TREVOR'S WRITING

We are renovating our upstairs bathroom...so I am going to jackhammer in my basement...makes sense to me. It definitely is something I don't get to do everyday:

I work at a church, I have attended a church my whole life and if I were completely honest I love church (probably a bit of a love/hate). I am scheduled to preach on March 29th and I was thinking about speaking about the church. However, I am not sure that I completely understand what church was intended to be, in fact, I think there are many times when I think that I have completely misunderstood what church is supposed to be about. Sometimes church seems to be misunderstood, sometimes people within the church do not represent it well, sometimes the way it is set up just does not work, sometimes the church does not seem to be at all close to what it should be... I have some thoughts on these questions, but I am more interested in yours. ...but what is church supposed be? What is it that church is supposed to accomplish? What is it that church is doing well? What is it that church is not doing well? Why is it that church is misunderstood? What can be changed about the way it is set u...

Seeing people is at the same time simple and difficult. I remember when I preached a sermon about 1 1/2 years ago. I spoke on the story of the good samaritan and talked about how we should learn from the people we normally look down on (those on the margins - for me...the homeless). I remember that someone talked to me afterward and challenged me on it. He said he knows a lot of people in the inner-city who are not good people at all, in fact they do a lot of evil things. What are we supposed to learn from them? At the time I said that the evil things are not what we are to learn from them, but that we can find some good. I have always felt uneasy about that conversation because I did not think I answered well. At the end of Tim Huff's book, Bent Hope, Steve Bell writes a Benediction. In it he says that Tim has an innate ablility to really see people. Not their problems and tragedies, not their lies, not the external decoys, but truly see who they are and that they are a p...

3 years ago Ben received a prize from his preschool teacher. It was a small bag full of a number of little things. There were little toys and trinkets, but the thing that immediately caught my attention was an unopened pack of Score Football Cards from 1991. I couldn't figure out why the pre-school teacher would be giving these unopened packages of football cards away. I cracked them open to see what was inside, it was a collection mainly of unknown (to me) football players. There was one that caught my attention, it was a Brett Favre rookie card. One of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game! I couldn't believe it. Ben took the other cards and played with them and eventually they were all worn out and in the garbage. But I took Brett Favre and placed him on my bedside table thinking I might have my children's college fund right there. Brett sat there and sat there, through the time I spilled a cup of water all over my bedside table, shoved under whatever I happ...

I have been thinking quite a lot about homelessness (over the last two years especially) and have come to all kinds of conclusions about myself and the things that I (and the church) need to do in order to help people who are in that situation. I have been involved in a few organizations who work with homeless people and met with many people to discuss what I/we should be doing to help. I finally discovered something very important that I can do right now. I am reading t his book called Bent Hope which is a really interesting read. The author is a Youth Worker who works with young people who live on the streets in Toronto. He walks the streets and hangs out with them and helps when he can. He basically just tells the stories of his encounters with people and talks a little bit about what he has learned from them. I am loving it! So, I know what I am supposed to do to help homelessness. In his book, pretty much everyone he encounters he mentions how they come from a family situa...

I got Jesus for President for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw really have inspired me to think more creatively when it comes to politics. It was very interesting to read it during the inauguration of Barack Obama and seeing the hope that people put in him. It would seem that a lot of people really look to Obama as a savior of some sort. Of course there are many others who look at him as something much different than a savior as well. This book argues that Christians should not put their hope in any sort of politician or political system but that Jesus really is the only Savior that we can truly put our hope in. Living like Jesus is the way we are political. Christian's started out as being anti-empire when Rome would have nothing to do with them. Everyone was forced to say "Caesar is lord," but this was the time that Christians took their lives into their hands and instead said, "Jesus is Lord!" I think that so ma...

After shaving you go to wipe shaving cream from your hair near the temples and it doesn't come off, because it is grey hair You remember life before computers The computers you first used were measured in kilobytes (Commodore Vic 20) You used to actually "dial" the phone You played Pong when it first came out You love 80s music You used to be able to beat teenagers at most sports, and now you have to cheat to do it You know you are not cool...and you really don't care (in fact you embrace your lack of coolness with bad jokes and purposefully wearing "bad clothes") 5 years seems like a short period of time Your sports heroes who you are sure just came into the league are retiring You are turning 35 today