We’re coming up on the three year mark of announcing that I was going back to school.  This is my sixth semester at Dallas Christian College, and I have roughly three more after this one. By the time I’m done with DCC, I’ll have received my B.A. in Ministry in Leadership in a span of  5 years while maintaining a full time corporate job. I’m only missing graduating in the standard “four years” by one semester, and I will only have to take 2 (projected) classes in that last semester. I’ve had to sacrifice some things, and there certainly are times when my daughters probably want to punch me in the stomach, but for the most part I’ve maintained a balanced life. When I started this journey back in May ‘07, I had no clue where it was leading. It took me two years (going back to ‘05) of wrestling with the idea of school before I finally released myself to jump in. I felt like God was leading me to equip myself for His ministry and I realized that all I had ever done is try to do things my own way and it wasn’t working out. …

When I originally met with the admissions councilor I admitted that I wasn’t sure where I was heading, but I had some ideas based on previous ministry experience… Music ministry? Youth ministry? or even head up a church plant? “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Most students come in with one ministry in mind but end up in a completely different area. It’s not that they were wrong, God just has a funny way of showing us things bits and pieces at a time. You’ll figure it out while you’re here.”

For the first three semesters I prayed and discussed future ministry constantly. As early as my first semester I had a fleeting thought about a possibility… fleeting in the sense that I threw it out my mind pretty quickly. But with almost every biblical studies class (and even some basic classes such as World History 2), the thought reappeared. Soon I was connecting dots between past experiences, current passions, newfound interests, and scholastic feedback. This past August, I finally owned up to it.

Suddenly, though, I wasn’t the one asking the question. For 2 years I had somehow avoided answering the question that now seems to be on everyone’s lips “What are you going to school for?” Sure, I had to deal with the occasional inquiry, but up until then a simple answer stating my major seemed to suffice. As soon as I came to grips with where I think this journey is leading, everyone started wanting details…

… and so, here we are…

There are two places we’re going with this:

1) I hope to serve at a church as a role of a “Spiritual Formation Pastor.” Like most things in our faith, labels have multiple meanings and carry different connotations for everyone. In a nutshell I explain it as an upgraded Christian Education Pastor that focuses on all aspects of discipleship, not just “educating” people. I could unpack this at a much deeper level, and probably will as things move forward. But, for now, take it however you want…

2) I hope to serve as an Adjunct* professor at a undergrad program similar to what I am in now. I would love to serve at DCC, but I haven’t even approached that yet. Yes, this means at minimum I need to continue on and receive my Masters. I’m still not huge on sheets of paper that supposedly confirm my status in this world (i.e. – degrees), but if “Prof-ing” is part of what I want to do, then a grad degree is necessary. I stress Adjunct* because I do not (currently) care about being tenured. The goal is two fold: Primarily, it is to enable others in my situation (corporate world adults) who realize they want more out of life and ministry. Secondly, I hope to supplement my “church” salary so I am not tempted to chase the dollar in ministry.

If this was simply about church ministry, I don’t know that this is the path I’d be on. I am convinced that everything I am learning here I could technically learn on my own. If I have the honor of serving you in the future, you will not see degrees hanging on my office wall and I won’t ask anyone to call me Master… It’s just how this world turns, it’s a means to an ends… but it’s one that is well worth it. I’ve loved *almost* every minute, ever class, every discussion, and especially ever essay I’ve written to this point. I don’t expect that to change.

Maybe God is still only revealing pieces, but I feel pretty strongly about the direction this thing is going, and it’s so far beyond anything I would’ve tried on my own I can’t help but trust in the vision that God is working in me…

So… now that you know… what do you think?

The other night I watched an indie-film adaptation of the short story book Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace. I know very little about the author other than what I’ve read from wikipedia, but the movie closes with one of his own quotes that I have been chewing on ever since:

The truth will set you free but not until it is done with you.

In my pursuit of spiritual freedom, I recognize that complete and perfect freedom is not obtainable overnight… we are pressing towards our completion, allowing God to transform our very being. This is where we find freedom, and how the truth ultimately sets us free.  What is perhaps most profound about this statement is the heaviness the man whom quoted it lived with. In 2008, at the age of 46, David Foster Wallace committed suicide. For David, there was no freedom from his internal depression; the emotional pain that tormented his soul won out over whatever truth had a hold of him. We could debate whether David allowed the Truth to enter his life or not… but I doubt any of us are in a position to have that discussion.

But it does beg the question: Am I letting the Truth hold me? Does the Truth penetrate my the depths of my soul in such a way that I allow Him to transform me?

My daughter writes the best essays for school… here’s the latest about her favorite season… (everything is [sic]… it’s hard to capture all the things that come across on a written essay, but i’ll try with formatting and smilies) The fourth paragraph is genius.

—-

Scream… It’s SUMMER!!!!!

Every time summer comes around I secretly jump for joy in my room. In fact, summer is my fav. season! It’s so fun! You know what? I’ll just tell you why and maby you’ll re-think what summer is to some people.

Summer is a cool season for 3 reasons. One of those is because there is NO SCHOOL! This means we get to play outside AND in. We can damage our brains with video-games and exsercise our body with bysicle riding and jumprope. We can also sleep with no school. And since we sleep all day, we can stay up all night! Awsome, right! Another choice to do other than school is watching T.V. and movies. Even though this also damages our brains, its fun! Wee could watch old movies and comedys, horror and fantasy, and almost anything you can think of! So…. COOOL!

Summer is awsome because every two years during August is… drum roll please… The Summer Olympics! Now, I know that you might not agree and I understand but with me its just awsome! The swimming is SO cool because swimming is fun and cool to watch. Gymnastics are really cool & awsome. I love the flips, turns, and rutines (this is a great way to watch T.V.). I love the diving too. I like this because I like stunts and people doing CRAZY things. So… AWSOME!

The “gradest” is the worst, but this is the greatest… We’re homework FREE!!! This means hours of FREE time to do anything in this essay… HOURS! This (ideas for teachers and anyone who works with the GISD) saves ALOT of trees! You always tell us to recycle, so we should have more summer! No homework is just so cool! It also gives teachers more weekend time because they don’t have to grade! (Teachers who are reading this, you should thank me for menchening it to you!). So… FUNN! (i spelled that wrong on purpose ).

Thanks for reading “Scream…It’s SUMMER!”

If you’re Buzzing, Tweeting, of FBing with me then you know today I posted about 35 pics and a video of our family fun during the biggest snow fall in Dallas / Ft Worth History (near 12 inches). But for those who aren’t social networkers (*ahem* all of dionna’s family pretty much *ahem*), you can see the pics here and watch the video below…

(Originally posted at MentorMeProject.com … Join the conversation, here or there)

I lead a Life Group/Community Group/Home Cell/Cell Group/ Splinter Cell/Jihadist Group for our church called “Inhabited.” The vision is “to invite God’s transforming power into our lives through various forms of personal worship” and the focus is on spiritual formation.  Ultimately, the “various forms of personal worship” point towards how we approach our relationship with the Holy Spirit, thus much of it centers around our prayer life.

I’m going to start posting our notes. Of course, as a community group, much of our night is discussion driven, which is hard to capture by just copy-pasting our notes. I’ll interject some nuggets that sprinkled our discussion to at least sort of gives an idea of where we went (of course, nothing directly personal, just guide posts). This week was a discussion of relational honesty. The original idea has been working in me for a few weeks, but the current book I’m reading (Metamoprha / Kyl Strobel), provided much of the support and helped me round it out as a lesson. I’d love to continue the discussion here for anyone who wants to jump in, especially considering I may not always convey it correctly as i convert discussion based stuff to text.

Our journey will probably have to look much like the psalmists’, who often cried out to God with utmost honesty about their inability to find Him near. Our honesty will be the place where God teaches us humility, trust, and how to really be loved. I have found in my own life that the Spirit longs for me to come to Him as I honestly am, with what is really going on inside of me and how I actually see the world. When I do, he takes me and shows me how little I understand and how much he has to teach me. – Kyle Stobel, Metamorpha

A really short film…

I did this right at 5 years ago, and posted it here almost 2 years ago, but it’s time to revisit it for reasons outlined below. Unshaved, unkempt hair, glasses instead of contacts, overacting, goofiness, etc… There ain’t no shame in my game!

We’re talking about sharing our faith in our church and I showed this to my pastor just for kicks… now, just for kicks, he’s showing it at church this Sunday (the high quality version without credits, that is)… I’m not sure if i should laugh or cry about it being shown to a bunch of people that have never seen me like this… but the video still makes me laugh. Enjoy:

As of this morning, I am officially a contributor of a project that I believe is of the utmost importance: the MentorMeProject. Where God takes the project itself is yet to be seen; there is a great heart behind the vision, and great potential behind the purpose, but as with everything in today’s internet culture, you never really know the effectiveness until it gets rolling.

But you cannot deny the need… consider an excerpt from “The DREAM” page:

The simple part is saying these words, the difficult part is putting these words into action.
Generation X (ages 27-41) and Y (ages 9-26) are called the connected generation. But more and more people are becoming disconnected and looking to connect.

Why do people consider these two generations connected? Because they have unlimited amounts of information? Because they have constant access to anyone? These two could be true on the surface, but serve as a poor way of being connected. There needs to be a redefinition of a connected generation before we move forward and connect with others.

We all can attest to the truth in the statements above. We are far more “connected” now than we have ever been, but to what level exactly are we connected? We have weaved a web that demands connectedness and community but forgotten at the core why community is so important. I am glad to partner and contribute along side of Kyle in his quest to see authentic, mentor-style relations borne out of the technology that is so readily available at our fingertips. The question is, can we move it beyond the web? Can we use the technology as a launching pad for something real and deeper? Perhaps…

So, read my post here, and join the conversation.

I added a new page to my site. I know a lot of people just use readers these days, so I thought I’d officially “announce” it. The page explains itself for the most part. It has two sections: 1) Books I’m currently reading; 2) a rolling list of books I’ve finished in 2010. In section 2, the most recent book will always be on top, but I am keeping them numbered as well. In currently reading, I will have no more than TWO books listed for personal reading, plus whatever books I know I have to read cover to cover for school. School textbooks that will not require exhaustive reading will not be listed. For example, in Synoptic Gospels, one required text is A Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. It is a reference book with 900 pages of various articles. I know we are not going to read many of them, so I’m not counting that as a “reading” or ”completed” book in 2010.

The other books will fall into several categories: Spiritual Formation, Memoirs/Story Telling, Ministry, Vision Casting, General Christian Living, Leadership, and so on. I want to focus on the books that I think will enhance the vision for ministry that God is working/transforming in my heart. Maybe, just maybe, you can start to get a clue as to what that is by watching what I’m reading…

I finished three books in the first 10 days of 2010. At that rate, I’ll read roughly 110 books this year… NOT GONNA HAPPEN! I knew school was starting up so I kicked it into gear to read a few that were sitting on my “to read” shelf, but I do hope to continue a trend I implemented midway through November… very little TV, very little Xbox360, very much purposeful personal/familial growth in the evenings. If I had to set a goal, I am still hoping for a rate of one book per week. But I have yet to see how much time I will need to focus on school work, so it may end up at even a much lower rate than that.

I need to preface this review by saying I have never read a book from cover to cover about parenting, much less specifically about fatherhood. I’ve been a father for over ten years now, but I admit that I have much to learn. So why haven’t I read a parenting book up to this point? I dunno. Maybe pride, maybe because I’ve done a pretty decent job so far, maybe I just haven’t found the right books to keep my attention. In any case, I wanted to give this one a fair shot.

The central concept of Influence Of A Father is the idea of transference: You can’t give away that which you do not have. As such, Tom focuses each chapter on two ideas. First, do you, the reader/father, own, practice, and reflect the Biblical value discussed in chapter; and second, once you do, how can you and why should you transfer it to your children.  This does open the door for some very base level discussions about values that I already hold to in my life. As such, I found myself skimming parts of some chapters that dealt with the heart of the reader rather than the art of transference. For this same reason, I barely touched the “Concluding Thoughts” at the end of each chapter, a two paragraph section focusing on self-evaluation questions.

This isn’t to say I skimmed parts of EVERY chapter; indeed, many of the values I thought I held were challenged and enhanced through this book. The three chapter section on Discipline, a subject I felt I have handled consistently and fairly throughout the years, illuminated areas within my disciplinary values that I had never thought through. Am I disciplining for the here and now only? or to instill life long values in my children? I hope the purpose is long term, but I also see definite times where the only thing I care about is getting the here and now controlled. While that is natural, it also opens the door for me to discipline when discipline is not really in order, or worse, to discipline without teaching and helping my children avoid mistakes in the future.

Other highlights include and outstanding chapter on mentoring and the role it plays in fathering. The wisdom in this chapter transcends fatherhood and can apply to any mentor relationship. Tom also provides a breakdown of unhealthy tendencies that fathers often embrace, how to find strength through partnership with your wife, and even what to do when kids go rogue (a discussion of the Prodigal Son parable).

From a standpoint of style, it is pretty predictable. Stories of his own childhood and fatherhood highlight his points, while scripture peppers the meat of his discussions. Tom is both straightforward and compassionate, understanding that fatherhood is a difficult task that many of us don’t feel up for, but he refuses to back down due to the heaviness our influence carries. All in all, it was a great read for me. I’m not too far along where I am set in my ways, and my eldest is not too far developed for me to fix some of the subtle things that I would like to do better. Besides, I still have two that are 5 or younger, and at least one more in the plans. My hope and prayer is that God will continue to impart wisdom into my life in order to see my children grow into the adults God desires them to be… God knows I can’t do it on my own!

Bottom Line: 4 out of 5 stars for content and usability.