Dreams Unlocked

Saw "An Inconvenient Truth" - man what a powerful film. It it basically a slide show on global warming that Al Gore has given around the world. It intersperes the show with vignettes from Gore's personal life, like losing the election. It prompted me to contact arocha - a Christian environmentalist group - they are international but have a Canadian chapter which is conveniently headquartered in Surrey. I hope to get them to speak in the fall at first@night. I am packing up my stuff - our flight leaves at 11 tomorrow. Will update you from beautiful Saskatoon!

(The Rev. Dr. being mauled by Dr. Loeppky esquire) Well - the switch to Firefox has gone quite smooth. Thanks to Jamie and Nick for informing me about how to switch my bookmarks over. Firefox seems to run faster and smoother then safari, which is nice. Hung out this afternoon with a fellow Resonater from Toronto who is leading an emergent church in Missisauga. It's called the Journey - sounds like he is on to a good thing over there. I was channel surfing just now. There were 4 different reality competition shows on - 2 about people becoming a rock star - they look like the exact same concept, a comedian one and a dancing one. I am waiting for Trinity Broadcasting to start a preaching reality competition show - I'd like to enter it. I'm eating Oreo ice-cream out of the bucket it came in which I think is quite depressing. It makes me imagine a scene where I am a middle aged overweight blue collar single guy, who comes home from work and has his chair close to the tv, the lig...

I am switching browsers from safari to firefox - the only thing is all my bookmarks are on safari so I'll have to start adding them on to here. I was in Josh's office today and I was flipping through the latest issue of Relevant magazine. I have never really looked through the print magazine, although I read the on-line version almost daily and have written for them in the past. I was a bit disappointed - not in the magazine itslef - lots of good articles and nice layout and graphics etc etc. What disappointed me was all the glossy ads for books and conferences for church growth. It looks like emergent has now been commodified. "Get you emergent church in 5 easy steps!" - at least that's what it felt like. So like everything else emergent has been sucked into the great American consumerist machine and is a commodity like Coca-Cola and ipods. Tsk Tsk. I am sort of holidays now - I have a couple of meetings tomorrow and then that's it for a couple of weeks. Adio...

Spent all day holed up in my glass box in the sky. Did final sermon prep. and the service outline. Headed down to the church around 5. Set up and waited. Brent was already there of course - old faithful. Amy came right on time which was awesome - she is such an encouragement. slowly more people trickled in. I think we had about 30 people - some tourists from england and australia. I think the service went really well - some cool audio-visuals and I spoke on U2. We also had communion. Was pretty tired after though - I think I've said it before - there is nothing like the feeling after preaching - it is a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual depletion. We head home to SK on Thursday. Have to wrap a few things up and I'll b ready to enjoy sunny SK.

It is hot - too hot. spent most of the day indoors except for an ill advised foray onto a bar patio on granville where my Mojito came to $10.44!!! Had a coupon to a yaletown clothing store for my b-day so i bought a nice summer shirt. Also Holt Renfrew now has a kids section - hang on - there was a major sale on which put the clothes within our budget. There was this totally ridiculous garish multi-pastel sport jacket. I put adam in it and let him walk around. He looked like a midget retiree in Florida - he just needed the white shoes. I wish I had had a camera but you're probably not allowed to take pictures in that store. We also happened to find the only friendly clerk in that whole store. Most of the time the people working there are pre-occupied with... nothing instead of helping you. I taped the Riders game which I am now about to watch. Go Riders.

I have decided that listening to my ipod while biking around vancouver is one of my favourite all time activities. It's just such a rush to have the Stones, Radiohead or U2 in my brain as I weavein and out of traffic in busy downtown or am on one of the sedate trails right along the water. On the topic of music I bought the new Thom Yorke - Eraser. This is a really really good album. Songs of paranoia and longing for these difficult times. Also got the new Bruce Cockburn - he's still a good lyricist and guitarist but his voice is starting to get to me. I think I have seen him in concert more then any other artist - including U2. Going to see him again in November - I have 2nd row center at an auditorium just around the corner from us. Saw the physiotherapist for my leg today. He said I'm messed up. He did an ultrasound on my leg! I wanted to ask if it was a boy or a girl. Also went to Regent to pick up some books - 2 books on U2 - i'm preaching on them on Sunday. Also O...

Rock on. Had Dim-Sum for lunch - Yum Yum. I believe Adam has officially entered his terrible 2's. He is defiant, loud and quite bratty - though not all the time. At lunch he was quite bad bu then calmed down when he had some food in his tummy. After lunch we went to the Lacoste store next door. They were having this big sale. I wanted to get Adam a Lacoste Polo because I thought it would be quite cool - but the shirts were 65 bucks!!! Sheesh - I'm not spoiling him that much. Felicia ended up buying me a really nice shirt which was really nice of her. Got tons of work done this afternoon - felt good. I cooked dinner tonight - Salmon - it was really really good - I was surprised. Leadership meeting tonight - it rocked!!! This was the most positive I have felt in a long long time. Thank God - the fire is coming back. I think we are closing in on a new name for the church - my choice for Urban Sanctuary was shot down. I think we are happy with Yaletown Church - it is short and too ...

Went and saw "Prairie Home Companion" because I like Robert Altman - big mistake - SNOOZERS!!! There were some ok moments but overall pretty disappointing. Whenver I go to a movie in Tinseltown theaters I always take a corresponding walk through the downtown east-side. Today I had my bike so I went for a ride. I cued my ipod to the opening song from the Inside Man movie - which is a totally rocking Indian film song. Man - talk about trippy. There is so much action in the downtown east-side. It reminds me of India in that way - there is always something to see. I saw a girl smoking from her hash pipe. I saw a skinny girl whose excess skin flapped over her tight jeans. I saw several guys with no shirts slaving behind their shopping carts. What a trip.

back home. the weekend was good, but seemed a bit rushed. i'm glad we went. There were a lot of obstacles to getting there. Several people had tumultous weeks. We came close to cancelling it. But now I see why there was so much opposition. we had a break-through on Saturday morning. the Holy Spirit broke through all our pretense and facade. With hearts open raw He came and worked among us. It was awesome. this weekedn I also read that Willow Creek is ending its Axis ministry to 18-30 yr. olds. This is after 10 years of ministry. Dan Kimball wrote an excelllent piece on why the "church within a church" scenario rarely works because the pasot of the generataionl church continually has to report to a sr. executive of the mother church. But I do not find that to be a problem at First Baptist. This is largely due to Tom Cowan's flexibility as a leader.He also does not really hold on to things too tightly. He leads with an open fist. Also last night - Dale drank tea which ...

Through many dangers, toils and snares we finally made it on our home group retreat on Boewen Island. You would not believe the debacles that came up in getting here. Anyways, we had our first session this morning. It was simple - share where you are at in your life - and here's the kicker - be honest! I led by example and opened up about some things I had been dealing with. And slowly one by one the walls came down. Tears were spilled - As I prayed for two people in particular I started to sob and could barely talk. THAT HAS NEVER EVER EVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE. I chalk it up to emotionalism and the fact that I slept for about 15 minutes last night. Anyways, it was a fantastic time and I only wish the entire home group had been there for it. Then we were going to go for a walk around the lake but we ended up at some rocky beach instead. then we had gelato's at my friends gelato place up here. I saw him just as he was leaving - Carlos - actually his place is a chocolate store ...

Yesterday I feel tired so I have a nap in the afternoon. I wake up with an all over body ache and extremely fatigued. I am sick and it sucks. I always feel so angry when I am sick. Angry at being sick. Angry at whatever it is that makes me sick. I am congested and everything hurts and I am whining. Had to cancel 2 appointments. Felicia tried to get some paper work done at the church and was brushed off by the person she had to meet. So she's in a crappy mood now too. Saw End of the Spear last night - its the story of Steve Saint the son of one of the martyred missionaries in Ecuador. It's pretty good - a bit slow inthe middle. When we were in Parksville I bought my first copy of Wired magazine. someone recommended this magazine to me 10 years ago, but I had never read one before. My loss - what a great mag. I may even subscribe to it. basically it charts how technology is changing the human condition. I have something to say about leadership but will wait until tomorrow.

(above - adam holding court in tofino) There are a few web-sites I check everyday. The Drudge Report is one of them. Drudge covers a wide variety of news events. Imagine my shock when I read the headline of bomb blast in Mumbai. I turned on CNN and watched in horror. I used to live in Mumbai in 2001. I took those same trains and got off at some of the stations where the bombs went off. I still have friends that live there and have been unable to reach them. This is India's 9/11. I am now officialy entered in the Victoria Marathon in October. I went for a run today and had the same pain in my left calf as when I was running the half marathon. I now have to see some kind of physical therapist to fix me. That sucks. Look at the disparity between those 2 scenarios. In Mumbai there is carnage, death and violence. In my little life I whine about some pain in my leg. We are petty people with our ipods, lattes and designer clothing. I hope people in the 2/3rds world are praying for our spi...

Yesterday was a historic day for first@night, for me and 2 friends. Brent and Mike got baptized by me!!! The first baptisms I've ever done! How thrilling! We did it at sunset beach and it was totally beautiful. Couldn't have been a more perfect setting. Today i totally crashed. Physically, emotionally and spiritually spent. Spent most of the day hibernating at home. did some reading and sleeping. Ready to hit the day running (literally) i'm going to start trainging for the victoria marathon.

I got props from a long lost friend who read the blog and liked it. So that made me feel good. Got back into town last night. Had pizza on Commercial Drive. As we were driving back we pulled up next to the Welch's. They followed us to our place and hung out for a bit. They had tried taking Olivia to a concert but she tried to sing too so they only saw 1 song. As we were visiting Adam all of a sudden started coughing and crying really bad. Turned out he was just exhausted. Got the new johnny Cash - Really good - although you can hear how weak his voice had gotten as he neared the end. There is a really touching tribute by Rick Rubin. I miss Johnny Cash. Thom Yorke has a solo album coming out on tuesday. Will pick it up. It's funny - with itunes I don't really buy cd's anymore, i just buy files off of itunes. It is fairly rare that I buy a cd in a store - so this is quite a lot of excitement for me - back to back cd's! Today I preach on Superman and then we do our fi...

We are in Tight-na-mara at this incredible resort on the ocean in Parksville. (http://www.tigh-na-mara.com/) This is the perfect holiday spot I think - very relaxing and TONS of stuff for kids. They have regular supervised activities for children, as well as babysitters. The resort has this incredible spa with mineral pool - unfortunately almost all of the massage treatments are booked up. We are here for a Baptist pastor and spouse retreat - as well as our local denominational assembly - I speak on Saturday on church planting. I came to the lounge because they have wireless here and wanted to check my e-mail. I had hoped to do some reading but there were 23 e-mails to check. Ended up making a few phone-calls as well. In 5 minutes I will go back to our beautiful ovean view room and fetch the boy - he has his kids program tonight which includes his dinner! Incredible - Felicia and I will have like 5 hours to ourselves!

ho-hum day. had staff meeting this morning. as the summer goes on, staff meetings are getting smaller and smaller. we finished really early today which was nice. still slogging through volf's "exclusion and embrace" - this book is affecting me in a deep way, much like willard's renovation of the heart. been pondering changing my profile pic. maybe every couple of mths. i'll change it. got the sermon done - will post part of it next week. getting ready for parksville now - can't wait! it's going to be so nice to be by a beach again. i am speaking on saturday about church planting and first@night - this is the bc area assembly of the baptist union - i hope i can fire them up about church planting!

the celebrity encounters continue. tonight i treated felicia to oysters at rodney's oyster house. a couple w. 2 young kids came in. the dad brought his kids up to the tank w. the crabs and lobsters. i also took adam up so we started talking. his son and adam are 2 mths. apart. i asked him where did oyu have him - he said, oh los angeles and she (pointing to his daughter) was born in new york. so i said are you on vacation. he said yeah. after a minute of talking about our boys, i asked him if he was an actor and if he was in the show "saved" (a new tnt drama about paramedics). he said yeah. so i said that they shot a scene in front of my friends house who had just had a baby and they wanted me friend to push the baby in a stroller, except he would have had to have done it for an hour and a half. this guy, who it turns out is the actor tom everet scott said that's crazy. tom everet scott is probably best known as the drummer in the tom hanks movie "that thing you ...