It’s strange how certain things are. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a good reason for it, thats just how it is supposed to be.
When you think of a refreshing drink do you think of a cold drink or a hot drink? You think of a cool drink right? Nobody says “mmm, I need a warm refreshing glass of water.” Maybe a middle eastern dude does, but I’m pretty sure that the oil’s gotten to their head. When you think of going swimming the hot tub doesn’t sound refreshing, it sounds relaxing. Swimming in cool water (not frigid) normally sounds more refreshing. But when it comes to cleanliness the roles are slightly reversed. Warm communicates clean doesn’t it? A cold shower doesn’t leave you feeling clean, and neither does washing your dishes with cold water. For me, the goal when washing my dishes is to wash with water that is as close to scalding hot as I can stand. It feels more clean.
In a somewhat similar fashion potatoes are quite fickle. You fry a potato in stick form and it goes well with catchup. If you fry those same potatoes even more it would be wrong to eat with catchup right? I mean, only little kids dip their chips in catchup. A good bean dip might work better in this situation. If instead of frying those potatoes you smashed them up into a big pile you serve them with a gravy and some butter. You wouldn’t think of pouring gravy on your Lay’s would you? If you bake that potato instead of frying or mashing it, it gets neither catchup, bean dip, or gravy. Instead it gets cheese, sour cream, and chives (among other things). There are more ways to cook potatoes and more oddities about how and what their served with. Strange isn’t it?

Just a couple of random observations about potatoes and water.

I found this on a fellow blogger’s post. Enjoy. Oh, and tell me what you think.

Last Thursday while walking to lunch on the corner of Market and East Bay, I passed what appeared to be a homeless man standing on the corner of Wentworth and East Bay holding a hand-made sign that read, “Vote Obama, I need the money.”, I laughed to myself and admired the man for his misplaced, albeit blatant honesty.

Once inside one of my favorite restaurants, I noticed that my waiter was wearing a bright blue ,“Obama 08” tie; again I laughed to myself as he boldly and proudly advertised his political preference for all the world, and his customers, to see — just imagine the odds of encountering two such 1st Amendment harbingers of change in less than 10-minutes.

When the check finally came I decided not to tip my waiter and explained to him that I was going to implement a practical application of Obama’s Redistribution of Wealth concept as my own personal socialistic experiment. He stood there in stoic disbelief as I explained to him that I was going to redistribute his rightfully earned $10 tip to someone who I deemed more in need…a homeless fellow standing a few blocks north in front of the Harris Teeter parking lot. The waiter stammered a few “Why practice on me? I’m just a local college student!” retorts and then angrily stormed away from the table in a steaming huff of progressive self-righteous indignation.
Apparently, after experiencing firsthand the application of such socialistic governance from the perspective of the rightful wage earner, my young liberal-minded waiter was quickly convinced that income redistribution was much easier to support as a noble, magnanimous social policy than when his own hard-earned income was about to be redistributed, against his will, to another I deemed more needy.

I went outside, walked back up to Wentworth, gave the homeless guy a $10 bill, and asked him to walk down to the restaurant on the corner and thank the waiter there who was wearing the “Obama 08” tie as I’ve decided he could use the money more than my waiter who had actually earned the $10. The homeless fellow smiled in grateful disbelief, tossed his sign in the hedge, and promptly bounded for the liquor store across the street.

At the end of this impromptu and rather unscientific income redistribution experiment I realized the homeless fellow was truly grateful for the money that he had not exerted any effort to earn, but my liberal-minded waiter was highly indignant that I would take from him and then give to another the honest wages that he had worked hard to earn even though the homeless recipient needed the money more.

As I walked back to my office, I began thinking about the heavy burden of corporate ownership and the endless frustration from beating my head against the wall of increasing bureaucracy year-after-year. I also thought of the majority of this year’s hard-earned profits that I had planned to reinvest in a few new employees, annual raises to reward loyalty and hard work, Christmas bonuses for extraordinary effort, and year-end corporate donations to the SC Aquarium, Coastal Conservation League, and the Historic Charleston Foundation.

After reconsidering my apparent politically incorrect capitalistic beliefs, the needs of my hard-working, albeit financially struggling, middle-class staff, and the six-figure salaries of the three non-profits’ directors sitting in the big stately, well-maintained buildings that each called home, I decided then and there to give every last penny of this year’s profit directly to Charleston’s Homeless Shelter, layoff all my staff, close our company, retire early, and depend upon the largesse of Obama’s promised Redistribution of Wealth for my every need!

In that brief instance, I too became a practicing socialist!

The churches of Christ in the NW are going through some major changes. While there have already been many, I believe we are just in the beginning stages and over the next few years we will look very different than we have for the last who knows how many years.
First off I’ve got to be honest when I say that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Here are two reasons why I’m the wrong person to write this post. 1. being a part of a partially blackballed church means that I don’t necessarily have my finger on the pulse of the churches of Christ at large. 2. I’m not very observant.
I’m glad I got that out of the way. Here are some of the major changes up here that I’m noticing.

• Camp Yamhill was one of the unifying and identifying places over the last however many years. It always felt like home to me. We could often do as we pleased, call it our own, use it as we pleased, etc. But the Camp has changed (probably for the better). In order to stay afloat and to be used more it has become much more “corporate” (for lack of a better word). It’s being run less family-like and more business-like. It’s no longer “our” camp (the CofC) but it’s being used pretty much every weekend of the whole year mainly by non church of Christ groups.
• Cascade College which is closing in May has functioned in the way that larger churches have functioned in other parts of the states. It’s brought in conferences, unifying events, and teaching opportunities for local churches. It’s also kept that elusive college age presence in our local churches, it’s sent out missionaries, it’s equipped ministers, teachers, and lots of Applebee’s servers. The professors at Cascade have staffed many of our churches, provided leadership, and given us a more global perspective when it comes to church and mission. So with Cascade closing all of a sudden we’ll feel that void of 20-somethings in our churches, we’ll lose quality teachers, elders, and ministers, and I could go on but I think its obvious.
• Church planting is changing the face of the churches of Christ in the NW*. In just the last three years there have been five churches planted (and one more that is on the verge of opening in Sherwood) in Oregon and Washington alone. Kairos Church Planting Support operates out of Vancouver and is having a national impact (international if you actually count Vancouver, British Columbia as a foreign country…which I don’t). This movement of planting new churches is causing “classic” churches to think about things that they haven’t had to think about for a long time. It’s bringing up new questions that have long remained dormant…which brings me to my next bullet point…
• A new focus on the unchurched is ruining much of the things we’ve held dear for so long. For a long time the Churches of Christ have lacked growth from evangelism. We just haven’t been bringing people to Jesus statistically. Our emphasis has been on our own family to the detriment of those outside the family. But now we are being forced to remember that the great commission applies not just to the foreign mission field but to the mission field that is our workplace, our neighborhood, and our friendships. And when you put an emphasis on reaching new people you are forced to give up on things that all of a sudden don’t seem quite as important. It’s a major value change that affects everything…and that is painful.
• For some reason, I think because it’s been a major identifier of how we’re different from the “denominations”, our accapella worship has come to be our primary core value. Say what you want about other values that we hold, but when you get down to hills that people are willing to fight and die over, you’ll often find that it is accapella worship that is defended to the death more than anything else. I’m not hear to argue between instrumental and accapella music, rather I believe that this goofy “battlefield” is changing. For better or worse there are more and more Churches of Christ in the NW that are choosing not to fight in this worship war (I’d say for the better but that’s just my opinion). And this shift will be a major one for our fellowship these next few years.

Please remember what I said before my bullet points that I’m completely unqualified to make any of these observations. Regardless I think that we’re on the edge of something big. I think that as the churches of Christ redefine who we are, what we look like, and what we do over these next however many years we will come to an exciting place where we are on the forefront of sharing the good news of JC with the immediate world around us. With Cascade gone we’ll reengage in campus ministry. Camp Yamhill will be a reminder that we’re not completely cut off from the world but journeying toward the end with it. Church planting will open the doors to new communities and to new seekers that our current “classic” churches would never connect with. Recommitting to sharing Jesus with those who don’t know him will create a whole new next generation of new believers who carry with them a passion that is more natural, more felt, and more urgent in sharing the gospel. And redefining what is important in our heritage will provide a healthier focus on Jesus rather than on peripheral things.
Things are changing. The church is continuing its restoration process and I’m excited to play my part in it…whatever it may be.

*The missional church stuff should be added in here but I just don’t know enough about it to write anything coherent…though that hasn’t stopped me thus far!

I think there are quite a bit of people blogging about this, but my nourishing mother Cascade College has announced that they’re closing their doors at the end of the school year (May). While I wasn’t a Cascade junkie like a lot of people I know, I am overwhelmed at the thought of the impact of losing Cascade’s presence in the NW. Not only do a lot of my friends work there, but many of the churches around here are staffed by quality professors that get the bulk of their pay from Cascade. Also, Cascade has served as a resource in hosting and planning area wide gatherings and such. I could go on and on about how this is going to impact us locally here, I mean, even the loss of the students at many of our churches (I’m thinking of Renovatus and Agape) around here will be painful.
Please pray for who/what God raises up to equip, send, and draw people to ministry in the NW. Cascade will be missed.

Don’t forget the blog below that I just posted tonight. But I felt the need to say that I’m going to give this new “stalkers” thing a shot. You’ll notice on the righ that there’s a picture of big john. Well apparently there’s this “new” thing (I put it in quotation marks because it’s not all that new, I’m a bit behind). For those of you who don’t know, what it does is it shows who follows your blog. I’ll write later on how to join it, or someone can comment about it, because actually I’m not sure. Anyway, if you figure it out I’d love to have others join John!