Saturday, May 20, 2006

The Severance Lounge

A Colyer "A"

Hey Chris,
Can I have a copy of your Colyer paper? I won't get to take the class and I have all the books. Maybe your thoughts would help pull it together for me. Congratulations on getting such high praise!!
Cindy

Friday, May 19, 2006

Your prayers

Hey everyone - I know some of you have been wondering when the church in PA will get back to us. I've been told that they are meeting on Sunday night to make a decision. They've been VERY close-mouthed about all this since we went back there; meaning that they finally told me something just a couple of days ago, and we all flew out there a month ago.
Anyway, Joe and Fran (the co-chairs) will be calling us at 9am our time on Monday to let us know what the decision of the PNC is. When we left them, Jennifer and I both felt very positive that this is the place for us, and we felt that they felt the same way. So I guess we'll see. If you can spare a few prayers on Sunday evening/Monday morning, we'd really appreciate it!

The Severance Lounge

Here's a little somethin' funny!

"Hello pastor..." This priceless voicemail recording, sent to us by a pastor who said, "Oh, have I been there!" is dedicated to all those who have been on the receiving end of "helpful" comments after the church service. Click the play button to start... and make sure you carry on listening to the megamix version at the end of the initial message.

http://www.shipoffools.com/Signs/blunders/hello_pastor.html

Presbytery Interrogation June 3rd.

I finally got all of my paperwork together so I can be interrogated by my presbytery (Indian Nations) on June 3rd. If I survive, I will be promoted to Candidate so that I can start failing my ordination exams. Any prayers, good wishes or pagan incantations would be appreciated.

Ron Church

Nancy Renfro

I am not sure how many of you knew Nancy, but she was an awesome woman. She was the moderator of the Student Council my first year. A position she took when the moderator could not fulfill their term. She was extremely helpful to me my first year as moderator. She had a great sense of humor and was always quick to listen. I have only spoken to her a few times since graduation (the most recent right after Ruth was born) but I will miss her.

I rejoice that she is now where I long to go.

Excitement and Relief

Julie and I (literally) received a call last night around 10:20. First Presbyterian of Berthoud has called us! They want to get us out to candidate sometime before Presbytery meets at the end of June, so things will definitely be moving along now.

Thanks for all your prayers and support...please know that we are praying for all of you, too, as you search/prepare for your first calls as well.

Now....if you will excuse me....I'm going to go sleep for four days.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Finished and bored

What the heck? So with the food poisoning and all I finally finished my semester at 10am this morning and by 11am I was bored and I am still bored. To fight the boredom I ended up going to Best Buy and picking up the 3rd season of SCRUBS. It's so funny...so good. The thing is now I am sitting at home watching SCRUBS and I am still bored. I am so bored...got any ideas in fighting the boredom?

The 3rd Pres miracle!

In case you haven’t heard…Third pres in Dubuque was released by John Knox Presbytery to transfer into the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination. The process was peaceful, amicable, and demonstrated to the world that there is a way of separating in a Christian, godly manner when two ministries have irreconcilable missions! (You can read the press release here: http://www.layman.org/)

This has been a battle fought faithfully, humbly, and with absolute integrity by the people of God at Third for 30 years now. So join me in praising God for this miraculous, Christ-honoring, God-glorifying, kingdom-advancing, godly-precedent-setting victory!

The reason this process occurred in the manner it did is because the task force (made up of people from all sides of the theological continuum) that worked through the issues went the very route that Dr. Colyer has been insisting is the only truly godly path of debate. Namely, they made a covenant right from the start that the goal was to seek the will of our triune God for the mission of God in Dubuque, and to honor and respect each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Every time they began to slip into a business mode of arguing, they would stop and pray and remind each other of this covenant. In other words, they entered into authentic trinitarian community and allowed the Holy Spirit to lead! The result is that you had people who absolutely disagreed with each other on core issues all testifying that these “committee” meetings were some of the richest, most transforming, most spiritually refreshing moments of their life!

Brothers and sisters in Christ, may we learn from this experience that such a path of doing the work of the Church is possible!

A New Form of Torture

The plot thickens......

Just got off the phone with Tom Patterson, the chair of the CPM at Berthoud. He had forgotten to tell me that they had moved the meeting to TONIGHT instead of LAST NIGHT. Yeah....my bad.

We are (needless to say) a bit on edge here....we stayed up until about midnight last night waiting and slept little (if any) after that. To add to the tension, Tom has backed off from his "sure thing" language and was very honest in telling me that last weekend's candidate was great and that he "wishes they could hire both" and that it may go late. And so it appears that we have another marathon night on our hands (Happy High-Blood-Pressure Birthday to Julie).

Of course, we will let you all know as soon as we know...expect a post in the morning. Then again....don't. Expectations, we are discovering, can just get you all crazy :)

Thanks for your prayers.

Just So You Know

Greetings all,

Just to diffuse some phone calls/e-mails......as of 8:45 this morning, we have yet to hear from Berthoud. We are a bit confused....there have been time mix-ups with the CPM chair in the past, but we fully expected to hear from them last night. I'm planning on calling later this morning to see what's up.

Of course, I'll post again when I get word. Thanks for your prayers and thoughts.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

THE GOAT vs DANIMAL

This is the pre-head butt photo. I actually have a video of the GOAT using a head butt to move Danimal about 5 feet...then Dan cries... I have more Day-lo pics if anyone want good blackmail material on Scott, Jared, the GOAT, or Cookie.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Something to do Sunday May 21 @ 4:30

How's this for a little shameless self promotion...

The Apple River UMC youth groups are hosting an outdoor concert Sunday afternoon at 4:30 featuring m28. Apple River, Il. is about 45 minutes east of Dubuque. We will have a picnic afterward at 6:00. This is a family event - we'll be at the village park - there's plenty of room for kids to run and play. If it rains we'll be at the church fellowship hall.

m28 is Matt Johnson's band - they recently won the Rockford Area Music Industry award for Contemporary Christian Group of the Year. To hear m28 visit their website - www.m28rocks.com.

So, those who have nothing going on...head east for the afternoon!

Bored

Hey - just thought I'd actually put something on this thing. It's Monday, and while I still have no brain and am waiting for a church to let me know what the h*** is going on, I'm a little bored already. Alas. Probably for the last time....see you all out there in cyberspace.