Gone to Thailand

Hello everyone reading this. This will just be a short blog, but I wanted to post. I am leaving for Thailand tonight for a 10 day trip. I am going with 6 men and one lady to build a church in a Northern Thailand Hill Tribe. I am so excited about what the Lord is going to do in me and the team that I am leading there. I won't be posting for the next 10 day's, but I am sure that I will have a lot to say when I return. Please keep us in your prayers.
The team is:
Mario
Anthony
Damien
Matt
Brad
Sonia
Paul

One more thing before I sign off. Yesterday the hard drive on my i-book crashed. It is our main computer so we really need it fixed. We need to pay $300 to get it fixed. If you would like to help with this need just post a comment below. I can let you know how you can be involved. Thanks so much for taking time to read.

Later.

He has risen. He has risen indeed.

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia! Charles Wesley, 1707-1788

Today we celebrate the end of Lent and the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray that we can have the joy of the risen Lord in our thoughts and minds today. This is why we live. This is why we pray. This is why we love. Jesus conquered death and the grave and rose victoriously so we could have life in Him.

Please take time today to thank Him. Take time today to celebrate Him. I pray that today you can be surrounded by people who can share and celebrate this resurrection day with you. I pray that if there is someone today who has no one that you would invite them to spend their day with you. I pray that we would have the joy of the Lord together.

Jesus, thank you for your life. Thank you for saving us. Lord, you are everything. May your will continually be accomplished in out lives. May those who don't know you find you today.

-AMEN-

What ever happened to Good Friday?

What ever happened to Good Friday? The last day has been a shock to my system as I have begun to realize that Good Friday means nothing anymore. Yesterday I was rushing to get my taxes done so that I could drop it in the mail before Friday because the post office would be closed, or so I thought. As I rushed to the post office I realized that I had missed the last pick up and then I noticed that on the door was listed the dates that the Post Office would be closed. To my surprise Good Friday was not listed.
Later I was talking to my friend Gordon. I asked him what he was doing for Good Friday and he told me that he had to go to work. Wired, why would his work be open on Good Friday? I guess I hadn't realized how far we have come in our society away from celebrating Christian Holy Days. I am totally disappointed at how far from the cross we have gone. It is like the cross never happened.
I remember as a kid in Canada going to church on Good Friday morning for an all church breakfast followed by the Good Friday service. I loved it as I got to eat with all my friends and raise havoc in the church by playing the biggest game of hide and seek that any Friday morning has ever experienced. Now, even though I didn't sit quietly through the service on Good Friday morning I distinctly knew that the reason we were there was because we were celebrating Christs death on the cross nearly 2000 years earlier.
Jephta, my German friend commented today that America doesn't see Good Friday and anything special. This is such a sad thing in my eyes. This is the day that we were freed. This is the day that the greatest sacrifice in history was made. Nearly 2000 years ago Jesus hung on the cross as a man to save us from our sins. The greatest act of selflessness that anyone has ever, or will ever make. How can we not celebrate the man who gave us our freedom? How can we not just stop our everyday lives to spend the day with Him?
Now I am not talking about my friend Gordon who has to go to work, or the server at Denny's who has to serve Moons Over My Hammy, but I am just talking about society in general. We are lost and missing the point. This is extremely grave.

Schedule

Yo yo all. Phil here with my little blog getting ready to post my schedule for the internship. So, buckle up and hold on cause here we go.

Currently I am spending most of my time running Mission Adventures, but I am transitioning out of this program that I have given the last 10 years of my life to. This has been an interesting time as I have been forced to figure out what I want to do after this summer, when Mission Adventures for me will come to a close. Here is a little bit of that story.

At the end of summer 2004 I became tired and lacked any sort of motivation for running the Mission Adventures program with Seattle. This was really all I have known in my time with YWAM, so I felt that my time in Seattle was through. The thing that I felt myself being drawn to was the Church. I felt that my time with YWAM was done and my time with the Church was starting. I called up my good friend Lars Rood and filled out a resume to work with the Jr. High ministry at his Church. The more I pursued it the more I felt wrong about it, but I did not know what else to do. After talking to my good friend Rusty I came to the realization that I could stay in Seattle with YWAM and do Church here. I realize this is a sketchy, brief overview of a huge transition in my life so if you want more details just ask.

So this brings me to now. My passions are to provide a place of worship for people who have not yet connected with a local church or community. I want to spend time developing that. So, while I am not working on Mission Adventures I will be, and am, reading blogs on church, listening to pod-casts on church, reading books, taking classes from a Bible College to finish my degree and running a by weekly Gathering that looks a lot like a church.

I am also heavily involved with my family. I really love them and they are very cute. I want to invest in my daughter and her growing up. I also want to be involved with Amy and the baby that is due in July. Very cool. The other thing that I want to do is take care of my body. I have started running and would like to do that 3 times a week or so. I also love playing dodge ball and blogging.

This is my rant. Enjoy.

Processing My Future

This week in the YWAM Seattle Urban Internship we were talking about Personal Growth, Vision Statements and Values. Most of the material we covered came out of a pod cast by Patrick Dodson. Most of the week was spent telling each other our stories of where we came from and what God has done in out lives.
On Thursday night we talked a lot about issues of divorce and homosexuality. It was interesting to here how people perceived the churches views on those two issues. Some of the comments were about how the church knows how to talk to people, or deal with people who steal or cheat, but when it comes to homosexuality or divorce we are kind of at a loss and don't' really deal with it very well. I wonder why that is? I think because most of us view those two issues as greater, more horrible sins than all other sins. These are sins that we would never commit, that no one should ever commit. How can we disciple people in these areas if we feel that we are above them.
Another thing we talked about is who we are. Patrick, in his pod cast called Processing Your Future talks about who we are in three areas.
Who we are in God
Who we are in Family
Who we are in Ourselves.

This is what I came up with, even thought there is a lot more time that I need to put into it.

Who I am in God is:
Faith, Forgiven, Son, Secure

Who I am in Family:
Brother, Son, Friend, Dad, Giver of Perspective, Dier to self, Provider, protector

Who I am in Myself:
Friend, Pastor, Empathetic, Learner, compromiser (in a way that I want all ideas heard, not just mine), No Compromiser.

I would encourage you to listen to the pod cast, it is great.

Energent

Today I was reading on The A-Team Blog about the The Emerging Church. There is a lot of talk about the Emerging Church movement and also a lot of questions. Roger Overton posted a good article on this and linked to an article that Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle wrote. Mark Driscoll was one of the original members of the Emerging Church movement, but left after a while because of theological differences he had with it. Here is the article that Mark wrote on the Emerging church that explains it pretty clearly for those of us who are interested. Enjoy.

How Emergent came about

Busy and Tired

I am tired. I feel like I am sitting in heavy traffic and just can't wait to get home. You know that feeling where you just feel rushed and want to be in a quiet place with no thoughts or stress? I kinda feel like that. It has been a busy week here in my world. I have enjoyed it in that there is growth happening in my life and in the lives of the people I work with, but it is still crazy. Today I received an email from a youth pastor wanting to bring her youth to an outreach that we are running this summer in the Gulf Coast. I just wanted to scream NOOOOOO, no more work. But, the work is good. God is blessing us. He is giving us favor and responsibility. I am tired, but I want the Lord to continue to do His work in me. I don't want to stop, yet I really want to stop.

Jesus, I love you. Thank you for the favor you are giving me and the YWAMers I work with. I am excited about what is going on. Please give me strength to hold on and stay invested. I need your help. It is exciting, but it is hard.
-AMEN-

Daylight Savings Time

I remember as a kid finding out that on the 1st Sunday of April I would loose an hour of sleep due to daylight savings time. They always made it so nice sounding though by calling it "Spring Forward." Like I was going to wake up to the sounds of birds chirping and green grass and Bar B Q's. Well, I grew up in Winnipeg Canada so usually on this beautiful "Spring Forward" day I would wake up to snow, negative 25 degrees and birds frozen to the telephone lines. And on top of that I would have to get up one hour early and rush to get to church on time, all the while wishing that on this day of the year I lived in Saskatchewan where they never changed their clocks.
There was also the other problem of "do I switch my clock before I go to bed or when I wake up. I always switched it before I went to be for "Spring Forward" and when I woke up for "Fall Back." I try to make the most of these two wired days.
So this year I decided to not let "daylight savings" kick my butt. I decided to set my clock forward before I went to bed and sleep until I could sleep no more. Fortunately the church I attend has a 12:30 pm service so I could skip the 10:30 am, 9:30 with "daylight savings" and still make it to church.
To be honest, this was the best "Spring Forward" day I have ever had. I woke up late, make some Cafe Roma coffee, wrote a blog, nuked some pancakes and still have 20 minutes before I leave for church. Maybe "Spring Forward" is not as bad as I thought when I was a kid.