If you’re looking for a little bit of amusement you could do worse than checking out YearbookYourself.com. It is pretty much what it sounds like it is - you upload a picture of yourself and it gives you some idea of what your highschool yearbook photos might have looked like any year from the 1950’s through the 1990’s. I had a little bit of fun this afternoon.

For reference, here’s the picture I gave it to work with:

Here’s my 1962 yearbook photo. My face is a little oversized in this one, it didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped.

Here’s 1968.

Here’s 1970. This is definitely my favorite.

Most of the rest of the 70’s didn’t work out too well because of the hair it tried to put on me. So, we fast-forward to 1984. Now, this hair isn’t that great, either.

By the time we get to 1988, it starts to get to something almost believable…

And then here’s 1994. I started my senior year of high school in 1994. The scary part: I had one of those cardigans, and I loved it.

Wild Goose Chase, the latest book by pastor Mark Batterson of National Community Church in Washington, DC, sets out its’ premise in the introduction:

The Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit that has always intrigued me. They called Him An Geadh-Glas, or “the Wild Goose”. I love the imagery and implications. The name hints at the mysterious nature of the Holy Spirit. Much like a gild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger and an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious at first earshot, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to pursue the Spirit’s leading through life than Wild Goose chase. I think the Celtic Christians were on to something that institutionalized Christianity has missed out on…

With each chapter in the book, Batterson then calls the reader to “come out of the cage” of one encumbrance or another, sharing anecdotes from his own life and those he’s come into contact with in his ministry, and then finishing up each chapter with an example of the principle that he sees in the life of a biblical character.

I was unimpressed when the introduction, and indeed, the whole premise of the book, seemed to be based less on some Scriptural principle than on a single phrase from Christian antiquity. And my concerns were deepened when I looked at the chapter titles and subheadings:

• Goose Bumps: Coming Out of the Cage of Responsibility
• Dictatorship Of The Ordinary: Coming Out of the Cage of Routine
• Eight-Foot Ceilings: Coming Out of the Cage of Assumptions
• A Rooster’s Crow: Coming Out of the Cage of Guilt
• Sometimes it Takes A Shipwreck: Coming Out of the Cage of Failure
• Good Old-Fashioned Guts: Coming Out of the Cage of Fear

While there are some good points to be made in the book from time to time, it really feels to me that Batterson wrote the self-help, motivational principles of Wild Goose Chase and then looked to find bits and pieces of Scripture to support his points… which is a dangerous way to teach the Bible. In addition, Batterson’s style of writing is unimaginative, cliché-ridden, trying too hard to be cool and trendy. Color me unimpressed.

After finishing up Wild Goose Chase, I felt like I had just sat through one of those exercise infomercials where ridiculously-toned models and cheesy announcers hype their transform-your-life product ad nauseam for 30 minutes late at night. What I came away longing for was something more solid, stable, and reliable - something more analogous to a Ken Burns documentary on PBS. So I’m sorry, Multnomah, I just can’t recommend this book. My friends, if you’re going to buy a book on living the Christian life, get something by Eugene Peterson instead. You’ll be glad you did.

As requested, I’ll link to Amazon: you can buy Wild Goose Chase there. But I’d suggest you pick up something else instead.

OK, so bad travel plans notwithstanding, I made it to Denver on-time on Monday evening. Tuesday was spent in an all-day FAA DER Recurrent General Training class (boring), and today and Thursday I’m attending the National Software and Airborne Electronic Hardware Conference. It’s sponsored by the FAA and NASA Langley Research Center, and there are some really interesting topics if you’re into safety-critical airborne software. Which, I know, none of you reading this are. So enough about the conference.

Haven’t really seen much of Denver yet, though I may atone for that this evening and travel about. I’ve just got too many things on my to-do list for this week. Sermon prep for Saturday, new Conversation Cafe website (now branded Topics On First - check it out! - but it’s still the beta version of the site), planning orders of service for the fall, updating church bylaws and membership covenants… so much to do, so little time.

Denver is a little bit frustrating, location-wise, because you think you’re in Colorado, there should be mountains… but there aren’t really any mountains in Denver. You can see them off in the distance, but they’re still too far away to get to without some more serious time driving than I’ll have. Oh well. Maybe one of these summers we can hit them for a vacation again.

Well, lunch hour is almost over so it’s time to head back to the conference. Good times.

Order of service for 8/16/08 at Imago Christi:

Welcome and Announcements
Greeting
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
He Is Exalted
How Great Is Our God
Requests and Prayer
Knowing You
More Precious Than Silver
Sermon: Forgiveness
Musical Meditation: Mystery of Mercy

Work necessitates that tomorrow I travel from Cedar Rapids to Denver to attend three days of FAA training. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound too bad, travel-wise. CID -> DEN is only a two-hour flight, and one US airline, when not eternally funding the estate of George Gershwin with its advertising budget, provides three daily non-stop flights from our fair city to the Mile-High.

But wait! This is no ordinary travel planning. This is corporate travel! Per the guidelines of our corporate travel policy (its wisdom, who can measure?) I have been routed on a different airline from Cedar Rapids first to Dallas-Fort Worth, and only then to Denver. For those scoring along at home, that’s 850 miles and two hours south-by-southwest to DFW, a 90-minute layover, then another 800 miles and two hours northwest from DFW to DEN. Which is quite obviously far superior to the 700 miles and two hours directly west from CID to DEN. To ice the proverbial cake, the forecast for both CID and DEN tomorrow calls for nothing but sunshine. DFW? 80% probability of thunderstorms.

Two years ago when I attended this training travel was a mess and I ended up driving through downtown Atlanta at midnight searching for my hotel; last year DFW gave me delays heading to New Orleans and I was trying to avoid the bayou and find my hotel after even The Big Easy had fallen asleep. Even with this year’s circuitous routing I am scheduled to arrive in Denver before 7 pm MDT, so it will take some serious delays if I am to achieve the three-peat. Still, with travel plans like this, anything is possible.

…after I declared I was socially stunted because of my intense dislike for calling people that I don’t know on the phone :

“Social stunting is God’s way of keeping engineers from ruthlessly running roughshod over society.”

Thanks, Geof.

One of our challenges at Imago has been figuring out the right time to hold our Saturday night service. Pick a time to early, and folks find it hard to attend because they’re still wanting to finish their Saturday activities. (Especially during the summer.) Pick a time too late, and you’re running in to evening plans (which is bad if you’re trying to attract college students), dinner schedules, and small children’s bedtimes.

When we started back in January we decided on holding the services from 5:30 - 6:30pm. The reasoning went something like this: it’s early enough that people can eat afterwards, even go out to dinner with someone else from church after the service. It’s early enough that people with small children won’t run into trouble with bedtimes. It’s late enough that people should be able to make it and still have been able to put in a good day of work on Saturday. And really, for the past 7 months, that’s worked pretty well. For our volunteers, it means something more like a 4:30 - 7:00 commitment, but that’s still not awful.

Now we’re approaching fall and we want to add a couple of adult Bible studies on Saturday nights. We’ve tossed around all sorts of service times, from starting earlier (5:00?) with classes afterwards, to having classes first, then the service, to moving everything later… Even though we’re talking about at most a two-and-a-half hour block of time, for some reason it seems a lot more difficult to fit it in on a Saturday night than it would be on a Sunday morning.

Tonight at our core team meeting the elders are going to propose the following schedule:

• 5:00 - 5:15 prayer for the service
• 5:30 - 6:30 worship service
• 6:30 - 7:00 fellowship and snacks
• 7:00 - 7:50 adult Bible classes

I think it’s probably the best option we’ve got right now. The other challenge is what to do with the kids during the class time given that we’re struggling with having enough manpower to do kids ministries. But we’ve got to do that somehow, to make the opportunity available. We’re trusting that God will provide the workers to teach the kids He brings in.

One of the things we’ve been wrestling with as elders at Imago is the concept of church membership. Now, we all agree that membership is important, both for accountability for folks who are a part of the fellowship, and to provide accountability for the church leadership. But most of us come from Baptist churches where “membership” is too often considered a ticket to gripe and cause trouble at business meetings.

Our objectives for “membership” and the “membership process”:

1. Provide a way for people to feel like they are a part of the congregation
2. Provide a process whereby people can understand Imago’s distinctives, including doctrinal statement and leadership structure
3. Create an environment where people come to think of “membership” as having responsibilities and commitments rather than “privileges”
4. Keep the voting base limited to the core planning/leadership team, rather than the standard Baptist congregational democracy.
5. Oh, yeah, and the end result needs to be church members, committed to service and under the authority of the church.

We have pretty well settled on a set of three “covenants” that might be looked at as “tiers” of membership, though we’re trying hard not to call them that.

Fellowship Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.

This one is pretty basic. This allows people who want to feel like they’re a part of a fellowship to say that yeah, they’re a part of the fellowship. I have really wrestled with whether or not this covenant should include a statement of accountability to the church. I am thinking maybe it should.

Ministry Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
• I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
• I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
• I will become better acquainted with ministry opportunities and strategies by attending planning and evaluation meetings of the church. I understand that I am able to contribute to the discussion at these meetings, but do not have the right to vote.
• I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.

Part of the commitment at this level would require completion of a membership class, which would include a review of the doctrinal statement. At this level we wouldn’t require that the person agree with the doctrinal statement 100%, but we’d ask them to identify any differences they have and discuss them with the elders.

People committed at this level would be able to assume responsibilities such as teaching children, assisting in (but not leading) ministries, and would be welcome to participate in business and planning meetings of the church, but would not have a vote.

Leadership Covenant

• I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
• I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
• I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
• I will attend and participate in the discussion at planning and evaluation meetings of the church and have the right to vote on any church business as prescribed by the church bylaws.
• I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.

At this level, we would require that folks agree with our doctrinal statement, have been baptized by immersion, and have completed the membership class. This level would also require the approval of the elders.

We’re still not sure when we’ll institute this process - I’m guessing probably in January. A year is plenty long for us to run with no members.

We’ve been in the thick of the church plant activity for the past several months, which is exactly when I should’ve been posting… and I haven’t been. Going to pick that up now.

A week without a blog update + lack of creativity = desperate measures. Hence, the bullet points.

• This past weekend felt far more like autumn than summer; this morning when I woke up it was 53°F outside and 63°F in the house. Beautiful sleeping weather. It’s gonna warm up a bit this week, but nothing too bad.
• I thought it felt like I ran into a strand of web as I walked into the dining room this morning. A few minutes later I felt something on my neck. Becky, you can thank me later for killing that spider.
• My sermon on Saturday night went pretty well. I intended to link to it here but didn’t get it uploaded last night. It’ll have to wait.
• Now I need to get my backside in gear for my next sermon, only two weeks hence. How do I focus all I want to say about worship into 30 minutes?
• Next week I’m headed to Denver for some training and a conference. I think it’ll probably be warmer in Denver than it will be at home while I’m gone.
• Nick & Allie led worship Saturday night at Imago and did a fantastic job. Allie wrote a new tune for the hymn Under His Wings that has been stuck in my head all weekend. Thanks a lot, Allie.
• My poor backyard is being overtaken by crabgrass. Gotta do something about that.

Well, now, that was random, eh?