A Pastor's Thoughts

Needless to say I’ve been working recently, just not my normal work.  My wife and I had the fun and excitement of packing the entire house.  After Christmas we had three weeks to get our new house ready to move into.  This meant commuting 35 miles from my mother-in-law’s house each day so I could paint, and tear up carpet, and clean.  Ok, my wife and other ladies did most of the cleaning.  But still everything was exhausting work, especially when you go home and you’re not sleeping in your own bed and you know that you get to get up and do the same thing over again the next day.

I started preaching at my new church on the first Sunday of January but it really didn’t feel the same since we weren’t moved in.  Last week was dedicated to unpacking which makes this the first week that I feel like I’m really “working.”  What I’ve discovered is that I actually kind of miss working.  I love preaching and in many ways it doesn’t even feel like work (except when I’m working hard to finish a sermon at the last minute.)  But this is my first week that I’ve had hospital visits and reports and other administrative stuff to do.  And strangely it feels pretty good.  Two weeks from now I might be ready to tear my hair out but for the moment this is alright.

When I interviewed for this position I was asked the question whether I felt that being a pastor was a job or a calling.  My response was one that I’ve heard from others but is true for me as well.  You should only be a pastor if you can’t find fulfillment doing anything else.  If you can be happy working in an office or on a construction site or elsewhere, that’s great.  Do that.  But if nothing else will bring you fulfillment like working in the ministry then that is a clear sign that God has called you to it. 

This week I feel as if God has reaffirmed my calling.  Even the parts of ministry that I don’t particularly enjoy, I have missed because it is a part of what God has called me to do.  I’m thankful that God has me where He wants me and that I’m doing what He wants me to do.  I pray that He will continue to guide and direct me in the next step.

This week my wife and I are heading home for Christmas and then we’ll spend the next two weeks getting our new house ready to move into.  The last few weeks, really I suppose the last six or seven months, have been chaotic and I hope that things will really start to calm down in January once we get unpacked.  So there’s a very good chance that I won’t be posting anything for a few weeks.  Once things get settled down I hope to be back to work creating websites full force. 

In the midst of all of the chaos I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and remind all of you the real reason for this season.  Getting together with friends and family is important this time of year as is a sense of generosity and giving.  But it all comes down to celebrating the birth of our Savior.  No matter what else you do in the midst of your celebrating remember to celebrate the wonderful gift that God gave all of us.

I personally hate social networking.  I think that it is one of the biggest time wasters imaginable.  People who I want to stay in contact with I either see on a regular basis or email.  Beyond that I couldn’t care less that someone I know ate at Applebees and had a great time there.  I know that this is the kind of meaningless stuff that gets posted all of the time because my wife recently joined Facebook and she gets posts like this.  I honestly think that things like this weaken legitimate social interaction and because of it people are going to lose the ability to have intelligent conversations about important topics.  Actually, scratch that.  If you’ve ever read comments on any political or otherwise controversial topic, our society has already reached that point.  There’s one intelligent comment for every 20 personal attacks and pointless posts by someone who didn’t fully read the article before feeling the need to tell everyone their opinion.

This isn’t to sound like a bitter old man, just stating my dislike for the direction that things are heading.  Nevertheless I can see the way things are going and social media in its current form are going to be around for a while.  I have resisted joining before because I was certain that it was a fad that would go away sooner or later.  Kind of like Myspace or whatever was big before that.  I also had hopes of Google releasing something bigger and better than Facebook.  But none of this appears to be the case at least in the near future.

And so I have signed up for Facebook and created a page for Spreading Light Ministries.  While I have relied heavily on search engines and links from other sites to drive traffic to my own, I realize that Facebook has become a huge word of mouth traffic driver.  I still don’t particularly like it but I’m considering it a necessary evil in order to continue to expand the reach of my web ministry.  I’m really probably behind the times on this one but I’ve resisted long enough.

So, if you’d like to follow what is going on with Spreading Light Ministries and share it with all of your friends, then you can find our Facebook page at Spreading Light Ministries.  There is also a Twitter feed which will mainly just have updates about the Facebook page.  But you can follow us on Twitter @spreadinglightm or on the page spreadinglightm.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer and I must say that this summer can’t be over soon enough now.  What began as a summer full of excitement quickly turned to frustration and despair.  Beginning around the 4th of July weekend my wife starting getting sick with her pregnancy.  As basically every woman in my church tried to reassure me, every woman goes through varying degrees of morning sickness.  Unfortunately I’ve also discovered that this is practically a competition among women to say who had the worst morning sickness.

While morning sickness was definitely a factor this was not my wife’s only problem and for the entire month I couldn’t leave her alone.  Despite the fact that I work from my home office, this caused some people to accuse me of not doing my full job.  I will always maintain that as much as I love the church, my wife comes first.  In fact if I can’t take care of my family, I’m not much of a pastor because the church structure (at least ideally) is based on the family model.  While other people take days off to tend to sick children, spouses, or parents, unless I take an entire week off, my workload doesn’t decrease.  No one accepts the excuse of “that was my day off” for not being visited in the hospital or being tended to for whatever their problem is.

July ended with my wife having a miscarriage.  We were assured by the doctors that it had nothing to do with my wife being sick and nothing that either of us did, these things just happen and unfortunately quite often.  Nevertheless, this does little to dull the pain.  Three other pastors failed in offering any words of comfort during this time – one actually made me feel worse after the fact.  The truth is that there are no true words of comfort to offer in such a time.  Others who have gone through the experience can sympathize a bit more but still I believe that each experience is very personal.

One thing that I can offer to anyone trying to console someone else going through the pain of miscarriage is to never pretend like the child is replaceable and the woman will be pregant again in no time.  While we had no trouble getting pregnant I’ve seen that many who have had heartbreaking miscarriages also had trouble getting pregnant in the first place, sometimes taking years.  Beyond that a child is not replaceable.  It does not matter if the parents never got to know their child, from the moment they found out they were pregnant they had hopes and dreams for the child and all of those dreams died with that child.  Telling a grieving parent that they will be pregnant again soon is like telling a grieving spouse that they will find someone else and get remarried soon.  There is no replacement.  Even though people mean well in saying it, they really aren’t words of comfort.

After two months – one month of tending to my wife and another of picking up the pieces – life is starting to return to normal a bit.  My wife and I are strong and with God’s help we will make it through this.  The week after the miscarriage I was able to stand in front of my church and say that despite all that had happened, God is still good and He’s still with us.  I know that I’m the exception but I have never questioned why God allowed this to happen or became angry or complained that it was unfair.  I have repeatedly told people that God did not abandon them in times or trial nor fail them when their prayers weren’t answered the way they hoped.  I not only have to believe this as well, I truly do believe it.

And so life goes on.  I don’t know precisely what life holds in store for us right now.  I certainly don’t know precisely why this happened, only that my wife and I are going to be stronger from the experience.  Right now I’m using the changing of the seasons to put a symbolic close to a very difficult and painful season of my life.  And I know that a month from now and a year from now I will still be able to say as I do today that God is still good despite all that has taken place.

A couple of weeks ago my life was thrown into complete disarray as my wife and I discovered that we are expecting our first child.  As far as disarray goes, this is the good kind.  Nevertheless time has moved at a different speed than before and my weeks have run together.  It doesn’t help that we’re experiencing a miserable heat wave or the fact that we have had guests most of last week and will again this week.  And none of them are baby related – they were planning on coming before we learned about the baby.

Aside from being excited I’ve had a few other thoughts on the pregnancy so far.  My first is that I have no clue how other women do it.  My wife has the luxury of staying home and she has been tired and miserable off and on.  She’s coped alright but I can’t even imagine her getting up and being at a regular job at 8 and coming home at 5.

Another thing that has struck me is how many doctor’s appointments there have been.  We’ve had three appointments in the first two weeks and have to go back this week because because the baby isn’t quite as old as they thought and they want to be able to hear the heartbeat this week.  Not too long ago there weren’t any of these appointments.  While I’ll do anything to make sure that I have a healthy baby, it’s not like these appointments have done anything to improve its health and none have been checks because something seems wrong.  They are just routine and if something should happen to be wrong, there’s nothing they can do about it at this stage anyway.  I have health insurance and maternity coverage and I already feel like I’m being nickeled and dimed to death.  My first appointment cost $25 out of pocket, I’ll probably pay at least that much for the second appointment and the third I already paid a $40 copay for two minutes of the doctor’s time to tell us that the baby isn’t as old as they expected and we’ll have to come back next week.  And that doesn’t include the cost of what the insurance won’t pay for the ultrasound – or the second one we’ll get this week.  I knew having a baby was an expensive process but I thought that most of that would begin at the delivery and the costs going forward, not right now. 

Most importantly though, I touched by the wonder of God’s creation.  When we discovered we were pregnant I immediately thought of Psalm 139:13 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  I plan on putting this on the wall of our nusery.  Last week I saw a tiny little speck on the ultrasound, no bigger than a grain of rice.  By this week that tiny little speck is supposed to have a discernable heartbeat.  I can’t tell you how amazed I am by this.  I can’t fathom something so small having a heartbeat and I can’t fathom the fact that one moment its heart will just begin to beat.  Even though it is what happens in every living creature there doesn’t seem to be anything natural about this to me.  There is no way that anyone can convince me that this is the result of a random process and it all just fell together.  Only God can do something like this and only He can give life and start a heartbeat in a being so tiny that only recently have we even been able to detect its presence.  I find myself amazed and in awe of God the further we go into this process.

As mentioned last week I’ve been working on some other web projects that aren’t Christian related.  After a flurry of activity I’m ready to go live with a number of sites.  My goal is to get ahead of the technology curve and have sites running and indexed in search engines before the search terms become popular because by then it will probably be too late to get good search engine rankings and traffic.

So I have ventured into the field of 3D technology.  I love new technology so this was a pretty natural direction to go.  In the process I’ve learned a ton about what is coming out in the future.  3D TV’s are on sale right now and there are actually a few 3D tv stations airing already.  A bunch more are slated to be added before the end of the year.  For now 3D TV is likely only to be a hit with technology junkies and early adopters but I believe it is the way of the future.  I’m willing to bet that by this time next year if you go to buy a tv, you will have just as many 3D choices as any other tv.  Even better, the prices will likely be comparable to regular tv’s and there will be a lot of 3D content in the making.

If you are interested in 3D technology that is coming out, I’d encourage to check out the sites just to gain information as to what the future holds.  And of course if you want to be one of the first to own 3D technology, you can find the latest products on the sites as well.  I’ll be releasing a second wave of sites in another week or so.  My thinking is that if I’m going to stake an interest in the technology, I should go all in so I’ve invested in a total of 11 websites.

Here’s the sites that are live right now:

• www.3dbuyingguides.com
• www.3dgamingtoday.com
• www.3dlaptopsstore.com
• www.3dsamsungstore.com
• www.3dsonystore.com
• www.get3dblurays.com

For those who are wondering why I am venturing in this direction, obviously I hope to make a profit off of this from advertising and affiliate marketing.  But there is an added benefit from any time I work on another project.  I learn how to better market websites and hopefully I will be able to create a broader reach with my ministry websites as well.  This week I’ve finally delved into the world of Facebook.  I personally don’t care for it but I know that it can be a great marketing tool and I hope to use it for the ministry sites in the future as well.  That’s my hope at least.  I haven’t learned all of the ins and outs yet but with some experimenting I’m sure I’ll learn what I need.

What on earth is maction?  It is a new term for “massive action.”  I was recently talking to a friend and he said that he had set aside the month of June for maction.  He has a second child coming in August so pretty much whatever he hopes to accomplish in the next few months needs to be done now.

I’ve been absolutely wore out lately with church stuff.  Hospital visits always take a toll on me and I’ve had someone in the hospital for the last three weeks.  It all started with three people in the hospital which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary expect my church isn’t that big.  But I’ve also noticed before that hospital visits come in bunches.  I can go months without anyone in the hospital and suddenly I’ll have a group of them. 

All of this has left me worn out and feeling like I haven’t gotten much done lately.  It’s also a foolish time to take on any more projects.  Yesterday I decided to take on a new project on a whim however.  My whims have been some of the greatest ideas I’ve ever had and have been the cause of some of my greatest online successes.  Despite the fact that I had decided to focus all of my online work on Christian websites from now on, I took on an entertainment project.  Hoping to be ahead of the curve, I’m setting up a network of sites devoted to 3D technology.  If it doesn’t catch on I’m not too concerned because I don’t have too much invested in it.

Just having a change of pace has felt really good though.  I love the work I do as a pastor and I love what I do online.  If I had the option of doing them for free I would.  But it is nice to take on a new project that has no religious significance.  That way there is no real pressure to even complete the project if I don’t feel like it.  If the project fails, I won’t lose any sleep over it either because there is no significance to it other than an opportunity to supplement my income online.

While I’m energized I hope to get the bulk of the work done for the new sites.  Unlike the other projects that I’ve taken on recently, this one is meant to be short term.  This means that right now is time for maction.  Even though there’s not religious significance I’ll post the links here when the sites are completed just in case anyone is curious.  (And it helps my search engine ranking when there are more links too. )

Just about everyone that I’ve talked to has been under a great deal of stress this week.  I don’t know if it is the start of summer that has done it or if it is the end of school for most students or what it is.  It has been a very odd week.

I usually handle stress very well.  I am not wired like most pastors who have a very ordered type A personality.  I’m much more laid back and take things as they come.  But even I have been feeling a lot of stress for the last few weeks.  Ironically, I was even on vacation last week but couldn’t escape a lot of the problems that I was supposed to vacate.  This week I saw the effects of my built up stress when I went to the doctor – my blood pressure was much higher than normal.  Usually my blood pressure is the only good thing I have going for me.

When we’re feeling stressed – and I have to preach to myself right now as well – we need to remember that God is in control no matter what.  He has promised to provide for our needs.  Beyond that, we’ll survive and He will give us the strength to handle whatever comes our way.  We are promised to never have more than we can handle.  This is an easy promise to believe in because when God is with us, we can handle anything.

Regular visitors to the site will notice a new format for the website.  After a day of toying around, I’ve decided to move the blog onto WordPress.  This will allow me to do updates a good bit faster and also gives visitors the opportunity to respond to articles with comments.  The site can be searched and it is easily navigated to view previous posts.

The other advantages to the new format are mainly behind the scenes.  Hopefully this will allow the site to be picked up by by search engines and other blog sites that will register whenever there is a new post.

Feel free to drop a comment about the new format and let me know what you think.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything and as I look at my last entry it was at about the same time that things stopped going as smoothly as I would like for them to go. For starters, I developed a head cold. Just a minor nuisance, not enough to keep me down but enough to make me want to sleep an extra hour a night. That lasted about two weeks. As I got over my head cold, I developed a cough. Once again, this was a minor nuisance but around the same time I developed stomach pains. My personal diagnosis was and still is a muscle pull from the coughing. I went to the doctor yesterday after two weeks of having trouble. I was hoping for a muscle relaxer or even a diagnosis of something to do with my coughing and something to help me stop. Instead I’m going to be checked for gallstones beside the fact that I really don’t think that that is the problem. At the same time I was finishing up an online class. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except that the school was having a lot of technical difficulties. I’m the type of person who understands mistakes happen and that people are prone to error. However I also expect that if I’m paying good money for something, I ought to get what I paid for. When I pay $750 for an online class and there are 19 other students who paid that same money, I expect problems to be solved swiftly with no concern for the cost because this is what we have paid for. Instead of solutions, I only received excuses and apologies. Last week I had a meeting out of state and returned home Saturday night. On the way home I hit a chunk of rubber from a blown tire. It was small and innocuous. But it was enough to cause me to blow my tire on the highway. With my spare, I had to get off the highway and travel backroads the final 80 miles home because I couldn’t go over 50 mph. Within a mile of getting off the highway I got pulled over. The speed limit had dropped from 45 to 25 but I didn’t see any sign. Despite having never been pulled over in my life, I got a ticket instead of a warning – final cost $144. I don’t write any of this to complain or to receive sympathy. Instead it is a reminder that we all go through down seasons in life. Despite my frustrations in the past few weeks, things could be a lot worse. I was able to finish my class despite the fact that things weren’t working properly. Although I haven’t felt great for five weeks now, at no point have I felt terrible. And even though my flat tire ended up costing me a speeding ticket, I was able to safely get my car pulled off of the road. The shoulder was wide enough that I could actually pull over and replace the tire. Before I even had time to pray about it, someone else pulled off and helped me change my tire. And even my tire ended up being under warranty so it only cost me $15 for the wear that I already had on the tire. It’s easy to say that things could have been worse but that’s not even the case. God has been watching out for me even in the midst of my frustrating time. Being a Christian doesn’t always mean smooth sailing. What it does mean is that God will be with us during those rough times and that He won’t abandon us.