Kontakion

At the end of last week I was able to finish a few more of my church books. One of them being "The Circle of Seasons" by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. This book I felt was an excellent read. In it Kimberlee really stresses what you as an individual can do to commemorate the seasons of the church in your home life. I liked it and actually plan on using some of the ideas for church worship services. Please understand though this book was written more as a personal or family tool not a church worship tool per say. Over all an excellent and easy read.

I just recently finished the book "Sabbath in the City" by Dryan P. Stone and Claire E. Wolfteich and what a refreshing read. It was refreshing because the areas that this book recommends for Pastors in urban areas to work on have been areas that I have already identified in my own life that I need to work on. It was amazing (even though it shouldn't have been) how much I have in common with many of the other pastors that serve in urban parishes. I have been coming to grips with being an urban pastor. That is being a pastor in the third largest city in Pa. I've never shunned urban ministry, but I have never had to identify myself as an urban pastor, its a perspective change. Personally I think this is a must read book. So much so that I believe I will be re-reading it in the near future so that I can be reminded to take a sabbath, and put sabbath practices front and center in my life and ministry. As you can tell I highly recommend this book to anyone, includi...

Well I never do these memes, but I saw this on over at "Art's Strange World" and thought what the heck, I'll give it a shot. Like him I won't tag anyone just let you know how to do it if you feel like it. The idea is that you take your MP3 player and put it on shuffle and use the songs that come up as the answers to the questions, of course this needs to be done no matter how silly it ends up being. I figured it would be something fun and interesting to do especially since I haven't posted about music for quite a while. So here it goes. IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY? Guaranteed (Eddie Vedder) WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY? Rest Stop (Matchbox Twenty) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? Lost in Hollywood (System of a Down) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE? Underwater Sun (Spongebob, this isn't the artist but I figured you would want to know where it comes from) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? Jeremy (Pearl Jam) This is actually kind of disturbing WHAT D...

As I posted yesterday I am sick, I should say I'm still sick. This is the first Sunday I have had to miss because I was sick so I pray that everything went well this morning. So I spent time watching Wall-e with Olvia and working on the service for next week, which is somthing I normally do on Sunday afternoons. Olivia is still very sick, if I had to say for myself I'm on the up swing already. I think I caught it soon enough with medicine, my biggest problem right now is I'm very sore as my body continues to fight this sickness. I spent time this morning and early afternoon reading some of the recent books I got with my business expense account. One is "Sabbath in the City" by Bryan P. Stone and Claire E. Wolfteich. I'll post more on this when I'm done reading it but right now I can say that I am strongly identifying with what is being written about urban ministries. A few posts ago I wrote that I was going on a retreat for the Provisioners, and only...

Well I hope all has gone well for most people on thanksgiving. Me I watched Olivia get sick on Wed, watched Katie succumb to it on Friday before I became its victim today. So all three of us are home sick, I have just enough energy to put a post up that's it. Of course I had to make some phone calls and will not be preaching or leading worship tomorrow, which I am very disappointed about since its the first Sunday in Advent. However I'm hoping that one Sunday down will be enough to bounce me back so I can it the ground running on Monday.

Well last night was my first Charge conference on my own. Next year I'm definitely calling it a Church conference in hopes of more participation, but over all it went well. We got the business done and were able to see the positive possibilities here at Emmanuel. Now I'm getting prepared to go on an overnight provisioners retreat for the conference. Its been a busy week with no signs of slowing down, but now that I've got Charge Conference done I feel a lot more relaxed and ready to roll. Its not that I was worried about what was going to be said, it was more that I had so much work to do preparing for the conference. Thank God next week should slow down a little bit.

Well this seems kind of epic, this is the first time in probably a year and a half that I am posting twice in one week. Well I'm just up late and trying to figure out a bunch of different things, the problem is this week has been so busy and hectic that I don't feel like I can just stop quite yet. The good news is I've started a walking regime with the dog every day. We walk up to the near by park and I let her off the leash for a bit and just walk. I'm still working with her on staying near by which is a little frustrating, but she is a puppy still as well as a scent dog. So far in walking with her I have found that if I am away from houses and more in the "woods" (about as much in the "woods" as you can be in Allentown) she is less likely to get to far ahead of me. One of my hopes is that I'll be able to take her camping with me as her and I develop an outdoor relationship. One of the best things about it has been the fact that we go out...