Category: Various

Yesterday we introduced the Jakarta church plant team to the whole church during the Sunday Celebration. Then in the late afternoon the team came over to my place for our first meeting. It was great hearing from every person about how God lead them to apply for the church plant team. Josiah, my son even […]

        As we enter into this Advent season, we are going to start a 3-part series called, “Christmas Letters.” If you have ever received a personal letter from someone you love, you will know the power of written words. Now in the days of e-mails, Facebook, Twitter and other communication avenues, we […]

Christina and I were talking and we realized that for some people it was a bit weird when they heard that we were going to spend Thanksgiving with former members. But we have built a great relationship with them over the years. In fact, they were the first couple that we married in our church. […]

We need to be in prayer for the situation in Mumbai, India. It is just humbling and heartbreaking when some of the craziness is happening in places that you have visited before the bombing. Here is a story on the power of Twitter

I have been afforded a couple of days by my family to make some progress on my dissertation. I have locked myself in a hotel room and I do not plan on coming out until I have accomplished some of my goals. It is my hope that I can continue to make advancement on this […]

After a one year hiatus, the T.V. show 24 will be premiering a 2-hour special movie this coming Sunday, November 23rd. It is called, “24: Redemption.” This will try to explain what happens between seasons 6 and 7. I think many people were disappointed with the last season. The first 3 or 4 seasons were […]

Karissa went to her first Daisy Girl Scouts today. You should have seen her face when she came back. She was so pumped for a 5 year old! Karissa ended up showing me her whole 7 month schedule (page by page). She also showed me her pledge or commitment card that she had to recite. […]

I have always been challenged and inspired by Pastor Ed Young from Fellowship Church when it comes to creativity and doing things with excellence. He has done it again. Fellowship Church is starting a new series called, “Seven Days of Sex.” Provocative? Yes. It even made the ABC News reporter blush a little bit. You […]

        This is a big game. Michigan is trying to salvage whatever they can from this losing season and Northwestern is trying to get into a bowl game. To the average Michigan and Northwestern football fan, it is all about identification with their team and bragging rights. So what do we do […]

I like to call myself a multi-tasker. Usually on my computer I have at least 7 or 8 programs opened at the same time and many other files working simultaneously. I would also like to believe that I get more done when I multi-task. I think it is the feeling of doing many things at […]

        We are going to start a whole new series called, “Re: turn.” Usually the pastoral staff and I try to come up with the whole year’s preaching schedule, one semester at a time. We already had a series that we wanted to do in the month of November, but just recently […]

        Tonight the family and I went to see High School Musical 3. One of the LIFE groups was gracious enough to pay for the movie tickets. I think Karissa was more excited about this than the boys. Overall it was a decent movie with some good themes – learning to make […]

  Photo: Reuters       Tonight as we were eating dinner, some of the people who had iPhones were checking the election updates. By the time we were having dessert it was pretty clear that Obama won the election. When I got back to the hotel room, I was watching the concession speech by […]

It has been great having Paul and his family hang out with us. Friday night, he shared from his life and some testimonies of the work that is being done in S.E. Asia. He has only been there for 3 years and already he is finding himself picking up more of the local language. It […]