Pray.

Right now there is someone in your life that you know about that can use prayer.

Pray for them. Now.

My family just went through a major crisis. We spent several days in the hospital with our daughter, and I cannot tell you how much of a difference the prayers of our friends and family made. This event hit me _very_ hard. I'm already a bit weak from the stress of the last year, and I just was not equipped to handle this well. After we asked people to pray for our daughter and for us, there was an inner peace and strength evident that was much needed. Our prayers, and those of others, were also answered in relation to our daughter, and that is a huge blessing.

Too often "we'll pray for you" is a Christian way of saying "good bye" or "I've got to go now" when in reality, it is a powerful statement, a real statement, a significant statement, and one that should not be taken lightly.

The Lord's Prayer is remarkable, but the most remarkable line to me is this: Give us this day our daily bread. Jesus is teaching us how to pray, and He instructs us to ask for something as mundane as bread every day. If Jesus wants us to pray over the mundane and ordinary, how much more does He expect us to pray over the remarkable and extraordinary!

Prayer is powerful, don't treat it lightly.

Joel

Huge Sigh of Relief

Today, at last, online giving is working again. I can breathe a huge sigh of relief and try to put everything else back on the front burner. My desk is a fiasco, my computer desktops are littered with files, my email is backed up, everything else is in chaos, but at least this is complete and ready to go. I received a few notes from people saying they were praying for me. Thank you _very_ much. That really means a lot, and I was able to relax last night even with this not working.

Now we have to communicate like crazy to try to get everyone moved over to the new system, but at least the feeling of helplessness (created by not being able to do anything but wait) is gone.

I'm going to have one amazing to-do list by the end of the day though... but that I'm used to.

Joel

Stress

Stress is brutal on the body. Generally, I'm a pretty balanced guy that doesn't stress about much. This online giving thing is an exception though, and is very stressful. Every day this isn't running it likely costs us money, and I really don't know how much. When it is all said and done it will be very interesting (and possibly disheartening) to see where it shakes out. If our income drops as a result of this transition, there is a very real chance we will have to start taking drastic budget measures. We have already cut nearly $900,000 out of this budget over previous years. To take another 20% cut would not be pretty.

My back is hurting, a nerve is being pinched causing my arm to feel odd (if I sit too long in bad chairs, or drive a lot), and I know exactly the cause of it. Stress. Well, that and using a chain saw for several hours and moving wood around my yard :-)

This passage comes to mind:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
(Philippians 4:4-8 ESV)

I have used this passage in counseling more than a few times. Chuck Swindoll paraphrased it beautifully: "Worry about nothing. Pray about everything." I know these things to be true. I have memorized this passage and quote it often. But it's really hard to put this whole project out of my mind, and the stress of it plus everything else is definitely taking its toll on me.

I need to take my own advice, heed the scriptures above, and put all of this out of my mind. Still, I know when they finally get ACH operational that a huge load will be lifted off my shoulders. Looking forward to that...

Joel

ChMS - Hooo Boy!

For years our online giving has been processed by a company called signusup2give. Unfortunately, today we received an email stating that they were ceasing operations in exactly one week.

One week.

In one week over 20% of the church income goes away unless we come up with a new solution.

And that is why I'm still at work tonight at 7:30, and won't be going home anytime soon.

We were planning to replace the product with something that integrated directly with Arena, but we were holding off on that for a little while as we got everything else up and running. Now we have to get it done, and oh by the way can we announce it to the church on saturday night...

Sigh.

The list of big things that we have replaced or brought online in the last six months just got longer. I'll let you know how this turns out, and how long it takes to bring up the web portal of arena, integrate it with online giving, and get over 800 people to move from the old system to the new one.

Joel

Proud to be an American

I did not vote for Obama.

I don't agree with him on, well, pretty much everything.

But today I am proud to be an American.

Let's hope this is the wooden stake to the heart of racism, killing it dead once and for all.

There is always excitement around a new president, and I do hope that Obama can accomplish the big things and doesn't get bogged down in the little things and the divisive things. Most of all, I pray that God will be glorified and His purposes will be accomplished.


America is a great place to live.


Joel

Pop! - The sweet sound of vinyl

Every once in a while I read something or someone makes a comment about how records sound better than CD's. I used to listen to a LOT of records, and I was very happy to go digital when CD's came out. I haven't played a record in years. But a couple of days ago, I was given a turntable. A very nice, if rather old (nearly 30 years old) one. A little research shows that this is one of the few sought after turntables of the late seventies, early eighties. In short, it rocks.

I was actually quite excited. I've been lugging around a not-insignificant number of records for years, never quite willing to part with them. So I decided this was the time! I brought it home, and first thing out of the gate discovered that the cable wasn't long enough to reach my primary receiver. I don't have any male to female extension cables, so that wasn't going to work. The cable is hardwired in, so replacing it was out of the question.

Ok, next idea, plug it into my receiver in the library. I connected it all up, and couldn't get the arm to drop. I fiddled and tweaked with it for a while, and finally got it to play. But it sounded TERRIBLE. To make matters worse, I was reminded of all the reasons why we all gladly gave up records for CD's so long ago. Pops and cracks were everpresent, and the records are considerably more fragile and require a lot more care than CD's. Jacob mentioned that it sounds like the house is on fire with all the pops and cracks. :-)

So the next day I downloaded an owner's manual and took the time to make all of the proper adjustments to get the turntable operating properly. It sounds a thousand times better than it did the night before, so that is a big relief. But the pops and cracks... well, they are still with us.

Tonight we had fun putting old vinyl in and enjoying music we haven't heard in YEARS. Loads of fun, and the thing sounds pretty good. Hearing a good quality record player does reveal a very nice warm sound, particularly for orchestral works. Better than CD? Well, how about different. It doesn't have the dynamic range, and it is certainly a LOT more work to deal with, but the music sounds really good once you have it dialed in. The biggest difference is a warmth that is lacking from CD's, something that is rather an artificial addition to the music. The issue though is that the older stuff was mastered with this warmth in mind, and although the CD may be a truer replication of that music, it does sound different than it would have when it was first produced. I would venture that pre-1985 stuff probably sounds better on vinyl unless it has been specifically remastered to emulate that sound in a digital world.

Music has become something totally different than it used to be. We listen to music on the go, in our cars, with our ipods, on our phones, at our computers. I don't just sit in front of the stereo and LISTEN to music anymore. Very few people do. But records aren't convenient, they don't lend themselves to skipping tracks, and they end after about 25 minutes. They require attention. They require you to listen. That is the difference. That is what makes the record player something cool to have around again.

My son, 7 years old, is absolutely FASCINATED by the record player. He begs me to play it. We sit and listen to the music and talk. It's a different experience than he has ever had as well.

Am I about to become one of those guys who shrieks about how terrible CD's are and becomes a record devotee? In short, No. I can setup 300+ songs to play at 320kbps AAC and not have to think about music for hours. That convenience is simply too good to pass up. On the other hand, taking time to stop and listen, to smell the musical roses so to speak, that is a pursuit worth engaging in.

Joel

Eastern European New Years

We have some good friends from Romania. This year we celebrated New Years with them in an eastern european fashion. What that means is that we started about 6pm, and have been eating ever since. At 3AM they served another round of food, in this case strawberry crepes! It is currently 5am, and the kitchen has been cleared to prep for breakfast...

Around midnight we sang a song, and they asked me to do something, so I read Psalms 98 and Isaiah 65 (the second half) and talked a bit about new beginnings and how God is faithful and has an amazing future in store for us. I then was privileged to pray for the group and got to usher in the new year in prayer. How cool is that!

It's been a really fun night. Great food, great friends, great ministry, great music, great wine, the whole nine yards! I'm looking forward to great breakfast...

Joel