Oregon Post


Cannon Beach

We got into Portland last night. We went to an amazing book store called "Powells" - It is HUGE.

This morning we went to Imago Dei - an emergent church.It grew from 20 to 1200 in 7 years. We have 1180 to go, 1179 after April.

I met with a couple of the pastors who were very nice and supportive. They have an amazing children's program. All the kids are photographed, are given a laminated badge that scans then into the computer. In order to pick them up , you have to be scanned in w. your matching badge.

Then we did some shopping - Portland has no sales tax. There was a big sale on Gap Red products so we bought a bunch of them. Then we went to Safeway to get some groceries. We went 30 minutes out of our way so I could get Krispy Kreme to guarantee I never ever ever reach my target weight - which I think I will reach half way through my cremation.

We are now in a beautiful cabin right on the beach at Cannon beach. It is a 1 bedroom suite w, a fireplace and full kitchen. It is fantastic. We are here until Friday and hope to completely relax. Adam was very excited by the beach, insisting we go out there, even though it was getting quite dark.

Also - Adam loves everything. He will often just blurt out random comments like:

I love ice.
I love candy.
I love doughnuts - he's never had a do-nut, so that was a surprise.
I love the car.
I love the road.

My goals are to relax and NOT read and books that deal with church planting, church administration, being a pastor or leadership. I have o.d.ing on these books for the past few weeks.

These are some of the books I have on tap for the week:

Streams of Living Water - Richard Foster
Devotional Classics - Foster
Lost in the Cosmos - Walker Percy
S - Sue Grafton - my first Sue Grafton book - I had never really heard of her before - In Stranger then Fiction, Dustin Hoffman's character is reading a Sue Grafton novel - and he was a literature professor, so she can't be that bad
Christian Meditation - James Finley

I love books on the spiritual disciplines and spiritual formation. I feel those of us in pastoral ministry need to have a healthy balance in the types of books we read. We should be constantly dipping in out of theology, contemporary fiction, literature, sp. formation, leadership, ecclesiology and biblical studies.

From Renovation of the Heart:

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character..... The drive toward good, which is naturally implanted in the human will by the Creator, is splintered, corrupted, and eventually turned against itslef as a result of practical self-deification, and all that accompanies it.

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