Christmas Time

It has been a very long time since I have blogged. I will try to do better.

It is that time of year when we do not have enough time to get everything done and still be able to be in the Christmas spirit. Tonight we had our second Christmas party in as many days. I enjoy seeing family that you only see once a year or so. I just get tired from all of the running around.

This is a picture of me and my wife's family from tonights party.

Updates

It has been a few days since I took the time to blog. I have been busy. I spent most of the day today helping a family from our church move to a different house. They have 4 kids and needed more space. Now they have it. It is nice to see others chip in to help out friends.

The rest of the day was spent at the new building working out the details for the audio/video for the auditorium. I also spent some time with the gentlemen installing the phone system. It is all starting to come together. Wednesday night a group met at the new building after our services in our old building. Some of the class teachers were claiming ownership of their new classrooms. I claimed mine several months back. Before we left the building we had a prayer to ask God to help us be able to finish the building quickly. We need to finish the parking lot which we cant do until it quits raining. It has been very rainy for the past 45 days. It rained again tonight! :(

Wednesday was our second "family feast". Barbecue. We had many more in attendance than the first night. I pray that it continues to multiply in numbers every week. It was a very good fellowship. I think this is what it is all about. The meal time gives people a chance to find out what is going on in others lives. When we know what is going on with everyone, we then have a chance to help out the ones that are struggling. We hope to be able to expand this to the community once we are in our new digs.

Tomorrow I am going to watch the Indians play their final home game. Well I will only be able to stay for just the first half because I have to get home to watch the Hogs beat Tennessee. Go Hogs!

Wednesday night meal at Church

Tonight we had our first "family feast" at church. Fazoli's spaghetti was the food of choice. We had a good turnout. Many families have said that there was just not enough time after work to help the kids with homework, fix supper, and make it to church on Wednesday nights. They are thankful for what we are doing. Our overall numbers were up slightly tonight. :) This is a project that the young men's class is taking on. This class did not exist 2 months ago. Now, not only do we have a great class, we have a great project on our hands also.

Halloween

Halloween is an interesting holiday. To say that we celebrate it here in the U.S. is an understatement. It is quickly becoming the favorite holiday of people in the United States. I think it has to do with the fact that in this country we are told everyday that if what you are doing does not work out, then you can just reinvent yourself. We see it everyday when people change jobs and take on a whole new role in life. Once a year, with Halloween, we all get to reinvent ourselves. Yesterday at my office we each dressed up. We had a blast and our patients loved it. You should have seen the looks on people's faces when we showed up at Couch's barbecue to eat lunch. You could have heard a pin drop when we walked in. People were in amazement. We can't wait till next year to see what we will do.

By the way, I went as a geeky tourist yesterday.

Tonight we held a trunk or treat party at our church for the kids in our church, their friends and for the kids in the community. It was an overwhelming success. We had hoped to have 25-30 kids. We had over 80 kids! Many of those kids were from area in and around Bono. We had hot dogs, cookies and a lot of candy. We had a Bible lesson about pumpkins and we took the kids on a hay ride.

This was our third party in three nights. I am exhausted! Last night we had our adult costume party at Darah's aunt and uncle's house. It was a wonderful time. We had a good crowd and some awesome costumes. We also had a fun hay ride. I was also a good birthday for me. The picture is of some of the good costumes from the adult party.

I am now relaxing watching the Cowboys put away the Carolina Panthers.

2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals

It has been several days since I have updated the blog. I have been busy. I went last Monday to see the Dallas Cowboys play in Texas Stadium on Monday Night Football. It was only a minor thing that they lost. I had so much fun because I went with my great friend Al Sturgeon. Since Al has moved to the coast I don't get to see him often. We had a great time.

Anytime I am gone from the office on a Monday or Tuesday it is difficult to come back to work. There are always a lot of emergencies to take care of when I get back. Teeth must know that I am going to be gone and that is when they flare up on people.

At night this week I have been staying up late watching the Cardinals in the World Series. Tonight they won the 10th World Series title in franchise history. Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals, the city of St. Louis and all of the Cardinals fans. I enjoyed watching this team play. It was definitely a whole team effort. A different player would come through all the time. I think the MVP could have been shared by several. Scott Rolen played great after being benched earlier in the NL Championship Series. Yadier Molina was incredible both on offense and defensively. The starting pitching was superb and the bullpen was on top of their game. And of course the MVP David Eckstein who shook off a terrible start to end up with the new Corvette was a joy to watch. You gotta love a guy that hustles like he does.

Lots to do this weekend. Adult costume party tomorrow night, teach class Sunday morning, and Trunk or Treat for the kids Sunday night. Tonight we had a going away party for a lady at our church who is moving to Georgia to live with her sister. So I have and will be busy this weekend.

Al, I will send you the pics from Dallas that you wanted as soon as I can get them on the computer.

In several post I have talked about our new building. Now you can see it for yourself. It is very nice. I am posting on this blog instead of working on my Sunday sermon. I have decided to use James chapter 4. I will be talking about our need to whole heartedly submit to God. Not just partial submission, but a submission that involves every aspect of our life.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me. Preparing for a Sunday morning class, preparing for a Sunday morning sermon, watching the Hogs, watching the Indians, watching the Cardinals all while packing for my trip to Dallas to watch the Cowboys with Al.

Cards win!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's a winner! Cards win 3-1

New Church Building

Tonight we had another meeting to iron out more details concerning our new building. You know the tough stuff, what color the tile will be, whether we will carpet the vestibule (I don't even know what that word means), what color the cabinets will be, if we are going to put lights in the parking lot, you know the meaningful stuff. Seriously those are things that must be answered. I just can't wait until they are done. Just two and a half months until we will be in the building.

I have been on the audio/video committee. We have been planning on having video projectors installed in the new building, but tonight we decided to postpone having them installed in order to save some money. We figured that it would be more important and safer if we had lights in the parking lot. I have said it before, I love powerpoint. I think it makes a huge statement. One that a lot of people like. I hope that we can have it in the future. We just decided to sacrifice it now. Sometimes we must be willing to sacrifice things for others. This building is going to be nice. I am very proud of everyone on every committee because they have been good stewards of the money available. The original part of our old building is 104 years old. I hope this building will be there in 104 years. My father-in-law and uncle-in-law have done a great job building this building. I am very proud of it. I just hope we use it to glorify God.


Cards just didn't have it tonight. Got to have more hits early in the game. We will get them tomorrow night.

Glad to see that Texas Stadium was not on the dirty bomb list. I will be there with Al on Monday night. Look for us. We will be in the end zone, probably wearing blue. :)

Happy Birthday

Tonight my family went to Colton's restaurant to celebrate my mothers birthday. I also got to see my brother-in-law for only the second time in a year and a half. No, Jeremy does not live in some distant state or foreign land he lives in Memphis. You would think that I would get to see him more often than that, but I don't. You see Jeremy is in his fourth year of an orthopedic surgery residency at Campbell Clinic. Campbell Clinic wrote the book on orthopedic surgery and Jeremy is being trained by the best. But being trained by the best has its cost, namely not having time off when other people do. Last year he had to work most holidays and so I did not get to see him. That being said, Jeremy will be the man to see for your orthopedic needs in about a year. He will be one of the best!

This Sunday I am being called on to preach again. There is beginning to be a habit forming here. I still haven't decided what I am going to talk about. I am just waiting and praying for an idea. I want to speak out to the half of our congregation that does not regularly get involved in most activities. I am wanting to speak to the part of our congregation that does not come to class and does not come on Sunday or Wednesday night. I am wanting to encourage them to give it a try. I think they will like it. I am looking for the perfect Sunday morning sermon. One that challenges but does not drive anyone away. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

How 'bout them Cardinals. It is a whole team effort with those guys. I have enjoyed it a lot. Now back to New York.

True Love

I teach a young adult class on Sunday mornings. Over the past 5 weeks we have been taking a road trip with Jesus. We are learning about the adventures in following Jesus. We have studied about the first 4 apostles and their calling,Nicodemus, the woman at the well and the man that was let down through the roof to have Jesus heal him. Today we studied the woman that anointed Jesus feet at Simon the Pharisee's house from Luke chapter 7.

We have been without a preacher since April. We have had several men come try out but we have not hired anyone yet. We have also had one of the best preachers I have heard come preach at least once a month and we have men of the congregation fill in the other times. Tonight was my night. As I studied earlier in the week I realized that my choice to use the woman who anointed Jesus feet might not make for a great class, but that it would probably make a great sermon. I decided to do the class on Sunday morning and the worship on Sunday night over the same topic any way. I was right, class did not go as well as I would like for it. After class not going so well I didn't know whether I should use the same topic for tonight. After talking to Darah and praying about it, I went for it. It went great.

Read the story from Luke 7:36-50 and ask yourself these questions.

1. Am I aware of the enormity of my sins?
2. Am I aware of the wonder of being forgiven of my sins?
3. Having been forgiven much, do I love much?
4. Has my love found expression?

Over the past few months we have been developing a new class on Wednesday nights for the young men. We started with just two and now we are up to eight. Tonight we passed out our new books that we are going to be reading over the next 6-8 weeks. After we talked about that we started talking about our new class taking on a project. One of the men in our class is a fireman and he suggested that we go around Bono and check smoke alarms in houses, making sure that they have a smoke alarm and that it works. If they do not have one we will install one for them. If they do have one but it needs batteries we will put in new batteries. This will let us meet the neighbors as well as do a good deed for them.

We have also decided to take on the task of organizing a supper meal on Wednesday nights before services. This would be for everyone but the men would be in charge of fixing/picking up food and cleaning up after we eat. The men wanted to give their wives a break. We also wanted to be able to invite people to have a meal with us at no cost to them. We are starting this November 1.

Today was a tough day at the office. I had several little kids that did not want to be at the dentist. Ok so no one really likes to go to the dentist, but these little ones started crying when they pulled into the parking lot and cried until they left. That makes for a long day for me and my staff.

Yesterday and today I spent a lot of time trying to get the logistics worked out for the sound and video for our new church building at Bono. A lot of planning goes into any new project and this one is no different. I just want to make sure that we cover all of the basics and get what we need to do the things we want to do in our new building.

We are looking at having 2 video projectors in the front of our auditorium so that we can run announcements before services, have the songs on the screen, and give the preacher the opportunity to have his lesson on the screen during his sermon. I love powerpoint. I use it just about every week in my Sunday morning class. Just about every week I have someone come up to me and thank me for using powerpoint. They say that it helps them be able to pay attention better and to understand a little better what I am trying to teach. I don't know what that says about my teaching ability. Could I not teach without the powerpoint? I don't know. I think I would do just fine. I just want to help everyone understand the Bible better. Powerpoint helps me do that. Now if I were half the teacher Al is I wouldn't need powerpoint at all.

The Difference a Week Makes

It is amazing the difference a week makes in the world of sports. Last week I wasn't too high on the Hogs. They were coming off a game in which the Alabama kicker won the game for the Hogs. I felt like we had a lot of work to do. The Hogs have a talented group of kids, they just hadn't shown much of it yet. But oh the difference a week makes. Headlines this morning read "Razorbacks ranked number 17". Wow first time since the Matt Jones era that the Hogs are ranked. Bring on SEMO. How 'bout them Hogs!

A week ago the Cardinals backed into the playoffs. Today they are headed to New York to play in the National League Championship Series. Oh the difference a week makes. The Cards played well this week with only a minor bump on Saturday. Nothing would be better than to beat the only New York team still left in the playoffs.

The Dallas Cowboys had what I felt like was their best game of the year against the Tennessee Titans a week ago. The season was looking good. Everybody was playing well, except maybe for the kicker. What a difference a week makes. Yesterday in the Terrell Owens return to Philadelphia showdown, the Cowboys just couldn't do it. Too much hype not enough substance.
What a difference a week makes. Can't wait to see what this week has in store.


This past Saturday Darah went to Little Rock and participated in the Race for the Cure to benefit breast cancer. Over 40,000 woman (and some men) dressed in pink walked and ran for a great cause. She had a great time and was exhausted but still went with me to the ASU Indian football game Saturday night. :)

Sports Saturday

Picture courtesy of Al Sturgeon's webshots page

Saturdays in October are some of my favorite days. I love sports and weekends in October are for sports lovers. Yesterday I watched the Hogs upset the number 2 ranked team in college football! As I was watching the Hogs I had my TV with the picture-in-picture set up so I could also watch the Cardinals. The Cards didn't fare as well as the Hogs, but it was still fun to watch.

Later that evening I went to see the ASU (not politically correct) Indians beat the ULM (Formally known as the Indians) Warhawks. Today I have been watching NASCAR and later I will watch the tabloid TV game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles. Tonight I will be watching my Cardinals win their division series against San Diego.

Oh how I love the fall in Arkansas.

Hope you had fun at the game Al.

Golf Tournament at Sage Meadows

This past week in the neighborhood I live in, Sage Meadows, we have been hosting a semi-professional golf tournament. The gentlemen that makeup the Heartland seniors Tour have been in town competing in the Optus Senior Open. I have enjoyed the excitement around the course over the past few days even though I have not got to watch much of the tournament.

This is a tour for men over the age of 46 that have either played on the pga tour or the champions tour and for some reason are not on those tours now. Their youth and skills have either slipped a little or they are working their way up to the top tour now. So in this tournament you have men that are either on the way up or the way down.

Life is like this tour in many ways. You are either on your way up the "leader board" or on you are on your way down, and everyone around you is in the same boat. If you are a businessman or woman, you are either fighting your way to the top or you are fighting to stay at the top. Either way, you are always on the move. A few are stuck in the middle not moving at all. If you are stuck in the middle you are losing ground.

This reminds me of verse 16 in Revelation chapter 3 about being lukewarm. The church at Laodicea was warned about being neither hot or cold, just lukewarm and that they would be spewed out. As Christians we must be moving up. We must try to improve our lives. We must try to be better Christians everyday. We must try to do good to everyone we meet. We must not ever become satisfied with where we are. We know we are all sinners and we may feel that we are at the bottom of the "leader board", but we must not give up. We must pray, study, and ask forgiveness and continue to climb that "leader board".

All of this from a small golf tournament in my neighborhood. Amazing what you can get out of life in you just look for it.


I said yesterday that I would get to what I think needs to be done to improve church on Wednesday and Sunday nights, I will get to it, just not today.

We had a good Wednesday night service last night even though our numbers were down a bit. I sometimes get discouraged when our numbers are low, but I know that it shouldn't really matter. We had a good young men's class last night. Once we got past trying to get the lights to work in our room. We never could get one set to turn on. Oh well, we will be in a new building shortly.

In our class we spent last night (after the lighting incident) trying to come up with a new book to study. We have decided on a book written by Lee Strobel titled Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Marry. In deciding on that book we had a good discussion of what the role of a church is. I said that all of my life I felt that church was a place to go to worship God. That worshipping God had to be the sole focus. No changes should ever be necessary. We should just worry about worshipping God.

About 3 years ago I changed my mind. I felt that church had to change in order to open it's doors to the unchurched, and to do that we must make major changes in the way we do church. Over the last 6 months I have returned to the conclusion that the primary goal of church is to worship God and that we should emphasize Bible study. In coming to that conclusion it left me in a quandary because I did not know how church would be appealing to unchurched individuals. I also did not know how we could focus our time together in worshipping God and still be able to fellowship with each other.

After studying and spending time in prayer I have decided that our time on Sunday morning should be focused on worshipping our Creator. We should gear our services to that and that alone! There must be a concentrated effort to make our time together focus on God. I am not sure that every Sunday morning service in my life has had its focus on God. I have sat through numerous Sunday morning sermons where the focus was so far from God I was not sure whether I was at church or at a civic club meeting. Some preachers decide that Sunday morning is the time that they will talk about why we should or shouldn't use instruments, why it is wrong to drink, dance or whatever is topic du jour of the week. They would not know what a Sunday morning sermon was if it were to jump on them on their way to the pulpit.

I think focusing our worship time on God is a step in the right direction in order to appeal to unchurched "Harry and Mary". An individual taking the bold steps to come into a strange environment, to come to our worship service does not want to be dogged by our trivialities. They are there because they are in need of something. They are in need physically, spiritually, or mentally. They have needs and they know that they can come to church to have those needs fulfilled. Or at least they think they can. That is why we have to focus on God. He is the one who can help them with their needs. We must expose them to our God and our Savior.

The most important change that I think we must make is that we get into the community on a daily basis providing the things that our neighbors in Bono need. What those things are I do not know yet, but I am looking. In doing those things, it must be something that is continual and allows the people around us to get to know us and for us to get to know them. We must develop relationships with the people of Bono! That is the first step to getting people to come worship God.

Tomorrow I will talk about what I think needs to be done on Sunday night and Wednesday night.

Missing Teeth

Today I spent over 30 minutes talking to the mother of a 6 year old little girl. This little girl is missing 18 of her permanent teeth. The normal number of teeth is 32. This little girl has all of her baby teeth, there are just no permanent teeth to come in after she loses those. It is not unusual for someone to be missing 1 or 2 permanent teeth, but to be missing 18 is beyond description. I assured the mother in the best way that I could that everything would be alright. You see we have modern dental science on our side. We can do orthodontic work and then we can follow that up with implants and crowns and bridges and not only will she have functioning teeth, they will look great. I am not sure the mother was convinced. That is why the conversation lasted over 30 minutes.
After talking with this little girl's mother I began to think about what it would be like if I were having to deliver tragic news to a mother or father about their lovely little child. Could I do it? I do not know. Could I go and face someone and be able to tell them that their life will never be the same. That their little Billy or Suzy was not going to live, or that they had a terrible disease and that life would be difficult from that day forward. I am not sure that I could do that, but I am thankful that there are men and women that can. Because they can, does it make it easy for them? I think not. I just think they have a gift I do not have.
I am referring the little girl to a specialist that will be able to take care of her beyond what I can do. The little girl has no idea what is ahead of her, and I like that. She just knows that she has a mother that loves her and is willing to do whatever it takes.

24 Days Update and Other Musings

It has been several weeks since we finished our "24 Days of Prayer". It was a great success and I encourage other churches to try something similar. We had over 600 in total attendance. With a daily average of over 25. We had over 100 different individuals attend the services. We prayed for well over 1000 people.

Everyone that attended was uplifted in many ways. Many individuals said it was the best thing that our church had done in a long time and that we should find something to do like that in the future.

I learned many things from the "24 Days of Prayer". I learned that Christians want and need to be around each other more often than the Sunday/Wednesday services. I learned that God answers prayers. I did not need this event to teach me that, it was just amazing to watch the prayers being answered right before our eyes during those 24 days. I learned that the more time Christians spend together the more they open up to other Christians and the more we are able to help each other because of the openness.
Overall the "24 Days" was a success!


Our church building project is going great. We have walls up and the painters will begin to paint in the next couple of weeks. A lot of the behind the scenes planning is going on for the building. It wont be long until all of the hard work pays off. We look to be in the building in January!!


How 'bout them Cowboys. They looked good against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday. Tennessee quarterback will be a good one in the future. He is just not ready now.


My Cardinals backed into the playoffs, but they are playing in October and so many other teams cannot say that. I do not expect them to make it to the series but I am still rooting for them!


I hope to update this blog everyday. Al you inspire me. You have so much to do and yet you write a blog for all of us to know what you are up to. Can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks.

Sunday Morning Bible Class

Over the next 5 weeks our class at church will be studying servanthood. We are a class of about 35 adults of mixed ages. We will be breaking into 3 small groups to do this study. I am very excited about this next phase of our class.

I do hope that becoming a servant will become second nature to us. This will be a challenging study for me. We tend to focus so much on ourselves that we do not even see the needs of others around us. I hope this changes.

Last night we started our 24 days of prayer. We had the elders pray over our church at Bono and over the church universal. We had about 30 in attendance. I do not expect 30 every night but I do hope for several that are interested in our church. Tonight's topic is the teenagers.

Freedom

Earlier this week the United States of America celebrated her 230 birthday. Being so far removed from the events leading up to the signing of The Declaration of Independence we can not truly understand the emotions and desires of the founding fathers for their much sought after freedom. We have always been free during my lifetime. Sure we have had our enemies and our skirmishes but here in this country we have remained free. Because we have always been free I feel that we take that freedom for granted.

A bumper sticker on an old Ford pickup in Paragould read "Freedom is my right to smoke wherever I want, whenever I want.". The mentality of this person will be the downfall of this great country. Sure this person feels like he or she has the right to smoke at all cost, but I do not believe that is the freedom our forefathers fought for. We have to, as good citizens, be able to coexist together. And if that means not smoking wherever and whenever so that it might save the life of the person you live or work with then I think it must be done. A better bumper sticker would be "Because I am free, I will not smoke, in order to live peacefully."

Root Canal Treatment

Being a dentist people often ask you who does you dental work for you. For a root canal I went today to Dr. Paul Curtis in Jonesboro. Dr. Curtis is an endodontist, a dentist who specializes in doing root canal treatments. Today he treated tooth number 18. That is a molar on my lower left. Just like I tell patients everyday, a root canal is no big deal. It is a little tender underneath the tooth, but doesn't really hurt. I have only taken one ibuprofen for the pain, or should I say lack of pain. Dr. Curtis is great. That is why I send him my difficult cases.

We had a good class last night at church. We are reading the book Roaring Lambs. It is a book written about 10 years ago, so a lot has changed in the world since it was written, but it is still a good book. We discussed the premise of the book, being salt and light in the world. I feel that in the Church of Christ we have been taught, and still teach, that we are to infiltrate the world to be salt. The author does not feel that he was taught that in his church. We discussed what we can do with in a couple of situations to be salt. I will see how we do in the future.

Changes

It has been a long time since I posted on the blog. I hope to do a better job in the future.

We have been without a preacher at the Bono Church of Christ for 3 months now. It has been an interesting time at church. I have witnessed people getting involved at a higher level than ever before. I have watched as some have started doing work for the Lord that otherwise would have stood on the sidelines. I do hope this commitment will continue.

I do know that it has caused me to do some serious thinking about how we do church. I am a better person because of my recent studies. I feel that we have to do a better job being relevant to the community. Relevant is the buzz word these days, but it is the best description of what we need to be. I have come to the conclusion, the same one others have come to, that we just do not do things right. We are all consumed with what takes place inside the building. We are so enamored with that, it has caused some churches to completely change the way they worship. Whether that is good or bad that is not for me to decide. I feel that we are focused on the wrong thing. We need to focus our efforts on what we do in our everyday life and if we do that right we will not need to change anything in the building, because we will be worshiping God at a different level than ever before and the world will see it and know it.



With the changes mentioned earlier we have a new excitement level among the members. Couple that with the building of a new building and we have the potential for something great in Bono. We are about to start a new class at church called the Servants Heart. It will, I hope, help us learn how to better at reaching out to the world and understanding our role as the servant. We also have another event coming up that I am very excited about. It is 24 days of prayer. We will meet at the building every night for 24 days to pray over a different topic affecting out church family. I hope this will build a bond between those involved.


We are just about 6 months away from getting into that new building. I am trying to plan a major event for every month leading up to the move down the road. In the plans are: a collection of school supplies for the kids at school, a ice cream Saturday, a tailgate party for an ASU football game, and a stress reduction workshop at the holidays. Other things are in the works.