With Friends Like This...

Here is the Obamassiah's chosen running mate heaping scorn upon the Obamassiah. Geez! With friends like this, who needs the "Republican attack machine"?

Advice to Young, and Would Be, Pastors

The best advice I can give you any contemplating the ministry, or who has recently begun a ministry: Have something to fall back on.

We often go into ministry with lofty visions of parsing Greek words in sermon preparation, comforting the sick, helping the needy and so on. We have such lofty expectations that we do not think about what will come next in our lives. Not everyone who enter vocational ministry will be in the ministry their entire life.

I would advise a young college student who is planning a life in ministry to select an appropriate major, or minor at the least. When I went to college I was not planning on ministry, but many of my fellow students were. They majored in religion with plans for attending seminary after graduation. This is a mistake. If one is planning on attending seminary after college, major in something else while in college. If one is not planning on seminary, consider a double major or pick a minor that will help.

I am thankful that I have had something to fall back on after leaving (temporarily?) the ministry.

Be wise. Plan for life after the "professional" ministry. No one who is a Christian ever leaves ministry, but many leave the paid ministry.

Wonderful, Great, OPPRESSIVE China

From Voice of the Martyrs comes this story:

Pastor Zhang “Bike” Mingxuan, known for traveling across China on a bicycle to evangelize, was arrested by Chinese police just two days before the Olympics began. Pastor Bike was the inspiration for the recent partnership between The Voice of the Martyrs and China Aid Association to create the Olympic Prayer Band.

This story came across on an e-mail alert and is not posted on the website. Here are some more stories of the "benevolent" regime of China showing "openness and tolerance" toward citizens who follow Christ.

While Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Bob Costas and the other NBC lackies fawn over how wonderful China is, remember that the Communist government of China is jailing people for being Christians.

Wow! I am Impressed!

In my one class last spring, we never received a syllabus. Never. Still waiting...

My classes for this fall start next Wednesday, and I have already received the syllabus for one of the classes. At least now I can plan my schedule.

The older I get, the more I like to plan. I want to know what is coming next. That way, I can set aside time to study. The problem with the class in the spring was constantly shifting expectations and assignments. The class itself was very interesting, but I hated that we never really knew what was coming next.

I think ("hope" may be a better word) it will be different this fall.

Back From Vacation

We just returned from vacation yesterday. We spent a week in Memphis with my wife's sister and her family. Our niece is three. She bossed our kids around all week. It was pretty funny.

We ate some great Memphis barbecue at Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue. It was magnificent.

We saw Graceland, the home of one Elvis Aaron Presley. My eight-year-old son went to Memphis with no clue who Elvis was. After touring Graceland, he wanted to be rich like Elvis. Later that day, he asked, "Dad, why didn't you name me Elvis?" My response, "Because, we didn't want you to get beat up." The one thing that surprised me is that Graceland was smaller than I thought it would be.

We went to the Shiloh Battlefield. It was only the second American Civil War battlefield that I have been to. (The other is Gettysburg.) I cannot even think of the words to describe it. There is a sense that so many men died there. It is almost as if they blood still cries out from the soil.

We went to the National Civil Rights Museum, which is on the site of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. Most of us fail to realize the struggle that so many African-Americans went through to attain equal rights.

We went to Mud Island, which has a scale model of the last 1000 miles of the Mississippi River and a museum of the Mississippi River.

We went to the Pink Palace, which was the home of the founder of Piggly Wiggly, the first modern grocery store. The kids had fun doing a treasure hunt for which they won a bunch of junk.

It was a great time, and very relaxing.