Thursday, April 5, 2007

On the plus side, it's quite beautiful here when it snows. If you can enjoy it from the heated comfort of your living room. The brief respite from winter's all-consuming ire at least makes me appreciate the beauty of a fresh new blanket of snow again. The old stuff, which was rotting and dirty, had the chance to melt, and it's like winter took a mulligan and started again. Dare I say that I am learning to tolerate the stuff?

Perish the thought. I still don't like it. I just figure buttering it up with some empty paltitudes might quell its rage long enough to make it go away. As my dad suggested to me today, at some point soon we may have to start offering ritualistic sacrifices to just make it stop. Hopefully it won't get that far, though.

Yes, it did snow again today, if you couldn't tell. An interesting snow, though; the kind that makes you feel like you're in a giant snowglobe, except without the violent shaking every little while. As I said, it's really quite beautiful, but it's still snow. But hey, it got up to a lovely -4 today (but still -9 with the windchill), so we're making progress. They're calling for sunny weather this weekend, but we won't be here to see if they're wrong.

Speaking of that, we're currently in the ugly phase just before leaving where things haven't quite come together enough to make us feel like we're ready to leave, but we've done all we can for now. We have to wait for some laundry to dry, pack up some perishable food tomorrow (snacks for the road, but they're cheese strings, and we don't want to leave those out all night), and do the packing of the car. I hate this part.

I don't hate it because of what it is inherently; it's more the anticipation of leaving but not quite being ready to go yet, that I hate. Not sure if that makes any sense--probably not, but then you're used to that. I am definitely looking forward to the weekend, though, and not just because I get to leave this disgusting excuse for spring behind for a weekend and hit the good side of the Rockies. More than that, I'm really looking forward to what this weekend might bring. Whether or not we end up working at this church isn't as important to me as just getting the process underway. It's exciting to see something happening after two years of it not happening.

What else is happening? Well, it was Wednesday, so school abounded. Did our presentation in the first class, which was good, but not great. Had an interesting discussion about Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Church in second class, and had two more student presentations in the afternoon.

The discussion of Purpose-Driven Church (PDC) was interesting. I've never really been comfortable with the model espoused by Warren and his ilk, and this discussion today made me even more sure of why I don't buy it. Oh sure, I like the idea of making church fit the culture a little bit more, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being in a comfortable environment when we come to church. What I'm concerned about is that the seeker-sensitivity inherent in much of the mega-church life is putting too much emphasis on God's immanence at the expense of His transcendence. In other words, we're so busy making God our buddy that we forget that He's completely other, and so much so that we can't even begin to comprehend. That sense of wonder and awe at coming into a time of communion with Holy God is being lost in our churches is being sacrificed at the altar of being invitational. But if we're just a social club, what makes us different?

It's also fun to discuss things like this in a classroom setting, because not everyone agrees. We're all, in a sense, on a journey toward our own particular paradigms of ministry and church life, and we're all working out how that looks for us. In my opinion (and I've likely shared this before), there is no one particularly "best" way to do church. As long as we maintain the essence of what it means to be a community of believers (including, but not limited to, prayer, preaching, singing, and fellowship), we can make the form fit whatever suits preference--to a certain extent, of course. Not everyone, however, shares that opinion, and, although few people are as ready to shoot their mouths off as I am, everyone has something to say. That's what I value about this college experience, and that's what I will continue to value going forward. The minute I stop listening to people who disagree with me is the minute I stop learning.

Anyway. After school, I came home and threw the boy into snowbanks for a little while. No, I'm serious--I buried him up to his waist in snow, which he absolutely loved. It must be fascinating to see snow for the first time without having any comprehension of what it is. Sometimes I think we know too much about everything, and it really shortchanges us of the wonder inherent in not knowing all there is to know about it. But that's getting into philosophy again, so we won't go there.

The neighbourhood cats were out in abundance today, which pleased the boy to no end. He'd run down the sidewalk after the cat, shouting out to it in some unintelligible language. Once he caught up with it, he'd pet it (by which I mean he was trying to grab big handfuls of its hair, but was prevented from doing so by his unruly mittens), and then it would run away again, creating a whole new opportunity for screamy-running. He's at that point (the boy, not the cat) where he's managing to hit pitches with his shriek that only Mariah Carey can hit otherwise. It's quite piercing when he rips one off in the kitchen, but it's quite comical outside. Let him shriek, that's what I say. At least he's having fun.

Speaking of fun, as I mentioned previously, we had Phil Callaway speak in chapel today. Man, he's just such a good speaker. Although I'd heard some of his jokes before, he was still refreshing. If you're interested in hearing what he had to say, you can check out the chapel website here and download the mp3. As of Wednesday night, they still hadn't posted the mp3, but it should be up in a day or two. While you're there, you can browse through everything the chapel website has to offer, which should (a) take you all of two minutes, and (b) give you insight into what happens here on a regular basis. Although what Phil had to say was specifically directed to the Bible college audience, it's also applicable to everyone else.

That, I think, will be that. Wife is slowly recuperating from her bout with sickness, but has now managed to crink a nerve in her neck (or something) by sleeping in an awkward way, so she's drugged herself up, which is handy for me because it means she'll be out like a light in a few minutes, and I can stay up and do kakuro to my heart's content.

As a reminder, no blog posting Friday, and, since we're not back until late Monday, none for Monday either. I'll be back on Tuesday with a full report from this weekend, though, so we'll see you then. Happy Easter, all.