Gilroy and Santa Cruz

I just got bck from an overnight business trip to Gilroy and Santa Cruz. I stayed last night at my mom's house. We went to see 'Frost/Nixon', which was just an amazing movie. Frank Langella should be a shoo-in for Best Actor at next year's Oscar's. Watching vit also makes me want to back and watch some of the original interviews with David Frost and Richard Nixon. After the movie Mom and I went back to her house, made crab cakes for dinner, drank Martinis and wtched Jeopardy.

Christmas is over

Here it is Dec 29. Christmas was pretty wonderful this year. We had some great family time with my family and then we traveled down to Southern California to see CHrista's paretns on the 26th (at 5 AM). I flew back yesterday because I had to work but Christa and the kids are stayng down there until Friday or so.

So I've got a few days to myself. Take down all the Christmas stuff, clean the house...relax and read. I miss my family but someties it's good to have a few days.

Holiday Greetings

HAPPY SOLSTICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You pagans happy now??????

Devils Lake

After all my ranting nd raving about this pastoral search and wondering what is going on, I get an email out of the blue from a church in Devils Lake, North Dakota, which is interested in talking to me about their Pastor of Discpleship position. Not exactly an ideal location, right???

I'm going to respond to them and talk to them, but I'm not putting anything else on hold for this. We're still going to start looking to move come January. Who knows if anything will happen with this church, and besides, what about the location? I'm tired of trying to figure out what God is doing

Post-Mammoth reflections

I've recevied a lot of suypportive emails since I posted yesterday about Mammoth and also sent an email out to a bunch of friends. My friend Matt had some interesting questions which I would like to vreflect on.

He asked me first about planting my own church. I've never thought of myself as a church planter. Being an evangerlist is not in my pastoral DNA as much as it is in some others. So I can't really seeing this happen in an intentional way. But there is always the chance that something like this could happen with God working on it and I being unaware of it. I think that vwith a little spiritual elbow grease George and I could have turned out Bible study in the late 90's into a church.

I donj't have a certain church size in mind. The Mammoth church was about 75 or so. There are probably a lot of smaller churches that are looking for pastors but there is always the issue (even though it should not be a reason to go into ministry) of whrther a church that size would bre able to pay enought for out family to live decently in the surrounding community.

I think perhaps that God might have something out there that I'm not contemplating (it ain't Orthodox, though...give it up ). I don't know what that might be. We're going to see what happens in the next couple of months as we begin to make preparations to rent out this house and maybe buy a bigger one elsewhere.

Mammoth Lakes update

Mammoth Christian Fellowship in Mammoth Lakes isn't going to work out. They send me an email telling me I wasn't their guy. They wanted someone with more Senior Pastor experience (they knew I had none going in) and they also wanted someone with extensive youth ministry experience (this never was mentioned at all before this).

So. Now what? We've been at this for 18 months now. I've gotern really close on some things but nothing has panned out. I'm tired of this search. Christa is even more than I. So I think that our pastoral search may come to a halt in the near future and we'll buy a bigger ouse around here and I'll stay at the bank.

There's still a couple of resumes out there (Cole Community Church in Boise, Parkview EV Free in Iowa and Central Peninsula in Foster City) but I'm really discouraged right now and all my optimism is leaking away.

How do you end something that you have worked towards for the last 10 years??

Fire station Christmas

Tonight we went to the Rodeo Fire Station because they were having a Christmas openn house and the rumor said that Santa might be there. The father of one of Caleb's classmates is a fireman there nad that's how we heard about it.

Regan spent seemingly the entire time climbing around in the fire truck and wanting to be on the back of it. Santa did come, of course.

Regna had a rather interesting interaction with St. Nick. She handed him a juice box with a straw so that he would put the straw in it and give it back to her. When Santa was good enough to do this, Regan ran over to the snack table, took a little muffin and gave it to Santa.

A little Russian history

Regan is in the midst of getting a new nickname from me. It seems right now that her favorite word is 'No'. It shold usually come with an eclamatio point at the end. Everything is "No, no, no".

So her new nickname is Gromyko.

Google it, people...look it up.

It's finally Christmas

Today it officially became Christmas season for me. I heard "Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer" for the first time this year.

Men's group tonight

We had a small group for my small group tonight. 2 men weren't here because there was an appreciation dinner at church for those who help with set-up and another man screwed up his knee aqt the gym. So the 4 remaining ones gathered to study Johsua 4, that great story where Israel sets up a rock memorial to what God had done in allowing them to cross the Jordan River.



We had a great discussion about how to remember what God has done in our lives and we old stories about what God has done. We also shared Communion together and read Psalm 77:11-20.



A good night

Our plan for Christmas

This year we're going to be spending Christmas with my family and with Christa's family. We'll spenhd Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas day also. We'll go to Christmas dinner in Walnut Creek. But we'll leave early from there and drive to Southern California to be with Christa's family. We'll have Christmas with them, complete with Christmas dinner and presents on the 26th.

I"m flying back by myself on the 28th to go to work. Christa and the kids are going to vstay down there for a frew more days and then drive back.

They will probably be down there over New Year's so I am looking for something to do on New Year's Eve. maybe I'll have a small dinner party here. Maybe I'll call Matt and see if he wants to do something.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

My favorite CHristmas program vwas on tonight...but too late for Caleb to watch on a school night. I've loved 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' for a whole lot of years now. The bet part of it is when Charlie Brown is still trying to figure out the meaning of Christmas after being caught i the busyness and commercialism. Linus says that he can explain Christmas. He takes the stage and darkens the lights. He then proceeds to recite Luke 2, tht famous scene with the shpherds when the angelical choir comers to announce the birth of Christ.

2 things that I plan to do with this...the first is to read the Luke passage to Caleb and Regan on Christmas Eve. The second is to begin having 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' party every year...starting next year, of course

Another place that I sent my resume

Perninsula Bible Church has another sister church just up the road on the peninsula. It's called Central Peninsula Church. When first moved up to the Bay Area in 1993 I went there a few times. Whenever PBC has it's annual men's retreat, all the pastors go and teh one who usually fills the pulpit that Sunday is Mark Mitchell, who is the Senior Pastor at Central APeninsula Church.

They are looking for a Community Life Pastor, one to do small groups, assimilation and men's ministry. I sent them my reusme today so we'll see what happens.

Thursday dinner

Tomorrow night 2 men from the search committee at Mammoth Lakes are coming to dinner. One the men is going to be Sacramento for business. The other is coming all the way from Mammoth just for dinner...it's about 6 hours there in the winter.

I'm going to grill tri tip with my special spice rub, roast some potatoes with fresh herbs and sit fry aspragus with seame oil and garlic.

Christmas songs that I can't stand

KOIT has begun playing all Christmas music all the time. Which is pleasant at times. But there are 3 songs in their music rotation which I absolutely cannot tolerate. Even a bar or measure from these songs is enough to make my head spin. Here they are:

Paul McCartney doing "Wonderful Christmas Time". Just an insipid piece of flotsam. Lyricallyand musically it sounds like it was made by a 10 year old with his first keyboard.

WHAM doing "Last Christmas". First of all, this song has virtually nothing to do with Christmas. It's about a couple breaking up and they happen to do it over Christmas. WHAM should never be played on the radio in any way shape or form.

Jose Feliciano doing "Feliz Navidad". Just downright irritating. He keeps saying that he wants to wish us a Merry Christmas but he never actually does it.

Back from Mexico

Yesterday we got back from our Thanksgiving Mexican vacation. We had taken a cruise to the Mexican Riviera with my mom, my brother and his family as well.

The kids had a fabulous time on the ship. There was a kids club for Caleb and that's where he wanted to be almost all the time. They had parties there and he got to hang out a lot with kids his own age. To be part of the club you had to be at least 3 years old...which left Regan out. So Regan spent most of the cruise being adorable and making friends with just about anyone. She would just walk down the hall, wave her hand and say, "Hi" to everyone.

Regan also turned into little Miss Attitude in a picture we were able to get of her. She's standing in a red dress with her arms crossed, head slightly down with a 'you want a piece of this' look. A lot of people on the ship said she was starting to look like Shirley Temple.

We spent a lot of time on the beach in both Cabo and Puerta Vallarta. While playng in the ocean in Cabo, Caleb said it was the best day of his whole life. 2 days later he said the same thing in Puerta Vallarta.

The food was pretty good as well...as it should be on a cruise. They didnt have escargot, which Caleb was looking forward to trying. He did get to try Duck a L"Orange, which he didn't care for. He loved Lobster Bisque. He tried a lot of different things and he liked more of them than he disliked. His 2 cousins who were with us (Charles and Sophia) weren't quite as adventuresome in their meals.