Major Select

I have been off line for a while because I have been just so busy. That doesn’t mean I am important, it just means I haven’t been taking time to spend on the computer that could be spent elsewhere, probably to greater profit. I owe several posts, but I figured I would start with this one, since it is a fairly big deal for me and the family but is really not all that momentous that it deserves a ton of explanation.

The other day (way back in June), the Air Reserve Personnel Center announced that they had selected several people for promotion to Major and I was one of them! That means that next May I will be a Major in the US Air Force Reserve. More to follow, it’s breakfast time at our house!

Too Much to Talk About

It seems like I never have the time to post, but when I do have the time to post, there is so much to talk about that I can’t decide what to talk about so I don’t end up posting.

I have what I consider to be exciting news!  I will be activated by the Air Force starting tomorrow.  The request is for me to do 7 months, but for now the orders will be for 4 months and they will see if they can extend the additional 3 months in September.  I have been shocked by the Air Force’s ability to get this done in a quick fashion.

This is a huge deal to my family financially.  We struggle to get by on my Nebraska state employee salary, but Uncle Sam has always been good to me.  The only real drawback is the commute.  I will commute from home every day, which means 150 miles round-trip every day.  The good thing is that the commute is all 60-65 mph road, so it typically takes me 75 minutes to cover the 75 miles one-way.

Obviously I am excited about getting started.

In other news, Gina and kids are doing well and are wrapping up the school year to enjoy the great outdoors.  The other night we hid out in the basement for a while as the winds were 60-70 mph and we were under a tornado warning.  Abby is growing so fast and now rolls over at will and has started to sample various foods.  Annabelle (the cow) seems to have mastitis, so we are working on helping her fight that but are relieved that we think we have found the problem.  Bert (her calf) is a cute guy that doesn’t want anything to do with us;  Annabelle is at least very sociable, though.  The goats are doing well and growing.  We spent yesterday moving chickens out of the coop and cleaning out the coop — we now have a huge compost pile!  The hens seem to be doing well out on the pasture, although that coop lost its roof the other day, leading to emergency repairs.  The rabbits kindled yesterday!  We know one of the litters had 8 kits in it, but we didn’t inspect the other litter.  We are very excited about our growing collection of rabbits.  The kittens have been growing; unfortunately we still have three of them.  They are funny to watch and are learning to accept our presence.  We also have 100 chicks (minus the 5-6 that have died) in our basement ready to move into the coop today.  These are all meat birds that I look forward to eating someday.

Gotta go…

May 2008 Fitness

I have been out of the fitness gig for a while, but I am headed back in with my upcoming tour in the Air Force.

23 - Ran 1 mile, walked/jogged 1 mile
25 - Ran 1.5 miles
27 - Ran 2 miles in 18:20 roughly
31 - Ran 3.25 miles

Two New Members of the Family

Yesterday the newest members of our family arrived!

As of now, they are unnamed, but we have a two-year-old cow and her first calf, a little bull calf.  They arrived here on May 6, the calf having just been born on May 4.  What a blessing we feel.  Please pray that we won’t be frustrated by the new experiences we will be facing.

Define The Church

It has been a while since I posted and I don’t have much time today, but I want to write a post in the near future about the church.  So, for the two of you who read this blog, I want to ask you to define the church.  I think this will be a fun and exciting study.

Comment sent to Governor Rick Perry of Texas

I am a former Texas resident and still a licensed Texas attorney.  Seeing what is going on in Texas with the FLDS compound is greatly distressing to me.  I DO NOT AGREE WITH ANY VIEWS HELD BY THE FLDS, but I fail to see how what is happening in Texas isn’t a complete and utter violation of the constitutions of Texas and the US.  As I understand it, based on the allegations of one 16-year-old, state and local authorities of interrupted (devastated) the lives of hundreds of families.  And state authorities are pointing to the fact that many children don’t have birth certificates as though this is some reason to delay the return of these children to their parents.  I am disgusted and considering making a trip to Texas to see if I can help these families fight back against such a tyrannical government that seems to believe it can disrupt any family it chooses whenever said government chooses.  Like I said, I don’t agree with their beliefs, but at the same time, these people are pursuing a dream and a vision and the state of Texas is pillaging the whole community because of the allegations of one teen girl.

Hi! My Name is Don, and I’m an Attorney.

It’s true.  I try to keep this fact hidden most of the time at work, since I don’t want the inmates to know.  I do want the staff to know so they can turn to me for legal help.  A couple of things have happened recently to make me willing to admit my profession.

First, I got an application form from the state bar, asking me if I wanted to be signed up for the referral service - it only costs $100 per year, but I would have to have professional liability insurance, which would cost another $400-600 dollars for the first year and would grow over the next 6 years to cost about $1100 per year.  I am still considering whether I want to enroll in that and incur that expense.

Second, while shopping for a cow, I ran into a lady who has a bunch of legal needs that I would love to help out with, but I haven’t heard from her in a while.  The beauty of that situation, of course, is that I might be able to say I performed legal work in exchange for a cow.  How ‘country lawyer’ does that sound?

Then, this past week, I met with a couple that has had a very bad month.  First, the husband got a DUI.  Then the husband was arrested on false charges and spent two weeks in jail.  The husband’s false charges have been dropped, but now the wife has been charged with her own set of offenses she didn’t commit.  The husband would also like to be naturalized and then work on the citizenship for his wife and two oldest children.  I wanted so much to help out with the false charges, but feel like there is a conflict of interest since the charges were brought by the State of Nebraska and I work for the State of Nebraska.  I hope to help them with some of their other legal issues, but need to do some more looking.

So now I am wondering if I should back off on how much I am working at the prison so I can have more time to work on legal and farming stuff.

Plus I am feeling more than a little overwhelmed at the thought of running any cases on my own.  I have always had a vast support network, plus free, unlimited access to legal research materials.  Now I will be trying to do all this work on nights and weekends using free resources.

The other issue is that I have never directly billed my clients.  I have always been paid a salary and then just poured my soul into my work.  Now I have to determine what my services are worth.  I have never had to figure that out before.  I want to stay away from an hourly billing framework and want to go with what is called ‘value-billing.’  Really it is just billing by the job rather than by the hour.  I know without a doubt that I will undercharge during my first year, because I won’t feel right asking for what I should get.

Garage Roof Done

Yesterday evening we finally finished the garage roof.  That roof has been my nemesis for months now and has been a source of near-constant frustration.  It all began with the trusses that didn’t stand vertically, then the struggles to put up roof sheathing, tar paper that blew away in our ‘breezes,’ and a chimney that I’m still not sure is done right.  But yesterday we all worked hard at laying shingles and last night I finally put shingles over the ridge line, completing the shingling.  Now I just need a good evening to slather on the roofing cement in the areas that need it.  Finally, no more water (I hope) pouring through the roof and getting all my tools and nails wet.

The other day (Thursday) we were all on the roof working (Gina, Caleb, Meagan & I).  Abby was inside sleeping.  The wind was blowing hard and we were all thinking about quitting, but I was afraid that would be the last nice day to work, and I was dreading letting any more water pour through the roof.  Then we noticed that the ladder had been blown over in the wind, so we were all stranded on the roof.  Gina and I argued over who would jump, when we noticed a car coming along the road.  We ran to the peak of the roof and tried to wave them into our drive, but they just waved back at us.  Then Caleb volunteered to jump.  So we lowered Caleb down and dropped him the last foot.  He was so brave and courageous.  What a joy it was to see him drop down from the roof and run around and lift the ladder back into place.  My hero!

How the Pastoral Role Damages Body Life

I have been reading the book Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna.  The subtitle to the book is “Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices.”  The basic premise of the book is that most of the practices that modern churches engage in are traditions that are rooted in pagan culture, not the Bible.  The inside dust cover states:

Many Christians take for granted that their church’s practices are rooted in Scripture.  Yet those practices look very different from those of the first-century church.  The New Testament is not silent on how the early church freely expressed the reality of Christ’s indwelling in ways that rocked the first-century world.

Times have changed.  Pagan Christianity? leads us on a fascinating tour through church history, revealing this startling and unsettling truth:  Many cherished church traditions embraced today originated not out of the New Testament, but out of pagan practices.  One of the most troubling outcomes has been the effect on average believers:  turning them from living expressions of Christ’s glory and power to passive observers.  If you want to see that trend reversed, turn to Pagan Christianity? . . . a book that examines and challenges every aspect of our present-day church experience.

I have been reading this book whenever I get a chance (which isn’t very often), but I just finished chapter 5.  Speaking of which, check out these chapter titles:

1. Have We Really Been Doing It by the Book?
2. The Church Building:  Inheriting the Edifice Complex
3. The Order of Worship:  Sunday Mornings Set in Concrete
4. The Sermon:  Protestantism’s Most Sacred Cow
5. The Pastor:  Obstacle to Every-Member Functioning
6. Sunday Morning Costumes:  Covering Up the Problem
7. Ministers of Music:  Clergy Set to Music
8. Tithing and Clergy Salaries:  Sore Spots on the Wallet
9. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper:  Diluting the Sacraments
10. Christian Education:  Swelling the Cranium
11. Reapproaching the New Testament:  The Bible is not a Jigsaw Puzzle
12. A Second Glance at the Savior:  Jesus, the Revolutionary

This whole book has been fascinating to read as I try to discern what God intends for His Church.  I believe firmly that God did not call some to be pastors as we see them today.  I am also firmly convicted that God did not call us as believers to build buildings or temples.  He called us to gather whenever and wherever we can and to live lives of service.

The unscriptural clergy/laity distinction has done untold harm to the body of Christ.  It has divided the believing community into first- and second-class Christians.  The clergy/laity dichotomy perpetuates an awful falsehood — namely, that some Christians are more privileged than others to serve the Lord.

Permit us to get personal.  We believe the pastoral office has stolen your right to function as a full member of Christ’s body.  It has distorted the reality of the body, making the pastor a giant mouth and transforming you into a tiny ear.  It has rendered you a mute spectator who is proficient at taking sermon notes and passing an offering plate.

But that is not all.  The modern-day pastoral office has overthrown the main thrust of the letter to the Hebrews — the ending of the old priesthood.  It has made ineffectual the teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14, that every member has both the right and the privilege to minister in a church meeting.  It has voided the message of 1 Peter 2 that every brother and sister is a functioning priest.

Being a functioning priest does not mean that you may only perform highly restrictive forms of ministry like singing songs in your pew, raising your hands during worship, setting up the PowerPoint presentation, or teaching a Sunday school class.  That is not the New Testament idea of ministry!  These are mere aids for the pastor’s ministry.  As one scholar put it, “Much Protestant worship, up to the present day, has also been infected by an overwhelming tendency to regard worship as the work of the pastor (and perhaps the choir) with the majority of the laity having very little to do but sing a few hymns and listen in a prayerful and attentive way.”

But there is something more.  The contemporary pastorate rivals the functional headship of Christ in His church.  It illegitimately holds the unique place of centrality and headship among God’s people, a place that is reserved for only one Person — the Lord Jesus.  Jesus Christ is the only head over a church and the final word to it.  By his office, the pastor displaces and supplants Christ’s headship by setting himself up as the church’s human head.

Escape From Sobibor

Over the past two nights, Gina and I watched “Escape from Sobibor.”

Sobibor was a nazi death camp in eastern Poland and is also the site of the largest successful escape.  From what I can gather, this was a made-for-TV movie, so it is without bad language or on-screen violence, but this definitely does not make it child-appropriate.  There is much off-screen violence, and obviously the themes of the movie should be disturbing to most.  The acting is a bit wooden at times, but the movie is so powerful because it details and illustrates such a horrid time in our past.  It is just hard for me to believe that such crimes could be perpetrated, and yet I don’t doubt that these things happened.  And they only happened 65 years ago.  This movie led me to a better understanding of how these camps worked, but it also gave a frightening glimpse into the psychological torture the prisoners underwent.  The prisoners did anything just to survive, but ended up living with so much guilt because of the way they had to deal with the death of their families and friends.

Overall, I recommend this movie to any adult.