I know everyone thinks they have the smartest kid in the world. I don’t know about that but I do know that I have a kid much smarter than me. Let me tell you what happened a few nights ago.

Everyone had gone to bed and I’m up just relaxing when I hear my wife get up and go to Cee’s room. Not that it is that unusual to have to check on a 3 year old in the night, but after a few minutes Tiff comes out to get me. Apparently our poor little girl is laying in bed covering her ears because “the bees are getting in her ears”. So like a good parent I go in there to try and calm her down and assure her there are no bees. I failed. The best results I got were she let me cover her ears.

So since compassion came up short I decided to go with the next best thing…bold face lies. I asked Cee if she’d like some medicine to help get rid of the bees. She was very pleased with my suggestion and seemed to wonder why it took me so long to come to what should have been an obvious solution. So I went out to get the “medicine”. What I got her was some water in a medicine spoon, that just between us.

*On a side note I told this story to my mom and her response was that she would have just given me real Tylenol assuming it would help if something was hurting and help me go back to sleep. I thought it was good to know how liberally the meds were whipped around when I was growing up. Just kidding mom…I love you!*

When I got back Cee was happy to see her “medicine”. She took it and shot me a skeptical look asking, “Is that water?” So I was faced with a dilemma…I’ve just been called out by a half asleep 3 year old…what do I do? I assured her it would keep the bees away and she could go back to sleep. Then I got out of there as quick as I could before she started asking any other questions. Next time she wakes up in the middle of the night I’m going straight to the NyQuil (for both of us) to avoid any of these awkward moments. Just kidding.

God is Everywhere.

One of my passions, as many of you know, is playing guitar. I’ve been playing now for about 15 years. For most of that time I’ve been leading worship. First in my youth group during high school, then at Mercer, then on the road throughout much of the southeast, and now at Lawrence Drive. I would never consider myself a great guitar player. I don’t intend to be falsely modest but I am simply a good enough rhythm player, but I really love to play.

I have several guitars that I have collected over the years, and most of them are fairly modest pieces that are primarily just functional, but I do have one crown jewel. I have a Taylor 310 that is my baby. I’m not saying I love it more…I’m just saying I had it before I had a wife or child so take what you will. My Taylor is a beautiful guitar that sounds better today than when I bought it (interesting fact, acoustic guitars develop a fuller richer tone as they age due to the way the wood ages).

Right now I am saving for another Taylor guitar. I’ve been saving for about 10 months. Every gift giving event I’ve simply asked for a few bucks for the guitar fund. I’ve stuck away my spare change and almost all my spending money.  And now I’m starting to get excited because I’m very close to being able to afford my new guitar. At last count I am a little less than $500 shy of my goal. I have spoken to the owner of my favorite guitar shop and once I decide which guitar I want he will put the guitar away for me till I have the final funds (an unofficial layaway if you will).There are two guitars I am looking at, a Taylor 614 and a 714. Both guitar are stunning and sound amazing.

If you haven’t noticed I am very excited about this guitar. I understand this will likely be the last time I will spend this kind of money on a guitar until…well ever. So I am very appreciative to my wife who has supported my desire to save for this guitar. She may not understand why we have to spend this much on a guitar but she wants it for me and that just one of the reasons she’s awesome!

It all happened so fast! I’m not really sure where I am any more. This summer has been crazy. I don’t really know of any way we could have done it differently but I know we won’t do it again. Sitting down to schedule everything I knew it would be a lot but the last two months have run by in a blur.

We started our summer as soon as school was out. Tiff and I took Cee to Disney for the time. It was a truly amazing trip. We also went to Sea World while we were down there but Cee is still talking about meeting Belle, Cinderella, and Ariel. When we got back we took AMP on the best Six Flags trip EVER! Most Atlanta schools weren’t out so we rode everything in the park and never waited more than 5 or so minutes in any line. It was a unique experience to almost have the park to ourselves. Then things got serious.

The following week was vacation Bible school (three words that cause me to wake up in a cold sweat at night). VBS was a hit and while the kids enjoyed their time at Saddle Ridge Ranch I took our middle school aside for a special week together (the 1st appearance of “Unhindered” this summer). After the dust settled on the ranch we all had earned a nice little break. We spent the weekend with my parents so Cee could get a little Grandma & Poppa time, and because my folks were going to dog-sit for during the next leg of our journey. And as soon as our weekend ended we left to go to Centrifuge for a week.

Now you won’t hear me complain about FUGE. I am one of the biggest FUGE shills you’ll find anywhere (to prevent confusion of unnecessary trips to dictionary.com, a shill is someone who promotes an event or product). Our trip to FUGE did not disappoint. We saw God work in the lives of our students, and we couldn’t have had more fun! A wrote earlier about camp, and how is it a special place and this couldn’t have been truer about our week at FUGE. It was so great to get away from everything and just be surrounded by God’s beauty.

Upon our return it was here! Five glorious day of nothing. Bask in it…since we all know youth pastor don’t do anything.

The next week included a combo trip to White Water and to see the Braves play, several movies and a couple trips to eat with various combinations of students. It was a lot of fun but was a lot of running around. Then we get to Fusion. Fusion is a basketball my AMP students host for elementary kids. We had a great week with the kids and after the kid left at lunch each day we went out to Morgan elementary to work. We repainted part of the play ground and area around it. It came out really good and I’m proud of the effort my students gave in some extremely hot weather.

Finally we wrapped up our summer travels with a trip to Birmingham, AL for World Changers. World Changers is a great opportunity for students to share the gospel by serving the needs of people in a community (I’m pretty sure that the gospel is more effectively shared without words than with but that’s a different blog post).World Changers was the second appearance of the Unhindered theme. Our study the week of VBS was based on World Changers’ pre-project material. World Changers was a great experience for all of us but I particularly enjoyed my time (I’ll visit this in more detail later).

Now as I stand on the backend of a jammed summer I am proud of all we did. Through the work and the play I know that it was all for God’s glory and I and my students were drawn closer to the Lord. We’re now preparing for the fall. Over the next several weeks AMP will see Candy Night, an AMP Costume Party, and my personal favorite MESSY DAY!!! All this leading up to an August 11 Kick-Off party.

It was a crazy summer and it will be an awesome new school year. I can’t wait to welcome in all the new students to AMP. First thing you need to learn is that God is Everywhere!

Camp is a special place. It is a place somehow outside of our normal existence. While at camp there is no outside world. Everything that is not camp gets put on pause. Stay here long enough and time begins to mean less. By the end of the week campers refer less to time and more to scheduled activities. When you’re at camp there are simple rules and a schedule to guide you through your day.  It is so much simpler than real life.

We are in an environment that separates us from many of the distractions that take our attention from God. It is an easy place to focus on God because everything we do has been scheduled around God. We’ve set aside time to study God, time to exercise, time to eat, and time to worship. It’s a full day but its also a complete day. It’s a day that meets our spiritual and physical needs.
But why is it that we struggle to bring that into our real lives. I know we can’t stay at camp but isn’t our calling to make God the center of our lives? Is it so unusual to set our schedule to revolve around our Lord? Too often our schedule makes us instead of the other way around. When we are driven by our schedule it is easy to rationalize away gross neglect of what we should be focusing on. We’re just busy…that’s not a crime.

What would it look like if we brought a little camp home with us? While the food and the smell of a room full of six middle school students are things that can stay at camp, what if we brought home the idea that everything we do focuses on God. What if we look for Holy application in our studies, our entertainment, and even our free time? What if just assumed that God is everywhere?

It is a dark day indeed. My ipod touch has finally stopped working (oh the pain to even type it!!!). It has been coming on for a while now. It began a couple months ago. I started losing the sound in one ear and if I adjusted the headphones it would work fine. I thought at first it was a bad set of ear buds but after replacing them the problem continued. It got progressively worse until now my headphones don’t work at all.

For most people this would be an annoyance and they’d move on. Perhaps those are healthier people but for me my ipod is practically glued to me most of the time. It could be an addiction, but I like to think of it as a tool. When you are as easily distracted as I am it is very helpful to drown out as much as you can. It is my defense against ADD (febble defense).

My ipod is not that old but it has probably gotten 10 times the use of a standard model. I use in the car (safely of course), at work, at home while doing chores, and even to help me sleep. Alas, it has been a time of mourning in our home. I thought all hope was lost. I began checking price on a replacement I wouldn’t be able to afford, but things looked bleak. Apple no longer makes a 16GB touch and the 8GB is too small and the 32GB is a little think on the price end.

But in the darkest night there shined a glimps of hope. I called Apple just so they could tell me there was nothing they could do, but it turns out I’m still covered under my warrantee.  

Hoorah! There is justice! He told me I’d have to go to an Apple store. He said there were 2 near by. Even better! One was in Alpharetta and the other Birmingham. You know right around the corner. It took some explaining but I finally conveyed the point that those were not in fact “close” though I guess if you are speaking in relation to Australia then yes they’re next door.

So now I am off to the UPS store. I will send my baby on a journey that will take it to unknown lands to see the ancient ipod witchdoctors of old. There will be trails and hardships but when it returns to me it will be a man. Good luck my faithful friend. I hope your trip is safe and I will miss you terribly while you are away.

Have a great day.

I am a terrible speller. I know a lot of people say they can’t spell but I seriously don’t even try. I just type something close to what I want and I let Word guess at the right word. This time around I’m not going to type this in Word and we’ll just see how bad this gets. My spelling is so bad that it is not unusal for word to say…”um, I got nothing.” I feel that if its going to that stupid red line under a word it should at least have a better suggestion orkeep it to yourslef. If its just going to say (no suggettions) then really, what was the point of bringing it up all.

It goes back to the 2nd grade. We would do spelling bees with the weeks spelling words to “help us study”. This classroom trama is one of the first times I realized that not all adults in my life could be trusted with sharp objects. This woman was clearly teaching 2nd grade because she was not qualified for the 3rd. Why is a spelling bee a stupid way to study for a spelling test? Well how about becuase the kids who need help studing are eliminated first thus not recieving any of the help! I was 7 for crying out loud and I could see that.

Each week we would have 15 or so words and 2 or 3 “elephant words”. These are words not spelled how they sound, which, by the way, is a stupid idea, and  whoever thought that “thought” should have and needed an extra “ugh” should be beaten by every 2nd grader on the planet. I digress, in our weekly torture bee it would never fail that she’d go alphabetically (a bad word to use without spell check), and when she got about three students in she would decided it was a good time to whip out an elephant word (yes, Coder was three names into our class roll). It would go something like this: “Tim, spell cart. Jane, spell shop. Jon, spell beautiful.”

To this day I cannot confidently spell “beautiful”. At least Mrs. Wilson can retire know that she touched one student and that is what they say teaching is all about.

Now I’m not saying she is the reason I can’t spell. I’m just saying, I can’t spell. Cee is getting smart enough to pick up on Tiff and my conversations. So we have started doing the spelling thing. “Do you have the c-u-p?” “Will you take her for her n-a-p?”. What’s sad is that about the best I can do. Tiff will spell something to me and I have to stop and figure out what she spelled. Finally after my feeble attempts Cee just look up and tells me what Tiff wants. Its embarassing to be out spelled by a 2 year old. Oh well I’m sure I could take her on in an even game of Madden football. And really who needs to spell as long as you still have video games.

Until next time, God is Everywhere.

Did you know…

Here’s a follow up video to my last post. Very interesting video. Enjoy.

If you reading this then you already know that ANYONE can have a blog these days. Social media (ie Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc) have taken over the way this generation communicates. We don’t call, we text. We don’t e-mail we facebook (and seriously my spell check needs to accept that “Facebook” is a word, heck it’s a noun/verb/adjective). When was the last time you sent someone a FB message and then were annoyed by how long it took them to get back to you?

The video below was just so startling to me at the magnitude of the impact social media now has. It isn’t a fad that will pass. Sure new things will come, and quickly, but the truth that we communicate differently is here to stay. It is a shift in the culture we live in. And at this point to say “I’m not really a Facebook/Youtube kind of guy” is like saying “I really think electricity has run its course…its on the way out.”

If this is true and the most powerful communication tool is directly in our hands how will we use it. Its something to consider the next time you’re on FB playing Farmville, Fishville, or Milli Vanilli (Trying for a pun…too much??? Perhaps). The next time you find yourself in hours 3, 4, or 10 of YouTube videos ask yourself, “Is there a way I can build the Kingdom of God with facebook?”

Is it a silly question? I don’t think so. The people on your FB page are more likely to avoid a product if you post a negative experience. Conversely, if you praise a restaurant you went to your FB buddies are likely to try it as well. Do we use our social media to show people the gospel that we say drives our existence?

You don’t have to post the Roman road as your status and I am certainly not endorsing those “if you believe in Jesus you’ll make this your status…if you don’t you hate God” messages. No its simple, you believe in the gospel…check. The gospel, the good news is fundamentally the way you see the world…check. Why not just work in something…anything really about how God is working in your life. How your excited about church tomorrow…how you enjoyed church yesterday.

**Authors note: To make this work you might actually have to let God work in your life and you might actually have to believe the gospel…but that’s another post altogether. **

Hey, just food for thought. Enjoy the video. God is Everywhere.

I recently updated to the newest version of software from Word Press (the platform that runs my blog). And as is the case with most “upgrades” it has been a huge pain. I’ve been working for over a week to fix what wasn’t broken before I “upgraded”. Note the use of quotation marks because I can’t adequately express the sarcasm.

Don’t get me wrong…I love the new toys. I have techno-joy! But it has been a joy learning a lot about code. I’ve been reading and editing code, so finally after all these years I can truly call myself a Coder. Its a great day.

I know this wasn’t the most interesting post so to make it up to you enjoy this video. Its a band called Boyce Avenue and I’ve really enjoyed them the last few weeks. Until next time, God is Everywhere.