited you were when you found out you would be a big brother.....

The day you told me that you and your little brother decided that you really wanted to get baptized together....

That the poor and disadvantaged, the neglected and forgotten about were the people that you really wanted to work with for the rest of your life....

When you drove what had been up to that time just your Mom's car for the first time...

i remember when it struck me several years ago that soon you would be moving out of our home to start your own life and frankly i was embarrassed that i had let the time slip away from me...

Siah, you have always heard me say i love you but this week i look at you and i am proud of the man that you have become...

Happy birthday bud....

Dad

Bittersweet....

Well, i have put this off long enough... i sort of hinted at a bittersweet visit to Indianapolis (a great town no matter what you hear otherwise) in a recent Twitter update... but i'd like to explain what i meant.
My family and i lived in Indy for a long time as a matter of fact for all of our children, Indianapolis is really our "home". Don't misunderstand me, we absolutely love being back in the Chicago area but outside of this part of the world, the longest we have ever lived in one place (almost 10 years) was Indy...
i guess the bittersweet part was having an opportunity on Saturday afternoon at a wedding reception (congratulations Christiana & Jason!) to visit with a few people from the church where for seven years i served as one of the pastors... As i fell asleep on Sunday night all i could think of were the missed opportunities to impact the area and the lives of families in that part of Indianapolis. i found myself wondering what in the world we were thinking?

We went into that church and pretty much took a bad situation and made it lots and lots worse. i am complicit because instead of standing up and asking "what in the world are we doing"... i just went along with it all and now it all looks like so much carnage... even as i write this entry i struggle with what i am feeling.... really, really saddened by what i saw this past weekend, but thrilled to be serving where i am serving... very surreal, difficult and embarrassing to explain. Maybe the guilt is just now really catching up to me all these years later or maybe just maybe, i am trying to wrap my mind around how the church in the United States can appear to be so fantastically vibrant on one hand but so incredibly anemic on the other...

Whatever the case i think maybe i have gotten this out of my system, i am thrilled to still be making a difference, my hope is that we will have many more years of being able to touch other people's lives right where we are....

Get the God-Life!

Last week i didn't get a chance to write on my blog due to a couple of factors (all of which are excuses and as Pastor Amado always says about excuses... well you'd need to ask him about that). Anyway, our staff had an annual planning retreat out near Starved Rock here in Illinois (The picture isn't actually where we stayed... the place we were at was much, much nicer, Thanks Mr. D!). i have to tell you... the fact is, i don't know how we manage to accomplish much of anything, we spend the majority of the time laughing! But that is in the end a very good thing because when we were done with this retreat several issues for our growing ministry were raised, discussed and clarified all of this done in a spirit of excited anticipation!

Now the key is how do we articulate what we believe is God's is calling us to do both as leaders and as a church and how we plan to lead over the next season of ministry. This is one of the most exciting things to me in ministry.... the constant call to stay sensitive to what God is saying...

Many of you who read this blog are folks who are trying to walk what i like to refer to as the "God-life" and that is a challenge and it's even more difficult when you are in a position of influence in a church... because it is often from this vantage point we often see just how "broken" all of us are... but everyday (at least for me) i get a chance to be with people who are committed to the God-life to the point of making significant personal sacrifice, who make me laugh and with whom i am excited to face the future with... all of which makes the God-life a joyful journey!

A very special year....

What year did a second woman join the United States Supreme Court?



This was the same year that the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time...


Professional Canadian sports team franchises won both the World Series (first for a Canadian team) and the Stanley Cup (24th time for this franchise)....



Despite what former vice-president Al Gore says, this was the year in which the Internet was offered for "free of charge"....




i watched at Greg & Laura Bruno's house as John Paxson scored a three point basket in game six of the NBA finals to give the Chicago Bulls a victory over the Phoenix Suns for their third consecutive NBA championship... the first three-peat in their franchise history!


And on the first Friday of October of that year in a hospital here in the western suburbs a wide-eyed baby boy was born into my family... he would gain legendary status as the one kid who absolutely refused, often at the top of his lungs ;) to stay with anyone other than his dear mother. He was the biggest one at birth and is the biggest one in our house to this day...

Every since he was a baby, he has had a heart as big as Texas... in all these years he has only grown sweeter... he's a good boy and i love him.

Happy Birthday Jonah!