There are several factors which need to be considered when hiring the education/involvement minister. This person has to be willing to work behind the scenes….not necessarily be able to preach…but willing to get up in front of people. I guess they are looking for a cheerleader; someone who will get more people involved at church. We’ve had several of our heavily involved families to move away. The Speights and Allisons come to mind. Now we need more people involved at church. Too little people are doing too much of the work.
What we are trying to avoid is the situations we experienced earlier….when there was friction among the ministers at church. One wanted more of the spotlight than the other. It was a bad situation in general.
I find myself very self conscious around new people. Especially new people whom I’m trying to impress. I find myself worrying about those little idiosyncrasies which I do in normal conversations. All of this is ironic since I keep this lame web log which reveals all of my shortcomings.
It’s Thanksgiving week. At Lipscomb at times they would close the dorms for the weeklong Thankgiving break. You had to get special permission to stay throughout the break. I always felt sorry for the international students who had nowhere to go during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Being away from home during the holidays must have been tough. Plus the school was always deserted at that time. I remember during Christmas break, when I didn’t have a computer with internet access at home, I’d go up to school and play on the computer at the dorm room. It was always quiet. I only did it if I had nothing else better to do.
Woodmont Hills Church of Christ Distributes $100 Bills.

The youth directories were a big hit. We handed them out at the youth devotional tonight. Everyone seemed anxious to get one. I’m glad to have made a small contribution to the youth ministry. Hopefully the directories will be useful.
I went to the El Salvador mission trip meeting. I have to decide by January 11th if I want to go to. Mostly it will be a medical mission trip. Handing out medication. Head scrubs for lice. Pulling teeth. Gospel meeting at night. It would be a lot easier to decide if I knew whether or not I was going to have a job in April. I think it will be rough work. But the same people go year after year so it must be fulfilling in some way or another. We’ll see…
The church is going to hire a education/involvement minister. Maybe it will take some pressure off of David and Phil. Hopefully they can get someone who will have a strong desire to make things better and work well with our current staff.

At church we mail tapes of the Sunday morning and evening sermons to 20+ people every other week. David Shannon must be a big believer in the tape ministry. We’ve added alot of tape receipients lately. Mostly it is friends of David…sometimes people who are from Gadsden (where he formerly preached at)…sometimes its other people David corresponds with. In order to reduce the number of mailouts we are asking receipients to renew their subscription by letting us know they are still interested in receiving the tapes. We are putting a postcard in the mailouts with our contact information. It’s probably a good idea. In times past we have had some of our shut-ins pass away. When their relatives cleaned out their house, they found lots of unopened envelopes with tapes inside.
Somehow I knew 107.5 The River radio station was not cool enough to play Sting songs. While driving and channel surfing this week, I heard that familiar guitar riff from “Every Breath You Take” on 107.5. Without even a second thought, I knew it couldn’t be The Police, but rather that 2nd rate Puffy remake, “I’ll Be Missing You.” Sure enough, I was right. By playing only Top 40 hits, The River has become lame.
My mom is getting a new range today. Her old one is from 1965 (I kid you not). GE doesn’t even make replacement parts for it anymore. So I’m sure she will be happy to get this new one.

Finally got the church youth directories done. I was over at Kevin and Amy’s printing business until 10PM tonight. They must be irritated for me staying so long. They wouldn’t ever say that they were irritated, even if they really were.
The directories look nice. In living color. I’m glad they turned out so good. It should be a big hit at the youth devotional tomorrow night when we distribute them. In order to get more kids to go, we should tell them the only way they will get their directories is to come to the devo.

I help out in the audio visual ministry at church. My job involves displaying the lyrics to the songs on the big screen in the auditorium during worship services. Lately I’ve had some middle schoolers ask me if they can come up and help display the songs on the screen. The display runs on a computer browser, so most of the kids are familiar enough with the internet to know how it works. I don’t mind them being up there. I just don’t want it to become the hang out place for middle schoolers. I don’t allow more than one up there at a time. If they decide to come up there, they will work and learn something about the visual screen. They will not be allowed to come back for several months. I don’t mind them wanting to learn about how the screen works, I just don’t want it to turn out to be something they do in lieu of sitting in the auditorium for worship.
Apparently word has gotten around about it. Without even advertising it, 3 kids have already asked about coming up there. I guess controlling things on the big screen is pretty cool, even in middle school.