Those Kids

When we lead worship at Fellowship Bible, our weekend begins on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 for rehearsal and the first service. The next morning it starts around 5:30 AM to get the boys up and ready to be at church by 7 for sound check and another quick rehearsal.
The last time I was leading worship, my friend John Mays (playing bass that day) looked at my boys and said what a great picture they were. I had not noticed until he pointed them out, but they were indeed a unique sight. Both sitting on the front row of an empty sanctuary watching me prepare the band for the early morning service. Ezra in his car carrier looking sleepy eyed and silent was drifting off for a little nap. Oak, still in his coat and hat was eating goldfish from a Ziploc bag and watching Cars on his portable DVD player. The way John pointed them out was saying more about who they were than how they looked. They’re cute, but they are also those kids: ones who get drug to church every time the door is open and their life is wrapped up in the work of ministry. John and I both grew up as “those kids” and his comment called attention to something that I had casually over looked. These boys are church kids. Their impressions of Heather and me will have as much to do with being a part of the local church than anything else. We are Church people. We love the Church.
As I looked at the boys that morning it made me think about my own life. I wonder how much hell was held back from my life simply because I was never far from the people of God, the culture of prayer and the Bible.
I pray that when the boys grow up and can choose where they spend their time and devote their affection, that they will still be “those kids”.

52 Letters

Happy new year! It's so much fun to see time fly while remembering that every second counts for something. I am a resolution guy. I love to make new years resolutions. I know they are targets for cynics, but I try to go about them a little differently. I like making resolutions that influence the future of other people, not ones to improve my abs or stop drinking so much Diet Coke. I am about 50 pages away from finishing the epic John Adams biography by David McCullough. As a huge player in America's fight for independence, John Adam's wrote letters to everyone. He used his pen to effect change in American leadership. He also exchanged a famously romantic lifetime of letters with his wife Abigail. Writing letters was one way he expressed his greatest passions. I love the idea of the old fashioned letter. Pens, paper, stamps and feelings are one of the best ways to connect intangible emotions with our senses. Not to mention, letters have ways of preserving sentiment and truth unlike any other communication (see The New Testament). So, inspired by John Adams and others like him, I declare 2009 the year of the letter. I'll write one a week for 52 weeks. Check the mail, you might be on the list.