Imperishable Inheritance

Well, every once-in-a-while it’s nice to just write about what’s going on with me. After all, isn’t that what “blog­ging” is all about? Of the 187 posts I’ve done so far maybe around a dozen are truly per­sonal posts. So many essays, ser­mons, the­o­log­i­cal rants, etc. I guess that’s why I’m a “God Blog­ger.”

Any­way, beyond that worth­less intro­duc­tion. I am still very sick, and I have been for the last week. On Tues­day I couldn’t get out of bed until three, and needless-to-say I didn’t make it into work on Wednes­day. It was a mis­er­able week, and today I didn’t make it to church because I felt so ter­ri­ble. I’m really tired of being sick. Hope­fully this cloud is com­ing to an end.

I have spent the last three weeks look­ing dili­gently for a job. I have had all these “career coun­sel­ing” meet­ings with impor­tant peo­ple in the WPAFB IT scene. They all basi­cally tell me that they don’t have a job for me, but they would love to have me on board. What is tying their hands is that right now the DoD is in a hir­ing freeze for the next four years. I guar­an­tee that jobs in the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is going to boom in the next 5–15 years. The large major­ity of work­ers that I’m around are all baby boomers, and the sit­u­a­tion is the same through­out at least the DoD (and I’m sure the same through­out the Fed). So look out for good gov­ern­ment jobs, but right now that it isn’t help­ing me too much.

I’ve applied for a few indus­try jobs; tomor­row I’m going to apply for Lex­is­Nexis, but I have so lit­tle con­fi­dence right now that I’m going to find an IT job in the Day­ton area right now. It’s a shame, because mov­ing in with Matt was some­thing that I was excited about. It’s not too late, but it’s cer­tainly not look­ing good right now. Many of my MIS friends are grad­u­at­ing and rolling over into grad­u­ate school which really is a ter­ri­ble deci­sion. They’re (1) edu­cat­ing them­selves out of a job, and (2) those that grad­u­ated with a busi­ness under­grad­u­ate and get­ting an M.B.A. are hurt­ing them­selves, because M.B.A.‘s aren’t meant for busi­ness under­grads. It would be cool to do career coun­sel­ing. I’ve worked so hard in this respect over the last four years, and I have gained so much insight into the processes that fuel this.

Next topic. I’m really enjoy­ing my dis­ci­ple­ship times. I work indi­vid­u­ally with Andy Miller and Rob­bie Mey­ers both fresh­man. It is such a joy to see them grow. This is what Matt must’ve saw in me. The older guys in Cru­sade also started group dis­ci­ple­ship to get to more of the younger guys. There are so many fresh­man this year (and sopho­mores) that we decided to expose them to dis­ci­ple­ship in a group set­ting. Matt/Bobby, Chris/Jason, and Evan/I each lead a group. We’re going to do a “spir­i­tual boot camp” for the guys we’ve been work­ing with, but those details are secret. In fact, pre­tend I didn’t say that.

Bridges had our first Bible study, and the only per­son that showed up was Ale­cia and her part­ner. It seems like this class is going to need a dif­fer­ent approach. I still have peo­ple who need con­ver­sa­tion part­ners so let me know if you’re inter­ested! I still keep meet­ing with Jim Dud­dle­ston of Apex to fig­ure out how Bridges and Apex can work together. Last time we spent the whole time dis­cussing my objec­tions to the “house church” phi­los­o­phy at Apex when that was not what I went there for. It’s look­ing like noth­ing is hap­pen­ing quickly. Goals I still want to accom­plish with Bridges this year:

1. Inter­na­tional Friend­ship Affair
2. Reg­is­ter as an organization
3. Pre­pare new leaders
4. Write our strate­gic plan (in process)
5. Get con­ver­sa­tion part­ners for the rest of the Chi­nese students.
6. Work out some­thing with Apex
7. Lead an inter­na­tional Real Life

Perry, Bobby, and I are also going to lead an intro­duc­tion to apolo­get­ics sem­i­nar in early spring quar­ter. I will lead an intro­duc­tion to sote­ri­ol­ogy sem­i­nar (hope­fully with Jim Knapp or Matt). I think that’s the last of my goals for col­le­giate min­istry. It’s been a busy two years. I am lucky that I was ready and able to take on such a load of min­istry right after con­ver­sion, but that’s the nature of col­le­giate min­istry: “win, build, and send.”

Well, lastly I want to say that Chris Rice rocks, the pen­guins from Mada­gas­car are hilar­i­ous, and Holy Peo­ple, Holy Land has been a great read. Seri­ously, I watched Mada­gas­car like three times this week­end just laugh at those pen­guins over and over again.