Thoughts on Churches Inspired By Christmas

We're here in Greenville with my family for Christmas.  Yesterday evening we went to Greenville ARP Church for the Christmas Eve service.  This is the church where I was a member for many years until I married and moved away.

This time has made me think about the nature of churches, both old and new.

Being part of a church plant is hard.  It opens your eyes to many things: for example just starting a Sunday school is difficult.  Redeemer don't have a good facility for it, nor enough numbers for sizeable classes, much less identified teachers and curriculum.  And the ongoing problem for church plants is here too: we don't have an established practice to run with, just experiences each of us have had from other churches.  But all that has to come together to make Sunday school happen, and your people need to make that happen.  Also, we're largely transplants to the area.  Thus, many if not most of us travel for major holidays, leaving our numbers lower at various times of the year.

A church like Greenville ARP has a very different feel.  The church is nearly 100 years old, has had ups and downs, but is currently growing, has a good facility (in fact seems to be maxing out), and plenty of organization, groups and activities.  I've been essentially gone since graduating high school nearly 20 years ago, but I'm still recognized by many there and some in the youth group are still there as parents themselves.

The thing is, Greenville ARP (like every church) started as a plant at some point.  I don't know the history, but it must have started with all the uncertainty, doubt, and messy-ness I'm feeling now.  Those planting a church don't know if it will fold soon, fold after they're dead, fall into bad theology, or flourish to 30, 60, or 100 fold in terms of people and years.  We plant in hope and prayer that the Lord would be pleased to use Redeemer to disciple a flock right now, and for it to continue as a witness of His grace to the time and place where it exists.

I suppose the situation of the early church was similar to a church plant - the fear and doubt of starting something new, no nursery plan, etc.  However, look at how the Church has spread over the world.  There is good reason to hope for one more part of the body of Christ to be established in a place. 

Another thought I'd like to share is the beauty of a long faithful history.  The Christmas Eve service brought that home to my heart yesterday.  There was a comfort sitting there and seeing so many familiar faces and knowing many have served in this one church for decades.  In our mobile society (and my own multi-state life), that is a feeling of groundedness and "home" I long for.  

Seeing the elders serve communion added to this sense of faithful history.  I recognized many of them, yet there were new faces there as well.  Knowing some of them personally still, and seeing them still serving communion to the people was a moving and beautiful thing.

Even some liturgical forms they use put me in mind of faithful service.  Greenville ARP serves communion by having the elders pass the plates of elements along the pews.  Perhaps it was my perspective of sitting in the balcony, but I noticed that each elder had to bend over or "bow" at each row to give or take the plates.  It served as a picture of their service to the congregation, not lording over them but lovingly serving them communion.  Another picture of service is in how the pastor is served communion.  After the elders serve the congregation, the pastor serves the elders, then elders serve the pastor.  This communicates that each of us needs to be served - no one can serve grace to themselves.  Greenville ARP has done this as long as I remember, and the picture painted there always strikes me.

This Christmas is bittersweet.  The world seems a terrible place with much evil and sin.  Our church plant seems small and an introvert like me struggles with hospitality and reaching out to others.  This is also likely the last Christmas with my dad alive as ALS ravages his body.  And yet, there is beauty in many places: faithful people, good family, and loving churches.  Memories, such as of my own father serving communion  as an elder help as well.  My faith is not in these things, but they point me to the body and blood of Christ, still held out by sinners to other sinners.  Whether we, our family, or our local church stands or passes away, we must pursue faithfulness to our God today.  

Merry Christmas, and I encourage you whatever your circumstance to look for beauty and faithfulness, but most of all to "Behold your King."

Pictures for KL

Theorems of the Paci

Having experience with three children now, I would like to put forward some theorems on the physics of pacifiers (pacis, binkies, etc.). These are all based on my observations.

Theorem of Paci Uncertainty: It is not possible to know the location of all pacis designated for a single child at any given point in time.

Theorem of Paci Induced Equilibrium: It is necessary to know the location of at least one paci at any given time in order to sustain equilibrium. If no pacis have a current known location, one must be located in order to ensure equilibrium can be achieved.

Theorem of the Paci Property of Substitution: When the location of one paci becomes unknown, the location of that paci will not again be known until another paci has been located first.

Theorem of States of the Paci: A paci may exist in a continuum of subjective states of cleanliness, which are only able to be evaluated by the observer (parent). The state determines whether the paci is suitable to use to restore equilibrium. Some factors affecting the evaluation of the state of the paci include experience of the observer, gender of the observer, subjective evaluation of the cleanliness state of the location where the paci has fallen, application of the "three second rule," average hours of sleep the observer has experienced that week, and how far away the system is from equilibrium.

I hope these thoughts help parents pursue further study regarding the paci.

Philip's Birth Adventure

First, the announcement for those who may not have seen: Philip McLeland Nickles was born 12/16/2010 at 1:46 pm. He weighed 9 lbs even and measured 20 3/4 in. long.

Tuesday, 12/14 - Appointment with doctor. Everything looked fine, and she seemed indifferent regarding an induction at that point. While I had an overall good induction experience with Lydia, I wanted to avoid that with Philip. However, the weather was weighing heavily on my mind. The previous weekend, we had a few inches of snow - it wasn't too bad, but, at the worst of it, going to the hospital would have been difficult and getting the kids to SC would've been even more so. Sad to say, the weather motivated me to schedule an induction for 12/17 (I wanted 12/16, but it was unavailable :) ).

Wednesday, 12/15 - Stephen and Lydia go to Greenville that afternoon. Lee and I decide to have a date night - dinner at Nick and Nate's (I have the spicy Kickin' Chicken sandwich in my last effort to move things along) and a movie (Harry Potter!). We drove home through wintry mix and slushy roads.

Thursday, 12/16 - c. 4 am, I awake with back pain - walking, water, etc have no effect. I was thinking this was it! By 6:00, I can no longer walk around and get my last minute things done. My contractions' strength and spacing are such that I decide to call at 7:30 and not wait for the office to open; midwife calls back and tells me to head to hospital.

8:00 or so, Lee has loaded and warmed car, and helps me over the super slick ice that is our yard to car. That's when we looked at the road and saw ice! Not thin, difficult-to-see ice, but thick ice that Lee could break into large chunks. Our road has quite a slope; icy slopes and our vehicles don't mix. The temp was almost 32 at this point.

Lee shovels the road - I think mainly to have something to do - until he realizes there's no way. I call Labor and Delivery and tell the nurse that we're not on our way and then lie down to try to slow things down.

Around 10:00 - Lee sees that road's ice is beginning to melt but will still be a while. He decides to call 911.

15 minutes later - The Cullowhee rescue squad begins to arrive. Very quickly there are least 5 male strangers around me in my living room listening to me talk about my contractions.

Soon after that - 4wd ambulance arrives. By this point, I definitely need help walking outside. Two people help me to the ambulance. Meanwhile, Lee is scrambling to move essential bags from the car to the ambulance. Lee rode in the front, but I must have asked 5 times whether he was there - we were NOT leaving without him!

On the way down our road - Lee realizes that the traffic resulting from our 911 call cleared our road enough for him to drive down in our car. Oh well.

11:00 - We arrive at the hospital. I am 7cm dilated. Labor continues naturally (another blog post to follow).

1:46 pm - Philip McLeland Nickles is born!! Whew!

One Month Old!

In honor of Philip's one-month birthday on Sunday, here are pics of all three at one month old.

Stephen:

Lydia:
Philip:

Review: God's Technology video

My wife was given the opportunity to download a free copy of God's Technology, a video about training our children to rightly use digital technology. It is produced by HeadHeartHand and features David Murray, a professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Here is a review.

Dr. Murray presents some guiding principles in how Christians should think about digital technology and some practical steps to guide children to learn how to use them.

Some things I particularly appreciated:

• He points to God as the ultimate source of digital technology and social media, and that He is to be thanked for them. 
• Training our children in how to use digital technology doesn't just focus on behavior, but on the heart. He encouraged interaction with our children about their online habits, both good and bad. 
• Digital monitoring tools are good supplements, but do not replace in person supervision, interacting, and good modeling.

As for the production, it is clean and professional. The visuals support the talk well without being distracting. My one complaint is putting in the animated clip about social networks in the middle of this video. I'm not sure it is necessary, and going between different production styles is jarring.

Overall though, I recommend the video for the practical advice that can be used with any age child on godly use of digital technology.

New Blog for Technology & Theology

Greetings all - I've started a new blog: A Theology of Technology

You'll find it here:
http://theotechno.blogspot.com/

It's a place to put my various thoughts on how to think about technology as a Christian.  Please come look if you're interested.

Commandment regarding the poor

But there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess—if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today. For the Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you. (Deuteronomy 15:4-6, ESV)

I've read this before, but it is an extraordinary command regarding:

1. How a nation should be a lender, not a borrower, and in being so, rules over them
2. There are to be no poor among you - and the chapter goes on to describe an economic system for how that is to take place.

See also v. 11 - that we will always have the poor with us.

It's been very interesting to read this section of scripture as a systems engineer and see how God was creating a whole way of life for his people.  That includes a law system, an economic system, cultural norms, and a whole worship system.  The whole thing admitted of The Fall and sin, and yet pointed the people to God and His grace and how to show that to each other.  This whole system was utterly different from the people around them.

I wonder how different just our family looks from our culture, or how much our church family looks different?  Admittedly, we're in a very Christianized area with many churches, so some things will not look different, but some will - and should.

December 2010

Click here to view these pictures larger

Technology and Short Term Missions

Interesting article about the relationship of technology to short-term missions. When we didn't have the ability to keep up with friends and family while in a far-flung place, this wasn't an issue as it wasn't really possible. However, now that the Internet is so pervasive, I would think it is a strong temptation for short and long term missionaries to remain closely connected to their home, with a consequence being that they are not fully engaged with the culture they are ministering to.

There's plenty that is good about technology in this sense. Those that support missionaries can get very timely updates about how they are and what needs they have. However, how to use the technology so that it serves this purpose but not to draw the missionary away from engaging with friends in their own culture is difficult.

Kristy and I have lived in three different towns since we were married. I'm very glad to keep up with some of our friends from the previous two towns via Facebook as I want to know what's going on with them. But, I can certainly see how people can get so involved with friends on Facebook that they don't make time for friends that are real and present here.

While I miss many people that are in other locations, I'm called to be with those that are here, geographically. In spite of Internet hype, geography is still an essential factor of life, and I think the more deep ministries (e.g., of the church) recognize that.

Failure is Not an Option

I recently read Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Kranz, a former flight director (among many other jobs) at NASA. He's the flight director that is the main focus of the Apollo 13 movie. It's his memoir of his life, focusing mostly on his time in NASA and on the missions he was a part of.

In short, I loved this book.  Spaceflight is terribly interesting to me, and I'm still amazed that they accomplished what they did with the technology available at the time.  But this book brings out the personalities of the many people involved. 

One thing that struck me was the amount of leadership, ingenuity, and deep expertise expected from everyone involved.  Many involved were from a military background and so naturally tended to leadership positions.  The great importance of the project made it necessary for only really good leaders to rise up - no "social promotion" or promotion based on years experience.  Definitely a meritocracy.  Also, leaders had to both know their technology backwards and forwards.  It wasn't enough to be a good manager, but you had to have come up through the system having not just the ability to look up information but the ability to pull it out of your head at a moment's notice. 

The ingenuity to deal with not just the extraordinary circumstances like Apollo 13, but designing everything from the rockets to the landers to the procedures to make it all happen in mission control to the communication system in such a short time was extraordinary.

I highly recommend it.

Forcing Tech on Others

A fellow named John Dyer has an interesting post on his blog about how since his father cannot access the Internet, he does not get all of John's updates about his life. He must use "older" technology like the phone or postal mail to keep up or send pictures.

This inspired a few thoughts.  One is that we have higher expectations of others to keep up with our lives.  We expect them to use the same tech we do, such as Twitter, Facebook, or just a blog, and to follow those in whatever way they wish to keep up with what we're doing.  That can be framed in a positive light as allowing others to choose whether or not to keep up with us.  It can also be framed as us expecting them to conform to our means of communication and to make sure they check it on some regular basis to find out if there's an update.  It seems to me that if we really value someone, we will want to keep up with them no matter the technology medium.

A second thought is that our communications to let others know what we're up to has become less personal as it has become easier to broadcast.  I remember when my mother would hand write individual letters to friends at Christmastime.  Family friends started writing a generic letter that was just copied and sent to everyone, and mom decided at some point to do that as well.  Kristy and I only do a generic letter at Christmas, as do most (maybe all?) of our friends.  Surely that's multiplied now as our Facebook status gets broadcast to anyone with permission to read it.  Now, it would take quite a bit of time to write individual letters, or even individual electronic messages to everyone I would like to send an update to.  The technology (copiers, printers, Facebook, Twitter) now facilitate broadcasting an impersonal message.  It's much easier, but I fear we've lost meaningful personal contact in the process of getting to this point.

What do you think?  What is lost and what is gained in terms of keeping up with people?

Blabberize!

This is a quick, fun project:

http://blabberize.com/view/id/333269

Pictures from Summer & Fall 2010

These are pictures from this summer and fall that I finally got off the camera.  This covers the local festival, VBS, beach trip, summer fun, Raleigh trip, birthdays, and Halloween.  I'm also testing out this embedded thing from Shutterfly to see how it works.

Click here to view these pictures larger

A graduate school story

Here's a fun story for those that are or were grad students.  I sincerely hope you have never had an adviser like this.


http://www.credenda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=206:heaven-taken-by-storm&catid=102&Itemid=122

Flu Shots

Kristy, Stephen, and I got flu shots yesterday.  I've been faithful in getting them since I had flu one time many years ago.  Stephen was scared, so I went first.  He was fairly brave though he cried a bit.  Soon after, he realized it wasn't that bad AND he got a sticker form the nurse and a rice crispy treat from dad.

I was thinking about this last night and realized I'm glad he's afraid of flu shots.  If a flu shot is one of the more scary things in his life, then he is in a much better situation than many other children in the world, even in our community  He has been spared hurts and traumas faced by many other children.  I am thankful for this for him, but sad for the many others.

Yes, still here

Yes, we're still alive.  Yes, we voted today.

First, the family update.  Kristy is at nearly 34 weeks and is BIG.  Her intuition says this baby is coming early.  I'm teaching a class this fall, so I think I'd better make the exam out early.  Also, I hope everyone understands if we don't get Christmas cards out this year on time.  Stephen is 6 now, and Lydia will be 3 soon.  I'll let Kristy talk about homeschooling, but Stephen seems to be doing fine.  He definitely has a math brain.  Lydia seems more social and talkative since being in preschool.

Due to how things get scheduled in the college, November is usually a really busy month for me.  However after some changes to how we do the electronic portfolios, that work came early in the semester.  Now I have time for all the other new tasks.  But, even when I come home exhausted, I remind myself to be thankful that I have a good job.

And so the election has come.  I cared more this time than previous times I voted.  I did a fair amount of research, even on offices I don't normally research like district court judges.  There were few races where I had a clear favorite.  Mostly, I either struggled between what I thought were two good options or two bad options.  I crossed party lines on a few.  Local politics are apparently very energizing and controversial to some around this area, if you believe the letters to the editor.  One local candidate said three was "civil unrest" in the county due to the incumbent.  I admit I hadn't noticed, outside the letters to the editor.  Still, one local race was decided by about 100 votes. Our state senator was elected by a margin of 200 votes.  The North Carolina General Assembly now has both houses controlled by Republicans for the first time since 1898.

Change is good right?  Our president said so about two years ago.  (Yes, I know what he really meant)

Homeschooling, here we come!

Well, Stephen is now "Kindergarten age," so our decision to homeschool is now "official." Our first day will be August 23. He has been in preschool for the past 3 years for 2-3 days/week while I worked. I'm done with my job, and I've been gently telling Stephen that once Kindergarten begins, we will be having school at home. He was reluctant at first, but thankfully, we have many friends who are homeschooled!

Here's a look at what we'll be doing!

Bible: The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos. We've been reading through this for a few months, and I like it! It's the level of depth I had been looking for since I felt Stephen had outgrown our other story Bibles.

Reading: About a year ago, we began The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise. I wanted to save money, so I bought only the book (the complete kit comes with already printed flash cards, audio version (I think) and a magnetic board with letters). Once we started reading I realized that Stephen needs the hands on experience. We hit a wall and took a break, I ordered a magnetic board with letters, and we should be on our way again!

Last week, Stephen got his own library card. He was quite excited! Our town is building a new library, so we'll definitely be making good use of that place.

When I bought Saxon K, I didn't know just how basic it was. Stephen has been speeding through it - it's like playtime to him. He loves the manipulatives and will play with tiles making patterns for quite a while. I plan to skim through the rest of the book, covering new things, and moving on to Saxon 1.
We'll be working through Mudpies to Magnets for science. We also have some science kits, which Stephen loves! He is certainly his parents' son...
I saw these workbooks at a homeschool conference and couldn't resist. I got a couple levels - just a little mental excercise. They'll be much easier once Stephen can read better and do them on his own!
I haven't done too much Stephen school with Lydia around. In the past, we have done everything while she naps, but that has turned out not to be Stephen's best working time. We'll be doing normal preschool things with her (and she'll be in a church preschool 2 days/week). Our big thing coming soon is potty training - oh boy!

Today's Checklist

Let's see how today went

• 1:30 am - get up with kids who are scared with the power out - check
• 8-ish am - get up with kids for breakfast, take care of sick Kristy - check
• lazy morning watching Gummi Bears - check
• keeping the laundry going - not really
• fix lots of different things for lunch for the kids that they don't eat - check
• drive 45 minutes to the nearest splash pad - check
• fun time wearing out the kids - check
• take pictures - nope, didn't bring camera
  
• drive back, listening to Paws & Tails (the kids liked it) - check
• stop for a "snack" at McDonalds and prove that daddy is a sucker - check
• put Lydia down for a nap - check
  
• mow yard - check
• shower and put self down for a nap - check
• be thankful Kristy is feeling better and making supper - double check

Hmmm...not bad.

Reading Lists

Lists of books to read combines two things that I've liked for a long time - reading and lists. One of my earliest ones was an attempt to read through all the Bobbs-Merrill Childhood of Famous Americans books in my elementary library (the older ones); I even kept a journal with a one-page entry per book I read. Well, I didn't finish that one, but I still remember a lot of the history I learned through them.


Another list was in high school - my 9th English teacher gave us a list of books commonly used in part of the AP English exam (here is a larger list). I used that list as my general reading list all through high school (didn't read all of those either, but I read a lot of great literature I might not have picked up otherwise). In grad school, to escape the constant science, I picked up biographies once more (not the Bobbs Merrill ones) and thought about reading through the US Presidents - that was in 2004, and I'm still on John Adams.

Now that I'm on the brink of homeschooling, I'm getting into new lists - lists to read to Stephen and Lydia and lists for myself to read in preparation. Also lists to buy for the future. With Stephen, I'm currently going through the preschool list in The Book Tree to find stories that he will like - a great resource!


Another list I'm adding to my lists is the Great Books. As I guide, I'm using Susan Wise Bauer's
The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. This list hits on many of the works she lists in the recommended reading for the rhetoric stage (high school age) in The Well-Trained Mind, which I plan to use as a guide in homeschooling my children. I'm going through chronologically (her guide is organized by genre) and reading the second book, The Iliad. We'll see how it goes!