Jennifer’s Dad and family returned to Arkansas on Saturday, and my parents drove back to St. Louis this morning. So far we’ve gotten almost halfway unpacked, turned in our paperwork and lease, and

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but we were given the wrong phone number for our house. Our new phone number is 563-589-0387. If you call -0388 you’ll be bugging our nice new neighbors, the Martins.

Grilled Steak. Get it.. stake... steak? It's funny!

Well, according to the calendar it’s moving day, so we’re on our way back up to Dubuque and Wartburg. It’s hard to leave a community you get to know over the course of a year and move someplace different yet again. And even though I’ll know a bunch of people from my own class, I won’t know hardly anyone from the other two classes on campus, so it really is like moving to a brand new place with a whole new set of people and relationships to learn. I’m looking forward to it, of course, but leaving is hard and arriving is hard too.

Our new address as of today is 447 Blair Dr #5, Dubuque IA 52003. Our home phone number will be 563-589-0388. We haven’t decided yet how we’re going to handle cell phones, but it’s likely that our existing cell phone numbers will be disconnected soon as they won’t be necessary for a year on campus and are rather expensive.

So, without further ado… adieu, Sterling and Rock Falls – and watch out, Wartburg!

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“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” – Ecclesiastes 3.1

There is indeed a time for everything, and the time has come for Jennifer, Anneliese, and I to begin making our goodbyes. Goodbye doesn’t come easily for me – maybe it doesn’t for you, either? I hope that we’ll get a chance to talk to many of you in the last few weeks of internship to remember this year together. I’ve already been thinking about what I’m going to remember and take with me from internship. Here are just a few things:

I’ll remember the fun of youth events, playing “sardines” (hide and go seek in the dark) in the church, the earnest questions of confirmation, your energy and excitement.

I’ll remember the laughter and tears, the high points and the lower points we shared. I’ll remember freezing my fingers off on a Christmas parade float and preaching in a barn. I’ll remember several weddings and several more funerals. I’ll remember your trust and your care.

I’ll remember gazing out of windows together – car windows, living room windows, hospital room windows – while wondering what God is doing with us all.

Most of all, I’ll remember each of you – your individual contributions to my learning and growth here, the ministry we did together, and the joy we shared as brothers and sisters in Christ.

My prayer for you is this: that you’ll remember who you are and whose you are. You all belong to Jesus Christ, in whom you were baptized. There are so many things competing for our attention and energy today, and it’s easy to get distracted. Take a firm hold of your faith! When we are firmly rooted in Christ, God’s promise in Psalm 1.3 is for us: “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.” I’ve said many times this year that great things coming for you at St. John’s. Believe it! God is going to use you powerfully.

Many people have asked what’s next for us. The short answer is: a move back to Dubuque, where I’ll finish my last year at Wartburg Seminary, write a thesis, and finish the approval process for ordination. After that, a call to a congregation awaits. I’ll be sharing more about this in Sunday School after my last Sunday on July 18, if you’re curious about the seminary process.

What’s next for St. John’s? Your season of goodbyes will soon once again be transformed into the excitement of saying hello to a new intern. Rita Augsburger will be coming to St. John’s for a year of internship in early August.

Oh, and if you’re not busy on the evening of Thursday, July 22, we wouldn’t mind some help loading our moving truck!

Grace and peace be with you all,

Intern Ted Carnahan

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From the sanctuary of St. John's, Sterling, IL.

‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.’ – Revelation 3.20 (NASB)

I want to leave a legacy.
How will they remember me? Did I choose to love?
Did I point to You enough to make a mark on things?

I want to leave an offering.
A child of mercy and grace who blessed your name unapologetically…

- Nicole Nordeman, Legacy

The Week Behind

This was my last week of internship at St. John’s. I was busy tying up loose ends with some special projects, including the new church website and the Guyana computer lab project, which finally shipped! There will be more to say about that in a few weeks. I had my first wedding rehearsal on Friday as a favor to Pr. Leo, which went pretty smoothly. Besides that, there have been a lot of goodbyes.

Jennifer and I are deeply into the packing and cleaning process. Anneliese keeps noticing things missing and comes over me, points, and asks, “Dada?” I explain that we’re moving, and that seems to satisfy her. She’s also very excited to see Isaac this coming week!

Input

I’ve been interested in the idea of communal housing arrangements, particularly ones that encourage simple living, for several years. I didn’t realize that there was a term for that until this evening: Cohousing.

I’ve been re-reading For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy by Alexander Schmemann. He’s got some amazing and timely things to say about the connection between clericalism (the false idea that pastors are different than everyone else) and secularism (the false idea that there is a part of life which should not be connected to God).

Output

I really need to post my July newsletter article online. I’ll schedule it to post tomorrow afternoon – that’s output, right? You can go peek at the newsletter here if you just can’t bear to wait.

The Week Ahead

Tomorrow is my last Sunday at St. John’s! In addition to leading worship with Pr. Chuck Steinke, a man who has been a great mentor to me this year, I’m also preaching my last sermon in Sterling. On top of that, the congregation has been planning something HUGE! I know it involves the youth bell choir, the adult bell choir, and the adult choir, all of which they’ve pulled out of summer break just for this occasion. They’ve put some serious practice time in for an epic combined musical event, and somehow they’ve managed to keep it a secret from me. I know they’re doing it, but I haven’t managed to hear even a note! I’m really honored.

At the end of the service, there is going to be a “Godspeed liturgy” to wish Jennifer, Anneliese, New Baby, and I well on our next step in the seminary process. After that, I’m going to spend a few minutes during Sunday School time telling people about the ordination process in the ELCA and how St. John’s and internship fits into that.

The rest of the week is packing, cleaning, and moving. My parents and Jennifer’s dad’s family are coming in to help us move, and we’re loading up on Thursday and driving on Friday. We’re doing pretty well on packing, though, so I don’t foresee any frantic last-minute box stuffing. This time next week we’ll be settling in to our new digs in Dubuque. That reminds me…

If you’re in the Sterling – Rock Falls area and aren’t too busy, we’d love to have some help on Thursday, July 22 at 4:30p loading our moving truck. Show up at 704 E 19th St, Sterling (look for the Budget truck) and we’ll even feed you afterward!

If you’re at Wartburg Theological Seminary and aren’t too busy, we’d love to have some help on Friday, July 23 at about 4:00p unloading our moving truck. Show up at Blair #5 (look for the Budget truck) and we’ll even feed you afterward!

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And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. – Acts 19.11-12 (ESV)

The Week Behind

This evening, a broom fell from its hook in the garage and smashed my left thumb, so I’m rather hobbled in typing this. It’s been a hectic week, filled with many last-minute goodbye dinners and meetings. I got a chance to hang out with the Sterling Noon Rotary club, which was pretty exciting. We’re also now in the thick of packing, with boxes lining the walls of our apartment and the garage. My office is almost cleaned out of books and personal items, too.

Today’s Sunday School class on Images and Icons was amazing! Barb brought in some great icons, and even though we didn’t have our full class time, it had an amazing impact. Icons teach the faith in a powerful way!

Input

Here’s an interesting article from this week from ChurchIT. Measuring Success in a World of Digital Pirates argues, quite rightly I believe, that even though people are “stealing” your software by putting it up for free download online, it’s a sign of popularity and it can be a good thing. The software under discussion, however, is the 8bit network’s StandardTheme, which states quite clearly on the “Buy Now” page, “Our theme is GPL.” The whole point of a software license like the GPL is that once you receive the software, you have the right to distribute it to others without restriction. Thus, it’s quite impossible for anyone, eyepatch or no, to pirate StandardTheme – or any other piece of GPL software. They certainly can charge money to distribute it, but any of their customers may then choose – quite legally – to make the software available as a free download on their own website.

This 19-page comic book does a great job showing how misleading and dangerous homeopathy is.

Should you replace your church website with Facebook?

Output

I got Koine Greek working in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, and wrote up some instructions.

The Week Ahead

My last week of internship! I’ll be shipping the Guyana computers this week, making my last visits with shut-ins, and writing a sermon for Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. I’ll also be rehearsing a wedding on Friday night for Pr. Leo, though I won’t actually be doing the wedding on Saturday myself. It’s going to be a whirlwind week, but I’m pumped to finish strong!

(Photo Credit)

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I’ve been using Ubuntu for several years with KMFL (Keyboard Mapping for Linux), a project to bring “Keyman-style” keyboard maps to Linux in order to type in Unicode. These are vastly superior to traditional keyboard maps because they allow you to type more naturally.

Under a traditional keymap, you might have to memorize that the letter Q is what you type to get the Greek letter θ (theta). Or, you might have to remember to type the right keys in the right order in order to get diacritical marks to appear in the correct place. Keyman, on the other hand, lets you type things like:

• When you want theta, just type “T H”. The T will first be a tau, but then will change to theta. Same with phi (P H) and psi (P S).
• Breathing marks are typed phonetically, so getting one to appear over an alpha means you type “H A”.
• When you want a sigma, just type an S. The computer will pick whether or not to use the final sigma.
• The final output is Unicode, meaning it will work everywhere forever, not just with some goofy proprietary font produced by a company whose name rhymes with Thigh-bleworks.
• Lots more. Be sure to check out the documentation.

Unfortunately, in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, the input system changed from SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) to iBus (Intelligent Input Bus). This means that my previous guides to getting KMFL working don’t work on Lucid anymore. (Here’s the one for Greek, and here’s the one for Hebrew.)

I couldn’t find documentation for this anywhere, but here’s what worked for me:

1. Follow the directions at packages.sil.org to add the SIL Ubuntu Repository. Important: Substitute “lucid” for “hardy” in those directions.
2. In a terminal, run sudo aptitude update
3. In a terminal, run sudo aptitude install ibus-kmfl
4. Download my modified Koine Greek Keyman file here: scim-greek-koine.tar.gz
5. Create ~/.kmfl and extract GrkPolyComp.KMN to it. Rename that file to GrkPolyComp.kmn (the extension must be lowercase). The interesting thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t appear to be necessary to compile the file with kmflcomp at all! The KMN file is source code, not compiled code, yet somehow this works.
6. Log out and back in.
7. Go to System > Preferences > iBus Preferences > Input Method
8. Add a new input method, located under “Other,” called “Greek (polytonic precomposed) Unicode”

To use it, toggle the iBus system on and off with Control-space. Alt-Shift-L toggles between different languages. You should have a little keyboard in your indicator panel – if not, go back to the iBus Preferences and the system should ask if you want it activated.

Happy Greeking!

PS – If you’re working on Greek, you might be interested in my Greek irregular verb quiz.

(Photo Credit)

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Okay, okay, I confess: with the holiday weekend, I didn’t get around to writing up the Saturday Stretch until now. So much for weekly disciplines!

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.’ – Matthew 6.25a (NRSV)

The Week Behind

It was a beautiful week, with lots of good weather to be outside in. Jennifer and I have begun packing in earnest! We’ve also been blessed by tremendous generosity this week. The Guyana computers were ordered and have arrived, and they are nearly ready to ship. I’ll have more on that in another article later this week or next.

Of course, this past weekend was the Independence Day holiday. For all of our celebrations of military accomplishments, patriotic displays, and the like, I hope we also keep in mind that the Fourth of July commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This is a political holiday, with a set of profound ideas at its core. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll take the chance to read it, or better yet, to hear it read (by a team of celebrities!):

Input

This week has brought little time for reading, beyond my normal news feeds. Why not check out Dilbert?

Output

Almost eight years ago, I royally abused the discipline of statistics to produce The Amazing Shrinking Sermon. I posted it online a few days ago.

The Week Ahead

I’ll be preaching on the story of the “Good” Samaritan in Luke 10 on Wednesday. I also have a lot of goodbye meetings planned and packing going on. Hopefully the Guyana computer lab will be shipped by Friday, too! We’re at two weeks left to the end of internship, so the clock is running on a lot of projects. It’s a good thing I like to be busy!

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In early October 2002, I was both a smart alec undergraduate doing a minor in Mathematical Statistics and the guy at church who was recording sermons to put them on the internet. I noticed over a span of six weeks that Pastor’s sermons were getting progressively shorter each week. Taking to heart the saying Mark Twain popularized, that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” I thought I’d apply some intentionally faulty reasoning and write it up for fun.

I stumbled upon it recently while cleaning up some old computer files, and it shows something very important about trusting models. More on that below.

We seek to prove that the length (in seconds) of Pastor’s sermons is getting exponentially shorter. We are concerned that eventually, Pastor may stand at the pulpit and, for his sermon, say nothing at all. Hence the following hypotheses:

• Null Hypothesis: There is no distributional relationship in the length of Pastor’s sermons.
• Alternate Hypothesis: There is an exponential relationship (with parameters derived from the data) expressed in the length of Pastor’s sermons.

I then plugged in six weeks of data, ran a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and reported the results:

Output from SPSS

The p-value of this test is .024, so there is only a 2.4% chance that this data does not fit an exponential distribution. The chances of this happening randomly in this manner are fewer than one in forty. The regression equation is y(x) = 1335.42*(.9811^x).

Next, observe that Pastor’s short prayer at the end of the sermon lasts approximately 15 seconds, so solve the equation y(x)=15 for x. X = 236 weeks.

Thus, in 4 years and 28 weeks from October 6, 2002, (namely, Sunday, March 4, 2007), Pastor will stand at the pulpit, smile, and say only, “May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds through faith in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.”

And then sit back down again.

I suppose it’s good that he retired so we never had to find out if my dire prediction came true!

Of course, this is all nonsense.

I think I actually surprised myself to get a p-value so low — meaning so good a match with the model I picked. I remember wondering how I would talk my way past data that wouldn’t fit what I wanted it to do. It would have been fun! To have it fit so well at the same time was just icing on the cake.

Today I’m wondering what models you and I have chosen that fit some of our data about the world, but don’t make cohesive sense. I invite you to share your thoughts below!

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One of the things I’ve been working on the last few weeks is a two week Adult Ed. series on symbolism in the sanctuary at St. John’s, Sterling. I’ve finally finished up the booklet to go with that class, and now that it’s over I wanted to put it up for download here. This format isn’t very printable, but it’s handy to read online. There’s some really beautiful stuff built into our church!

Download: Symbols in the Sanctuary.pdf

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