Whatnot

So I've thought about posting this for some time, but wasn't sure this was the forum. But why not?

My wife and I have been having some great conversations lately about ministry and serving and vision and mission (and LOST). :-) It feels like God is birthing in our hearts a desire to pursue some stuff...here it is.

This vision is incarnational. It's all about living with people. Being a neighbor. And being ridiculous. We would love to buy a house or vacant commercial building in the ghetto south side of our city. We want to make that home. We're thinking "urban ministry and retreat center." More on the retreat center thing later.

What we're envisioning is a an urban ministry center focused on the kids in the neighborhood. We see a community center for kids. Help with homework, tutoring, educational programs, games and the like. A safe, warm, fun place to be for a kid. Open everyday from whenever school gets out until 7 or 8 pm. Maybe a free preschool (currently in our city, the free preschool program is full. Kids get in via a lottery. really.) This would be the day-to-day infrastructure of the place. It could also be a center for launching other projects out of from the city, for the city. Blanket giveaways. Food giveaways. Porch painting projects. Really anything you could think of that some neighbors might need.

The beautiful thing about this is that it combines a lot of my wife and my passions for ministry and our experiences. My wife is a teacher (working toward her Masters in Literacy) with a heart for children and missions. I don't know what I am, but I've done ministry with the homeless professionally and am currently doing more suburban children's ministry. I love the big picture (recruiting, planning, organizing). My wife loves the details. And in this vision we both find our "sweet spot."

Maybe I'm crazy. Most of all, I never want to stop living, walking, and breathing in God's Kingdom today in the hopes of some dream tomorrow. But tomorrow could be pretty cool, eh?

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so...all the snow has come...and more is coming.

We are buried. We built a snowmand last week. Not a huge one, but bigger than my kids. He is buried up to his neck. His head is coated in fresh snow so only his frozen carrot nose can really be seen. It all came so fast and so thick that the highway dept plowed it all onto our sidewalk to make the roads passable. On the side walks it's up to my shoulders.

I started hacking away at the sidewalk pile of frozen crusty salty solid ice. I cleared a path 5X2 in front of the house. How am I supposed to have friends over if they can't even open their car doors?

My wife skipped town for winter break to visit mimi and papa. so it's bologna sandwiches and ncaa b-ball for me. woo-hoo (to be perfectly honest...i'd rather have my family here!).

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Okay - so this is from buffalo, but really, this is the kind of snow we get. We're at 54 inches for the year. Of course, just an hour north, Oswego NY was supposed to have 4 ft in 4 days.

I always thought I was tough when I was a midwesterner...but I had no idea.


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I need to take more time to simply reflect. I used to do this all the time - but I've grown quite lazy in this regard.

I'm currently reading McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus - good book. If you like McLaren and subscribe to a theology of "The Kingdom of God" that's present, near, already, not yet; if you get that last sentence fragment and believe it, you would like this book. So far it seems McLaren does a good job synthesizing that message into manageable bites, drawing largely from the narratives of Jesus and from his own works (It helps to have read New Kind of Christian the second book).

sidebar: Is everyone else on earth using myspace but me?

I'm considering myspacing up. if that's even possible.

tim

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