Hey All!

For the last year I have not been using this blog but will keep it up for archival purposes.

The blog I am currently using can be found here.

Thanks!

Quick thoughts on Free Will

I have been thinking alot about free will lately. For most of my life I have believed that I am in charge of my choices and I have been endowed by my creator to do as I please and hope that it pleases Him as well. Lately I have begun to question whether I am free at all and maybe I am influenced by more than the "essential Justin" living inside my skull.

I can't escape that I am influenced by my family, especially my parents. My parents divorced when I was five and it has colored my life in both tragic and hopeful shades that I am just beginning to unravel. I would like to believe that my faith in Christ was a decision I made on my lonesome and I now "own" my faith but the rhetoric is failing. I owe my family and friends my faith more that myself.

I am influenced by world events that I can't control. If September 11th has not colored your view of the world then you have lived under a rock for the last 7 years. If you do live under a rock and you are somehow reading this then I guarantee that you live under a rock for reasons that are outside yourself. You made the choice but you were influenced more than either of us realise.

I can't escape my peers opinions. Most likely if I buy a shirt at the store and my wife thinks it is dorky I will not wear it. Or I will were it just to prove to her it is not dorky. Even my decision to buy the shirt is influenced by mass marketing and how cool the guy in the picture looks when he has it on.

How do I escape these influences? Should I? I think they are there for a reason. I am still trying to figure it out.

Travel Log: Brown County

The whole Bed and Breakfast thing is quite alien to me. You go to someones home and you stay there and then they make you breakfast. I always thought it was a cute idea, quaint actually but it was never something that I considered doing.

When my boss gave Linds and I a free stay at The Allison House in Nashville IN I liked the idea but I was a touch hesitant. I have never been one to turn down a chance for adventure (especially if it is free) but weekend time is precious time and you have to spend it wisely. With hope in our hearts we packed up our bags and headed south for the weekend and were pleasantly surprised. Brown county was quite beautiful despite it being late winter (I suppose if you were and optimist it is early spring). Nashville is full of the artsy local color that Brown County is known for. It sports a plethora of arts and crafts (genuine custom leather wristbands $5 baby!), the nations smallest movie theater and is minutes from Brown County State Park. The Allison House is a charming little place in the heart of Nashville. Jeff and September were great hosts and the conversation at the breakfast table was lots of fun. Its location makes it a great home base to launch out and enjoy what Brown County has to offer.

I would not recommend going in the off season simply because there is not as much to do but either way as quick weekend getaways go I still give in 4 out of 5 stars.

Thinking of writing again

Ok so I have been horrible at updating and thinking. The mundane has really been dragging me down this last year and I have not had the energy/discipline/desire to write anything in quite a while. Call it writers block with a mix of mild depression and constant moving. Linds and I realized the other day that since marriage we have moved around once every six months and in this last year we moved 3 times officially and a road trip or two in between there. It was a blast but in the end it we mostly escapism.

So here I am in front of the computer again in an apartment that is starting to feel like home and in a mid Lent epiphany I realized that I want and need to start writing again. I am going to change the format a bit...I might even change the location but from here on out I am going to be writing alot more. Some insights, some poetry, some drek about what I had for breakfast...either way I am going to be here more often.

Hearing God and being a pastor

“Only when we have ourselves absorbed its (The Word’s) message can we confidently share it with others” -John Stott Between Two Worlds

In the past I thought I reflected the Word to others pretty well. Any and every lesson I learned was neatly packaged and marketed. God's Word was spoken well but rarely absorbed into my life. I was a mirror without a sense of itself and a sponge that never got wet. I can remember times sharing in college and as a youth pastor and in the middle of a sentence that annoying still small voice would whisper, “Do you really believe this?” Naturally I would ignore this voice and go on with my message.

Doctor’s often ignore their symptoms and believe they can’t be sick and I think that the same can be true of pastors. I am not sure if it was the pressure to perform and uphold my reputation. Maybe I am just not good at planning ahead but rarely did I allow my messages affect me first. Even during times of self reflection and personal study, when God would speak to me I would quickly divert it into an idea for a message. I am left wondering that in around 3+ years of ministry have I grown at all. Have I just not allowed God to touch me?

As of right now I am not in the ministry in an official capacity i.e. paid. I am seeing this as a time to do some much needed study. Not for a message or to even share my fascinating revelations with everyone I see. I want to be absorbed by God for God’s sake not for my rep or my paycheck. I am so guilty of using God to make me look good and that could quite possibly be the reason that I have not heard from God in longer than I care to admit. I now believe that some of this silence could be due to the fact that His most important lessons I have not kept quietly to myself.

Indianapolis

After alot of thinking and reading and mental debate Linds and I have decided on a graduate school. We looked everywhere from George Fox in Portland OR to Denver Seminary in CO and Azusa in southern California. We debated and numbercrunched and prayed our guts out and in the end we decided...on IWU. I know what you are thinking. Why in the world would you go crawling back to the university that you did your undergrad in? I had some nice sounding reasons prepared but when it comes down to it it was about the money. I can get a Ministerial Leadership/Non-profi managment degree for about a third less that any of those other places. For a person who is planning on working and managing nonprofit organizations that was an offer i couldn't refuse. So Linds and I are looking for jobs in Indy and hoping to start school this november. It was a little hard to give up my dreams of living in the Pacific Northwest but this is definatly the best decision for us and we are pumped to live near so many friends.

We also just finished a month long road trip that started in Charleston SC and wound its way through Chicago, Montana, Yellowstone, and Denver. It was a blast! A good chunck of the trip we journeyed with Nate and Jenny Richardson. It was good to be with friends again.

I am planning on posting my reflections on this trip here soon. Wish us luck on the job search and see pics on Facebook

Justin and Lindsay