Want To Go Running?
First of all to all of my "faithfull" readers I appologize for not posting in a while. I have found myself quite busy these past days. I assure you I will be posting again very soon. I plan to sit down this weekend and do a lot of thinking, and reading about certain things, and I am sure to post on my findings. Until that time let me just update you on the past month of my life. As most of you know I have been working for about a month now at Pratt & Whitney. I go into work at 8:00 AM, work for four hours, have an hour lunch from 12-1, then go back and work for four more hours. By the time the small hand reaches the five and the big hand reaches the twelve I am pretty well pooped out. I am enjoying my job experience with Pratt & Whitney very much. Some days go by as fast as the jets who's engines we supply, and other days seem more like a not so funny version of Office Space. Overall I am enjoying this job and really feel like I am starting to finally understand some of what is going on around me in the office. I am also going to feel much better about my time spent in this endeavor come Friday when I finally at last get my first glorious pay check. Other than work, I have been staying busy doing other various things. I have recently become more inspired to run. I am even strongly attempting to get my running ability high enough to join in a half marathon (13.1 miles) in October! This will be my first ever marathon experience and I am looking forward to accomplishing this goal! I am however looking for some good running partners to train with and then run the race with. There are at the moment about five different people who have shown some slight interest in joining me on my quest, but I am not sure if any of these five will in the end run for that finish line. I am starting to not be so happy about missing this fall semester, but I am sure that this will provide me with some good time to really know for sure where God is leading me in my life. I am very sad to not get to see a certain few from school until I get back there but we remain in constant contact, which is most sufficient for now. I am most happy to report that my dear friend spending the summer in London has been fine during these uncertain days in the UK. When the first attack came that Thursday morning she was actually on a train returning from Scotland, and was outside of the city when the attacks happened. This past weeks mini-attack was also no where near her as she was ill and not at work in the city. She is now spending her final days in the UK before returning back to these states we call united, and she will be graduating this December. It seems I now have a variety of friends stretching across this country and others whom I feel somewhat closer to, even though stretched apart by great distances, than I do to the friends that I have here. However, a few relationships have re-bonded and I am very happy for that, and for the support and strength they bring to me. Well I hope that this post proves suffice for my happy half asian readers until I come back with a much more meaningful post. Until that day arrives I wish you all the best in your travels, experiences, and undertakings.
State Of The Church
After receiving different mixed comments about this entry I have decided that I should try to make something clear. I have great respect for the pastors put in leadership roles within my church, and have the greatest respect for the youth pastor. I in no way want this to read as an attack at him or the other pastors on staff. I think that the youth pastor is a great man of God and he has had a major influence in my life since I was in seventh grade. I am a much greater man today as a result of his influence and example in my life. What I have written out in this entry are questions I have to patterns I see, and concerns from hearing these questions more and more from various members of the church. I in no way completely blame the pastoral staff for the state of the church. I think as Christians we are all to blame for the poor representation of what the church is supposed to be. I need to work on it, you need to work on it, and only through studying, absorbing, watching, listening, and keeping each other accountable can we ever hope to not feel completely ashamed when God looks at every one of us and looks into our hearts and souls to see how we carried out the great command.In the two years I have been away from home I have had the opportunity to visit a wide variety of churches. I would hardly consider myself an authority on the state of churches, but I do have many questions about my home church that I can not find logical reasoning for. Last Sunday it was announced that my church was adding two new job descriptions that are just rewordings of what are already supposed to be existing jobs, and a new "part time" staff position. First of all I would like to know why we have six people serving under the pastor title receiving full time pay and benefits. Let us take a second and think about this. We have a senior pastor, a seniors and congregational cares pastor, a pastor of student ministries, a pastor of outreach and adult ministries, a pastor of music, a pastor of young families and sports, and a minister of missions and small groups. I hold nothing personal against any of these men and I think they are all men of God, but I don't understand why we have so many pastors that share the same responsiblities only under a different titles and none of these responsibilities are being done. On average our attendence is around the 1000 mark give or take a couple hundred. This makes our church neither a massive church or a small church. However, I don't see the necessity of having six full salary pastors and a minister of missions for a church of this size. This year we have heard over and over that the people of the church need to be more generous in their giving. First of all tithing is supposed to be an issue left between you and God, and isn't supposed to be pressed upon the people by the church. I think it is appropriate for the church to tell us to give and that we should give because its commanded, but if we are giving then the church can't tell us to give more. The church doesn't hold the authority to press the people to raise their percentage tithed. They tell us that we need to be more vigilant of our expenditures and that we are living outside the lifestyle of a Christian. I see nothing wrong in wanting people to lessen their lifestyles for the cause of God's kingdom, but again that is between the people and God and the church has not the authority to press these issues. There are a lot of people who work very hard to get to where they are, and they give a great amount to God, are comitted members of churches, and God rewards them with the things they have. There is nothing wrong with having nice things as long as you understand the responsibility given to you by God to manage that money. I am especially troubled by this pressure to give more because the very church that is pressing us to tone down our lifestyles and live more humbly is not living by their own direction. We are all directed through scripture to be good stewards of our money, and to not live a life of debt. With that said; our church has been in debt for the past six years. I have seen churches of great faith construct great places of worship completely in faith and God has provided the means for them to undertake the building of a new church. These churches did not find themselves in debt because they fasted and prayed for God's providing of the money needed for this undertaking, and God provided after their strong sign of faith and they built a church. After remaining in debt since 1999, our church has continued to add more and more staff members while losing more and more members. We have six full salaried pastors, and what have we done for the kingdom of God as a result of this? We have two church services a week that both take place on Sunday morning and that is just about it. I will say that the childrens ministry is very good. However the strongest part of the childrens ministry I see is Awana, and who oversees Awana? The Awana program has been overseen as far back as I can remember by, not a church pastor, but a member. I think that before the pastors add yet another staff member doing the job that they are supposed to already be doing, we need to see some accountability. I said before the pastors "add" another staff member because bringing this youth minister in not umder the pastor title makes it a "non church voting" issue. The church body is paying the salaries of these men, therefore the church body needs to be included on the hiring of these people. We need to see results of these many pastors jobs, and I think they need to better display for us what it is that they preach. Again I say that I hold nothing against these men personally because I have known the majority of them since I was two years old, and I do believe they are all great men of God. I am only speaking out as a concerned person who is seeing a pattern that is not good stemming with the leadership positions of the church. When the leadership falters, the church falters, the community falters, and before we know it we are looking around at what we are already seeing; hatred of religion by the public, and the downfall of society. We have become so self absorbed as a church that we no longer see the folly that exists within our very walls. All I know is that, now that I am working again and will be tithing, I will be giving my gift of money to the missions fund, so that I know that it is working to bring God glory in the greatest call ever given.
Staying Home
Most of you know of my recent return to the work world. After being unemployed for just about two years, I finally have returned to the work force. I guess I am just doing my part to make the employment numbers a little bit better. I returned to the work world as a college intern. Now being an intern isn't quite as bad as the reputation goes. I work at Pratt & Whitney as an intern in the purchasing department. I basically sit in my cubicle staring at my computer screen inputing various data for eight hours. Exciting I know. I am getting paid rather well for sitting in my cubicle, and I am getting good work experience. The only downer to this job is that I had to comitt my time to them through the end of September. Therefore I will not be returning to Liberty this fall. I am most dissapointed that I will not be heading back to beautiful central Virginia, but I don't really think that it is a bad thing. With dad being gone until December, and getting this chance to bank a little cash and get some good experience, I think that staying here for a semester is a very good decision. I am so sad that I will not be returning to those I have come to consider very close friends, and I will definately miss the newer friends I have come to grow close to over the months I have been home, but the time away from these people should make me learn to appreciate them all so much more. I will be looking so forward to getting back to them, and to my school nestled near the base of the Blue Ridge mountain range. So until I return I bid you all a most fair semester, and I will miss you all very much.
London Under Attack
I woke this dawn from a much needed deep sleep to the sound of my alarm screaming it was 6:30 and time to rise. Still wandering dazed and confused from waking; I poured myself a nice big bowl of cereal and settled down on the couch to see what was on tv for a few minutes before hopping into the shower. My drousiness was quickly blown away when I saw the "BREAKING NEWS" bulletin on every news station. I at first thought that maybe they had arrested another person in the missing Aruban girl case (which definately requires the Breaking News signal), or that the news was going to jump all over the story about President Bush falling off of his bike. However, what I saw was nothing I was ready for at 6:30 on a Thursday morning. Like many cities before it; London was added to the unfortunate fraternity of cities in the world that has endured terrorist attacks. With Tony Blaire's historic third term as PM, London being picked just yesturday to host the 2012 olympic games, and the G8 summit happening in near by Scotland; the stage was set and the world had its eye on the city of London. Though no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, it is widely speculated that Al-Qaeda was behind the planning and carrying out of these attacks. What did the terrorists achieve in these attacks? The terrorists achieved killing more than 40 innocent people today. What is their message? The terrorists believe that if they attack us we will pull our troops out of the middle east, and they believe that they can cause enough panic on a large enough scale to make us bring our troops home to build up a wall of soldiers around our nation. However, the terrorists will never prevail in their scheme. After we were attacked in 2001 we saw the largest surge of patriotism we had seen since world war two. We don't collapse in the midst of danger. When faced with danger we don't hide ourselves in civilian clothing to attack unsuspecting people. When faced with danger we ride out and meet it face to face. We all know the sacrifice millions have given to give us the gift of freedom and we know that it is our responsibility to carry that torch through to the next generation. Shortly after this mornings attacks Tony Blaire issued a statement saying that the British people would not be terrorised, they would not be divided, but they would push on through the fight and prevail for freedoms cause. Today we were grimmly reminded of why we are fighting the battles we are involved in afar, and why those battles are so important. We were reminded that we don't stand invincible from attack, and that we are vulnerable in our confidence of superiority. I hope that this sad reminder will cause the free world to rise back up in strength to take this fight to the men who comitt malicious murder behind the mask of religion, and that these men will be introduced to swift and efficient justice. As americans and people of the free world, our hearts and prayers go out to those effected by this mornings attacks. I would offer this up to these people: look to God for strength and wisdom in the wake of this tragedy for He is the god of comfort.
