What we have discovered, Part II

The story below led Teresa and I to finally land at a big church down in Marietta called Johnson Ferry (JFBC). Good people, solid teaching and full of 'grown ups'. We attended there about a year and enjoyed it, was a perfect place at the perfect time. We started feeling the call last fall to find a church local to our neighborhood as JFBC was over 25 miles away.

We started looking, again, at churches in Cherokee county and became disappointed, wondering if it was US that was the challenge? Nothing we found seemed to say 'this is it' in any manner. Come Christmas time we were really frustrated. Now, there were two couples back at the 'old' church we attended that both Teresa and I respected, liked and thought highly of, both on staff at the time. One couple left the church when we did, moved away and have since found a great peace in their lives after much turmoil. The second couple stayed at the church and we could not believe they were still there, so disappointing.

I December 2008 I decided to contact the second couple mentioned above as I discovered they too left the church not long after we did. I sent an e-mail to reconnect and had a good conversation with him (Malcolm). It was just nice to catch up, catch up a little and find them, amazingly, in the same boat as we were. It was also interesting that he mentioned several other people (not from the old church) who were in the same boat as well.

That got me to thinking and with my brothers encouragement I sent a simple note to Malcolm saying "If you feel led to start a church we would like to be a part of it". Well, Malcolm called me the NEXT DAY and said they have been praying and seeking what to do about starting a new church and our note was perfectly (God) timed. We met, they shared the vision, mission and purpose of a church and we thought it was spot on!

So, Life Bible Church was 'born'. We met a few times as a group of people to get to know each other and last weekend had our first semi-official 'service'. This church was not created to 'entertain' people, to put on a show or designed to be 'seeker sensitive', meaning be entertaining to reach people. It is, as the name state, a Bible church. We will study, teach and share the Bible.

This week we actually signed a lease on some space in town and will start meeting in ONE SPOT for the next year at least. That is great, no school, theater, city hall, civic center. A real building!!

I pray that this is the start of something good, faithful and true to what a church is/should be.

What we have discovered searching for a church home

When Teresa and I moved to Woodstock, GA we found (on the internet) a local church that met in a theater up the freeway from us. Before we moved to town we actually went to lunch (@ Williamson Brothers BBQ, yum!) with the senior pastor and another guy on staff (Malcolm). We really thought the church had a good vision to reach people, especially those NOT from a traditional church background.

Some of the things we liked about what we saw:

- Upbeat music, great musicians with high energy.
- lots of people greeting you at the door, a good buzz
- met in a movie theater and seemed to be growing
- diverse people, all ages, races and backgrounds represented
- seemed to have their act together on Sunday mornings

We started attending not soon after moving to Georgia and decided we would get plugged-in right away. We both volunteered to be greeters and passed out flyers at the door each Sunday, helped new people find their way around and generally wanted to make people feel welcome. A little while later we were asked to help lead what they called a 'home team'. This is a Bible study group comprised of people from the church, which met weekly.

All was well, or so we thought, for several months. About 8 months into the process our eyes were opened wide, we discerned serious problems with the leadership (confirmed them) and direction of the church, decided it was time to move on, told the pastor so (and why) and left. Looking back it was the right thing to do as God used that to teach us (and continues to do so today).

Since then Teresa and I have learned so much about the purpose, function, leadership and importance of a church. We have visited so many little churches around us, started by so called "church planters" over the past year and are amazed at how exactly the same they all are. This has led us to study, research, pray about and pay attention to the state of today's 'christian' church.

Cherokee County (and the entire southeast region) is covered in new churches. They meet in every school, theater and civic center available.

Here are some of the qualities of a 'new', real, hip and relevant church started by a planter today, based on our observations.

- say NOTHING matters but reaching people for Jesus

Using this first statement justify the following:

• be as offensive to other Christians as possible, it is cool to show how stupid Christians are. I personally was told from day one that "I didn't get it, that I wouldn't make it". That much was true, a source of some level of 'pride' now, for lack of a better word!!

• be as offensive to other churches as possible, other churches are stupid too you know

• home teams must be more social in nature, do not study the Bible, talk about the sermon from last week. Do not stray or you will be cut off.
  

• use crude and vulgar language on your blog, twitter, in the service and in your publications and events. This is designed to show the non-believer that you are cool too and that it doesn't matter how you act or what you say if you are a believer. Some of the best words and phrases (these are NOT made up, I have them all available for reference), and I apologize for this, are 'suck', 'freaking', 'ass', 'balls to the wall', "I'm going to punch him in the throat", "I'll come kick their @##", and make jokes with crude sexual references constantly, talk about how 'hot' your wife is and hint about your sexual prowess.
  

• Bible study is to be done on your own time, topic sermons are the way to go

• going deep is a joke, people don't want to study deeper in the Word

• the leadership of the church is accountable only to God, they started the church so they are the only ones that should know what is happening behind the scenes.

• every third sermon series has to be about the history of the church.

• every second sermon series has to be about sex, post pictures of couples under cover in bed, kissing, pictures of people's backside, etc. Send flyers out to the community and laugh when someone calls back saying the flyers are rather offensive.

• be obsessed with secular music and television, telling everyone about it and how you make your day by filling your head and life with the stuff
  

• Go to every church planters conference available, hang out with your 'pastor' buddies all the time
  

• Talk about how cool your church planter friends (pastors) are and how cool you are, remember YOU are the only one that knows what God wants from your church/ministry.

• Remove anyone who ask questions, then make fun of them.
  

• If someone leaves the church tell everyone remaining to ignore them, do not contact them, they never existed and it is THEIR problem. Even if that person was on staff, they are persona non grata, useless to you.
  

• show pride in having the police called to your church, having the neighbors upset with you and threaten to beat them up, or send someone from the church to do so

• twitter every thought you have, the more vulgar the better (remember, that makes you 'real')

I could go on... but I will not. It is hard writing this without coming across as EXACTLY what I am speaking about. I do not say these 'planters' are stupid. However, I do believe many are misguided and dangerous to the faith.

This was therapeutic, I'll have more to say about what else we have discovered - THAT IS POSITIVE, AMAZING, HEARTWARMING AND A REAL BLESSING.

Well, Teresa and I did it. The SUV, Pathfinder, that we owned was OK for towing our little camper on back roads and such but once you hit the freeway it really struggled and the MPG was terrible (8 or less). We decided to get a Ford F250 so we can pull our trailer AND when we upgrade it would handle that one too.

We looked around at several trucks and met a nice guy named Stephen at Mall of Georgia Ford who showed us a nice F250 but it was too expensive. We explained to him (and a couple other dealers) exactly what we were looking for. We wanted a 2004-2006 F250, Super Cab, 6.0 litre turbo diesel, auto, leather, as many options as possible in the cab (auto temp control, power everything) and NOT WHITE in color and a specific price range. (side note, it amazes me how dealers push "monthly payments" when I specifically said PRICE!!!!). They don't really like informed buyers I think.

Stephen went out and they bought a nice 2006 model and called us. We looked at it this week, negotiated for many hours and I returned last night to pick it up. Teresa said a sad goodbye to the SUV, it was super nice but too weak for us.

Our plan is to keep this for many, many, many years. Can't wait to get out and pull something in it. It feels like it could pull our house off it's foundation!! Amazingly enough, however, it gets the same or BETTER gas mileage than the SUV and towing should be no problem at all for it.

Thankfully we have our little Mazda for every day driving.

Should have sold the tickets?

Teresa and I had tickets to the SEC Football Championship game here in ATL last Saturday. Alabama was taking on the Florida Gators for a chance to play for the National Championship in Miami in January. However, it was not meant to be!

We arrived at the Georgia Dome about 4 hours before kick-off and checked out all of the fan 'stuff' around the area and settled in to our seats, ate a hot dog and waited for the game. While the game was great, losing is not!!

All around the stadium people were wanting to buy tickets. I heard during the week that tickets were going for $350-$400 each in the section we were sitting in. Having bought them for $70 each that would be a tidy profit!!?? We decided against it and looking back perhaps we should have!?

NAAA, no way.

ROLL TIDE anyway. Beat Utah in the Sugar Bowl (that's weird... beat UTAH?)

Snow is pretty but....

Teresa and I are in Sugar Mountain, NC again to celebrate 4 years of marriage and we awoke to a good 4-5 inches of snow on the ground. It is beautiful, cold and very nice with a fire, coffee, etc.

One problem... last night Teresa pointed to the sign that said "4WD or Chains required" that was flashing as we entered the community. Well, silly me didn't think much about it because the roads were fine AT THAT TIME. The forecast was for maybe 1/2 to 1 inch of snow. Now, we have a winter storm warning, blowing snow and frozen roads.

That, along with not so new tires on the SUV, means I had to call the local wrecker company, buy some chains and have them delivered to us here. The guy was nice, has the chains and said he will "put us in line" after he pulls a couple of cars out of the local ditches.

Oh well, that is what you get when you mix a southern boy with snow - NO COMMON SENSE. At least we will have chains for the next time I decid to drive somewhere in the mountains during winter.

Adventures in camping....

Teresa and I wanted to take the new camper (see previous post) to a campground close to home and make sure everything works. It is better to do this close to home, as we discovered, that to go far away. Their is a lake close to us called Lake Allatoona so we thought that would be a great place to go. The campground was called McKinney Campground and was only 10 miles away.

We were able to get it to the site, leveled, hook up all the power, water without any problems. It was a nasty night in Georgia Friday as it was rainy, warm and muggy. We were pleased that the camper didn't leak during the rain so one major hurdle was crossed. The next morning we got up and did a little grocery shopping, lunch then headed back to the camper. A cold front came in that evening so we decided to light a campfire outside, turn on the heater inside, cook some dinner and watch a little TV while warming by the campfire (roughing it, huh?).

We settled in to sleep while the temperature outside was plummeting into the 40's to 30's by morning. Around 1:00 am I woke up FREEZING and the heat was not blowing at all. I checked the thermostat, electricity and everything was good, just no HEAT!!! Now, we purchased this camper with 2 full (so we were told) 20lb propane tanks just two weeks ago so I'm not thinking there is no propane just yet. Freezing and frustrated I sat there in dismay as to how did this happen when it hit me.... PROPANE!!! I went outside and sure enough, the tanks were empty. This was really frustrating as I didn't expect to have 5 hours of heat with two full tanks of gas. I put on more layers of clothes, grabbed the blankets and curled up on bed for a long, cold night.

We woke up early, made some coffee and packed up quickly as it was just too cold to enjoy the day without a little heat, plus I was frustrated. I searched on the web site and read the owners manual and discovered there was no way that we should have run out of propane that quickly, which leads me to the fact we did not receive the agreed to full tanks from the dealer. I will deal with that now!!

We plan on going out again in a few weeks and will take a little space heater as back-up. Lesson learned!!

We now return to our regular life....

Election is over, I'm now an official member of the loyal opposition. Life goes on and a new president/congress/government is not who we put our 'hope' in anyway.















Last weekend Teresa and I decided not to go to the Alabama homecoming game in Tuscaloosa so we could go camping one more time in our little pop-up camper. We headed up to northwest Georgia this time, right at the point where Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia all meet. The state park this time was Cloudland Canyon State Park, and wow, it was a beautiful place, elevation 2,000 feet.

We arrived Friday afternoon and set up shop on the west rim camp ground. Since it is not the 'peak' camping season we were able to get a pretty good camp site. The weather was perfect, lower 40's at night, near 70 or so during the day, lot's of sunshine.

We had a great time, the trees were in full color mode Saturday and Sunday. While we were hiking the canyon trails they were just stunning in their colors of red, orange and yellow. The hiking trails were very nice, a little challenging and the views of the canyon were impressive. Each time we go to a Georgia state park we are more impressed with the beauty of this state.

We left the camp site Saturday to drive around, head into Chattanooga to watch the Bama game at a local sports bar and to look at bigger campers at a huge Camping World store in town. Since we enjoy camping so much and the little pop-up, while nice, is just too darn small for us now, we have been considering upgrading almost since the first time we used the pop-up.

We looked at a ton of pull behind trailers and spent several hours there mulling over a few. We really liked a couple of them and the prices, in today's economic environment, are incredibly low. We left and headed back to our little camper for the evening. Sunday we hiked a little and decided to head back to Camping World...... and we decided to take the plunge.

We bought us a little 19ft Jay Feather camper that can easily be pulled by our SUV but is big enough (fridge, full shower, stove, oven, microwave, couch, TV. We really do want to 'rough it' when camping, huh??