Obama's America

Read this. This election counts.

Pastor Von

I went on a one day trip to Mexico years ago. I wouldn't say it changed my life forever, but there was a man on that trip that people called Pastor Von that has forever been etched in my memory. Although I couldn't remember his face, I could remember his fearlessness, his blunt manner of speaking, and his loving determination to change lives.
Now, years later, as a youth pastor I sit here in my office thinking about cool things the youth group could do for the Lord and the name Von came to my mind. I knew two things about him: he worked out of San Diego, and he had a ministry where he brought people into Tijuana to clean/feed/help the impoverished. I decided to google "von mission trips" and nothing came up. Then I remembered someone mentioning him to me in an email a while back so I went into my yahoo mail and searched "von". Lo and behold, there was an email that mentioned Pastor Von's ministry. When I searched "Pastor Von" this was the first item on the list.
When the picture loaded, I recognized him. I also remembered the name of his ministry: Spectrum Ministries. When I saw he had a blog, I had to read it. And lastly when I read these words, a smile came over my face and I almost welled up in tears...I don't know why but these things are close to my heart. He wrote, after much talk about the dangers of Tijuana:

"Sunday I'm heading into one of the more dangerous areas of the city to preach. Does this make me a hero or a fool? Neither. I'm just doing what God wants done in a dark part of the city that needs a little light. I'm not preaching scared or walking scared."

Man, how awesome is that. We could use more of that in the world.

Reading List 2008

READING LIST 2008
GOAL: To finish reading 25 books by the end of 2008

So far I'm only about half-way to my goal. I'll try to jam in 13 books in November/December. (Does Go Dog, Go! count?)

Finished Books
1. Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen (2/19)
2. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy (3/1)
3. Life of Pi, Yann Martel (2/24)
4. Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, Randy Alcorn (3/3)
5. Poetics, Aristotle (2/28)
6. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (4/30)
7. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (4/28)
8. Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey (5/4)
9. The War of Art, Steven Pressfield (5/25)
10. Desiring God, John Piper (8/3)
11. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Prisig (8/12)
12. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (10/11)

Books in Process
1. Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould
2. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
3. Good-bye to All That, Robert Graves
4. Peace Child, Don Richardson
5. The Ultimate Priority, John McArthur
6. Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
7. They Like Jesus But not the Church, Dan Kimball
8. Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

Books I Want to Read
1. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
2. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler
5. Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
6. Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
7. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
8. Spiritual Leadership, J. Oswald Sanders
9. Heaven, Randy Alcorn
10. The Seeing Eye, C.S. Lewis
11. The Satanic Verses, Salamon Rushdie
12. The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren
13. Penrod and Sam, Booth Tarkington

The Church

The church is a group of sinners who are saved by grace through faith. Though the church consists of humans, it is called to do the humanly impossible.