The Lord was gracious to bless us with a solid, enjoyable weekend; certainly the best since Kalila and I have gotten Saturdays off.Saturday Morning. On Thursday, my pastor sent around an email to the men of the church to let us know that we were not going to have our usual Men’s Gathering on Saturday morning. Instead, he wanted to have a discussion about the mission, values, and ministry of our church in light of our upcoming “Family Meeting,” customary to the end of the fiscal year of the church. Thus, we got together on Saturday morning and did just that. This was really the first meeting of this kind, and I think it was absolutely critical to the future of our church. We reflected on the blessings we’ve experienced at the church since it started about 3 1/2 years ago. We discussed the needs of our area and the potential God could offer through us. We poked around concepts and phrases that captured the essence of our mission and values to really help give us a concise point of reference. We also brainstormed about how we could better our current ministries as well as others that we could offer. I think God’s hand was hugely evident, and we can be a better church because of it.

Saturday Afternoon/Evening. No sooner do I leave this meeting that I get a call from my dad letting me know that he has tonight off, he just bought a new truck, and he wanted to come up and visit. His truck is brand new, which is crazy because the newest vehicle my dad has ever had is was like 10 years old. Since he now has a truck, he was now able to bring up some bureaus and chairs we had wanted that he had in his basement (we’ve been meaning to get this stuff for about 10 months). While waiting for him, we had lunch at the new Panera now in Beverly and we talked about the importance of the meeting that morning. My dad arrived around 5:00 and we quickly moved the furniture up the stairs and in place at our apartment. After we cleaned some of the furniture and chatted a bit, we headed to have another fantastic meal at the Wildhorse Cafe.

Sunday Morning/Afternoon. There was a new sense of anticipation as we went and enjoyed the worship gathering at our church Sunday morning. There was a slight buzz while at church, I gather, from the rest of the guys who were at Saturday morning’s meeting. At church we just had a great time catching up with the saints and meeting new ones that came to visit. We ended up going out to lunch at the Longhorn Steakhouse with our good friends Eric and Elizabeth. This Friday will be Elizabeth’s birthday, so we offered to cover her meal. It had been a long time since we caught up, so it was sweet to get together. Elizabeth will be turning 31, happy birthday!

Sunday Night. After a late afternoon/early evening nap, we went again to the Wildhorse for a drink and some nachos with our good friends Matt and Kayle and their friend Matt. We had an interesting yet brief discussion about some of the reasons that their friend Matt, a seminary student, doesn’t attend a church regularly. I could really resonate with some of his reasons and it really opened up a great context to hang and chat about it further.

I think the reason I feel so fond of this weekend is that it was all about people I care about. I don’t think I am really satisfied as a person if I am not well connected with those that I love. It is great to feel re-connected.

NPR interviewed Bruce Springsteen last year by Renee Montagne while he was touring for his recent Album “Devils & Dust”. He actually did a few songs for the them, including “Jesus Was an Only Son” (see the lyrics a few posts down). It is a pretty interesting chat where he talks about songwriting, politics, religion, and music. Worth a listen; it’s in 2 parts about 45 minutes total. Here’s a summary:

On his latest album, Devils & Dust, rocker Bruce Springsteen strips down, musically and spiritually: The singer uses his lone voice against a spare acoustic backdrop to explore themes of spirituality, moral uncertainty and loss.

“At this point, a lot of [my music] traces back to gospel roots… I was drawn to music that addressed the spirit, probably because my own needed to be addressed,” Springsteen told Renee Montagne during a recent interview in Asbury Park, N.J.

Springsteen broke through with his 1975 album Born to Run, which established him as a writer of characters. “You’re always writing about yourself… you hide it in a variety of ways, and you meld your voice with other lives,” Springsteen said.

Among the characters on his latest release is a young soldier at a checkpoint in Iraq, whose story is explored in the title track. It begins: “I got my finger on the trigger, but I don’t know who to trust … I feel a dirty wind blowing devils and dust.”"What moved me the most was the idea of a young kid stationed at a checkpoint,” Springsteen said. “You’ve got a very, very short period of time where you have to decide about the car that’s driving toward you, whether it’s an innocent family, or whether it’s your death coming at you… And you have to decide right, right now. There’s so little room for error, and the error that you make is so very final.”

As much as I have been purchasing great music lately, I have also been listening to a ton of lectures and sermons online. Danny O and myself have been shooting links back and forth on some of the best stuff we can find. I have listed these below.

Spiritempoweredpreaching.com I have talked about Art Azurdia before and posted this link when they were just starting to put audio up. Now they are in full force and are adding stuff every other day. Must listens: Jonah (the second one will rip you to shreds), Revelation, Hebrews, and TULIP.

Monergism.com: Piper They have a Piper page that has links to all of his major stuff. Everything is a must listen for Piper, but particularly I have been re-listening to his stuff on Hebrews. Two that I keep going back to are “For Whom Did Jesus Taste Death” (2:9) and “Woe to Those Who Trample Under Foot the Son of God” (10:26-32). Absolute money!

Rick Anderson He is akin to Azurdia in so many ways and is also part of F.I.R.E. He is a powerful preacher and has great theology.

Regent Radio This is an unbelievable weath of lectures and sermons provided by Regent College in Vancouver from their faculty and guest speakers they’ve have from all over the globe. They have J.I. Packer, Gordon Fee, Ricki Watts, Craig Gay, Alister McGrath, George Marsden, N.T. Wright, Eugene Peterson, and Bruce Waltke, to name a few.

Craig Koester He is a professor at Luther Seminary and his Bible Survey class audio is available on their site. Oh how we need to understand the whole story of the Bible! This is a tremendous overview.

Acts 29 Bootcamp This is done for potential church planters wanting to associate with the Acts 29 Network. Very interesting stuff about pastoral ministry, especially from Mark Driscoll, who pulls no punches and bats no eyelashes.

BiblicalTraining.org This is your online seminary/theological education done by some of the best professors in the country. Get your Greek, Hebrew, Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Philosophy, Pastoral Ministry, Missions, and more.

I have finally been able to upgrade/replace my Gateway Solo 5300 Laptop from 2001. This thing was hurtin. It has served me well though, and brought to completion in college and near completion in seminary. I have simply to taken it to the limits for a Pentium III (900 MHZ) processor, 10 Gig hardrive, with 128 Megs of RAM. I am still going to keep it around, and have toyed with the idea of running Linux on it. Yesterday, I stepped it up to desktop, an Emachines T6216. It runs on a AMD Athlon Processor, which is 64-bit and 2 GHZ, has 512 Megs of RAM (expandable to 4 GB), a 160 Gig Hardrive, DVD/CD burner, and multi-flash card reader. Needless to say, it is more than sufficient for my needs. The Lord has been gracious to bless us with a decent tax return and a pay increase for Kalila to make this happen. I have been talking about a new computer for over a year, and have been researching them for the past few months. It helps to have a former roomate who builds computers, a brother-in-law who repairs computers for a living, and another brother-in-law who works for Microsoft to guide me on my search. It also helps to have a beautiful wife to support this kind of a purchase (wink, wink to Kalila).