Busting the rule. This morning I experienced something that I haven't seen in 25 years. We went to church this morning and the place was so packed that they had to set up folding chairs in the aisles, and those seats were filled. So much for the myth about building when the church gets 80% full!

Not forgetting to blog, just busy! Back to Louisville, Indy, DC, Richmond VA, then home on Friday night. Sigh.

Hi there Jelly Girl! I am in D.C.

Backgammon on my cell phone, how cool is that?

Small World. This is another one of those "I LOVE TECHNOLOGY" blogs. Kickin back in the office, listening to Japanese jazz over my Real Player, sipping some coffee, and doing the expenses. How cool that I can just click the pad a few times and have music coming in from all over the world. After I get the expenses done I am going to install SKYPE and give VoIP a try (Voice over Internet Protocol). Then I will be able to sit here and talk to the folks for free. I do that now anyway, but it will be totally cool to do that with the Internet.

BoSox kept it alive last night. I was refreshing the laptop to keep up with the scores while watching Monday Night Football. Good game there too!

Today starts the travel. Heading to Indy tonight and tomorrow. Sometime either tomorrow night or Thursday morning I will head to DC then on Friday go to Richmond, VA. Should be home late, but have a men's breakfast at church at 6:30 on Saturday. Think that I will grab a nap on Saturday.

Tried to play with Blogger tonight to insert a picture, way to complicated with this format. They claim that I can edit in HTML but won't recognize the tags. Bummer. So, for those of you who are watching the political race for President, check out this link.

Got the hiccups bad today, and now. Can't sleep, couldn't sit still through awesome sermon, it si really frustrating. My whole body convulses.

My wife pointed out a couple of myths that we saw at church today that were blown away, and highlight why we are glad that we are were we are. First, if you have followed anything with church growth statistics you know that a church cannot grow past 80% of its seating capacity. People just won't be crowded. WRONG! If the preaching is strong, and the Spirit is in the church then seating capacity doesn't mean a thing. CHBC is packed with people sitting packed in and they run over twice the capacity of our former church with far less seating.

Location. The old adage is true for churches as it is with anything in real estate. If you want to grow then you need a good location. Hogwash! We gladly drive deep into the country to attend were we are now, and we have found that most of the folks that attend with us don't live anywhere near the building. The church is not the building. It is the body of Christ, alive and vibrant with its members.

Members just don't want to get involved. Let me tell you from nearly 15 years of ministry, it is like pulling teeth at times to get members to get together outside of the traditional Sunday morning gathering. They might start getting together a little more as a new preacher comes to town (and they often celebrate when he leaves), but soon they get into their rut and would rather be with their friends from work or highschool than with the bride of Christ. I once had a member flat out lie to my face about another responsiblity that they had instead of making an agreed outting only to find them at the same restaurant that we decided to go to in another town. Not upset that they lied to me, that is between them and God. It just goes to show the nature of some people.

Well, CHBC had 30 to go to Promise Keepers this summer, my former church couldn't get 4 so no one went. We had a couple of marriage conferences (preachers wouldn't come to either) and had 10 couples for the first and 5 for the second. CHBC is having one next month and they are turning couples away after the first 24 couples were counted. Not bad for a little ol' country church!

Got to have a good place for the members to park, they won't be inconvenienced by walking more than 50 feet. Laugh, but there wasn't a deacon's meeting in my last year at Glenview when that wasn't the main topic of conversation. We would park in the farthest reaches so that the members could have the easier places to park. They even reserved 4 spaces for first time visitors (or those who are arriving really late). Sad. We have parked in the mud and dirt every single sunday along with hundreds of other people. Why? We are going to hear the Word preached - fresh and vibrant.

We have been criticized by some for our decision to go to a denominational church, even a family member. Well folks, if the difference is going to a church to listen to the latest download from SermonCentral.com which has no life in it, or hearing the Word from people who preach it and live it, then I think that I have made the right choice. Sure do miss Monty and Brent.

Busy Saturday, spent in a clost. Yesterday we got all the hardware to re-do our walk-in closet with some nice new shelves. So today I spent about 12 hours getting it just right. Now I am spent. Cruised over to a cool site on political polls that averages what the top pollsters are trying to report. Summary: George wins. In the electoral: George wins big.

Got new tires on the Benz, looking good now. Thinking about putting it away for the winter and driving the Cadillac. We'll see how that goes, I just love to drive the Benz.

Got new slogan's for Kerry:

Support a Woman's Right to Terminate Her Baby
Support John F. Kerry


Support the Jihad
Support John F. Kerry


Could think of a hundred more, but just too pooped!

I give in, Xanga. I hate to give in to something just because everyone else is doing it. But there have been times that I have been proved wrong. For instance, back in 1987 I played with an early version of Windows (v.2) but only because it was bundled with PageMaker, a Mac program that I had admired for awhile. Never did do anything with Windows, only booted it when I wanted to use PageMaker, mostly to show it off to a client. Then 3.0 came out and I finally jumped on, mostly because my boss told me that Windows was going to really boost our sales and I needed to get off DOS. I agreed, learned to master Windows, lost my job. Oh well.

Now I am experiencing the same thougths with this blog, or actually blogging as a whole. I have actually had this blog for over 4 years, although there have been tremendous gaps in adding to it. Well, just as I get pretty consistent I find that everyone in the family now has a blog over at Xanga. My brother-in-law has been telling me for months that I have to get a Xanga site, and even my eldest daughter has a site of her own. Now my dad has a site, as well as my beloved. So, I have finally decided to do a Xanga site as well. I struggled with what to do with another blog, because I really don't want to do something that everyone else does. I have seen some pretty pathetic blogs out there and I wanted to contribute. I didn't want another place to dump my mind (that is what this place is for!). So what to do. I decided that I would share with the world a secret passion that probably only my wife knew that I have, Haiku poetry. Probably not the type of thing that people who know me would guess that I am into, but it is truly something that I enjoy. I used to enter a daily Haiku contest at USATODAY, and think that I will start doing that again. There were many times when I thought that my entry was tons better, but I suspect that they can't read them all, I should have one at least once. So my newest blog is going to be dedicated to the fine art of Haiku, the poetry form which employs economy of words (something that I am notoriously bad at elsewhere). I think that I will try to enter the daily contest and post my results on my blog.

New phone today! Wanted camera phone, alas ATT cant do that here. Fall is here, spectacular colors. Love to moblog!

Irony? Just as friends return to Florida hurricanne "Lester" leaves Mexico to head to sea to the west. I see more than just a little irony there.

Venti nofat latte, jazz, gloomy skies. Love days like this! Short trip to Nashville for the night.

Struggling with Compatibility Issues. One of the things that I truly love about the web is the ability for different people in different countries with different types of computers to all communicate in a similar style. By that I mean that I could post this and then people from all over the world can read it, regardless of their computer type. Then comes instant messaging and now you have to have specific clients (software) to talk with others using that client. So MSN folks can't chat with the AOL people. Well along comes programs like Jabber and that issue is gone. Well now there is a compatiblility with blogging that has me scratching my head. Everyone (including my wife) has jumped on the blogging bandwagon with Xanga. So why Xanga? They have a nice feature that allows you to subscribe to other Xanga surbscribers. So, I could do a Xanga site or just sit here and take the 2 hits a month that I am likely getting (not sure really, just guessing, and really don't care if it is 2 or 2 million). Hmmm.

Oh, I am screaming with highspeed (1.5mb) DSL now. Want to download like crazy but the CD-RW drive on my laptop is crashed so I am a little nervous about doing that. I want to put together some great music lists and burn them. For now I will just work on my expenses and listen to Sean Hannity clearly.

Seasons at the speed of light. My goodness where has this year gone? Went out this morning to do some work in the yard and noticed a bunch of the trees turning color. Man that looks fantastic! Fall is by far my favorite season, mostly because of my love for photography. Looking through some of my favorite pics this morning I noticed most of my outdoor stuff is in the fall. Can't wait to get some good snaps this fall.

Politically speaking, Bush did great, Kerry did about the same.

Midnight in Indianapolis, heading home listening to SuperTramp - 'Take The Long Way Home'. Convertible, Cohiba. Life is good!

While you sleep...

Tonight I have decided to head home. It is just after 10:30 as I write (pm) and should get home before 2am if all goes well. I am tired, but look forward to grabbing a few winks before another busy day. Another funeral, so sad.

My beloved has a Blog!!! They did a great job putting it together. It even has a great MP3 playing in the background (good thing that we now have DSL!).

What is a perfect night for me? Well, tonight is pretty close. Two dozen chicken wings, Monday Night Football, and a friend is coming over (my hotel room) to watch it with me. Sharing it with my best friend (Mary) or family would be better, but this is close. I think my TV is bigger, but since we don't get TV coverage this is much better.

Dumbstruck - I got a call last night that my ex-step-father-in-law (complicated) passed away, just two weeks after my mother-in-law. God has a way!

Help, I woke up back in time?! Did anyone else wake up with a wierd feeling this morning? Billy Joel is in the news for getting married and Mt. St. Helens is going to blow. I have this panic feeling that I am late for my senior finals in highschool! Weird. I need to go out and get some Pee-Chee folders and get ready for my class.

This week I will be in Dayton, OH Sunday through Wednesday and then to Indy through Friday. Yuck.