I am here sitting in a session with a panel about engaging the church for foster care and models that exist. The panel includes members of Project 1.27, 4KIDS of South Florida, the Call (Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime), and Royal Family Kids Camps.
When the panel was asked about how the state is responding to their ministries, the response kind of surprised me. The gentleman who started RFKC said that the problems he has is with the church, not the state. That was enlightening, but not so surprising to me. The surprising thing is how the state is responding so positively to their ministries, largely because those who are helping in the church are doing such a great job with it! Now if only the church would step out in all states, imagine the bridges that could be crossed.
What I love hearing the most from these stories is how people are confused by the people of the church because they don’t understand why people would do these kinds of things. I love it!
Church Ministry, or 501c3? That is the question that Michael is trying to help us answer. He is the founder of Tapestry, an awesome ministry out of Irving Bible Church in Texas. My favorite statement so far is “God doesn’t want our ideas as much as he wants our faithfulness.” He’s brought out several things that we need to work on before we jump into the 501c3 arena. Glad I know!
While I am at it, I met a man who had n awesome story about how God transformed his life through his daughter. His daughter has started a ministry who’s goal is to help kids help kids. She is 17 and started it when she was 11. They handed out free kits… I can’t wait to dig in!
The former first lady of Guatemala and current first lady of Guatemala City is speaking about her journey with the children of Guatemala. All I have to say is, What an AWESOME woman! We need more people like her in this world. Her heart for the people of her country and God is amazing. What a story. I hope you can download her talk when they post the sessions online! Praise God for this awesome woman!
I am sitting here among many many people with a passion for caring about orphans worldwide. It is pretty awesome walking around with those that I have heard on recordings and read about on the internet. I know that I am going to forget to do something while I am here. I’ve already met a few different people, the first two from Oklahoma, how strange is that?
I love what people are doing here, but I must say that I think that people are missing something. Everyone seems to have James 1:27 posted in their booths. My issue is that everyone is using ellipses. People are either ignoring widows, the “remaining unstained by the world” part or both. People are missing a profound truth by doing this. There is an important aspect of what James is trying to tell us: caring for orphans AND widows is how you remain unstained by the world!
Looking forward to my first breakout with Michael Monroe of Tapestry – “Organization Matters: Church Ministry v. 501c3.
As I am flying the plane to Summit VI, I am lucky enough to be flying on a flight with internet access and I get to post what I have been thinking about for a while. People all around me seem to be struggling in their marriages. This breaks my heart. I have heard the D word come up more times than I would like to think.
This past weekend, I was particularly disturbed by an advertisement I saw in the men’s room at one of the golf courses that I played this past weekend. The advertisement was a picture of a young woman dressed in golfing attire smashing a golf club over the head of her presumed husband. Tiger Woods thoughts entered my head. The caption was something like: “Things not turn out as you planned?” The advertisement was for a so-called family-law legal firm trying to sell their divorce services. Now wait… did things not turn out as I planned? They sure didn’t! The criteria for divorce is that things are not working out as planned? WHAT?
Things are not going to work out as you planned; they NEVER do. Now, I am not going to say that divorce is never the right option. What I am going to say is that it is seldom the right option. I by no means have the marriage thing down pat, but I’m not doing so bad, either. The advice I am going to give is not something that I have come up with on my own or something that I think is the end-all-be-all of marriage advice. I do think it holds a lot of water, though.
I hear a common complaint from both men and women about their spouses. I hear, “he just…..”, or “she just…”, or “my needs …”, or “I’m not happy”, and many other things like this. The common reason for the complaints is that the spouse is not holding up their end of the bargain. When you get married, you do not have a “treaty”, so to speak. Rather, we make promises and the only condition assigned to them is being alive. We do not say, “I will love and honor you as long as you make me happy.” No, we simply make promises. However, we set the expectation in our heads that the other person will satisfy some set of needs that we have. When they don’t, people think that all bets are off.
I am not trying to get on a soap box. What I am trying to say is that marriage requires something of us that is difficult. What happens when expectations aren’t being met is that you will often end up shutting down and your spouse ends up with the same exact complaint about you. Here in-lies the problem. This situation is an endless cycle of nobody ever being happy. My suggestion is that instead of focusing on what you are not getting, dedicate yourself to making your spouse happy. I know, this sounds crazy, but try it anyway. Do it not because you hope that they will return the happiness to you, but do it because you promised to love them. Genuinely pursue their happiness with a passion. If you wait for your spouse to make you happy, you are never going to be happy. Find happiness in making your spouse happy and see the difference that it makes in your marriage.
I turned on the news this morning as I was waiting for something on my computer to finish running. In that news broadcast, I saw a very short news article and I was reminded of something that I witnessed when I was a little kid that has disturbed me since. In New York City, there was a homeless man who helped a woman who was being attacked and ended up getting stabbed. He laid on the sidewalk for over an hour while 20 people walked by him. A couple people looked at him, turned him over, talked about it, and then left. Someone else took a picture on their cell phone. By the time the fire department showed up an hour and twenty minutes later, he had bled out and died. From Fox News:
What I was reminded of when I was young was a trip that my family took to the Big Apple around Christmas time. As we were on our bus, we had come to a stop. I looked out the window and saw a sight that I could not completely understand. However, the image still is haunting. A man was on the sidewalk, leaning against a fence. One hand was up holding on to the fence and the other was down at his side. A river of red ran from his wrist that was down, across the sidewalk, and into the street. Person after person walked by. Some stopped and kicked his feet to see if he was alive and then continued on their way. Nobody seemed to care.
The story that Jesus told two thousand years ago is still as relevant as it was back then. More people walk by, not wanting to concern themselves with the problems of other people, than those that will stop <by a disturbing margin>. It was the homeless person, the person that society looks down upon, that tried to help someone else. How sick is this culture that we live in?
Yesterday was PJ’s baseball practice. He plays coach pitch. This is a really strange thing for me as I really don’t get why they just don’t use tees. Maybe they are finding kids hit better when they start this way younger, I don’t know. Anyway, 5-7 year olds are really funny to watch on the baseball field. Their minds are EVERYWHERE! Well, everywhere except baseball. I was watching my son on the field playing first base (really just the kid closest to first). He’s jumping all over the place, throwing pretend baseballs, pretending to catch baseballs that are just far enough away from him that he needs to jump or dive. Who cares about the batter, right? Of course, then you have the kids that are on the bases. The ball is hit….. I said the ball is hit…… ooo… look at the airplane! I think they need a coach for every kid to tell them exactly what to do and when, because they just stand there, oblivious to what is going on.
So, I am going golfing this weekend. Typically I stink. No, not from sweating. I have possibly the worse slice known to man. When I hit a golf ball, the ball goes about 150 yards straight down the fairway. It then stops, turns its right turn signal on and takes a sharp right turn. The slice is so bad, that I sometimes am scared that the ball is going to hit me on its return back towards me. Anyway, wish me luck. My goal is to make 2 birdies in the 4 rounds of golf that I am playing.
Last weekend, I was driving my mini-van back home from DC after the Cherry Blossom Festival. My parents, my mother-in-law, PJ, and Mia were in the car with me. I expected Mia to fall asleep quickly. Instead, we got the super-talkative Mia. At some point along the trip, she wanted to play Rock/Paper/Scissors with someone in the back seat. Well, there were no takers. So, I thought I would be clever and see if she would play with me, “Mia, I’ll play with you, just think about what you choose and then we’ll tell each other and see who wins.” So, she agreed and we played.
BOTH: Rock, Paper, Scissors…. SHOOT!
Daddy: Mia, what are you?
Mia: Rock
Daddy: I’m paper. Ready, Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT! What are you?
Mia: Scissors
Daddy: Oh, I’m a rock! I win again.
Well, this went on for a good while until someone convinced her to ask me what I was first.
BOTH: Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!
Daddy: Mia, what are you?
Mia: No, what are you?
<back and forth until finally…>
Daddy: I’m paper.
Mia: Me too!
Laughter ensues throughout the car.
Daddy: Okay, let’s do it again! Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!
<same conversation as to who says first>
Daddy: I’m rock.
Mia: I’m scissors.
So, no matter which way it went, I don’t think that I ever lost! Fast forward 1 week….. PJ and I are sitting on the couch waiting for the others so that we could watch a movie.
Daddy: Let’s play rock/paper/scissors. But, I don’t want to use my hands, we’ll just tell each other what we are.
PJ: Okay! Rock, Paper, Scissors… SHOOT! I’m paper!
My wife, God bless her heart, has opinions about my physical appearance. Yes, I am sure this comes to you as a surprise! Well, my father recently retired from his job of many, many years and brought me the picture that he had kept in his office of me for the past 15 or so years. I am guessing that it is probably during my Junior year of high school. I am guessing this because of the fact that I was wearing blue jeans (before that I would only wear black). Also, I think that I might have been a little bit thinner in my senior. See picture:
So, it is not the best picture ever taken of me, but it isn’t THAT bad. I am/was a towering 5′ 5″ and in the picture was probably between 115 and 120 pounds. After seeing the strikingly handsome image of me in the picture, she proclaimed, “It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet you in High School. Yes, I am that shallow.” Ouch!
This leaves me in a bit of a predicament. Currently, I am a bit heavy. Okay, the stupid BMI things try to tell me that I am morbidly obese. This is a bit overkill (no pun intended). I can run a 5K faster than my wife who tips the scales around the 3 digit mark, so it isn’t THAT bad. That being said, I definitely need to lose weight. The problem is that my itty-bitty wife doesn’t want me to because she is afraid that I will lose my “cuddliness”. Basically, she is telling me that she would rather me be cuddly than healthy/alive. Okay, she really doesn’t feel that way, but she doesn’t want me to look like I did in High School (really, I think it is the hair she doesn’t like).
So, what is a big man to do? Well, I struck up a bargain with her. We are both science/technology/engineer/math freak (aka STEM freaks). So, I devised a method where we will optimize my health/attractiveness/cuddliness/etc…. What we are going to do, starting today is that I am going to start dropping the pounds by eating well and exercising. Then, on a weekly basis (Monday morning), I am going to blog about where I stand with my weight and fat% as it is reported on my scale. She is then going rate me in those categories that she finds so important (i.e. cuddliness) on her blog (www.theCorkums.com). Let the blogging begin!
As of waking up this morning:
Weight – 186.6 lbs (which is low because I was like 190.2 just a couple days ago)
Fat % – 30.9% (my water % is low in the morning which throws this number off)
Please, if I am to do this, I am going to need a whole lotta prayer!
