Everything You Want in a Pastor? Or Not?

I was on my way to a meeting at my boss's house Tuesday, in Tyler, in the rain, hoping I'd get to run by Bethel and see my long, lost friend Todd, who left Lufkin recently for bigger, lusher, greener pastures and I had to stop to refuel my travel mug with coffee(cup #3 for the morning, thank you). Right where you turn off of Hwy 69 North to go East to Dave's house on FM 346, there is a convenience store on the West side of 69. I pulled in. Ran into my colleague(never thought I'd ever have a colleague) Paul, who was picking up a 12-pack of the post-coffee, rest of the day, Diet Coke for our meeting. After I walked out of the store, in which the nice lady at the counter didn't charge me for my coffee(love her) and just told me to have a great day, I walked out, got in my closest-thing-to-maroon-I-could-get Ford Edge, and pulled out on FM 346 and ended up behind a pretty, new, black, 4-wheel drive, Chevy Tahoe. Here it is.


Now let's go down the check list of coolness assuming by several things in the picture that this just might be a Holy man, a man of God:

1) License Plate: BRO LOU If he's a pastor, points for coolness in the mode of Rob Bell glasses.

2) Black Tahoe: Well, it's a new Black Tahoe. Points for the Tahoe, points for it being black. Cool package all the way around.

3) 4-Wheel Drive: Manly pastor can go places others can't.

4) Flex Fuel: Green pastor concerned with the environment and ending our dependence on foreign oil. (or it was just part of the package some salesman at the dealership convinced him he needed)

5) Fish symbol: Everybody has 'em these days, heck I've got 4 on one vehicle, but, you know, when you put it on a Black 4-wheel drive Flex-Fuel Tahoe, with BRO LOU on it, it just adds to the package.

6) Titleist Sticker: A golfing Pastor. Huge points in my book. I don't really know why I give him points, but I am a golf fan and Titleist fan, so I guess that is worth something, isn't it?


Now I could be totally off base here. Might be a pagan blues singer. Named Lou. From Tyler. Who likes to go muddin'. Who enjoys fishing. And golfing. And is concerned about the price of unleaded gas.


If he is a pastor, does anybody else give him cool points? Or is he over the top?


And if anybody knows this fellow, um, I thought it was cool, um, just for the record.

Did I really just see that?

Have you ever had that experience where you see something and say to yourself, "Did I really just see that?" Here about two weeks ago, I saw something and knew I had to blog on it. Unfortunately, I've just now gotten around to it.

I was working in Nac and had just pulled into the parking lot of an office I was about to go into. Of course I was talking on the phone when I pulled in, this time to Mike Tyson, our Associate Pastor of all people. Anyway, I pulled into a parking spot on the side of the office facing the business across a side street next door. It's about 9-9:30 in the morning and there is one pick-up in the front parking lot at the business across the street pulled straight in with the tailgate facing the loop, the main road with lots of traffic. As I'm talking to Mike, I noticed an older (I'd say 65-75) gentleman walk out of the store and open the door to his pickup. Now understand, I'm not really paying attention to what is going on, I'm just talking on the phone while something arbitrarily goes on in front of me. I all of a sudden became aware of a puddle underneath the pick up and randomly thought, it's August, it's a little condensation from the pickup. But then I realized the man had the door to his pickup open and was standing in between the door and the pickup. My next thought was "nuh uh, surely not". And he stepped out from his door and zipped up his pants. I guess he thought, being between the door and truck and all, he was hidden, but he was literally facing the loop for all of Nac to see.

My comment to Mike at the time was, "I'm not believing I'm seeing this." And my next thought was a line from that great guy movie, Braveheart:

FREEDOM!!!!!!!

What a way to start a day. Hilarious.

Hurricanes --- Bad Timing

I know, I know, this is going to sound terrible as an inland living guy, but here it goes. As we watch Hurricane Ike coming across Cuba and coming straight at the Texas/Louisiana Coast, I must protest it's timing.

3 years ago when Rita hit, she came on land on Saturday I think. We spent from at least Thursday on preparing and helping evacuees. Happy we could do it. But how inconsiderate of Rita to hit on Saturday.

Two weeks ago, Hurricane Gustav disrupted a perfectly good three-day Labor Day weekend. A holiday weekend. All these people had to evacuate their homes and spend what should've been the last holiday of the summer hanging out in shelters, hotels, with family, but not home or on their last vacation. Now, here comes Ike looking like he'll hit once again on the upcoming weekend.

I officially request/demand that all hurricanes, if they must come and disrupt our lives, come during the work-week. We don't mind missing work for some weather related event, but to disrupt a perfectly good weekend is just plain wrong. Ike, either speed up or slow down, preferably slow down, so we can at least have the weekend to relax/prepare for whatever it is you are bringing.

Confessional #1

The first of the new confessionals is here. Wish I could do video, but I'd have to go to the church, become very proficient at Premiere (which would take a lot of time), which would then potentially open me up to other "tasks". So, for now, I'll just be doing a typing confessional.


The morning started out pretty okay. I'd asked everybody to show up a little early because we needed to reset the stage and AUX mixes after the Jeff Johnson concert last week. Almost everybody got there early. Consequently, by the time we played the first note, it was about 8:30 a.m. It actually pretty well. We got through the entire set with a couple of extra run-throughs and were done by 9:05.


The service as a whole went well. Ross Reynolds, a young man that grew up in our church, is about to complete seminary and was our guest preacher. He preached in all three services so he started off over in the sanctuary preaching in Traditional first. More on that later.


We opened the service with Ross King's Praise the Lord, a real congregational favorite. Our next tune was new to us, This Day, from Vineyard. It came out on their Wonderful Mercy cd back in 2001-2002. Really great song with lead parts for both April and me so it allowed both of us to lead. The response from the people was great and Jay nailed the guitar parts. Because it was Communion Sunday, we went straight to the offering next and did Todd Wright's Glorify. Slight glitch here. Kathy starts it just like the cd in the key of F. Well, genius me, finished praying(I was focused) and forgot to capo. I hit the first note, realized it, and went to correct it, but Kathy stopped playing. Mark, thankfully kept the percussion going, Kathy started back with my cue, and we never missed a beat. Talked to my wife, Anita, and she said she never even realized it happened. Because Ross Reynolds was preaching in Traditional, we went straight to the Communion litergy next. Our Communion song was Jared Anderson's Here Us from Heaven. I love this song and so does our congregation. April did a great job both singing melody with me and then doing all the girl parts from the cd. Only thing, we were in wait mode for Ross to get to our service. We played Hear Us from Heaven for 18 minutes it seemed like. Not really, but we had to extend it a bit. Because it was in the key of B and I planned the set before I knew we would be doing the service in the different format and I hadn't planned to have to extend the song while we waited, I boxed myself into that one song because of the key without the ability to move back to some of the earlier songs. It didn't matter to the congregation and they sang the heck out of Hear Us From Heaven.


Ross preached the first sermon of a new series we're doing called T for Teen. The cover slide is on this page. He got that really uncomfortable topic that the church loves not to address, Sex and Pornography. Let me just say, there were some parents of younger kids in that room sweating bullets worrying what a seminary student was going to say. Ross did a great job.



We closed with This Day slowed down for the invitation and then rocked it on the way out.


All in all, a good first Sunday. Everybody stepped up and did a great job. Makes my life so much better. We are blessed with a great team.



Runnells will be preaching next week so we're excited about that. I think I'm going to change our stage set up around a bit so we'll see how that goes.

New Start this Sunday

Well, it's here. Todd has left us for Bethel in Tyler. What does that mean? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!



No really, that's what it means.



Starting this Sunday, April Holder and myself will be back on an "interim" basis (please God, for everybody's benefit, let it be a short interim and not a year long interim) leading worship at FUMC-Lufkin. You can see our set list over there------>.

Fortunately for me, God has given our church an unbelievable group of musicians who love to serve God with their talents and Todd trained/taught/mentored them well. April is gifted and for some reason (thanks God) our voices work real well together.

So what I ask is this: please be praying for our church during this transition period that we will honor God as we lead our congregation in worship each Sunday. And that our church is deliberate and prayerful (and quick) as we begin our search for our new worship leader.

I guess I'll be blogging at least once a week now with at least a text confessional. I'm not real good at all the video editing stuff so that may be limited.

I'll be back on Sunday p.m.

I Have a New Favorite Politician

How can you not love Sarah Palin? She is my new favorite. I have not been a huge McCain fan in the past, still not now, but I am a fan of Sarah Palin. I now have a reason to vote for this ticket.

Sunday, July 20th

I hate getting to the end of the day on Sunday and realizing that my weekend is over and I really want about 365 more days of the weekend. That's where I am right now....10:20 p.m. waiting for my work computer to finish logging in, needing to take a shower, realizing I'll be up at 5:30 a.m. in the morning to work out, but just sitting here at the computer blogging for the first time in over a month. Oh, and Ocean's Eleven is on TBS.

I led worship today while Todd Wright was "out". Thanks Todd for the opportunity. It really went well. We had Adam Fisher guesting on electric guitar and I could listen to him play all day long. Adam is a talented guitar player, but he's an even better young man. Thanks Adam. April Holder sang with me today and she is just fantastic. We opened the service with Todd's "All the Freed". It seemed to go pretty well once we got going. Adam nailed the lead. The worship set was Baloche's "Our God Saves", John Sherrill's "God is Faithful", and Jared Anderson's "Amazed". Adam was Joe Delay on Our God Saves and it rocked. This was the second Sunday our people have heard "God is Faithful". Todd introduced it last week with just the first verse and chorus, so we added the second verse and the second chorus. I also dropped the key to D and G so it would 1) fit everything else and 2) be easier for me to sing. Dang the original was high for me. I think it went well. Kathy transitioned us straight from Our God Saves to God is Faithful without missing a beat, then, while I prayed over the offering, she started Amazed and made that transition work as well. April sang the second verse and chorus of Amazed and nailed it just like she had all the other stuff today. All the band, Mark on drums, Brad on bass, David on keys, Danny on acoustic, KT on piano, Adam on guitar, were great today and really made my part easier. It's nice, on the rare occasion that I lead, to know that the band has all their stuff down pat and we can freely worship. What a blessing.

Oh, I can't forget the sound guys, Rodney and Doug, great job. And Julie fixing all the projection issues after it had a few post UMARMY gremlins.

Then I came home, ate a bite, then went outside and built a gate to go on our horse pen, hence my need for a shower.

So, that was my day. Had a grilled stuffed burrito for supper after I got kids picked up and delivered to Deep End. Hit the spot.

Gig'em!!!