Seattle Half Marathon – Fatbet.net – Ragamuffin Challenge

So in the on-going saga of running in this half marathon . . .

I ran last night in the rain and wind.  Not great.  My mile time improved though.  I have a lot of work to do to get ready.

Michael H, Matt T, and Nate (who I don’t know)  have entered a fatbet.  This is a great idea, because as a dude, I don’t like losing, and our wager is the loser has to shave their legs.  My leg hair is actually quite full and lustrous (think Absolom, but on my legs).  So I really don’t want to shave.  As of right now, I’m winning.

I also jumped into the the Ragamuffin Top Challenge with blogger extraordinaire Carlos Whitaker.  


I’m trying to do this thing right.

And now for the hard part.  My initial weigh in on Sunday was 288 lbs.  that’s a lot!  It’s still not my highest weight ever, and my 6’3″ frame hides my flab well.  No one believes me when I tell them my weight.  So my goal is to get down to 268, which was my lowest point before Judah was born.  I think I can go even lower than that, but 20 lbs is definitely do-able and I need to break my goal down into chunks.

So far I’ve actually lost 3lbs since Sunday.  Which is is encouraging.

If you are considering doing this, I found this website which was helpful Half marathon training.

Let’s do this thing, and let’s not lose sight that we are running to give 5 girls a future that they would otherwise never have.

Running For A Purpose

So, maybe I’m a big moron, but I have decided to run in the Seattle Half Marathon.  That is a pretty big deal since I’m a pretty big man.  As a church we are running to raise money to send 5 girls in Kenya to a top notch school, so that they can have a future other than being a 3rd wife baby-machine. So this is a pretty big deal, and I want to be a part of it.  I’ll post a video we made with John Kruger, and Kelly Ushikubo as soon as I get it encoded.  John is the missionary connection to the Nehemiah Project in Kenya, and Kelly is the one who got people excited to run the Half Marathon in the first place.

On Sunday we launched this project.  I was preaching and I mentioned that I was thinking about running. After service I had several people talk to me who wanted to run with me.  And we started a fat bet.  So I was more in.  Later in the day, I heard that my friend heard that I WAS running and now he wants to run, so I’m pretty much running this race in the court of public opinion.  

Good Times.

Last night I went to the Lynnwood HS track, and I ran an 11 minute, mile.  I have a lot of work to do to get ready for this.  Anyone have any advice?

Today and This Week

Today I have the privilege of preaching in our morning services.  I’ve got a double header this week and next week.  Talking about Genesis 41, Joseph and Pharaoh.  I’ll post video later.  

Then right after church we are taking the youth group to OCEAN SHORES!!! Woot!  We are getting away for a few days.  Instead of camp with the network this we opted to do our thing.  which will be fun. I hope to see relationships strengthened this week between some of our older and younger students.  So that’s what I’ll be up to.

The Shaping of Things to Come -Review

I’ve been meaning to read Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost’s The Shaping of Things To Come, for quite a while now.  I actually purchased it from a book store in La Conner, where the owner had taken to heart the missional incarnational approach to ministry, that this book talks about.

Frost and Hirsch are proposing that the way that we have done church for the past 1500 years, is not going to work in our current post-Christendom era.  They then go to give examples of new ways that people are trying to reach their communities.  Including a church planter who started a shoe store in hopes of one day starting a church with the people who are buying shoes from the store.  Or coffee shops that provide a place for forum’s where people can build community and discuss ideas.  (That’s what the nextchapter.com was doing in La Conner).

Frost and Hirsch also talked about the different types of leaders that will be necessary to keep the church moving forward in this new era.  The Christendom model of church was attractional and assumed that people should come to us for all things religious.  But the New Testament model of Church was Go Out with the Gospel.  The types of leaders that thrived in Christendom were the pastor/teachers.  Frost and Hirsch advocate that we start to build churches around the Apostle/Prophet/Evangelist/Pastor/Teacher model.

It would be unwise to say that the church doesn’t need to change.  And Frost and Hirsch provide a lot of great ideas for how the church could change.  I would recommend this for anyone contemplating a church plant.  It might give you some great ideas on what your church could be instead of doing the same old thing.

I think this was a very helpful book, and I started reading it before I knew that it would be one of my texts for school.  So Yippee, I got this one done and out of the way.

Too Much Incoming Stuff

This post from Seth Godin is great.  He’s nailed it.  Today has felt very much like it’s all incoming information, and not just from my email.

I actually am working on only checking my email once or twice a day.  But it’s the phone calls, it’s the meetings, it’s the radio when I’m driving, there seems to be just too much information flying at me all the time.

How do you filter out your overwhelming information?

Great Post on the Shack and it’s Author

I appreciated the Shack for it’s display of the relationship between the trinity.  It’s a book that has brough a lot of healing to a lot of souls.  It’s controversial, and I get a lot of comments from people who don’t see the potential for grace in this text.  

Today I read this post from Bob.Hyatt, who had a chance to interact with Paul Young.  Great post.  All you shack haters please read it.  It might stop the hating, if you hear from the source.

If you’re wondering, I’ll probably be reading

So I’m going back to school.  Yeah I know, my life is crazy enough already, with a wife, a 2 year old, a baby on the way, a puppy and youth ministry.  I’m going to add one more thing Grad School.  Kathy and I talked and prayed about this, and we figured there really never is a good time to improve yourself.  There’s never a good time to go to the gym, there’s never a good time to read that book, there’s never a good time to take a sabbath.  So you just need to do it.

With that said I will be taking 2 courses this fall, and I was emailed my reading lists for those two classes. So my new years resolution of reading one book at a time will have to come to an end soon. Here are the books that I will be reading.

For Meaning of Christian Community

  • How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems
  • Lectures on Calvinism
  • Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works)
  • An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives
  • Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace
  • Leading the Team-Based Church: How Pastors and Church Staffs Can Grow Together
  • The Shaping of things to Come (I’m already reading this.)
  • Created for Community (I’ve already read this so I will be reviewing)
For Theology and Contemporary Media
  • Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry
  • Christ and Culture 
  • Film Art: An Introduction
  • Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue
  • Art And the Bible: Two Essays (Ivp Classics)
  • Plowing in Hope: Towards a Biblical Theology of Culture
  • Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture
  • Understanding Evangelical Media: The Changing Face of Christian Communication
So I’ll be pretty busy with reading in the future.