What I will miss about NC

I moved to North Carolina just over 7 years ago.  And later this week I will be moving away.  So I thought I would write a couple of posts about North Carolina.  Yesterday I wrote about the things I will be glad to not deal with once I leave North Carolina. Today I am writing about the things I will miss about NC.

• My house – I have lived in the same house for 5 years.  I believe that is the longest time with only one address in my entire lifetime.  Not only have I lived in the same house for 5 years. But it is a really nice house with really good grass in the front yard.  I have issues with that sycamore tree in the front yard, and I'm not crazy about the utility room being on the carport, but otherwise I’ll miss this place.
• Distance from my family – I know what you are thinking.  This was on yesterday’s list, you are right it was.  It is a bit of a bummer living so far from family.  But there are some positives about it as well. When you live 1/3rd of the country away from your family you only see them about 3 times a year.  It turns out, that seeing less of my family makes me appreciate them a lot more.
• CBC – I really enjoy my classes at Carolina Bible College.  Teaching adults is very different than teaching teenagers, which is what I have done for the last 13 years.  But it is a nice break and I get to delve deeper into topics I can often only scrape the surface of when teaching teens.  Also, my students are generally appreciative of my teaching, even if not my grading.
• Cookout & MiCasita – Two very different restaurants go here on the list.  Mi Casita is a Fayetteville Mexican restaurant where I eat pretty much weekly.  I will miss it very much.  Cookout is a fast food restaurant that is unique to North Carolina.  The food is wonderful.  Seriously, where else can you get a double cheeseburger with fries and chicken nuggets plus a drink for under 5 bucks.  I’ll tell you - nowhere.  Also, it has without question, the best milkshake in any fast-food place anywhere.  My favorite fast food restaurant will now be hundreds of miles away. Sad.
• The watershed lake I fish regularly – I love fishing.  And for the last 4 years I have had the opportunity to fish a healthy lake with virtually no fishing pressure.  I have fished there dozens of times and could count on one hand the occasions when there was more than one boat in the water.  Last year alone I had 3 bass that would have been my best fish ever if I could get them into the boat.  I have caught bass, pickerel, bluegill, shellcrackers, and crappie in healthy amounts from that lake.  I hardly ever have a bad day in that lake and I will definitely be sad when I can’t drive 5 minutes and be there.
• My friends and church family – Let’s be honest, the really sad part of moving is not going a long way from a great restaurant, or a house, or a lake, or any of those things.  The hard part is leaving behind all the people.  I will not attempt to name all the folks here who I will miss.  I will miss friends from seminary, pastors in my association, students and colleagues at CBC and loads for people from my church family.   There are many people in NC that my life is better for knowing, and it will be a shame to leave them.  Fortunately, in this day of social media, it is possible to keep in touch much better than ever before.  It is amazing what you can learn about people’s lives through a twitter feed or through facebook.  So I’m glad for those technologies.  You people keep updating and I’ll keep reading.

What I will not miss about NC

I moved to North Carolina just over 7 years ago.  And later this week I will be moving away.  So I thought I would write a couple of posts about North Carolina.  Tomorrow I will write about the things I will miss when I leave, but today’s topic is what I will not miss about living in NC.

• The distance from my family –  It is about 700 miles from here to my hometown, I only see my family about 3 times a year
• The U.S. Army trying to shake my house apart – I have lived about a mile from Ft. Bragg for the last 5 years.  In that time I have grown accustomed to my house shaking, windows rattling, and the sort of jumpiness that comes with that.  However, that doesn’t mean I like it.  And my dog hates it.  He just roams around the house barking at some unknown enemy.  This is one thing I will not miss in the slightest.
• Bar-b-q with no smoke in it – What people call bar-b-q around here is good enough for what it is.  It just isn’t bar-b-q and I won’t miss it in the slightest.
• The traffic – All I will say here is good riddance to the traffic in Fayetteville.  I will not miss Reilly Rd.  I will not have to make Yadkin Rd., Skibo Rd., or The longest light in the world on Morganton a normal part of my day.  And for that I am glad.
• The world turning yellow every spring – I guess this is not strictly a North Carolina problem, but it is a problem all over the Deep South where pine trees are the majority.  In late March and early April everything turns yellow.  I don’t mean has a sort of yellow sheen to it, but the wind blowing through the trees looks like yellow smoke.  Cars turn yellow, the ground turns yellow.  The pollen forms a light dust on the ground that is actually slippery.  The windward side of the lake becomes coated in yellow pollen and after every cast so does your bait.  If you have never seen it, I don’t believe I can do it justice with words.
• Fire Ants – Again, I know this is not just a problem in the Sandhills of NC, but fire ants were unknown to me before I moved here.  For more on my feelings about fire ants, read this.
• People referring to chicken & dumplings as “pastries” – Nothing about that makes any sense to me on any level. Good riddance to that quirk of dialect.
• The difficulty in watching UK games – I am an SEC fan, stuck for the last 7 years in the heart of ACC country.  Kentucky is regularly preempted in favor of an ACC game.  I understand why, but I hate it.  That is one more thing I will not miss.

Great Commission ressurgence needed

I am frustrated as I write this, so the tone may not be what I am hoping for.  It may come across as a polemic rather than an illustration about the need for a great commission resurgence within the SBC. I’ll begin with some context.  Just over a year ago, the city of Fayetteville’s Dogwood festival passed a ban on all booths that promoted “religious or political views.”  Effectively this shut out all churches from the festival.

So last year the churches of greater Fayetteville made a big deal about not being allowed into the Dogwood festival.  We even held a political action rally.  This rally did not exclusively address the Dogwood Festival, but that decision was the impetus for the rally.

In response to the outrage, the board, rightly in my opinion, reversed the decision.

Political action working, right?  Yep.  We got the desired result, churches are now allowed at the festival.

Obviously then, this year, there were many churches there representing Christ, giving out free water (rather than selling beer) and telling people the life changing message that Jesus saves.  Right?  Wrong.

Three churches participated. They include, the largest church in town, a small Presbyterian church (PCA), and one church that was apparently fundraising.

There are 100 churches in the Baptist association which encompasses Fayetteville.  Many of these churches were represented at the political action rally last year.  Now let’s do the math, 100 churches in the association, zero churches participate in the festival after they hear our voice and change their policy.  That number, again, was zero.  Now, to be fair, not all 100 were at the rally, but many were.

Here’s the question; does that make us look inept, or hypocritical, or like we only want to cause trouble?  I’m afraid it sends the message that we have no time to witness because we are too busy complaining about people who will not let us witness.

To me it definitely says that we are not nearly as concerned about the gospel as we pretend to be.

By the way, my church was at the rally but not at the festival, so I am not merely casting stones.  Actually I want someone to tell me why I'm wrong to think this way.  I believe in political action, I’m glad the board reversed its decision, and I don’t expect every church in Fayetteville to be there.  I do, however, believe that we put way too much energy into fixing social issues and not nearly as much effort into spreading the gospel, even though it is the greatest message that could ever be told.

I believe that this is the perfect example of the need for a great commission resurgence. We need to have churches that focus on what's really important, the gospel.  It seems that we are currently out of whack.

(BTW - I really wanted to post this comic here because it is funny and goes with the last line.  But usage rights cost $25, which is ridiculous whenever you can just follow this link and see it for free.)

Twitter...again

Despite Ryan's overwhelming negativity, today I will present my third and final (at least for a while) post about Twitter.  Oddly enough I have seen a half a dozen posts about it in the last week.  I think this phenomenon is because actual celebrities are now beginning to use it. Today's post is about some of the many websites that use the Twitter apps for a multitude of purposes.

I'll start with Twitterholic which shows you the top twitterers of all.  Even though President Obama hasn't twittered since the election he is #1.  largely because his campaign promised to announce his running mate by twitter first, he has a 60% lead over #2 Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com.

According to twitterholic I am the third most popular twitterer in Fayetteville NC. Behind this guy and this lady.

Next up is twitter grader.  It ranks twitterers using some fancy secret formula in order to judge your influence and power among the community.  It is no surprise that the twitter elite turns out to be a bunch of tech bloggers, because currently twitter is mostly used by techies.

According to twitter grader, I have a grade of 83* and am #2 on the elite list for Fayetteville NC.  Again I am behind this lady.

Then there is twittemperature.  This one is supposed to judge the relevancy of what you twitter.

I have no idea how this one works because I have gone from smoking hot to freezing cold in just a couple of weeks.  Currently I'm 13° F whatever that means

Then there is tweetscan.  It allows you to type in a word and see all recent tweets containing that word.  Give it a try, it's pretty neat. Type in Brian Regan, or Obama, or Macaroni, or explosion.

Here's a list of real and fake celebrities on twitter

Try out some of these tools and tell me your scores and ranks.

*Obviously that's 83 girth units

Live-Blogging a Tropical Storm

I have lived my whole life in Kentucky.  I don't know how many of my readers are aware of this geographical tidbit, but we don't get many hurricanes in Kentucky.  The closest beach is about 9 hours away from where I grew up. I have now lived in NC for 5.5 years and I've experienced a few hurricanes.  None have been very bad this far inland.  (I live in Fayetteville the beach is an hour away)  The worst was the first.  Isabel in 2003 was definitely a learning experience for me.  I remember thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, and since you know its coming, not that bad.  Then all my friends in seminary told me how bad they are, and I began to be concerned.  At the time I lived in a trailer, so I loaded up Esau and spent the hurricane day at a friend's house.  I had never seen anything like the steady 40 mph wind, and it rained quite a bit, but the power stayed on all day.  I went home about 6 pm after I thought the worst was over.  There was no power at my house, but it was on by the time I got up the next morning.

Well, now I have a blog and I have readers all over the country.  (Ok, really they are mostly in NC and KY.)  So I thought I'd give play-by-play of the experience of Tropical Storm Hanna.  The storm is only 65 mph now and not going to become a hurricane, but 65 mph is enough.  The real problem with this experiment is that the worst part of the storm will be during the dark.  But I'll take pictures of the sky, and fill you in on the events periodically.

11:00 am Friday, September 5

I had an appointment at 9:00 then decided to run some errands.  This is the bottled water isle at wal-mart.  Clearly people are concerned about having no power (loads of people around here are on wells.)  Winds are calm, but it looks like rain.

1:30 pm - Wind is still calm.  It's raining a little bit now.

2:00 pm -The sun is shining, still no wind.

2:49 pm - Raining again

5:50 pm - Winds are up to 70 mph.  So it might become a hurricane after all.  Here it's still pretty calm.  it's raining.  But no real wind to speak of.

At any rate, I gathered up my flashlights, batteries and candles just in case my power goes out for a while.  The headband light works for a long time on just a couple of batteries.  I can read all night if necessary.  I'll cook the meat I bought today for supper, so it doesn't spoil.  And everything that can blow away is fairly sheltered.  The can trailer at church was emptied yesterday so it's good that I won't wake up with aluminum cans all over my yard.

7:54 pm - I just ran an errand about a mile from the house.  It's raining pretty good, but still no wind to speak of.  There is a lot of traffic for any rainy night, but especially one with a hurricane coming.  Lots of cars at the gas station.  I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the bread & milk at the grocery store.  Wind is getting closer though.

11:04 pm - This is so far the boringest tropical storm ever, but it's still a way off.  The rain has really started now, and it's gonna rain heavy off and on all night.  There probably won't be another post until morning.  When I get up we should be having sustained 35-40 mph winds, and it looks like it will be a hurricane before long.  I'll take a vid with my camera for you tomorrow.  Good night all.

5:40 am Saturday, September 6 - Wow, its raining.  Raining hard enough to wake me up.  it's very windy but I still have power.  According to the TV, the eye is a county away.  This looks like the last really hard band of rain.  I'm going back to bed.

7:19 am - The eye is north of us now, and the wind has pretty obviously changed direction.  (I get wet in places where I could stay dry before.)  I shot a short movie on the camera, but it's boring.  Imagine trees blowing in a 30 mph wind, and a lot of rain.  I still obviously have power.

9:06 am - It has rained A LOT, but it looks like it will be over in about an hour.  It moved a bit faster than they predicted, but looks like I'm clear.  If you read along, thanks.  One more update coming, pics of the damage at my house

11:27 am - This is my last post on Tropical Storm Hanna, detailing the wind damage at my house.  I seem to still have no shingles missing from the roof.  But I do have this huge limb and terrible flooding in the front yard. :)  The sun is shining now, it's pretty breezy but the storm is officially over.  Here's the pic of the destruction wreaked by the terrible storm.  Thanks for reading.

Makes Me Proud to be from Fayetteville

I’m just back from the city council meeting (the one from this post) and we won. That is the third time this property has been defeated for rezoning. I don’t know if my letter was any help to our case in the meeting, but thanks for reading it earlier. Also thanks to Caroline for editing the crap out of it.

I have an old post called “Makes Me Proud to be From Kentucky.”   Tonight I learned something interesting at the city council meeting that makes me proud to be from Fayetteville. Apparently, Fayetteville is the third worst city in the US to raise a kid. That’s right…third worst (#255). Take that Beaumont Texas!

As you can imagine, all the local media outlets have picked up on this, and of course, they have man on the street style quotes in the articles. My favorite is in the one from our nearest ABC affiliate,

It's almost not surprising…

That is pride in a city right there.

I know these kinds of things are just done to sell magazines and start arguments, but this is a poor distinction.

Interestingly, the worst city on the list, Clarkesville TN, is a mere half-hour from my hometown. Maybe this magazine has a bias against me. Or maybe they just don’t like military towns.

I’ll end this post with another quote from one of the many articles.

How your children turn out has much less to do with where you raise them than how you raise them. I daresay you could raise a wonderful kid in Clarksville, Tenn., and a rotten one in Honolulu.

Well said!

Silent?

There is a sentiment that I often hear in Christian circles. It basically goes like this; We have all these problems because Christians have been silent for too long. I have never heard it questioned, but today I want to question your thinking about that statement slightly.

I will begin by saying that the “problems” that people are ranting about when these statements are made, are real and true problems. Allowing marriage to be anything other than between one man and one woman is wrong, abortion is wrong, the movement to push the Christian church out of every area of the public sphere is wrong. (E.g. kicking the Gideons out of public school or not allowing Churches to have booths at the Dogwood Festival. Fayetteville NC I’m talking to you.) Those things are wrong! I will unashamedly say so. (And there may be a future blog post about the death of the word wrong)

Secondly, there are some political things that American Christians are silent about. For example, we are often silent about genocide, I suppose because it happens far away. We are silent about the abuse and martyrdom of Christians in most of the world. We are mostly silent about the evil of divorce. (I should say evangelicals are silent about. Liberal Christians believe fixing this stuff is equal to salvation) However, we simply are not silent about the things I hear people complain about all the time. Most non-believers know Christians for their political activity more than anything else

You will not meet a non-Christian in America that doesn’t know the Christian position on marriage or abortion. In fact, research tells us that non-believers believe that what it means to be a Christian is to be judgmental and to hate homosexuals. <aside>This may be their view, but it is simply not true. The best thing that ever happened to me, ever, is asking Jesus to be my lord. I know that lost people are in fact lost and will act that way. It is to be expected.</aside> But we have lost our message somewhere. We can blame the news media, or the people who make entertainment, but if they were Christians they would know better.

The problem [if there is one] with all our political activism is that it is an attempt to fix consequences without taking care of the problems. Dr. Reid always says, "Jesus did not die to make bad people good; he died to make dead people live." The deplorable behavior of our nation will not be fixed by all the political rallies, petitions, or letters (and I write letters to my politicians regularly) that we can produce. They will only be fixed with a great awakening style revival in our nation.

So back to the original statement, we have all these problems because Christians have been silent for too long. I agree with this statement…but not the way most who say it mean it. We have all these problems because Christians have been silent with the gospel message for too long. I am convinced that unless my city councilman actually knows Jesus, there is no reason to expect him to vote like someone who does. (He does claim to be a Christian.) The same goes for my mayor, my Governor, and my president. You get the idea. Also, I know that hope for our world is not found in politics.

This is not a pessimistic post just to complain, I offer solutions. So, what can you, my reader, do to fix all the problems of society? For starters, I would say consider every single person you know at least casually. If you know that any of them do not know Jesus, and you have not witnessed to them, witness to them. That sounds convoluted, so I’ll say it a different way. Tell everyone you know that Jesus loves them and that He died for their sins. If you are reading this and realize that you don't know Jesus go here and watch the movie. Secondly, live differently from the world. Live with joy and your acquaintances will want what you have.