Category: Personal News

I ran across this link today: Gas Prices State by State. Cal­i­for­nia, of course, tops the list for all the states–we even beat out Hawaii. I also learned recent­ly that real estate is cheap­er in Hawaii than here in the Bay Area. That just seems wrong on so many lev­els at once…

For all our friends and fam­i­ly, this is the cur­rent break­down of Cali ver­sus the oth­er places we’ve lived.

Cal­i­for­nia $1.93
Louisiana $1.60
Mis­souri $1.58

For the record, I have the best wife ever. Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day, Paula!

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I went to hear Tony Cam­po­lo speak at ‘Straight Talk’, a real­ly cool min­istry to busi­ness­peo­ple spon­sored by Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church.

He was real­ly funny–I’d always heard that he was a fun­ny guy, but he was REALLY fun­ny. He was also insight­ful. He con­trast­ed two basic ori­en­ta­tions to life (emo­tion­al and ratio­nal, peo­ple and prin­ci­ple, yin and yang, Pen­te­costal­ism and Pre­by­te­ri­an­ism) and talked about how Jesus was able to inte­grate them both.

When­ev­er I’m around a world-class speak­er I always try to glean some tips. He did­n’t do a good job of con­nect­ing with mem­bers of the audi­ence before­hand (we shared a break­fast table sep­a­rat­ed by one per­son and bare­ly exchanged two sen­tences), although I think some of that may have been due to the struc­ture of the event rather than his pro­cliv­i­ty (there real­ly was­n’t much of a chance to talk). He did an excel­lent job of using humor to make pro­found points, and was an out­stand­ing sto­ry­teller. In fact, his talk was real­ly a series of sto­ries con­nect­ed by some log­i­cal tran­si­tions.

He was also out­stand­ing at local­iz­ing his mes­sage. He had tons of jokes about Pres­by­te­ri­ans and Men­lo Park and oth­er things his audi­ence would res­onate with. I’ve got no doubt he’s giv­en basi­cal­ly the same talk many times before, but it felt fresh and spe­cial because of the local­iza­tions.

Side note: Tony men­tioned that he thinks Pen­te­costal­ism is the­o­log­i­cal­ly incon­sis­tent. I wish I had been able to talk to him about that… but duty called.

As soon as the meet­ing was over, I had to book it up to Wood­land to meet with two pas­tors (AGTS class­mate John Gal­le­gos and Jeff Bills), and then I drove to Sacra­men­to and met with anoth­er pas­tor (Eddie Rentz, the for­mer nation­al youth direc­tor for the Assem­blies of God: check out his google), and start­ed to dri­ve home just in time to catch the traf­fic jams.

After return­ing I vis­it­ed a stu­dent in his dorm room, and then came home around 7:30pm. Twelve hours on the road–not a bad day.

On a com­plete­ly ran­dom note, one of the dorms I lived in back in my under­grad days was demol­ished via explo­sives last week­end.

I always said it should be con­demned, I just nev­er thought they’d take me seri­ous­ly…

See the mul­ti­me­dia footage.

This morn­ing I heard from an old friend from col­lege, Rob-Dog McGuire. It was very exciting–I haven’t talked to Rob in over five years!

He’s work­ing with Teen Chal­lenge in New Orleans and seems to be doing quite well.

Any­way, if you’re an old col­lege friend and need to find Rob, drop me a line.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing we were up ear­ly to go hear Doug Fields and Bo Bash­ers talk about youth min­istry at an event spon­sored by the Church Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Net­work. It was great–CCN does these simul­casts from the Bay Area and they want a live stu­dio audi­ence. If you show up, you get in for free! There were prob­a­bly twen­ty peo­ple in the audi­ence.

It was inter­est­ing to see how well Doug worked the audi­ence. He’s a real mas­ter at con­nect­ing with peo­ple. Before the satel­lite broad­cast began he learned most every­one’s name, where the lead youth pas­tors were sit­ting, and made small talk with sev­er­al peo­ple. He remem­bered names and called on peo­ple direct­ly dur­ing his teach­ing. I was chal­lenged to get bet­ter at that.

Side note: I don’t think Doug real­ly liked me. He did­n’t dis­like me, either. It was just a weird vibe. Maybe it’s because I was­n’t dressed like a youth pas­tor; I mean, my shirt had but­tons and every­thing! It might also have been relat­ed to the fact that when Paula and I showed up one of the direc­tors asked us to sit in the cen­ter of the front row because every­one else was hang­ing back. His first impres­sion of us walk­ing out was prob­a­bly that we were some sort of weird groupies: we were dressed up and sit­ting in the cen­ter of the front row. And then we gave him weird respons­es: he asked all the youth pas­tors to raise their hands (and we did­n’t) and then he asked all the oth­er church staff to raise their hands (we did­n’t). I think we con­fused him.

Still, it was great mate­r­i­al.

After that we drove up to Tehama, CA. It’s way north, and pret­ty remote. We were to speak at the local Assem­bly of God church Sun­day morn­ing, so the pas­tor put us up in a hotel overnight.

I have to say that Tehama AG has the nicest church build­ing that we’ve been in so far. It’s the old­est AG church struc­ture in Amer­i­ca (built back in the 1800s) and it’s the old­est church in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Sim­ply gor­geous.

After the morn­ing ser­vice we drove down to Cuper­ti­no to speak at Abun­dant Life Assem­bly of God’s mis­sions ban­quet. That was fun.

Then we came home. It was a long week­end (with over 500 miles on the car), but it was great!

I should men­tion that I’ve com­plete­ly kicked what­ev­er bug had me down a few days ago. Thanks for all your con­cern and prayers (espe­cial­ly to Andrew Carea­ga, who remind­ed me that I had­n’t giv­en any updates on my con­di­tion: he’s a true e‑friend).

For the record, I am offi­cial­ly against being sick. I dis­like it immense­ly.

I have a dull body ache and have become a mucous fac­to­ry. I’ve been feel­ing a lit­tle sick ever since Chi Alpha’s Win­ter Con­fer­ence, but I thought I had kicked it yes­ter­day. Instead I kicked it into high gear.

*sigh*

Yes­ter­day Paula and I got up at 5:30am to dri­ve to a church in Sal­i­da to share with them about our min­istry, and then we drove to Sono­ra to share at that church.

We did­n’t get home until 11:30 at night!

Still, we had a great day. Both the church­es were swell (although very dif­fer­ent).

I’ve been mean­ing to post some reflec­tions on books I’ve read late­ly. Hope­ful­ly I’ll get a chance to do that some­time tonight…

Paula and I lived in Spring­field, MO for around five years, and so we were extreme­ly inter­est­ed to hear that they were hav­ing a snow­storm last week.

Paula got puck­ish and sug­gest­ed that I spread a lit­tle hol­i­day cheer, and so I sent my friends back in MO a pic­ture from our bal­cony along with this note:

I just saw a weath­er report for the Ozarks, and it filled me with such sor­row. How I miss the snow and ice!

I took a pic­ture from my bal­cony a few min­utes ago with you in mind. Look at what Paula and I are forced to tol­er­ate day after day…

Mer­ry Christ­mas,

Glen

Nat­u­ral­ly, this pro­voked a few spir­it­ed email respons­es.

What most sur­prised me was how many peo­ple respond­ed by send­ing back a dig­i­tal pho­to of their own. I’ve uploaded two of the best so you can con­trast them with my own provoca­tive shot.

I’d just like to wish all my friends in the state of Misery–I mean, Missouri–a very Mer­ry Christ­mas.

P.S. I’m wear­ing shorts and a trop­i­cal print shirt as I write this. I’d say I’m dream­ing of a white Christ­mas, but I don’t think a min­is­ter should tell white lies…