Sunday Schtuff

Sometimes, it's nice to remember that your wife is spiritually mature, too, and that some of the things that you've shared from your own spiritual growth have made an impact on her. This morning, neither one of us was feeling well - stiff from last night's ballgame festivities, and stuffed up from whatever is filling our sinuses. At about 9:30a, I asked: "Do you need me to say, c'mon honey, even though we feel bad let's go to church anyway? Or do you need me to say, I feel bad, too, so let's stay home?" She responded: "I don't want to go, so I know that means I should probably go." That's my line, but I tried anyway: "But we don't feel good - let's stay home." She pushed me off the bed, and our morning started with a shower, a shave, and blowing my nose.

We visited another new church this morning. Even if we didn't have to go through the "looking for a church" exercise, I would've enjoyed the past few weeks of visiting and seeing what other congregations are doing. This church meets in a local movie theater - most comfortable seats I've ever had at church (and it's a good thing the servicewas just around an hour and a half). It was nice - and I didn't have high hopes before pulling up to the entrance. There were greeters all along the way in, and everything was very... intentional, like they'd thought of things that fit, made arrangements that would be appreciated. The kids met with their age groups in an adjacent theater, playing games and watching a video on Sharing. In the main theater, the full band played a good mix of Vineyard/Passion-esque music. From the website it looked like the message might be shared by video, and that's what happened. Like I said, I didn't have very high expectations for going to church to watch a video sermon - but I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it worked. The pastor spoke on "Jeopardy: Courage", and while it might've been more topical in nature than I'm nomally into, his use of scripture was dead on. Besides, any time you base a message on Joshua, I'm hooked.

So now, out of the four churches we've visited over the last month or so, we've got a top three and a no-not-really. I'm in no hurry to join a church, and I'm not putting out feelers for needs or preparing my resume' for applications. Right now, I want to find a place to just grow, to just respond, to just get involved a little at a time and get to know people, to be known as people. It's important that the kids are happy in their service/ministry, and that my wife is intrigued and on the same page, too. We're trying to make it as much a family decision as we can.

My fantasy football team sucks. I think too much - if I never touch it again, I'll probably go 50% on the rest of the year. As it stands, I tweak the wrong personnel on the wrong weeks, and after winning the first week, I've now lost two in a row. Scratch that - I've got one more player playing. I'm down by 50+ points, and if my TE has a brilliant and record-breaking day, I might lose by only 20 pts. Fun, fun, fun.