My sister got engaged about a month ago and engagement pics were taken and put up.
A couple of photos I took around Bethel. The first is an old speaker in the nursury that would broadcast the sermons downstairs. Neither of which are being used now. The second is of old hymn booklets that are from the 1950s. They have quite a few of them. They're not used either.
Bethel's been an interesting place to photograph. One that's been stilled in time for some years now. It's getting to the end of its time though. This Sunday we're holding a Celebration Service for Bethel Reformed Church to commemorate the 100+ years it has been around. Then we're dissolving the entity of Bethel to be reborn a month-ish later to be CrossRoads Community Church. Hopefully God will bless the work that is being done and transform the community here.
Our competence as readers–as witnesses who attest to "what we have seen and heard"; as jury members seeking to do justice to the evidence–is what is on trial every time we interpret the Bible. For we attest what we believe–about texts, about God, about ourselves–in each and every one of our interpretations. The trial of interpretation ultimately concerns not the text but the interpreter: Will the readers respond to the word of the Lord appropriately or not?
Doctrine helps the people of God to participate fittingly in the drama of redemption, and so to be true and faithful witnesses to God's incarnate wisdom. . . Viewed against this backdrop, the church is less the cradle of Christian theology than its crucible: the place where the community's understanding of faith is lived, tested, and reformed.
Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, 21, 25.
October 31st is more than just Halloween in my family. When we lived in Edmond, OK, my dad would decorate our house throughout the whole month of October leading up to Halloween. He had servos and strobe lights and miles of fishing line. All this added up to moving decorations in the windows: witches floating up and down and skeletons dancing. But the real excitement was taking place on the inside.
The foyer was transformed into a seating area for ghouls, gorillas, and giants, but the famed "Bonesy" was the one who lead the show. The kids would line up down the front walk and on to the sidewalk to wait to get in on the action-- and by action, I mean "get the piss scared out of them." Upon entering the house, there would be a monster and a gorilla seated in front of you. A 7 foot tall monster was standing off to the left. Dead in the center was the candy pot and not so dead behind it was Bonesy, a talking skull. Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in D minor would be playing in the background. Once the door was closed behind the kids, Bonesy would begin the show. Introducing them to each of the monsters around them. The older kids would play it cool, sitting on the various monsters and exclaiming inexhaustibly how they weren't scared. Eventually a rhyme came that they had to solve. Their attention would be directed to the stair landing where a strobe would reveal a gruesome scene and capture their attention long enough for the youth pastor in the gorilla suit to stand up to his own 6' 8" with his hands raised above him and styrofoam peanuts to blow out of the 7' monsters mouth. Blood-curdling screams would emit from the "coolest" of kids. Many moms that came through tinkled themselves.
I remember wanting to go in the front door after a night of trick or treating and my dad was still dressed up. He came out to greet me, using his own voice, rather than the digitally processed one. I had nothing to do with him and countered his approach with my own retreat. I wasn't cool. I was scared. And I didn't care who this man said he was, I'd been witness to what happened throughout the night. I wasn't going to fall for it.
But my dad didn't put on the production just for the pure joy of scaring hundreds of kids and adults throughout the night. It was also his birthday. And still is. So Happy Birthday Dad. Here's to many more years of scaring bowel movements out of both the young and the old.
Early this week my friend Chris and I met up at IKEA, so I could take back my flat-packed furniture I decided would just not hold all my clothes. Sad, I know. But after unloading the still boxed fake wood furniture, we hopped in Chris' car and headed north, leaving the city. It is a difficult task to leave Chicago. It takes effort and planning. Neither of which we really did. But with little more than some directions scrawled on a scrap of paper, we headed north in search of fall color and apples. We did find both, at a small little orchard, nearly sold out of many of the varieties already, near Sugar Creek, Wisconsin. We also found this little country church. It seems to have more property than the church that I'm currently at, and way more than the church I was previously a part of and the one that Chris still attends. It's great to see country churches still expanding and reaching the community around them. It would be great to see that where I am.