The great state of Tex-afornia

This week I am speaking at an event called "Surge Week". It is for a small youth group, but I am still nervous. This is the first time I've been asked to speak at another church. I feel ready, but there is always that nagging feeling that you won't be prepared. I am the type of person who worries right up until I get up to speak, but when I am up there I feel fine. I know God will speak through me and that it will be a good experience for me. I just hope that the students develop a passion and love for Jesus. My personal conviction is that speakers make a limited impact on a person. Pastors, families and friends will make more of an impact in the grand scheme of things.

posted by Kevin @ 1:23 PM 0 Comments

My wife, sister, and I saw Seabiscuit last night. It is an excellent movie! I highly recommend it. I won't give the ending away, but a main theme is how broken people come together and make each other whole again. This is a great picture of what Christian community should be like. We as broken, sinful people come together in the name of Christ. Through community with the Holy Spirit and each other. Lives are mended. Souls are renewed. People are sanctified. I feel really strongly that relationships are essential to growing in Christ. A friend of mine who works at my church said recently that one cannot truly know God apart from community. He got a lot of flack for that. I agree with Him. Sure, it is necessary to break away and be alone with God. Silence is necessary to the Christian walk, but community is where we see our good and bad natures act out. In community we see the best and the worst of ourselves. After all, God said that it was not good for Adam to be alone (Gen 2). Adam, who walked in the presence of God, was incomplete without human companionship. Every time I think about that my noodle (and theology) gets baked.

posted by Kevin @ 9:45 PM 0 Comments

I have today off today. I work part time at a church and am not going to school this summer so I usually end up working more hours at the church than they are paying me for (which is ok with me). When I actually do take time off I don't know what to do with myself. Usually, I just go to Best Buy and play the video games, which is probably what I'll do today. It's too hot to go play frisbee golf. What I'm getting at is that I don't understand is why I feel uncomfortable being away from my job, as if I'm going to miss a stupid phone call or something.

It's a hard thing to see yourself apart from your career, especially when you feel like your career is a calling. Maybe that is what I am uncomfortable with. What God has made me to be is not my career. I am His child. I am uniquely Kevin.

Maybe that's it or maybe I just need a babysitter to come hang out with me while my wife is at work.

I just noticed that maybe is a funny looking word...Maybe...maybe...wierd.

posted by Kevin @ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

Last night my wife and I bought a book on Celtic daily prayers. It is a really cool book. There is a community of believers who live in northern England. It is interesting that their commitment is to live with authenticity before God and others. They also try and balance living a monastic life of contemplation with living a missional life of ministry to others. I have been having some trouble praying lately, so I think this book will help me with direction. It feels wierd when you don't have anything to say to God. It is not as if God is silent, but I am. You know when you meet a friend from a long time ago and you were once really close, but now you don't have a single thing to say to them. That is the awkwardness I feel in prayer right now. My first instinct is to grab my guitar and sings songs to God because it is better than the silence, maybe that's my problem. I am far more comfortable with activity than silence. I am dependant on praise songs for connecting to the Father. Isn't it amazing how dependant we get on the specific modes of communication with God. I guess I can see why so many older people do not want to change how they worship or pray, maybe they are spiritual co-dependants. I would venture to say that we all are spiritually co-dependant in some way or another.

posted by Kevin @ 9:35 AM 0 Comments

I am working in my office right now and to be completely honest, it is lonely being the only one here. I work with 7 other people at a youth ministry in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Usually, this place is teeming with people, but recently it has been void of any life. Two people no longer work here (I sorely miss them both), three work in a different office now, but same job, and everyone else is gone. I realize how much I enjoy working with people. It's not that I necessarily need to interact with other people, but just having the background noise seems to help me get my work done and to be creative. It's amazing how hard wired we are for interaction and for other people.

I realize now that my childhood dream of being a forest ranger would not have suited me well. Seems like weeks of isolation would have been a poor career move. No wonder why so many crazy people live in the wilderness alone.

posted by Kevin @ 2:54 PM 0 Comments

Here is my first entry on a blog.

posted by Kevin @ 2:41 PM 0 Comments