the emergent church. (?)

what is the emergent church?  

in all honesty no one knows exactly because the main feature of "emergent/emerging" is elusivity. 

I am almost finished with the book, "Why We're Not Emergent: From 2 Guys Who Should Be" and I will expand on their findings soon hopefully.  Before reading this book I had heard of the term "emergent church" (read: also postmodernism - I knew about this term but I didn't realize they were two peas in a  really hip pod) but had no clue what it was about and now after delving into this mess of a topic I can honestly say there is no way anyone can neatly cover the basis/understanding/foundations/differences of this topic very well because it is so vast and nothing is nailed down but Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church (NOT the openly emergent Mars Hill of Grand Rapids Michigan) gives a little breakdown here that is a really good intro to this topic.

food for thought.

So I found a great new website: www.conversantlife.com and they are tracking curious project, check it out here.

I can barely recall but it's all coming back to me now.

Time to own up.  

What is that song that old school song that you hear once a year on the radio or on your ipod when it's on shuffle that you just belt it out like nobody's business.  

You know what I'm talking about.  You're alone in the car or with a good friend and it's american idol finale go time.

I'll start: Celine Dion - It's All Coming Back To Me Now (Who can resist an 8 minute long power ballad?)

happy birthday to me.

My parents got me this wonderful invention I have been coveting for awhile. I first saw it at the house where I was a disciple now leader back in february. It is a Keurig Brewer! What does it do? What doesn't it do is more appropriate. It makes a wonderful cup of coffee or gives me a perfectly hot cup of water for my tea in less than 60 seconds. What's better is there is no measuring or cleanup with this holy machine (pretty much the sole selling point for me over a conventional coffee pot)! You just buy these single serve "k-cups" (you can buy them pretty much anywhere, target, bed bath & beyond, etc.) in over 150 different coffee and tea flavors and put it in the machine, let it do its rapid magic and then throw it away! It's great!

grad school is like...

...regular school on crack.

So I'm actually in class for 6 hours a day and on campus for around 10 hours a day if not more for work and then doing things that only people in grad school do, such as walk around surveying people about their high school curriculum preferences and finding books in the library and then making endless copies for some unknown reason, just because your professor told you to.

However, there is a silver lining. Two actually; one: it is for only 5 weeks and i'm almost 2 weeks in!, and two: 80% of what i'm learning is practical knowledge and immediately applicable once I start teaching. In fact I'm not sure how I would have started teaching without all the things I'm learning, I'm pretty sure I would have been awful because no one except teachers realize how much detail and organization is really necessary to have effective classroom.

So now I just need a job. But since all of us in my program will begin teaching in the fall we're all in the same boat, the jobless boat that is. There are a few that have jobs and those that do have them already are a result of some connection with a school district back home or from a family member, etc. But it is a little encouraging in a weird way that i'm not the only one without a job still. I had a screening interview with KatyISD on tuesday morning, it was more substantial than I was thinking it would be but it went really well, except there are no job openings yet.

I will post pictures from the cruise Brittany and I went on when I get the rest of the pictures, we usually only took one camera with us everywhere so I only have about half.

Back to work on more assignments...

a little update.

I'm a college grad!

And I'm still looking for a job!

I went to Austin ISD's career fair this past saturday (the day after graduation) and was told the same thing over and over, 'it's still early and we don't know what positions we will have open, but we'll take your resume'. Oh and 'So do you coach?'. Pshh. So at least all of the Austin ISD high schools have my resume now so, there's that. I left Austin saturday and drove to Dallas (McKinney), and stayed the nite with one of my aunt and uncles because my whole family was getting together there on sunday for Mother's Day. Always good food and a lot of laughs when my family gets together.

I leave for my cruise on saturday! Brittany and I fly to Orlando saturday morning really early and then leave that afternoon on our ship to go to Cozumel, Belize, Honduras, and the Bahamas. I'm so excited!!

Oh and 3 more things:

1. The new McDonalds chicken biscuit breakfast thing is disgusting. I never go to mcdonalds but I wanted to get a drink on my way to my subbing job the other day and so I pulled in there and saw the sign and thought I would try their new copycat of Chik-fil-a's morning deliciousness and it was really gross. The chicken part anyway, it's pretty hard to screw up a biscuit, but the chicken tasted funky.

2. Chocolate skittles are also gross. Take my word for it. They are so artificially flavored its revolting. There are like 6 flavors in the bag, s'mores, chocolate pudding, brownie batter, caramel chocolate, some other gross chocolate flavor, and vanilla. I tried each skittle twice to make sure it wasn't a fluke and the only one I liked was...the vanilla. It tasted like the vanilla tootsie rolls, you know the ones in the blue wrappers.

3. Texas avenue construction is complete! Yes you read right, it is finished! Just in time for a significant decrease in overall trafiic due to the summer so I should be able to get to Target and HEB in less than 10 minutes now instead of 20 or 30 (in cases where I was a dummy and didn't take back roads).

Well, thats all for now.

it's over. sort of.

Today was the near-dreaded official last normal sunday of the year at Living Hope. The one I blogged about back in October and January. I knew this was coming and so I mentally prepared myself this morning telling myself things like, "this is not your last sunday so it's not a big deal", "you've already written letters to people and gotten tears out then", and "It's ok I sit upstairs anyway so it will be less intense and emotional". When the time came to take your little prayer request card up to the altar at first I didn't do anything because I didn't know what we were supposed to do upstairs. So I just contently started singing the first song and then people started going up to the front of the room so I was like, dang it. I filled out the card and walked to the front.

The tears were falling before I was even kneeling.

I started to pray and then a second song started which was when people could come pray over you and my hope group leaders/second parents came and each prayed with me and it was useless trying to wipe away the tears. Then the Moss', two of the most sincere people I have ever met and were on the spring break trip, each came and prayed. Then Barbara who I teach sunday school with came and was already crying so much she couldn't even talk which was fine with me because her long bear hug said more than enough and provoked at least as many tears as any prayer would have. Then Lynn, her husband came and prayed for me and I could feel his tears hitting my hands and then the time was up so I just spent the last few minutes trying to wipe away all the mascara off my face. The only thing that could have made me possibly cry more was if Jean, another lady in my hope group had been sitting upstairs, just being around her is such a blessing and I will miss her terribly, it will be a wound to my heart that will take a long time to heal.

It really hit me last week how grateful I am to have such amazing people in my life that I am so broken about leaving. That fills me with joy when I think about how blessed I am. I really feel sorry for college students who are not only not involved in their churches but have no relationships with people other than college students. I wish I could tell everyone who is not how much they are missing, but unfortunately I think it is one of those things that can only seem beneficial once you're involved and sadly too many college students only see benefits in terms of labels and facebook friends.

Anyway, I started crying again the second I left the parking lot and started crying again as I typed this post. I wonder how I will make it through my real last sunday at lh.

Now I'm off to go run for 20 minutes straight. Maybe I'll update about that later, it might have the same tearful result.