Well, I am not a coffee drinker, but I did have a bit of a coffee break today. I am currently sitting in an oversized, really comfortable couch with my feet propped up on a foot stool… sipping chai and enjoying some smooth jazz in the background.
And all of this while connected to friends and my work on the internet!
So, needless to say, I am having a nice little break, and getting work done. How is that possible?!?
I highly recommend this place!
I am definitely fascinated by this stuff, so I must share a few more images. And, a movie.
Just before impact
Impact!
The large plume after impact
Click Here to view a movie of the approach to the comet, all the way till the very last second! Very cool!
I just finished watching the coverage of the Deep Impact collision with a comet. Fascinating. Can’t wait to read more tomorrow. Click the link above for lots of cool information about a fascinating space mission.
“I was waiting for Dad to come get me,” Alex calmly explained to his mother. Stifling back a laugh at first, she finally came to realize the amazing depth of trust in that statement.
You see, there’s a bit more to the story.
On a hot, muggy Virginia morning, the three Campbell boys headed out to a small private pond to do some fishing. One day prior, the eldest and his father had enjoyed a leisurely hour or two catching a dozen or more little fishies with the owner of the pond. It was so great, we wanted to do it again, and this time with younger brother, Alex.
We drove down in the golf cart, which was a bit of an adventure of its own, and got ready to do some fishin! We had even brought some fish food to entice the big catfish up to the surface. It worked! They were amazing! Really big fish with big mouths that they opened up and moved from side to side catching as much of the floating food as they could with one gulp.
Once we had gotten a bunch of fish around the dock, we loaded up the hooks with worms and tossed in a couple lines. One for Ian, and one that Alex & Dad shared. I was thinking as we did, “What if we actually catch one of those catfish?!” I didn’t really want to try and take them off the pole! And, I was warily watching Ian, as I was not sure he could reel one of those suckers in!
We had a few nibbles, even a few times the bobber went completely under the water… but no luck for a while. Alex was having enough fun just feeding the fish the food we had brought, so he did that and Ian and Dad fished.
We were on a little 12 foot by 8 foot dock at the edge of the pond, so we had a nice spot to fish from, but a bit dangerous as the boys like to get close to the edge to see the fishies… which Dad was none too comfortable with! So, with the occasional warning, we had no problem.
Not long into the hot afternoon, there was finally some action! After all those nibbles, we finally had something! I started reeling in something larger than a little Brim and told the boys to come look! Ian was getting excited too, but had to pay attention to his own bobber out on the water. I finally caught a glimpse of it… it was a bass! About twelve inches long or so. Nice!!!
As I reeled it in and brought it up on the dock I called to the boys to get them to come see it up close. I was reaching for the fish to pull it off the hook when it happened.
SPLASH!
I couldn’t really believe I had just heard it. I thought for a second that I hadn’t. But, I had. I turned toward the sound to find Alex was gone! Just… gone! So as Ian continued fishing, not really knowing what was happening, I hurried over to the edge of the dock, and I don’t remember if I put my pole down first or after I got there, but it still had the bass on it when I did! As I reached the edge, I looked over the side and there was Alex’s orange hat… UNDER the water! The water was quite murky, so that’s mostly all I could see… his hat and his slightly raised arms floating under the water, appearing to be heading down.
I just froze. I looked down, incredulous, and I was sort of waiting for him to at least try to come back up. Then I would reach down and get him. It was only about two and a half or three feet to the water surface, so I could probably do it. But… nothing. Not any movement at all!
So I jumped.
I couldn’t see the bottom, but it sure did look like he was sinking, and he wasn’t moving! So, I jumped in with visions of other frantic parents you see in the movies searching to no avail through murky, child-stealing waters. I was not sure what I would find, or what I would do, but love for my son just made me jump!
(I hate even the idea of swimming in ponds, by the way.)
Thankfully, I hit the bottom not long after the surface. The water level was about half-way up my chest. I immediately grabbed Alex and pulled him out of the water. He gasped quickly, and I set him up on the bench on the dock to catch his breath. He coughed a bit, and I asked repeatedly – but calmly – “Alex, are you OK?” His first response was a very shaky, “No…” But, I could tell he was breathing mostly normally, and all was going to get better soon.
It was at this point, Alex being out of danger, that I noticed that the bass was still on my line. 🙂 Not only that, he was swimming right next to me! For some reason, he had not tried to escape, and drag the pole with him. He ended up in the water, and just stayed there during my rescue efforts. So I removed him from the hook, and let him go.
I got out of the water, and tried to reflect on what had just happened in that five to seven seconds that felt so much longer. I sat next to Alex, who was still shaking, and put my hand on his back. We just sat there in silence for a few moments. Perhaps he was soaking it in as well. (No pun intended…) 🙂
Ian broke the silence with a classic Ianism. “This is a day I will never EVER forget.” (You have to actually say it out loud the way Ian would for it to be an Ianism.) Ian continued to make sense of it in his own way by saying a few more things, but I don’t remember exactly what they were.
Within a few short seconds or minutes, I am not sure, I noticed Ian’s pole dip way down… he had something!!! And as Ian struggled to hold on and reel in the beast, I thought, “OH NO! Ian’s going to get dragged in too!!!” So I jumped to my feet and grabbed on to his pole too! Even with me helping, that fish was putting up quite a fight! We had caught one of those giant catfish, or maybe a whale. That was my second guess. We shall never know as the fish broke the line just as I was trying to figure out what in the world to do with a 2-foot catfish caught by a not quite 4-foot little boy.
Lucky break.
“I think it’s time to go back inside, boys,” I said in my fatherly wisdom. They concurred.
We packed everything up and went for a therapeutic ride through the woods on the golf cart. We approached the house, and found that Mom and sister had just headed down to the pond to visit with the boys, unaware of all that had transpired. We met up with the girls and began to explain the whole sequence of events, and finally went inside to clean up.
Still processing everything by recounting the story to Mom, Alex came up with a line that just stunned me upon hearing it. I actually heard it through Jen’s retelling.
“I was waiting for Dad to come get me.”
He was submerged under water quickly and unexpectedly, and he does not usually find himself in such a predicament anyway! No struggle. No attempt to swim. Nothing. He was just “waiting for Dad to come get him.”
What kind of trust does it take to do that? Perhaps a bit of ignorance of the danger he was in? Perhaps. But just the fact that he would say that was so incredible. How many times do we fight and struggle and kick and flail – and it gets us no where – because we aren’t waiting for our Dad to come get us?
He can, and He will.
It was quite a day. I will not ever forget that image of my son floating to the bottom of a pond, looking already quite dead and lost. I am sure Alex will not forget the experience either, as Ian has already declared for himself.
But I hope I never forget the lesson in trust either.
“I was waiting for Dad to come get me.”
A spoof of a popular song from the early 90s… and hilarious!
KEEPING CHURCH SIMPLE – PART 2F
How does leadership work in a simple church?
Once again we must think of family as our primary image of church instead of thinking of non-profit organization as our primary image of church. Once we do that, the idea of leadership becomes simple. Leadership then resembles parenting more than it does managing.
Two kinds of leaders emerge in simple church networks: stayers & goers. Stayers are the spiritual fathers & mothers within a simple church. They serve as the overseers of the family. They pastor the flock. Their leadership style is comparable to a mother or father in a healthy biological family. Goers are more apostolic at heart. They go throughout the network planting new churches and networking the existing ones together. They often act as overseers of the network.
Various authors have come up with more elaborate leadership concepts for simple churches. These systems try to identify how simple church leadership corresponds to Biblical terms such as apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, elder, and deacon. Though some of their ideas may be valid, I have not found myself to be smart enough to positively identify how each of these roles plays out in today’s church. For my simple mind, I have only been able to distinguish between the stayers and goers. Perhaps the roles mentioned above are more complex explanations of the simple reality that some leaders stay in a context while others go from context to context. In the end, it is often easier to identify leadership roles in the rear view mirror (by seeing what God has done with a person over a period of time) than it is in the windshield (trying to label and predict who will play what leadership role before the test of time).
Supplemental Readings:
Luke 10:1-12 (read along with Luke 9:1-6 & Matthew 10:1-16)
Ephesians 4:11-16
Romans 12:3-8
1 Corinthians 12:1-31
I Timothy 3:1-13, 4:12-16
I was talking with a guy here in Virginia last night about his family. He was mentioning how his two year old loves to have Daddy put him to bed – won’t have it any other way! And I asked if he had other children. That led into a conversation about his 12-yr-old step son, and all of the hardships they have endured recently with the father of the boy, including lawsuits filed against them. They went nowhere, but caused much frustration and hurt in the family, of course.
And I said something to him that just made the ugliness of divorce a bit clearer in my own mind.
“Children,” I commented, “are the physical embodiment of the oneness of marriage. So, just like you can not separate a child, you should not separate a marriage. They are inseparable. At least, they are not meant to be separated.”
I don’t know if it meant anything at all to him, but I think he knows first-hand how hard it is to live in a family with several different parents involved. It’s hard enough in a marriage with only one mom and one dad! But we complicate things by our widespread acceptance of the breakups of marriage. They are not break-up-able. Just as a child can not be torn in two, neither should a marriage.
But somehow we have become OK with that as a culture, and if the going gets too tough, it’s just time to leave. Divorce is alright due to “irreconcilable differences.” Blah! No difference is irreconcilable. None. That’s a cop out, and we know it. But, everyone goes along with it, and then it’s OK. It’s OK to have a mom and a dad and a step-mom and mom’s boyfriend, and don’t forget Dad’s second ex-wife. She was “mom” for a while too. How sad.
Please know that this is not judgmental at all. Not in the least. We are certainly given full reign to choose whatever path we would like to tread. Full reign. I was touching on this I believe in a post not too long ago. The church does not deal well with choice, as we are then capable of choosing poorly. But God gave us full freedom to choose the path we would take. I whole-heartedly condone that.
But if you look at a child – no matter what age – you see the actual, physical embodiment of the inseparable oneness that a marriage is. When a child is born, he is equally his mom and equally his dad and equally a brand new person. Beyond that he is equally mom’s and dad’s ancestors all wrapped up in one neat little package. It is the marriage of two lives into one, and from the most intimate oneness comes a new life, one life from two.
It’s beautiful.
But we want our way, and it sure seems like we are two lives, so… we file for divorce. “I just can’t do it anymore,” says one, “I don’t love you anymore,” says another. But the kids, the very present and inseparable reminder that a marriage is forever can not be discarded so easily. And so there are battles. Showdowns in court and elsewhere to fight for custody of what can not be evenly apportioned. You can separate out most other things, but kids are the solemn reminder that divorce is not an option God designed for marriage.
This is more serious and somber than I was intending, but it was a very clear picture to me and I wanted to share it with you. I am certain that many of you reading this have some experience with a broken and/or blended family. I do not intend to condemn anyone’s previous choices, mistakes or otherwise. But, if someone perhaps reads this and can possibly choose to repair their marriage, to work harder, to forgive again… please do.
Think of the children.
(I didn’t mean that as cheesy as it might sound…) 🙂
KEEPING CHURCH SIMPLE – PART 2E
How are finances handled in a simple church?
There are many options for this. In our network, we encourage everyone to meet the financial needs of those in their simple church family first. Then, with whatever money is left, give back to the church network to help start new churches and network the existing churches. We provide two ways for people to do this: by giving at our monthly gathering of churches, and by sending gifts to through the mail.
When we honestly read the New Testament again “for the first time,” we notice that financial giving was primarily about meeting the needs of the poor. There are also subtle references to supporting people who give their full-time attention to ministry (though the kind of ministry more closely resembles what we would call missions than it does pastoral ministry). What we don’t find in the New Testament is a command to tithe to an organization to allow the organization to function. This is not to say that tithing (an Old Testament principle that can teach people much about generosity even today) to an organization is “wrong” in and of itself. This is to say that the New Testament teaches sacrificial giving and sharing of material wealth to those who are in need and the New Testament teaches that some (though certainly not all and probably not most) full-time missionaries are entitled to financial support from the church.
Once we acknowledge what the New Testament actually teaches about giving, it becomes far simpler to follow New Testament patterns in our church life. We prioritize sacrificial sharing of our material wealth with those in need, including those who gather with us in our small communities as well as those who live on the other side of the globe. We are also open to giving financial resources to support local or international missionaries. Beyond this, most expenses are minimal and can be dealt with without elaborate financial systems.
Simple churches and their networks sometimes incorporate in order to allow their members to receive tax benefits for their financial gifts. Though this is a legitimate practice, it is certainly not high on our list of priorities as to what it really means to be the church. Our preoccupation with giving in order to get a tax deduction is, once again, an idea we have incorporated into the church because of our “non-profit organization” assumption. It is more of a luxury, and certainly not a necessity, to get a tax benefit for sharing our wealth with those in need.
Supplemental Readings:
2 Corinthians 8-9
1 Corinthians 9:1-18
1 Timothy 5:17-18
Luke 16:13
1 Timothy 6:6-19
KEEPING CHURCH SIMPLE – PART 2D
What do you do with kids in a simple church?
If the primary image of the church is that of “family,” then healthy churches should deal with their kids in the same way that healthy families do. This means that kids are frequently included in the life of the church and in its meetings.
Families with small children often have to modify their lifestyles in order to deal with their kids. It is looked upon as a privilege rather than an inconvenience to do so. Church life should follow the same pattern. What better way to spend a church meeting than in pouring into the spiritual lives of the next generation?
Having said this, families occasionally need to get a babysitter so that the adults can have some free time to relate on an intimate level. This same pattern can be practiced by the church as well.
Supplemental Readings:
Matthew 18:1-6
Deuteronomy 4:9, 6:1-9, 11:18-21
