ha

good times

Sorry to keep posting videos...

But this one made me laugh.

Go Jesus, It's Your Birthday

done as well

just finished my last exam....yes.
i pulled an all nighter last night writing up this thing for OT...so I'm about to crash right now.

two weeks

In my hermeneutics class, my professor put up some 'email' he had received from some guy called the end time prophet. he says the world is going to be in nuclear holocaust in 2 weeks. worth a look...however ridiculous. Later!

trip

i asked off for the week after Christmas, but, so did everyone else. I'll know by next Tuesday if I got it.

Luke, may I just say, you have a gift of finding great paying part time jobs over the holidays.

hope you guys are well

update...

jon...shoes are cool. I like the larry ones. i checked with lauren and i think my mom bought me a new pair of walabees for christmas. I love those shoes so its ok.

luke...jealous that you got fall already. I ordered the cd version for some stupid reason. going to take 5-7 business days. but i ordered all the seasons for $20. I don't know if you could swing it, but a buddy of mine here at the beach and I are planning a trip to Buluxi, Mississippi for a week after Christmas to do some Katrina relief work. I know you are packed with Holiday plans, but thought I would offer it to you. We are trying to get a good group of guys together to do some series ministry! It should be an awesome trip. Jon is trying to work it out with his job. I should be a very cheap trip (food and gas)

That's about all. Miss you guys. Hope to see you soon.

and done

As of 7:23am I finished my last exam of my first semester at SBTS. It feels good.

Thanksgiving was good at home. Guess what. I saw a couple of movies...

I listened to Fall for most of the day.

Jon, sounds like an awesome weekend in the mountains. You should go in the middle of a hurricane sometime.

From now until the 21st I am going to work Mon-Sat for 10-12 hours a day. That'll put me at about 1,000 bones a week. So, the next time I will probably try calling either one of you guys is probably going to be a Sunday afternoon...

Later.

chip shoes

here is a link to the patagonia shoes...check out the ones in the top right corner...

rain

well, droughts about over i guess, it rained in Raleigh all day long. Good readin weather.
I had a great thanksgiving - though I didn't see either of my parents. Mom and co. went to VA and dad and co. went to see Lynnes family in Marshville, NC (home of Randy Travis). I ate so, so much. Luke, sorry I couldn't talk when you called...

Oh, and I went to the mts with Rachel. And her family. We stayed in a one bed room little cabin in Boone. Hiked, ate, slept, watched movies, etc. It was wicked cold. I'm going to put the pic up on the facebook soon.

aight guys, hope you're doing well/had a good thanksgiving. Chip, that last post made my day. I want that CD. Good stuff. And Luke commented on it.

bye

Jon Foreman

don't know if you heard about this but jon foreman is releasing 4 ep albums this year with songs he wrote that aren't on switchfoot cds.

check it out

http://www.jonforeman.com/

looks pretty awesome...

abide sermon?

Chip,

How'd that sermon turn out? I'm eager to hear what the Lord taught you as you prepared.

Give us a link to that podcast... What's it called? Chip's tips...or uhh...Equip with Chip...or...Robert E's Homilies...

my wholeweek

Yeah, whole week off here too.

The difference is that I am done with classes and by Tuesday at 9am of next week I will be done with the semester.

I'm working Tuesday and half the day Wednesday and then home until Sunday. I'll try calling you on the road. A lot of the drive is in the mountains where I don't have service, but I'll give it a try. After all "fewest dropped calls..."

In other news, it hit me today that I have become a believer in the Amillenialist position. Mostly as a result of a Bible study one of my professors gave through Hebrews 3-4 (of all texts!). That was probably the one position I thought I would never be.

Jon, keep spreading the word about Huck. He's awesome. There is one thing I can't figure out when I envision him in office. Great president? or the Greatest president?

wholeweek

i have this whole week off, and thurs and fri off at work. ridiculous. I don't get out until like 16 of december as well. hope you all are doing well

from IBC (Immanuel Baptist Church)

This past week IBC (where I go to church) "launched" their website. It is nothing too impressive, but it does have sermons up on it. I'm telling you all this because there is one in particular that I hope you will be able to listen to. It is here. Ryan is one of the best preachers I have heard. He consistently gives the big picture and always relates his sermon to the cross. This particular message is significant because of the circumstances surrounding it. It was preached September 9th. The next time Ryan was to preach was this past Sunday (two months later). September 7th his wife had surgery, she had not been feeling well. September 10th she was to be diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. She was to have surgery and then start chemo as soon as possible. What made this particularly difficult is that she was 8 months pregnant. There were some complications along the way, but as of right now, she has delivered a healthy baby and has recovered well from surgery. Needless to say, this has been a difficult time for Ryan and his family. I think it is incredible that in God's Providence He had Ryan preach this particular sermon when he did. Over the past two months Ryan has been a visible demonstration of what he talked about in this sermon. It is definitely worth a listen if you can find the time.

Chip, think about it as a preview...

A few other things about the message:
1. Every Sunday the text (usually a chapter) is read by someone other than the person preaching. That reading is included in the file. I like that they do this. The person who reads it has practiced it and prepared. During the reading we all stand "in honor of the Word." It's good.
2. I think Ryan's Canadian - so, that's his accent.
3. I don't know if this is typical of the audio files, but there is some of the music and then some of the rest of the service on it. I would recommend skipping over the music, but listening to the vote on the candidates for membership. The membership process is not a simple thing at IBC - application, classes, recommendations, interview with an elder, affirmation of vows, and then presentation to the church body for vote. What you can hear on this file is the affirmation of vows/confession before the church that each of the candidates goes through before the congregation votes. I kind of like the system (I think I talked with you, Chip, about it some) and think it is about the best that you can do to have a regenerate church membership.

Alright, a long post after not posting for a while. I hope you guys can listen to it sometime...

at the pier near our house (last saturday)

reformation polka...

jon,

that fishing pole is hilarious!

update...

as far as being old...lauren and i attended a hay ride for halloween. no dancing at all! We went to this neighborhood where a lot of our church families live and just hung out.

I am starting the "get skinny for real" diet. You ever heard of this one? I think its going to work...just you wait - I am going to be in shape the next time you see me.

We got a lot of wind for that random hurricane that just showed up.

Application to Southern is in the mail. Hopefully starting online courses this spring semester.

I am not good at blogging...

halloween

you guys have a good halloween?
we had a get together last night, an 80s party of sorts. It was fun, but the older i get, the older the people I hang out with get. and trying to get people to dance was painful. it was fun though.
before the party, ethan and I, and some of our guy friends, went to Meredith college for their 'cornhusking' event. We were 5 of maybe 40 guys there. All the classes at MC basically put on a huge skit, and dance and, uh. We brought meat and tailgated in the middle of it. Good times.
Ok, off to film a wedding today. have a good one.

ps I also snagged a "cowboy church" flyer from school last Thurs. I'll take a pic of it and post it. Hilarious.

a good one from pascal

I came across this tonight:

"Do small things as if they were great, because of the majesty of Christ, who does them in us and lives our life, and great things as if they were small and easy, because of his almighty power."

saw a funny costume

I saw a man today (black) carrying a dog. He was wearing a red Falcons jersey with the number 7 on it...

agape

So, I have learned a lot in hermeneutics class this semester. I am going to try to take any class I can with this professor.

Today Dr. Wellum was talking about common exegetical fallacies. He gave an example about the Greek words for love (agape, phileo, and eros). He was talking about how it has been said again and again from the pulpit that there is an inherent distinction within the words. He then stated "guys, we really have got to quit saying this sort of thing." He then pointed to John 3:35 and John 5:20 where the terms phileo and agape are used interchangeably. But, a little more shockingly, he pointed to the use of agape in 2 Timothy 4:10 to speak of Demas who loved the world and deserted Paul. But the most surprising use of agape comes from the LXX in 2 Samuel 13:15 where it refers to an incestuous relationship.

His point was that there is a special sense of Christian love and godly love, but that understanding is derived from the context of passages talking about love. It does not come from an inherent distinction in the words. Too often "inherent distinctions" are the result of Greek students who know too little but want to do something with what they know...

He got me.

guess who i saw

emmy's

here is a quote from "above all earthly pow'ers"
Wells is getting to his point of how christology functions in a culture of relativism...this an interesting lead up about immigration..........he was talking about european immigration here:

"The tensions which this immigration has created appear to be even greater than in America becase these nations are all so much older, the memories longer, their ethnic sense deeper, and there is no nation in Europe whose genesis lies, as America's does, in ideas and which is made up almost entirely of immigrants adn their descendants."

we are a nation of immigrants and ideas. that is humbling.

pants

chip, how are your mountain khakis length wise? mine are like an inch too short now...hmm...

also a tip
i read in men's health about buying really hard jeans and breaking them in yourself. it works. they are my favorite pants.
levi's 501 'shrink to fit' - the only thing is i have to clean them like michael scott.

game

I really don't need to update much. i thought I'd give you a dose of my days though:

445am: wake up, work till 1030am

if tues-thurs: go to class afterwards
if mon or fri: study afterwards

sat/sun: sleep till 9 go study

Rachel has a really really busy schedule, I rarely see her during the week.
and on weekends, which is why i'm writing this now. I'm waiting for her to get out of work.

Funny: I'm at a coffee shop now, and the chinese man behind the counter is getting irate because he is trying to convince the other baristas that color "pumpkin" is a "brownish" color.
Well hey, i ended up updating anyway.

ttyl

on contradictions in Scripture

Here is a quote I came across on the contradictions of Scripture by B. H. Carroll in Baptists and the Bible:
I have seen these contradictions melt away until I have lost all confidence in them. Now, a boy is usually a great deal smarter than his father, and then he is when he gets to be a father. When I was a boy I thought I had found a thousand contradictions in the Bible. In the Old Bible of my young manhood I marked them all.
Well, I had then nearly a thousand more contradictions than I have now. I do not see them now; they are not there. There are perhaps a half dozen in the Bible that I cannot explain satisfactorily to myself. I don't say that my explanation of all the others would satisfy everybody. There are some that I cannot explain satisfactorily to myself; but since I have seen nine hundred and ninety-four out of those thousand coalesce and harmonize like two streams mingling, I am disposed to think that if I had more sense I could harmonize those other six; and even if I ever fail to harmonize them, God knows better than I know, and that when I know perfectly just as I now know only in part, and only a very small part, I will be able to understand that; and so when I come to things of that kind and cannot master them, I put them in parenthesis and say, "I will come back; God cannot leave you penned forever; He will send somebody that can take away the difficulty and make it clear to me." I assume that it can be done.

when the man comes around

I saw this at Justin Taylor's blog. It's pretty awesome.

tornadoes

Thursday night Benji and Sarah had me over for dinner. We ate the salads in the dining room and the rest of the meal in the basement. Why? Because there was a tornado alarm blaring all over the city and they were warning everyone to take shelter. I've never experienced anything like it. During that first "cell" there was a tornado that touched down. They said it was moving at about 45mph! I thought they went, like, 5, maybe 10mph. Once the first storm cell passed I saw on the radar that I had a window of opportunity to make it back to SBTS before an even larger cell came. I needed to study for my Hebrew quiz in the morning, so I left. When I got to the school I found out people had been hiding in the basement here as well. I studied and went to bed and apparently slept through another one that sent everyone to the basement. The whole thing was a crazy new experience for me. I think I had only ever felt threatened by a tornado when a hurricane was coming. At the point you are kind of freaked out anyways. Up here it just kind of came out of nowhere...

i need new wallabee's

Jon...are they still selling clarks at the flea market?

Luke...T4G is in ken-tuck-y right...i could be up for that

i'm sick...

t4g.org

t4G '08 anyone?

This is a portion of Mark Driscoll's "Confessions of a Reformission Rev." He is writing about early on in their church's history when summer rolled around and they were losing attendance.

"Scrambling for ideas, I agreed to cancel a Sunday church service to let some of our long-haired public-radio types take us outside to do a large joint art project they had proposed. They gave each of us a large chunk of paper on which to paint something that symbolized our personality, which they would then string together as a large mural highlighting the different personalities in our church. As a truck-driving jock who watches a lot of Ultimate Fighting, I can honestly say it was the gayest thing I have ever been a part of. I feared ending up with a church of chickified arty dudes drinking herbal tea and standing around talking about their feelings, as illustrated by their finger painting. To this day, I twitch like a Vietnam vet just thinking about the mural."

It cracked me up!

"So...what's alex up to these days?"

OETR

yes! i dug it out of my trunk about 3 months ago and Rachel and I went. it was a weird date. There were lots of "red hat" women yelling and giggling...
the food was good though.

thats cool that you saw alex, glad to hear he's well.
some durham youth pastor's called the other day, asking if he was a missionary yet. I'll update them:)

Tea Room...

Jon...did we ever use our gift certificate to the tea room?

fyi

me and guys saw this donkey...

hey guys,

I finally made it to the blogosphere! This is an awesome site by the way!

Monday I ate lunch with Alex Keeling, which was really cool and very random. I went in to the bank to deposit money for a youth trip and he was standing in the back of the bank. When he left the Summit, he moved to Elizabeth City (which is about 45 min from the OBX) and his territory included banks on the beach. Anyway, it was cool seeing him. He seems to be doing great...same ole' Alex. He has another kid on the way (Roman - which is a cool name).

Lauren in going on a spiritual retreat this weekend (Thursday-Sunday). It's the Walk to Emmaus...I went on it my first year at Southeastern and you guys wrote letters. Pray for her this weekend if you think about it. It's been a busy couple months for her and she is looking forward to spending some good time with the Lord.

I am reading the book "The Irresistible Revolution - Living as an ordinary radical." It was given to me by a friend and at first discounted it because it seemed to be among all the "emerging" stuff coming out. It's definitely different but for the most part is pretty good. It reads like "Blue like Jazz" and it similar in content. Also similar is how you value this book "don't really disagree with what is said, but scared to agree too."

Anyway, this is getting long. See you soon hopefully

cowboy

i'm also going to grab that flyer tomorrow...i forgot to get it today..........

that reminds

remember north hills?
I ate with rachel and her mom over yonder thother day, at panera.
I don't think i should have gone. I'm finding out that girlfriend's mom's are really life coaches/psychiatrists.
I fiddled with a soup-bread-bowl for most of the convo...but it was still quality time.

have you taken any exams yet? i made an 83 on both of mine. i need to study a bitttttt more
work and school is tiring, i may have to request less hours at Caribou

where the blank is chip

blocks

Last week I got to tear large portions of a building down with a forklift. Awesome.

Over the weekend the rest of the building was knocked over...

Today, I got to pick up blocks, ship off the mortar, and stack them on pallets. Not so awesome...


It was humid today. It rained and then got real sunny. It kind of reminded me of home. It kind of got me thinking that I'm pretty sure NC is the best state. This led me to telling Jesus I wouldn't mind if I lived in NC in the new earth.

Hey

I agree.
I'll try to post each week.
If this doesn't work I don't know what else will. Maybe video conferencing via satellite...

three-way (chat)

Alright guys.

This is an effort to keep up together. I talk to Jon. I talk to Chip. Chip talks to me. Chip talks to Jon. Jon talks to Chip and talks to me. Yet, it has been a long time since Luke and Jon and Chip have all talked together.

This is the closest thing we have for now.

This blog doesn't have to be about anything. Just us and anything worth posting because it is relates to us.