Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had a great time with family and friends. We had the Bartmans (my sister's family), the Webers (Dawn's parent and bros) and the Houstons (Dawn's grandparents) over for a great dinner that Dawn prepared. Oh man it was great. I've been trying to eat less and more healthy, but who could resist?
Last year was Dawn and my first Christmas together and she was in the hospital for the whole time. Our families brought gifts to the hospital and took up a waiting room. Dawn was on drugs so it was pretty funny. Very memorable, but I'm thinking our new tradition of having people to our house was nicer.
After an extremely busy month it sure was nice to just hang out with family for the day. Today we're going to see the Dead Seas Scrolls so I'm excited for that too. I think I'll have something more to write about after that.
Let the Praises Ring
Almost done with this CD of EFC musicians that we started in May. It's taken quite a bit longer than I had anticipated and been a lot more work than I had hoped. I have to thank my wife Dawn for being so patient with me spending a majority of my "days off" working in the studio all summer, fall and especially this Christmas season. I love her so much.
Heard the first pre-mixes of each song this week and I'm really excited for the realease next month. I'm really proud of everyone's contributions to this album and I'm praying that God blesses many people with it.
A highlight for me was hearing good mixes of a couple new songs of mine. I'm always pretty nervous sharing new songs with people, but I really like the way these turned out. Hope you do too.
Mall
I can work and focus intensly for ten hours in the studio, but ten minutes at the mall wears me out. I get really tired, loose any attention I have, and just kind of become a zombie. If I'm going to do good I need to get any shopping done in less than ten minutes, which is especially hard this time of year. Every line is more than ten minutes. So, I just can't go to the mall. Probably wouldn't get a parking space anyway.
Does this happen to anyone else? Is there a name for my disease?
Christmas Spirit
I'm going to get into the Christmas spirit yet. Just doesn't feel like it's 3 days until Christmas. I'm going to suprise Dawn and do something Christmassy. I don't know what yet. So....any advice would be appreciated.
Handel's Messiah
One of my fondest memories happend last week the night the power went out. We were in the middle of one of our biggest rehearsals of the year with the choir and orchestra when the power went out. The emergency flood lights came on in the auditorium and we had a number of flash lights. So the rehearsal went on. Listening to Handel's Messiah in the dard that night when I was holding a flashlight on Tim (Salzman, the conductor) and he was using a small flashlight as a baton was great. Very pretty and down to earth without all the mics and AV that normally make what we do possible. I still love it when it come down to the heart of it. Hallelujah! What a great memory of our music team at EFC. Thanks to all who were there!
Why give?
Saturday night service at EFC was awesome. Surely one I'll always remember. What made it so unique was the fact that we, as well as most of the NE side of Seattle lost power. It was supposed to be our biggest music weekend of the year, but had to be cancelled. So we met in the mod Sat night with a generator running the power. There was less than 100 people that venured out of their cold homes.
With this kind of setting the things we usually do as a big church fall aside and we get to the core of who we are. We met in small groups and Pastor Jim asked this question, "Why do we give gifts at Christmas time?"
I think some of the tradition of gift giving is drawn from the kings who brought gifts to Jesus. Also the fact that Jesus was a gift from God. But why do WE give? Why do I give? We give because we love. Giving is an expression of love. We give to God and we give to others just as Jesus did. God loved the world so He gave His only son.
It's easy to give when you love. Love is even greater than reason when it comes to giving. It just happens. When you really love something is doesn't matter the cost. I can easily give to someone I love. The harder part then is learning to love. Deciding to love.
God, help me to love!
Power to the People!
We have power! Thankfully we have power right now, but over a million homes and businesses lost power Thursday night in the Puget Sound area. It's almost Sat night now and still no power for most of those people. A big storm blew threw with hard rain and wind gusts up to 65 mph in our area knocking out power all over the place. Jill and Tom and the kids are staying with us right now because they don't have power at their house. To make it worse the temperature dropped below freezing at nights so all the people without power are freezing.
One small effect in the big picture, but big in my life is the fact that our Church's building still has no power. This is the biggest music weekend of the year at Eastside. "The Music of Christmas" I've spent hours and hours and hours working on it. I've spent my days off in the office arranging music and planning. Not to mention all of the people who have comitted time and energy to it. But without power, we had to cancel it.
I kind of like it when things like this happen. You know, throws you off a little. I'm really bummed that we didn't get to play the music, but life goes on. Things like this give a little perspective of the big picture. Like how small I really am. And it brings home what's really important in life. Not everything important runs on electricity.
Top 10 Things About the Big Wind Storm Knocking Out Electricity:
10. Schools were canceled yet again due to weather.
9. Tom, Jill, Josiah and Alex stayed at our house for a couple days.
8. Sat night service at Eastside was awesome fun in the mod.
7. Everyone had something in common for a while so starting conversation was easy, even with strangers.
6. Our house still had electricity so I stayed up late watching season 5 of 24.
5. Lots of people didn't shower for days.
4. Didn't get a lot of work done.
3. No mail = no bills.
2. Tom made breakfast at our house in the morning. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
1. Rehearsing Handel's Messiah with no power in Eastside's auditorium. (More to come.)
There you have it. I guess I'm pretty thankful for what God's doing in the midst of chaos. Makes me love him more.
Julia
Today Dawn and I went to our friends, the Pearsons. They're an awesome family with three kids. The twins, Jordan and Joel, are very cool. Quiet at first but I think they're opening up to us. Who am I kidding, they like Dawn way more than me. But Julia, their adopted girl from China likes me. She must be almost 2 soon. I love going over to see their family because Dawn and I also want to adopt a girl from China. Aparently adopting parents have to be at least 30, so I'm waiting for Dawn to catch up.
Speaking of adopting, I'm praying that things keep moving ahead for the Calvos to adopt a kid from Guatemala. Keep praying.
I once heard someone say that if you're pro-life, you should adopt a kid. I don't know if that's the logical outcome of being pr0-life for everyone, but it is the outcome for me. Another outcome would definately be protesting abortion clinics and yelling profanities at young, scared and confused girls going in for an abortion. And if that doesn't help them see the light, then just shooting people at abortion clinics works very well. Just another step towards saving the world.
Tribute to Jon Pugh and Snow Storms
First of all, Jon Pugh is an amazing cornet play. I was honored to have the chance to play some jazz with him this week. But tonight what left me thinking how great he is, is his personality. He is truly interested in people. He doesn't talk about himself, though he has some incredible stories. He asks great questions. And he thanks you for sharing your life with him. He has charisma. After talking with him you feel like you have been affirmed. You leave feeling better about yourself. He doesn't get you to like him by telling all the cool things that he's done, or dropping names, or hyping things up. But because he asked about my life, I like him even more. But I have to admit that I failed that conversation. After he asked about my life, I didn't ask him more about his.
I'm reading a book called "a.k.a. The Lost" by Jim Henderson. It's about small talk, ordinary things, and small steps to normalizing evangelism. I've been thinking a lot more about the power of conversation. Last week in our big snow storm I was at work. People were coming in to our church's builing to use the bathroom or phone or something after being in their cars for hours and barely moving. I got to meet some people and sat around and talked for a couple hours. A couple people had been to our church's service before, but didn't feel at home. Last weekend I saw them again and got to say hi. They told me how much they loved it. I think it was the power of conversation and just being there for them when they needed.
So, I'm being much more intentional about doing the little things that matter. You never know what God is going to use to show himself to someone, and it might just be me. Or you. It was hard for me to sit around and talk to people when I was really behind on work, but it may have been the most important thing I did all week.
Justin & Marissa
I had a lot of fun hangin out with Justin & Marissa tonight. I've known Justin for years. He was actually a student in the youth group in Eau Claire when I was the youth director there. He was up here in Seattle with his girlfriend Marissa visiting friends and seeing the city for the weekend. It's always great to catch up with friends and make new ones. I'm really excited for the opportunities that Justin has in his life right now. I wish we had more than a few hours to hang out. Began some great conversations with them. And I love giving the "Poor Man's" tour of Seattle...aka..."10 Things I Hate About You tour."
One thing we were talking about was personal values. Justin and I live with a lot of the same values; like enjoing creation, relationships, honesty, integrity, having fun, etc. On the other hand, we have taken different roads in life and have some contrasting values. Justin says that he's living in sin according to what he was tought at church. They've been living together for a while which I guess is the most blatent of our value differences. Now, I don't condone dating couples living together, but that would never disqualify someone from being a great friend. Justin will always be a good friend of mine. I was glad that Justin could be honest with me. That means a lot more than being someone you're not. In Justin's words, "Things went well, to the point of Tim actually saying "You do realize that you're talking to a PASTOR right? I'm a pastor!" a sign I wasn't putting up any false fronts about who I am and what I believe."
I dropped them off and invited them to visit Seattle again and stay longer than a weekend. As I was driving home, thinking about how much I like to hang out and talk with Justin and how great it was to finally meet Marissa, I thought about what it would be like to have them over to stay with us sometime. I've never had a couple stay over and share a room when they weren't married. Would it be weird? Is it ethical? Can Dawn and I as pastors invite a couple who's living together and not married to stay at our house? What does that say? Is it loving, accepting and forgiving? Or is it enabling? Would it be different if we weren't pastors? Is it approving of a life style I believe leads to more harm than good?
Either way, Justin's a great guy and I hope to see them again soon.
