This is how I feel too many Monday mornings. Fixating on the few negatives rather than the numerous positives. We have had a number of people come forward about baptisms, there have been people that have committed (and others re-committing) their lives to follow Jesus - all markers of success in the 'church biz'. I have watched relationships heal and people walk through overwhelming challenges. There have been births and marriages. And in the middle of it all I get stuck on who left the service without talking, I think about the person who seems to be avoiding a coffee, and I analyse every comment to make sure I don't miss a veiled shot.

It amazes me because this is not who I was - but it sure is who I am. I am working on it though (I wouldn't have scanned this sketch if I was still feeling so insecure), but it's a work in progress. It took me 5 years become a person who is constantly listening for footsteps and it will take a while to get back to being myself again. Pray for me (seriously).

Ehkosit,
Migwec.

Today we are relaxing and doing th e Pysanky thing (Ukranian Easter Eggs). Combine permanent dyes, burning candles and hot wax to breakable eggs and a housefull of kids (we have some friends joining us in this first year of a new tradition). I even bought some pirohi - thats perogies for the non-Ukes (I qualify as an adopted son of Yorkton's Ukranian community).

On a side note, it was quite discomforting to see just how little photoshop manipulation it took to fit an egg image on top of my real head.

Ehkosit,
Migwec

Daddy's girl...

She's so much my girl that we are even watching Tipi Tales together!! I try to teach her a little Ojibwa as we watch - but I'm so rusty. BTW that's the language I sign off on - "Ehkosit" means "That's all to say for now" (sorta) and "Migwec" is "Thank You."

Ehkosit,

Migwec

( Micah and I exchanging slashes)

(Mason and I get ready for a face-off)

Here are some action photos of the day at Kids & Dads Hockey. In every photo I am hooking, tripping or somehow pestering my kids. My wife is not the cross-stitching type, but she has threatened to do a needle point of Ephesians 6:4 (the one about Fathers not provoking their children to wrath) to put up in our house.

Had a busy Easter Sunday. The service at SouthGate went well - we were missing a number of families to traveling, but there were a number of families growing in their consistency (not just in terms of Sunday attendance but in small groups, spontaneous fellowship and leadership engagement).

Right after the service we headed down to Good Tree Christian Fellowship where Juli has been working with their  children's ministry (she serves as the Sunday School Pastor) and I went to First Baptist Church to preach at the Spanish Congregation. Preaching with a translator takes some getting used to, but it went well. I do enjoy preaching in that sanctuary again.

I found out today that another couple is "attending elsewhere" - I realize it is part of the ministry, but I still take it personally when people decide to go to another church. I recognize that I should say, "As long as they are still a part of the body of Christ and worshipping with fellow believers that's great." In fact that is what I say, but deep down I have to admit a twinge of personal rejection. But we push on...

BTW if you get up close (and scratch the screen) you can smell the jersey I am wearing.

Ehkosit,

Migwec

Today was the last day of City Hockey for my boys (Mason & Micah) and the parents were scheduled to play against the kids. That was exciting. It was Mason's 9th birthday - that made it even more exciting. The only down side was I was on the run before the ice time (I was doing a guest lecture at Chinook College and then had additional pick ups after school) and I forgot to pack a jersey. or hoodie, or anything remotely athletic. It was going to be the "dress shirt and Helmet look" for me - incidentally collared shirts were one of the options for the NHL to go to this year but they decided to go with the RBK Edge models in a hotly contested decision.

In what turned out to be a really (really really) bad decision I grabbed a jersey out of the Lost & Found at the rink. Surprisingly the cast away shirt that had been marinading in the bin of long forgotten shirts, jerseys, water bottles and miscellaneous equipment was more than a little stinky. I should have realized it was bad when I heard one of the jock straps release a sigh of relief as I took the jersey out. I am sure that it had been used to scrub down the washrooms at the rink the last time dysentry had swept through a visiting team...wow it stunk and it was a size too small to boot.

The end result was that the kids won 14-3 and I think I've got a rash developing where the shirt came in contact with bare skin.

Next time I'm going with the dress shirt!

Ehkosit,
Migwec

While the boys are taking Spanish lessons - as a linguist I can't justify waiting until the school system starts teaching them languages so they are learning from a friend - I come down to the local coffee shop to respond to emails and do some planning.

We had a really good Palm Sunday service. I am sensing a real connect within our community. The younger set has really stepped up to the plate. It is nice to hear people talk about SouthGate as being "Our church" rather than "Your church" or "Jeff & Juli's church".  I understand where that comes from, but it is great to see ownership setting in. We are going through some gut checks as a church as we move forward. The realization that we are now responsible for meeting our budget is a challenge for a church of any age, but this is new for us and is taking some getting used to. We have slashed as much as we can - we were pretty frugal to begin with - and it is going to stretch us. The other realization is that we may need to look for more permanent digs - the cost of land and buildings is slowing down, but it is still going up in Calgary. In the last few weeks there have been some interesting prospects pop onto the radar screen and so we will gather some information and pray like crazy about it.

No matter what I will still be a regular at the Starbucks - its nice to get away and I tend to see different people that would never wander into a church office.

Ehkosit,

Migwec

One of the greatest sources of sanity - and greatest purveyors of insanity - over the last year has been my English Springer Spaniel. Bronte (my wife was an Lit Major) is full of boundless energy - and a similar amount of 'poopage.' Our backyard attests the truth of both of these statements.

We have worked hard to train her over the winter and she has made big strides - though she has her days. This summer we are determined to reclaim our yard and so she has a big dog run along the side of the house and when we re-do the fence she will receive a few upgrades in her accomodations.

As the weather has improved so has my desire to take her regular walks.

Ehkosit,

Migwec

Today is Palm Sunday. It kicks off the Holy Week celebrated by Christians. It all starts with the Triumphal Entry. I have never been to the Holy Land, I don't know what it is like to be park of the crowds that gather for the Passover Celebration.

The closest I can claim is that I have been part of the Pow Wow Grand Entry at the college I graduated from and taught at, the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (now the First Nations University of Canada). One year I even entered with Allen Sapp (who painted the picture above). Being that I minored in Indian Art History in my first BA that was quite an honour.

I have been reading the the accounts of Jesus' last week in the various gospels. Considering this week accounts for the bulk of the book of John I think I will be putting recreational reading to the side for the remainder of the week.

When I do get back to it I am going to start up John Raston Saul's "The Unconscious Civilization" and I also have to pick out another classic - probably Austen's "Northanger Abbey" (Juli just finished it).

My reading has dropped off this fall and I feel a little mentally lethargic.

This Photo Booth feature is the best 'baby-sitting tool' ever invented since the TV!!! We can literally waste an entire morning making goofy pictures. Here are a few from this  morning's efforts.

Enjoying a big ol' bowl o' Pho. 

I am finishing up some notes for tonight's lecture. It always strikes me as funny that I teach the students (among other things) that they should limit their teaching to small amounts of 'TEACHER TALK' in a fifty minute period - but I do it in the context of a three and a half hour lecture!!

The new course I am starting focuses on Applied Linguistics - so it draws on my undergrad and grad work. I sometimes worry that I may try to push too much info into the time frame, but it has been a long time since I have had a chance to get into lexical decomposition, functional vs inflectional morphology and the like (it just doesn't come up in everyday conversation as much as you would expect or hope it to).

Is there a cool way to pull up your pants? Mine are usually riding too low for the comfort of the wearer or onlookers.  I have been trying to convince my wife that it is how all the kids are wearing their pants - she just reminds me I'm not a hip urban youth (in fact I can't claim any single descriptor let alone the combination of all three).  

But back to my problem. I possess a middle-aged gut that means I have to choose between 'the under sling' where I position my belt below the gut and cinch it tight making me look like one of those kids books where you mix-and-match the head, body and legs. The other choice is to do 'the over stuff' where I cram my girth into my waistline and my belt buckle is in danger of chafing my nipples!! The truth is that either solution is the gut equivilent of the 'comb-over.'

Always the moderate I try to keep my belt in the middle - but then I am forever having to hike my pants up. I am committed to avoiding the above mentioned solutions for as long as possible so please help me!! If you have a link to you-tube or a reference in a self help book please pass it along. I have looked through back issues of GQ and this is a thoroughly neglected topic.

I have watched as others clutch, twist and pull their pants up in a variety of techniques - each one less cool than the last. I have to admit I am looking at my wife's collection of maternity pants with envy that borders on covetousness. I'm pretty sure this breaks a number of the Vatican's definitions of sin - new and old.

Ehkosit,

Migwec

Here are some more pix from the Tuesday morning crew...

Just fooling around with some pictures of Maggie dancing...

I thought I would have bought an LP from a band called "the Dancing Maggies" back when I bought records.

Here she is spinning...

There is an old, abandoned church off of Mcleod Trail (major North/South road in Calgary) that goes back to the days before the village of Midnapore was swallowed up by the urban sprawl. To say its seen better days is an understatement.

Driving past it one day I noticed that its dilapidated form had been decorated with some new signage. When I looked closer I could make out signs saying "Private Property" and "No Trespassing."

I couldn't help but see the symbolism of it all. No matter how broken down the structures of the church get, we are still primarily worried that the wrong kind of people will get in!! The 'three acres and a steeple' takes precedent over the people that are filling in the condos being built all around it.

Ironically, considering the state of the building, the lawn is well kept - we wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea - 'our Jesus' may be ramshackled and exclusive but he's well manicured where it counts!!

On another note, my daughter has taken to dance anywhere that there is a flat, dry spot - so there were a few action shots taken on this trip (we were originally going out to vist some seniors in our congregation but they were out and about). Unfortunately my wife is the real photographer in our family - but I had her camera with me so I thought I would play with it a bit. I liked this picture for some reason...

It was a good day. The Saturday night set-ups have gone well and they make the Sundays better in every way. We used to have to show up at the school early in the morning and unload everything - originally from vans and cars and then cube vans and finally out of on-site storage. Now there is time to set up, practice the music, get the refreshments ready to go and then turn off the lights and get some sleep.

I have to admit that there are days I would like to own a building that stayed set up all the time - but the cost of real estate is monstrous in Calgary (and getting monstrous-er), and then we would have to worry about mortgages and maintenance, etc. The trade off is not just the lack of set-up, but also the ways we could resource our community. The speed that communities are popping up means that the new ones often lack community centres, meeting space, child care facilities, etc.

Other days it seems appealing to go into a house church model - again removing the need for a weekly set up. This fades as I realize that is the main reason really laziness on my part. Not that I am against this model, I know a few people that doing organic churches and there are lots of upsides. The reason I don't move us into that model is that we get so many people from different backgrounds and the larger meeting space allows us to gather and celebrate our diversity.

Since the beginning of the year we have also been helping out with another church plant.  We always said it would have been nice to have had another church come alongside us and just give us help in areas we were short staffed. Somedays it is hard to rush out from tearing down only to drive across the city for a second go at it - especially since my wife is 5 months pregnant!! But it is what we love doing, the kids have friends there, and the traffic isn't so bad on a Sunday afternoon. 

Ehkosit,

Migwec

This is one night that I really miss living in Saskatchewan. Sadly, its not anything as noble as family, friends or a sense of flatland allegience. The reality is I just hate getting up an hour earlier than usual. Not just because I possess a grumpiness::early morning factor, but with three kids it makes the morning unbearable - especially since our Sunday mornings are a little nuts at the best of times.  

Just getting some final marking finished up at my office (actually its somebody else's but in the evenings I teach I come in early and pretend its mine). I have always had a strange fondness of offices - everywhere else I've always been the fat funny guy, but in my office (surrounded by my books) I am erudite and learned (make sure you pronounce that as 'lurNED') - I am that academic that I thought I was going to be. Once I leave the office I revert back (I often sing show tunes in my linguistics classes and quote Woody Allen as often as Noam Chomsky) but in my office I am thoroughly bookish (my wife says I am even pretentious).

Leaving my big office at the downtown church (complete with eight floor to (almost) ceiling bookshelves) was one of the hardest transitions to make in the whole churchplanting endevour (even when I was only going down after hours and on Saturdays).

Its been nice to get the linguistics and TESOL books out of the boxes and onto some shelves - it was like unpacking a bit of my soul and restoring it to its rightful place!!

Ehkosit,

Migwec.

Our Wednesday night children's ministry was cancelled tonight due to a drama team going to the school we rent. I thought I would stop by to (1) make sure there weren't any stranded "Club DJ" kids and (2) be a part of the activity (I volunteer at the school so I figured I could sneak into the back without being seen as a creepy old guy). But when I arrived the parking lot was empty and the school was dark...there was nothing going on. I know that there are frustrations in owning a building - but renting a neutral space isn't the stress-less, joy-filled solution some people (authors, church planting pundits, etc) tout it to be.

Oh well I have a little time to grab a coffee and collect my thoughts before I head out to a few visits. I thought about going home but my brood is used to having Wednesday as a high energy gym night and they have been bouncing off the walls since they got home from school today.

Over the next while I want to work/talk/pray with some folks in the know (and in the thick of things) to help me go from 'church-ranting' to 'church planting.' I am not a complainer by nature, but I have become fairly cynical and borderline negative over the last few years. I love the denomination I serve in, but it has been a while since we have had a full on focus with our church-planting initiatives. Now that there is a significant amount of church plants starting up - e.g., Calgary was dormant (for us) for 30 years and now there are three very different church plants in the city. In good baptistic fashion this will need to be done at a grass roots level and work its way up.

Ehkosit,

Migwec

test

this just a test

Its Tuesday morning and the women's small group is going on. That means I need to put down my concordances, interlinear greek new testament and put on my childminding cap. I think its one of the reasons I enjoy pastoring a small church - my ADDesque vocational attention span comes in handy. On any given day I shift from youth worker to counselor to CEO to scholar.

Well the group is ending so I need to clean up toys...

ehkosit

Migwec

Zoiks! I'm tired. I usually take it slow on Mondays - but it's beautiful out and so I am going to take the dog out to the dog wash. I also have to take in the recycling in (its been a while and it is starting to really back up) and find a few doodads in the garage - an old router, a composite hockey blade, a few textbooks on Applied Linguistics. I'm not building some McGiver (sp?) device I just have had a lot of little jobs to do and I want to catch up on them this week while the weather is nice.

Today was an exceptional day. I have been meeting people non-stop for the last two-weeks (maybe longer) mostly leading up to our congregational meeting. The phrase "Annual Church Meeting" is often the strongest cussin' in a pastor's vocabulary (it's often what I say when I hit my fingers with a hammer for example). I have never felt that way about SouthGate meetings - but as we have grown we have taken on bigger decisions - e.g., are we ready for independence? Is this budget do-able? Who is a member? etc. 

One of the big things we were discussing was our budget. This was the first year we developed our own budget. That is a great step forward - but we had to do it without any actual financial records from our accounting service. Needless to say this caused me more than a little frustration and worry (and insomnia). But because we did our homework and our congregation understands some of the struggles we have had with our mother church (more like a crack-mother church at times) they endorsed the budget and other business.

It has been good to watch people step into leadership roles - and this was so apparent from the involvement of people in the meeting.

ehkosit

migwec