I'm trying out a new commenting system over the next few days. Pros: It allows people to login with an Open ID or a Facebook account or twitter, etc. Cons: It doesn't recognize the drupal user accounts that some of you have. On the other hand, people seem to have a hard time with those. Sometimes if you hit home it logs you out. People constantly leaving comments and discovering they aren't logged in.

Anyway, I'll try this one and we'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think. Older comments show both systems to preserve the original comments.

If it's not good, I'll find something else.

rlp

I’ve been asked to keep and maintain a blog for Edge Outreach through April of this year. The purpose of the blog is to tell some of the stories from their ongoing work in Haiti.

In July of 1999, Kelly Fleury was in Haiti attending the funeral of his brother, Dezman, who had worked for a rental care agency and had a passion for helping poor children in and around Leogane. At the funeral Kelly met a poor widow who was weeping because Dezman was the only person who had helped her and her children survive. Inspired by his brother, Kelly formed the Dezman Fleury Foundation that year. They began by building an orphanage. Slowly raising additional funds, they built a clinic and pharmacy, a school, and a bakery. The bakery was used as a business to teach a trade to the girls from the orphanage and to provide funds.

Pictures from their website taken before the earthquake tell the story. The facilities were modest by some standards, but the children were clean and well cared for. The orphanage, school, bakery, and clinic are like many social service ministries in Haiti. They are mostly run by small groups who do the best they can without a lot of resources. What you notice in the pre-earthquake photos is how clean everything was. You also notice the faces of the children. They looked happy.

The earthquake on January 12th decimated the Fleury Foundation buildings, as it did so many others. As usual, the poorest of the poor were the hardest hit…

Click here to read the rest of the story.

This is the final part in a 4-part episode. Parts 1-3 were written in July of last year.
Part one
Part two
Part three

All the Foy Davis stories can be found at FoyDavis.com

***

Part Four

On Monday morning Foy woke an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then he sat up, groaning, and went to the bathroom. Squinting under the fluorescent lights, he ran a hand through his hair. He pushed his chin upward and felt the stubble of his whiskers with the back of his hand. Staring straight ahead, he showered with robot-like movements that were deeply ingrained in his muscle memory. Halfway through his shower he couldn’t remember if he had washed his hair, so he pulled it between his fingers to see if it squeaked.

After he was dressed Foy wandered into the small kitchen of his apartment. He picked up the TV remote and turned on CNN. He kept his eyes on the television while he put two slices of bread into the toaster oven. He flipped through the channels methodically, glancing now and then at the bread as it turned brown. When the bread was toasted, he took the slices out, covered them liberally with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then put them back into the oven until the butter and sugar were bubbling. He got a Diet Coke and ate in the living room, sitting on the couch. Foy glanced down at his left heel, which was bouncing up and down at a furious pace. He took a deep breath and made himself relax. Within five minutes his heel was bouncing again. He looked at it, laughed, and said, “Screw it.”

Now comes the big question for me: What am I going to do with my life in this next season?

This transition is a profound one. I was seventeen when I felt/sensed/thought/intuited/believed that I was called to the ministry. Thirty years have gone by and I feel/sense/think/intuit/believe that the time has come for me to move on from paid local church ministry. Of course there is the rather annoying matter of making a living. I have to replace the income I was making at Covenant. This wasn’t a complete leap of faith on my part. My work at Jethro has increased. I am a contract employee, which means that as long as Jethro has work, I have work. I’m currently getting more hours at Jethro than I did last year, which is nice.

I’ll tell you what the ideal life would be for me. I would average 20 to 25 hours a week working for Jethro, leaving the rest of my work time for writing and Real Live Preacher. Basically half of my life would be web design work and the other half writing and RLP. The problem is that writing does not bring in much money. Nor does blogging. I have a group of wonderful people who kick $5 or $10 bucks a month my way to maintain this blog. That money has been a life saver. Thanks for all of you who do that.

What I’ve got to do now if figure out how to parlay the traffic at rlp, my love for writing and blogging, and the few professional writing gigs I have into something that approaches half of a living.

Jeanene and I have been looking at numbers and talking since the fall of 2009. I did not resign from Covenant without careful thought, prayer, and consideration. We’re taking a pretty big risk, but it seems like the right thing to do. What I described as a “call” to pastoral ministry has been replaced by a “call” to writing and RLP. Everything feels right to us. I just have to work out the details and be willing to admit that I have to earn money as a writer to justify the time it takes.

I wonder if you would be willing to talk with me about this? I’d like to hear your thoughts and ideas. I don’t want to turn rlp into a forum for how I’ll make a living, so I’m taking the conversation off the front page. I’ve set up a forum for discussion. If you have an interest in talking with me about this, you are invited to join us.

NOTE: You don’t have to have a user account to participate in the discussion. But if you do, please do log in so we can see who you are.

New RLP Discussion Forum:
The Future of this Blog

The retreat was wonderful. We humbly incorporated lessons Jeanene and I have learned from the Quakers into a retreat based on listening to each other. REALLY listening. Where you strive to put everything else out of your mind except for hearing another person’s story.

Monday and Tuesday were killer days. Several project deadlines at Jethro. I’m grateful for the hours but no writing time for me. None. Which is okay, I guess. That’s the way of the world when you’re a working man. I did leave Covenant to clear up some writing time. I think what I’m discovering is that when you’re doing 150% of what you should be doing, cutting out 33% of your life is just getting you back to full.

Anyway, I'm back into a Foy story. I'm working at the library right now. Taking a break to post this. I don’t know when it will be done. Next week sometime I suppose.

As for other things:

Journey:
I had a wonderful time preaching at Journey Imperfect Faith Community last Sunday. I visited David’s office, which was sobering. The people were fantastic. And I got a rare treat. So rare that I’ve only done it once before. At “Bible study” between the services, I got to read some of my writing to everyone. Wow! That was fun. It was kind of an indulgent thing to do on a Sunday, but it was a good thing to do. It really meant a lot to me.

I read “Turtles all the Way Down,” and “Childhood Like a Dream.” We used them as a springboard to talk about the two parts of our faith - mental and physical. The part of faith that involves what you think and believe, and the part of faith that involves what you do with your body.

Enjoyed preaching as well. They are doing gardening as a theme for Lent, so the sermon was on the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Gardening for Lent; that is SO Journey.

The Retreat

So, I’m working on a new rlp Drupal theme. You’re looking at version 2.0. I’m interested to see what you think about it. I’ve taken away the little guy holding two worlds apart. I liked him, but I’m not really having to do that anymore. The new banner kind of fits how I’m feeling right now.

Which brings me to the big question at hand, the question I’m hoping you might explore with me.

What should I do with this blog? I think I’ll keep the name Real live Preacher. I’m preaching THIS SUNDAY at Journey IFC in Austin. I know, that didn’t take long. I like preaching and hope to get some chances to travel and preach or speak. We’ll see how that goes. If you’re in Austin and come by Journey on Sunday, make sure you grab me and say hello! – Mark Carter, this means you!

I’m dedicating half of my life to writing and writing related things. That’s the good news. The other news is that I have to figure out ways to make money as a writer/preacher/speaker guy. I have some idea for some fun stuff I could do here at rlp. I’ve had a request to bring back the old chatroom for one thing. I’ll run some ideas by you in the next few days.

Maybe you have some thoughts?

rlp

Let me say for the record that I love the craft and the discipline of preaching. It’s such an esoteric art. There are careful guidelines that thoughtful preachers follow, even if no one else in the congregation knows what those rules are. Individual style and creativity are good things, but they are carefully balanced by tradition and good scholarship with the text. There is a kind of weekly preaching rhythm that you slip into, often after many years of searching and trying. I think it takes a good decade to settle into this strange calling. My wife would say that around 5 pm on Saturday afternoon I would start withdrawing emotionally. I would grow more quiet and want to go home if we were out, as I began making my own introverted and intensely personal preparations for Sunday.

This Foy Davis story was my attempt to put my own sermon process into words.

Several people have asked me how it felt not preaching the first Sunday after I left Covenant. I took to it like a duck to water. Apparently - and this was a surprise to me - most people do not have sermons to deliver each week. Most people do not go to church before dawn and spend hours getting ready for the congregation to arrive before leading worship and delivering a message to the faithful.

Sunday morning was, for me, like taking off my shoes and remembering that human feet were designed for walking. Really, we don’t need shoes. Barefoot works very well. Likewise, the body and the soul remember that we were not designed for preaching. It’s an artificial affectation, like flying in airplanes or scuba diving. It’s fine, maybe even desirable for a season, but NOT preaching is our natural state of being.

Wednesday I cleared out my office at the church. Our church office is a small room, only 12' x 12' with an alcove that has a built-in desk for a computer and shelves above it. I designed this office myself. It's kind of like a tiny library. The walls are all bookshelves except for a giant window. I came to write on Wednesday, but I kept looking at the piles of stuff and decided it was time to clean it out.

What a lonely experience it is, clearing out your office. I don't mean lonely in the sense that I wish someone had been there. I mean lonely in that only you can do this. And probably the experience only holds meaning for you. It needs to be done alone.

Behind the door in the office is a set of shelves that had supplies and piles of things I thought I would deal with but did not. Agendas, papers, books I was going to read, and so on. It was stunning how much of it has no relevance anymore.

Away, all of it, into the trash. The shelves above the built-in desk needed to be clear for Tim, who will serve as the interim pastor. When I was done the only things left were some staples, some decorations given to us by a member who spent some time living in China, a plate with sculptures from a retreat, a 100 ounce soft drink container I got at the Christmas party in 2008 (I didn't want it and couldn't imagine taking it home), and my macabre collection of Chick Tracks, that I left for Tim as a gift.

I'm in the process of a major renovation at rlp. First the back end. Drupal 5 upgrade to the latest version of Drupal (6.15)

Upgrade went okay. The downside with a major Drupal upgrade is having to reinstall and reconfigure modules. My menu system is messed up right now due to significant differences in the way Drupal 5 and 6 handle menus. But I'll rebuild it.

Look for rlp to be a bit wonky for a couple of days.

A team of mathematicians at UCLA discovered the most exotic number in the history of counting. Using a network of powerful computers they discovered the largest known Mersenne prime. A Mersenne number is 2 to any power minus 1. 2 to the 189th power, for example, is just a number. But 2 to the 189th power minus 1 is a Mersenne number. I don’t understand why mathematicians find Mersenne numbers so fascinating, but they do. And among the Mersenne numbers, those that are also prime numbers are the rarest of the rare. Only 47 of them have been found so far.

The UCLA Mersenne prime number is 2 to the 43,112,609th power minus 1. Don’t forget to subtract that 1. Two to the 43,112,609th power is a painting you might find on the wall of a motel room. Two to the 43,112,609th power minus 1 is the freakin Mona Lisa.

What fascinates me most about the UCLA Mersenne prime is the size of this number. It's 12,978,189 digits long. Most people have heard of a Googol, which is a 1 with 100 zeros after it. That sounds like a big number, but perhaps you're not aware of just how big it is. If you counted all the atoms in the entire universe, you would still fall well short of a Googol. This means that we humans have invented a number which, in fact, has no connection to any known reality. There will never, ever, ever be a Googol of anything.

I had three dreams early Saturday morning before my last Sunday as the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church.

Salting the Edwards Aquifer

In the first of three dreams I had this night, there was a big controversy in San Antonio regarding the Edwards Aquifer, our city’s source of water. Some, mostly conservatives, wanted to add massive amounts of salt to the aquifer. They claimed the salt would create a “salt pan” and preserve the aquifer in some way, insuring us of a supply of water in the future.

I tried to make a guess at what this meant. I asked

I used to wonder how my time at Covenant would end. Back in the middle of it all, back when I couldn’t imagine any other life for myself, I would wonder what my last Sunday would be like. I knew my time at Covenant was not preparing me for ministry in another church. For better and for worse, Covenant Baptist Church is a unique kind of community that doesn’t follow the rules. I am not by nature good at organizational and managerial issues. I wonder, did my personality help create this strange little church that has always been somewhat unorganized and lightly managed? I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t pick up any of those skills on this wonderful journey with these quirky pilgrims.

On the other hand, you might say that Covenant is the perfect kind of church to turn a preacher into a writer. There was always plenty of time and space for wondering, daydreaming, wandering, and musing.

Of course, everything eventually ends. I knew that, but I could never imagine how it would happen.

Although I am leaving Covenant, I'm still the youth pastor for the Southwest Baptist Youth Camping Association, of which my church is a part. Our camp is in June. The ministers rotate through this, and this is my year.

It's a challenge, preaching to teenagers. One that I relish! I'm pumped about this. Our theme is "Heroes."

My goal: find the hardest, most heroic things about being a Christian and push the life instead of the dogma.

Today I disappear into my office at the church to get ready for our big planning meeting tomorrow in Fort Worth. I have 5 sermons planned. Going to work on them from now until the end of the day.

see ya,

g