I've begun a writing project for The High Calling. I'm going to write about every job I've ever had. I started with my first job and am working my way from there. We'll see how far I get. I've have a LOT of jobs over the years. I grew up in a working family, and I began working in 6th grade. Along the way I've done everything from bagging groceries to driving forklifts.

This piece is about my second job. I wrote about my first job here.

My Second Job

My second job, like my lawn-mowing gig, was arranged by my father. A local daycare center needed a janitor to come in every evening and do some cleaning. There was a tile hallway, five or six classrooms, and a couple of restrooms. In return for cleaning these, I would be paid four dollars an hour for two hours of work each day. That was a little more than minimum wage at the time, so I took home about $150 a month. It seemed like a fortune.

My specific duties were clearly laid out for me. I was to empty the trash, vacuum all of the classrooms, sweep and mop the hall as needed, and clean the bathrooms. I wasn't sure what they expected me to do when it came to the tile bathroom floors and hall. Along the baseboards and around the bottoms of the toilets, the tiles were dingy and not very clean. Did they expect me to make the floors spotless or simply maintain them as they were when I began the job? ...Click here to read more.

rlp

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I preached a sermon this morning — one in a long line of sermons stretching back to 1992. I've preached so many sermons by now that I find it almost impossible to remember any particular one. Right now, on a Sunday night, I don't want to remember any of them. The discipline of Sunday night is forgetting.

It's strange, but while I can't remember my sermons, I do remember preaching them. And if I close my eyes, I can see myself laboring away at the work of it...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

I've begun a writing project for The High Calling for which I'm going to write about every job I've ever had. Well, I'm starting with my first job and working my way from there. Who knows how far I will ultimately get. The High Calling Blog Network is seeking stories of lessons learned in odd jobs. You can read about that here.

I grew up in a working family, and I began working in 6th grade. Along the way I've done everything from bagging groceries to driving forklifts.

The professional writing I do for The High Calling is a little different from the free-wheeling style of rlp. For one thing, I'm searching for the lessons in the stories.

Here is the first. The second is done, submitted, and will be online soon.

My First Job

In the summer of 1974, just after I completed the sixth grade, my father came home with a box of business cards for me. They read:

I thought it was pretty cool to be 12-years-old and have my own business cards. But when he told me that I had to walk around the neighborhood passing them out, I must admit that my excitement lessened considerably. Click here to read more.

I saw my father preach the other day. His hair is now white, and the skin on his face has loosened with age, but this is the same man whose face I saw above the pulpit throughout my childhood. He stood like a captain in the bow of the ship that he loves, confident that the vessel would rise and fall with his voice and break the waves of human need as it sailed to the promised land.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

Greetings,

Last Thursday I had arthroscopic knee surgery. I tore the meniscus in my left knee almost two years ago. I wish I would say I was doing something exciting. The truth is I was helping some friends move. I never felt it tear, but it's given me trouble ever since. The surgery went fine. The doctor found some other cartilage issue and drilled a couple of holes in my femur. I'm not sure why he did that, but I was coming out of the anesthesia and don't remember much. I'll find out details at my follow-up visit.

Today was my first day walking. The three holes they punched in my knee for the surgery hurt worse than the knee itself. Looks like I'll be fine.

I spent all day working on this blog, which frustrated me. I'm itching to write. But the move over to a new server with new software has been harder than I thought. And I haven't even done most of the work. I'm serious when I tell you that I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't met Tim Miller at Jethro.

Most of the cool things about the new Drupal site are behind the scenes. Things that make it easier for me. I worked over the menus on the left. I got my Foy Davis and RLPDV and archive links the way I like them. Some of the stuff links to the archives. I doubt I'll ever get around to importing all that stuff.

One new thing about this blog is the way I'll handle subscriptions. The details are in a new page I created. On the old site I maintained a page for subscribers. Well, if you use the word "maintained" loosely. One problem was I had to basically lay out the html every time I wanted to update it. With the new site, it will be much easier for me to maintain some secondary content as a way of thanking the folks who subscribe.

Tomorrow I have some stuff to do in the morning. I hope to get some time to write later during the day.

rlp

Real Live Preacher has a new website and the RSS feed has changed.
Please subscribe to http://www.reallivepreacher.com/rss.xml if you want to continue reading Real Live Preacher by RSS feed.
Thanks
Site Admin

Tim from Jethro here.

There have been numerous comments with questions about the new site and whats happening. Please keep them coming - especially if you notice broken things.

However to avoid wasting your time and duplication here is a list of the things we know about and are fixing - some from the comments!

RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are working on this site - but they are different from before. We suggest you change your subscription to the main feed. It is better then the rlp blog feed though you can choose that if you want. Gordon is mostly going to write under his rlp user name. However some content may be posted, e.g., images, audio, video etc., that is not a blog entry and will not be included in the blog feed. For a full list of feeds and to learn how to use them check out the sitemap. For those users who in the past were subscribed to the blog3 feed as mentioned in comments, we will look at the solution of mapping the feed over. However we would prefer they switched to the new feed. Unfortunately some of this can't be avoided. The feeds structure was different in the old version of Drupal. We think it is better now but of course change can be hard.

Subscribers blogs and subscriber content
Gordon and I are discussing just how and what to set up for subscribers. As he mentioned we want to offer subscribers additional content etc. We are just working out the best way of doing this. Feel free to comment with suggestions, ideas.

Audio Posts
We have added the ability to attach audio to a blog post so Gordon can add these into his writing. They will still exist as a separate entry and there is a feed for podcasts that can be subscribed to. This works in iTunes or any other Feed reader that you use for podcasts.

RLP Archives
We have only just got these working - took some time with DNS changes, importing the old database and setting it up to work in a sub folder. However there is a lot of stuff that is not linked up right yet. We will need to manually edit a bunch of links so that they point at the right place. Please be patient as we do this. We would love for you to point out to us broken links as you find them.

RLP Search
At the moment search is operational in both the current site, though there's not much to search on yet, and the archive site. however one search will not find content in the other etc. We are looking into this one.