Church Picnic

Church of the Resurrection had a picnic on "Holy Hill" yesterday. That is, we are hoping to buy land to build our own building (finally!) and so all the people who have made pledges to the building project got to come onto the land to have a picnic. The hill is called "Holy Hill" by the current land owner whose father was a man of faith.

Unfortunately, Karisa came down with a fever. She was feeling warm Saturday night, but woke up Sunday with a temperature of over 100. So she stayed home all day! I did everything I could to help but there's not much I can do to make her feel better. At the picnic, I got some friends to help me tell her how much she was missed:





















In order, they are: Alyana, our dear friends' daughter. Joe, one of our old Sunday School kids. Matt, deacon at our church who did our premarital counseling. Abbi, one of the youth from our church. Janet, our Family Pastor. Keith, our good friend and Alyana's dad. Tegan, another one of our former Sunday School kids.

It was a fun picnic but I missed Karisa! I spent a lot of the picnic trying to recruit for a logistical nightmare that fell into my lap Saturday afternoon. But I managed to have some fun. Here's me and Ella (though she refused to smile!):

Sacramentalism and Community

(While I was traveling last week, I did some writing on my new iPhone. Here's one of the things I was thinking about)

While traveling the west coast to do college fairs I brought a couple of books with me for reading material. A smart traveler will bring light reading to help pass the time. Sadly, I am not the smart traveler. I brought to serious books:

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne



and

For The Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann



Revolution reads easy enough, but confronts the reader with such challenging ideas that it is not possible to breeze thru. Life of the World, on the other hand is an inspiring book but so dense that it requires sustained concentration to benefit from and even begin to understand.

Neither book has made for the easy plane reading that would be my usually fare for such trips. Somewhere in the air between San Fransisco and LA, though, I realized that it was highly significant that had these two seemingly very different books together in my bag.

Throughout my trip my peers have been asking me about plans for the future. I have said seminary is my plan. But the truth is that I am still very unsure about what I want to do.

I love the church and the sacramental world that is the topic of Schmemann's book. I also am captivated by the depiction of community and a life of "ordinary radicals" that Claiborne writes about.

I realized is that these two books represent what I want to do with my life. Or at least the vision for my future that I find most captivating. I want to do is bring together the ideas and visions of these two very different books just like the two books are physically stashed right next to each other in my carry on.

What would a sacramental, charismatic, evangelical community among the under-served and poor look like? Could I learn what it means to bring the joy and beauty of what we have at Resurrection to the intentionally loving community that strives for justice?

That is a life calling that I would love to walk. Seminary, internships, overseas and even loving and living in our apartment now can be training and preperation for that sort of calling.

We're landing now and even though I didn't have an easy-to-read, page-turning novel to read, I think this flight was well worth it.

West Coast Travels

From August 1 until August 7 I got the chance to travel to some amazing places. In order, I went Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver. This was an especially neat trip because I had never been to Seattle, Portland or LA before (and my only visit to San Diego was an ill-fated trip in high school to see my girlfriend which shoudln't really count for many many reasons, but that's another blog entry all together).

Sadly, the way that the trip was structured was that I saw all these cities in only five days. That made for a crazy lot of travel, rushing between hotels and aiports. I did get to go to La Jolla while we were in San Diego and saw some seals. Here's one of them:



The other great thing is getting to know the people you travel with since we're all doing the same crazy schedule together. Sometimes I'd end up on the same plane or taxi with someone, but the main way we'd get to know each other is through our meals together after doing a college fair.

One guy I got to know especially well was the counselor from St. Johns (Santa Fe), Garret. Garret and I had been on a fair tour in the Mid-west last year. I didn't expect to see him out west but was pleasantly surprised to find him searching for our fair location the first morning (something that I had just done 5 minutes earlier!)



Garret and I connected pretty well. It sounds too junior high to call him my "favorite counselor" on the tour, but I did enjoy hanging out with him. He's a great guy, fun to chill with, and is anal like me about getting to the airport with time to spare!

Our last night of the tour we went out to a northern Italian restaurant. I have to admit, I felt pretty embarrassed the whole night because I didn't drink wine (not allowed to on college dime) and didn't recognize hardly anything on the menu. I ended up ordering bruschetta (got corrected on my pronunciation though) and a Caesar's Salad because I knew what they were. I would have preferred to just order pizza (as my wife can attest to), but that didn't feel cultured enough. Here we are all:

Golf Victory, of a Sort

Last Friday night, Karisa and I went mini golfing with a good friend of ours: the ever lovable and consistently enjoyable Meghan Cahill.



Notice how excellent of a golfer she looks like. Needless to say, we were up for a challenge. And it proved to be true as Meg was the first one to get a hole-in-one!



I did pretty well for myself in the first half. On all of the first nine holes I managed to putt for exactly 2 strokes every time. I was in the zone! Unstoppable! I was especially excited because they had a "best score of the day" board and it was only 38 by some guy named Nathan or something like that. 38? Piece of cake. I was on track for 36.



Then the wonderful women I married jinxed me. On hole 10 she said it was all over. I proceeded to putt for 3 and 4 strokes on the next 5 holes or so. But then something AMAZING happened! I went first and made a nice putt that put me about 4 inches from the hole. On track for a hole in 2 again. (Finally!) Then Karisa went. Her ball hit my ball and knocked me into the hole! Not only that but her ball's spin allowed it to curve with the green and she ALSO got a hole in one!!! That means she got two hole-in-ones with one stroke!!!!



That made our night. It was awesome. As a result of her stellar play and my second half collapse, Karisa and I ended up tying for the win:



To celebrate the fact that we all got hole-in-ones (though mine was really Karisa's but if you looked at the scorecard you wouldn't know it) we went to the local DQ. We thoroughly enjoyed the background on the wall there:



And thus:



Good times were had by all! Thanks for hanging out with us Meg. And Thanks to DQ for their awesome wall decorations.

Pictures As Promised

We went to a Phillies game while in Philadelphia. Sadly they lost but it was tons of fun!



We went into New York for half a day after visiting my brother's place in Ramsey, NJ.



My family playing cards.



Karisa and I went to a park together in the week between Philadelphia and Florida.



We also had a party for Karisa's birthday. Some of us got on the roof!

I don't have very many pictures of our time in Florida, sadly. But you can see some by going to familyjohns.blogspot.com. My father-in-law got some good pictures. f

Yogurt Covered Raisins

Group dynamics are interesting anywhere. Taking ten recent high school graduates and putting them into a group together is sure to lead to conflict, raised tensions, and hard feelings. When you add onto that the effects of being in the wilderness for 12 days without access to bathrooms, beds, and eating dehydrated food will only add friction to group dynamics.

The group I was placed into was made up of a future school worship leader, an amazingly funny drummer, the most incredible guitar player I have ever met, an intramural champion, and a future ministry chair just to name a few. We all loved Jesus. We all were men who should have been good friends except one thing: we didn't know it. 

In my group, division reared its ugly head fairly quickly. There was a group of guys who were athletic and cool. At least, that's how I perceived them. These guys were more stereotypically manly. On the other hand was the group of guys with little to no outdoor experience. These guys all had talents, but not ones that necessarily manifested themselves while trekking through the woods.

Sleeping arrangements were the easiest way to tell these divisions. In three tents, one was the "cool" tent and the other two were the rest of us. Whenever we mixed sleeping arrangements, that meant that some of us in the other two tents swapped with each other. The cool tent remained unaffected. 

One of the guys in the cool tent seemed to perceive this position as a position of power. That is, he seemed to feel he could get away with things and no one would stop him. The most infamous of this behavior was the yogurt covered raisins. 

While eating "brick," dehydrated vegetables, and sucking on 1950's candy, our one truly delicious food was yogurt covered raisins. Unfortunately, they were in short supply and always were the first to run out at any meal. Therefore, they had to be rationed.

This one guy, however, decided to take it upon himself to sneak a number of packets of yogurt covered raisins for himself (To be fair, he did share with his fellow tent mates). When we all found out, we were very mad. And yet, no one seemed to say or do anything.

Later, on getting back to Wheaton, we further discovered that he had appropriated a number of packets of Break Time (gatorade knock off). To be honest, BreakTime wasn't that good. But adding BreakTime to a nalgene full of smokey scum water made all the difference in the world. The whole reason we found out that he had the BreakTime was because he must have realized himself that it wasn't actually that good compared to the drink options available in "civilization." So he decided to offer them - oh so graciously! - to the rest of us.

I am ashamed to say that through all four years at Wheaton, I never could get over the anger I had about these actions. As a result, I never liked this guy. He always seemed arrogant and selfish to me. For sure, what he did on High Road was selfish, but there was more to him than that and I refused to see it for my entire college years.

Yogurt covered raisins now serve as a reminder to me of the incredible dangers of not dealing with conflict head on. It may seem like the nice thing to do at the time, but it really just creates long term side effects.

If we had addressed our issues directly, instead of trying to keep the peace, the trip would have been a genuinely deep experience in bonding and growing in relationships. Instead we settled for sub par relationships. Sadly, I only remained friends with one of the other guys on the trip and even that seemed to be God's work as He put us together again the next summer as counselors.

It would be unfair to expect myself to have handled the situations then like I would have now. I don't regret what happened (usually). Rather, I look back and see how it could have been different all the while also being incredibly thankful for how much I learned through it. High Road -- and even those unhealthy group dynamics -- taught me and changed me forever. 

After hearing this story it sounds unbelievable, but I was actually one of the few guys I knew who said they would go on another High Road if they got the chance. Next time though, I'll make sure that we deal with any Yogurt Covered Raisin issues.

God's Love at the End of a Half Marathon

Before reading this post and if you aren't familiar with High Road, you must read the post immediately before this one: "The Long Run to Joy"

The year after I completed High Road and started at Wheaton College, I returned to the Northwoods to be a camp counselor and take classes. Like High Road, my summer at HoneyRock doing Summer Leadership School could be an entire blog of lessons in and of itself. During the summer there, I learned much about my relationship with God and others and myself.

The two most significant moments at HoneyRock (though there is also a close third) came through one man: Dr. Rich Butman. I was taking a class with him during the second session of the summer called "Community Leadership and Development." The first significant moment came through an hour and a half with Dr. Butman in a two man kayak. Since I talk about that time together a couple of times a week in my information sessions in the Admissions Office, I will not be elaborating on it here.

Instead, it is the second moment that this post is about. During Dr. Butman's class he required that we complete 2500 pages of reading, but he left it up to us to decide which books off of a list we would choose to read. (To this day, I found this classes reading assignments to be the most enjoyable in my life, despite having a larger number of pages to read than almost any other class.) 

One book I had decided to read was The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen. I was a little skeptical because I have been over dosed on sermons about the Prodigal Son through out my life. But on the strong words of recommendation from many friends I decided to give it a go.

A third of the way through, I quit. It just wasn't doing it for me. I can't really remember why, but I remember not really knowing why then either. I just wasn't digging it. So I moved on to another book. When I had completed the next book, I decided to give the Prodigal Son a second chance. Picking up where I left off, I read what turned out to be an incredibly moving story of God's fatherly love for us, his children.

Again, I don't remember a ton of what it was that struck me from the book. What matters though is that it acted as the tilling of my heart to prepare for something more to come.

Towards the end of the class, we were sitting together discussing what God was doing through the books we had been reading. It became clear that God was teaching us all about His love. 

It must have been God's perfect timing because as we were discussing God's love, it so happened that right outside where we were sitting a group of High Roaders were completing their long run at the end of their arduous trip. Gathered just outside the not very sound proof walls was a crowd cheering and hollering for each one as they finished.

In a moment of divine wisdom, Dr. Butman told us to listen to those cheers. They were full of joy and delight. Then he said something that to this day echoes in my soul. "Those cheers are pictures of God's love for you. If you want to know how God feels about you, listen to those voices and cheers."

I'm sure the actual words he used were different, but the meaning was clear. I couldn't stand it. God feels that way about me? Delights in me with that sort of joy? Memories of my High Road group's faces and smiles burst into the foreground of my memory. The thrill and exuberance I felt was there. The sense of value and delight was there around me. 

I was crying and couldn't stop. I was embarrassed to cry in front of someone I respected so much, but I couldn't help it. God was breaking through on a new level into my soul. His love was better than I ever knew. 

More of that, Lord! More of that!