I read his blog because he linked to my blog and it appeared on the management page.  If I was really good at this tagging stuff, I would follow all the rules of tagging more people, but really I have never been into forward emails and this tagging stuff seems too much like a chain letter.  Nevertheless though, I will participate in revealing seven facts about myself.

1. Since Tim’s facts revealed his music background, I will continue with this line of thought.  When I was in the sixth grade, I started to play the tuba.  I was very small for my age, so I had to sit on books to play this instrument.  The first big concert I ended up quiting because I was too ashamed to sit on books to play.

2. As most people who read this know I am a huge hockey fan, but when I was a child, my favorite sport was baseball.  I ended up playing this more than hockey.  Now I do not even watch much baseball, but love hockey.

3. Since being in the south, my wife thinks I was born in the wrong part of the world.  I love Tennessee college football and I have learned to dislike Alabama football too.  What is it about this rivalry that makes for such strong emotions?

4. In Canada, I loved eating fish and chips and Donairs.  These are two foods that are different where ever you go.  But in the states, I have replaced these loves with Barbecue.   I love eating at every little redneck barbecue place in the south.

5. As people know, I am working on a Doctorate degree.  In High School, I failed English every year.  In grade 10, the teacher let me move on, in grade 11, I had to go to summer school, and in grade 12, the teacher let me pass because I passed my other classes and he did not want me to be in school for another year.

6. I think I work with the best church in the south.  I have been with this congregation for 4 years and I have never been mistreated.  I know that the first two years, I hear preachers talking about how great their congregations are, but this changes for many of them.  The Waynesboro congregation is really like being the minister in Mayberry.

7. Most people do not believe it today, but I was going to be a refrigeration, ventilation, air conditioning, and heating repair man.  Most of my life, I did farming and carpentry work.  Now most people believe I never did a solid day’s work of manual labor in my life.

Hope you enjoyed my sharing.  Tim, I am glad you have a blog now.

At the age of 20, I left home from Nova Scotia to attend the Brown Trail School of Preaching.  I was a Christian for about 8 months before I started to attend the training school.  At Brown Trail, the term “rebuke” was thrown around a lot.  And I certainly received numerous rebukes while at the school.  A loud mouth, and a lack of Christian maturity, and a ignorance of some of the unwritten rules of the church added to this common practice.   On the first day of school, I was rebuked by Johnny Ramsey (Johnny was a great guy though).  Let me continue with the story.  Johnny asked the class to produce a list of reasons why we love the Lord Jesus Christ.  I, in my wisdom of 20, with 8 months of maturity behind me, reasoned that I only needed one reason, which was that Jesus died for my sins.  Good enough for me.  Johnny asked me to share one of the reasons that I produced, which I did.  Johnny then processed to go around the class with this same intention in mind.  After everyone had a turn, Johnny came back to me and asked how many reasons I produced, I told him “one reason, because to have to have more would be prideful.”  This made Johnny very upset, because he thought I was saying the assignment produced pride.  Needless to say, I received a stern rebuke.   After a few weeks, Johnny did realize that I certainly was not trying to question his authority or thought the assignment was prideful.  He ended up taking me out to lunch and said he was sorry for the rebuke.  He did not know my background or how immature I was in the faith.  If he knew, he would never have handled the situation in the way he did.  In the end, Johnny was a huge encouragement to me.  Not to say, I never received another rebuke from him, I will share this one later in the week.  But I really loved the man and he loved me.  By the way, Johnny also has a great grandson, and his son-in-law was super to me.  In fact, I miss Johnny Ramsey, and in a way I wish he could rebuke me one more time for old time sake.

Gabrielle had her two birthdays this weekend.  One on Friday for the little children from church and the community and on Saturday for the family.  Both birthdays were successful, except for Gabrielle crying during the singing of “Happy Birthday.”  She said “I do not like people singing to me.”  She must have been hearing her Daddy because he is an awful singer.  On Saturday, I helped preach the funeral for a World War II hero.  Alfred was a great man with a quiet courage and strength.   The family, the church, and the nation was sad to see him go onto to his Creator.  This Sunday I am starting two new series of lessons.  The Sunday morning lessons are on “Reliving Pentecost.”  This weeks lesson is about the Holy Spirit baptism and the purpose of the gift to restore the power of the church.  The Sunday night lessons will deal with the Biblical sercets of a “Better Life.” The Bible reveals the true behaviors for living a better life on earth.

Yesterday at FHU I had a wonderful experience with Dr. Woods.  A few weeks ago we received our mid-term tests back.  I had a respectable grade of 92.  As I was passing the test back in, I made a little comment of, “Dr. Woods, this is funny that the question I felt I knew the best was the one I did the poorest on.”  The teacher asked if I would like him to look at it again.  I said “no” because when you are about to graduate a few points does not make that much difference.  Yesterday though, Dr. Woods mentioned my test again.  He said that he changed the grade because he marked it poorly because of the terrible writing and misspellings in the answer.   He said that “you hand cannot keep up with your brain.”  I thought this was a classy act.  For those of you who know me, I have difficulty writing sometimes.  It seems that I am always misspelling a word or using the wrong word in a sentence.  In elementary and High School, I was labeled a slow learner because of this difficulty.   I was placed in the slow classes and had to attend resource because of this problem.  This created self-esteem problems and a defeatist attitude towards school.  In these schools I was given a label of “slow” but Dr.  Woods labeled me as “smart.”  I remember a few years back listening to Jack Welch’s autobiography in which he told the story about having a stutter.  His mother did not label him as slow but informed him he was too smart for his mouth to keep up with him.  Welch mentions this as a defining moment in life.  In fact, Dr. Woods increased my grade because he realized that I had a good grasp on the material, but the presentation was poor.   The way Dr. Woods treated me is the way I would like to treat others.  Instead of making people feel bad about their weaknesses, inspire them with their strengths.

I printed off the entire thesis yesterday.  It is a massive project when it is put on paper.  It has enriched me, challenged me, and blessed me.  It was on “The Discipline of a Godly Minister.”  Being a godly minister is important to me because of the need for God’s representative to function in the church in a high capacity.  All ministers should be encouraged to serious examine the Biblical instructions from 1 Timothy 4:6-16.  This was the text that I used for the thesis.  In the next little while I will be sharing some of the wisdom for minister’s from this text.  I still have to proof the thesis, make sure it is MLA form, and polish some of the writing.  After writing over one hundred pages on being a godly minister, I feel that the Lord has used this to help me grow.  Some of the lessons that I have learned from this text are: always, always stay connected to the Word, Godliness is the most powerful message from a minister, Be known for what you do for God, not for what you are against, and God will provide a mentor for his ministers.  There are many other lessons, and I am thank for this work.

You know those type of men.  You see them at the basketball games, football games, whatever sporting activity that their child is playing.  He is the head coach, critic, biggest fan, and certainly the loudest.  This man is a sad case.  But even worst is the man on the sidelines coaching his kid in old man glory.  This is the man who is living in the past through his child.  I am not this man yet, fortunately, but I have been seeing some of the living in the past behavior in myself.  I hope this is healthy but I have been playing hockey a lot and playing chess even more.  As a child I was great at chess, I want to be great again.  As a child, I wanted to be great at hockey, never really got good at this for Canadian standards.   Recently though I have loved developing my chess skills, improving fast and when I play hockey there is a great joy that comes over me.  I pray that these hobbies are feeding my soul, more than me living in the days of childhood.   Should I be moving forward with new hobbies, or should I  connect to the story of childhood?

Every morning I usually write a quick blog about whatever is on my mind. Yesterday I started my morning with this. Then I moved on to writing the bulletin article, moved on to a newspaper article, fielded a few calls, and began some study on the last lesson in the series on the Seven Signs of Jesus in the Book of John. After lunch I did some counseling, had a Bible study which ended up with Bruce wanted to be baptized. Jerry helped with this work. He is a deacon in the congregation and perhaps the best evangelist in the congregation. Bruce was so sincere as he said “I wanted to be baptized so I can know what it feels like to have my sins washed away.” We rejoiced with this man. After that Jerry and I went to visit one of the ladies who’s husband was an elder here for years. I rushed back to attend a Board of Directors meeting at the local cafe for a non-profit in town, and then had to leave early to say the prayer at the basketball game. Stayed at the game and cheered with Kim and Alan, they were fun to sit by. And then went home to my loving wife and talked with her until bed. A great day people. I have to go now, one of the youth group members is here and we are having breakfast. I love being a minister.

College signing day is one of the highlights of the year. This year the Volunteers need to have a very strong day to have a good recruiting class. It really bugs me that Alabama is going to have a strong class this year. I love it when bama gets beat. It will be interesting to see where the number one recruit, Pryor will go to. Hopefully not to the Ohio State Buckeyes. I have a friend Dave who is dreaming of this event. I hope his heart is broken. Today, I need to be at a meeting or training project for a board of directors event. Also, I like to be at the FHU lectureships today, but I will be in my office trying to get some work done in the morning, than help out with the after school program, and then go to do some visitation, then we have church. I hope to be home today for supper.

This week I sent off my application for the Doctor of Ministry program at Harding Graduate School. After a lot of prayer, I thought it best to work on the Ministry program over the Ph.D program. I do not have the desire to be a professor in a university. I love doing ministry in the local church context more. But I have been tempted to do the Ph.D program but another 60 hours instead of 30 hours just seems like a lot now. For the goals that I have, the D.Min program seems best. Doing Greek parsing has never been a discipline that provides fire for the soul. I am glad I have the skill to do this academic work, but I have the passion to help churches grow. The only teaching capacity that I would like to engage in is maybe doing some adjunct work in ministry classes. I would like to teach the next generation of ministers on how to have a healthy ministry. This is why I am working on a thesis that deals with “The Discipline of a Godly Minister.” I never had anyone in my family teach me about ministry. Did not even grow up in a church. I had to learn to do ministry the hard way. Fortunately I have had some good men teach me some valuable lessons throughout the years. I am excited about this next step in my schooling.

Saturday we were going to have game night at the Morine’s house, but that was cancelled because of sickness. The Morine clan travelled to Florence, AL for the day. While we were there, we picked up some books, Wayne Jackson’s book on Acts, and Homer Hailey’s book on the Minor Prophets, and a book of devotional readings for a friend that was recently baptized. Also, we stopped at the Verizon Wireless store to update the phones since it was time to renew the contract. We had a hundred dollar credit, so Charity picked out a Chocolate phone, and it was buy one get one free, so I ended up with one now. I little late in getting a “cool” cellphone, but I am of the old school who still uses their phone to call people. Today I feel a little more cool and hip. Speaking of my coolness, I even have a facebook page. It is a great way of reaching out to some old friends with the story of Christ. A lot of people from my past would have no clue that I am a Christian now and I want to encourage them to look at the faith.

Today the family travelled to Clifton to preach for the congregation. This is a wonderful congregation of great people. It is in a small river side town. A place where someone would like to retire. The church was full and the services were excellent, well except for the poor preacher, but he is young and still learning. The Bible class was really interesting. The man that taught it did a great job in looking at Isaiah and Israelite history. It is nice to sit in a class every now and then. We had lunch with the preacher and another wonderful couple. The food was great and the company was a lot of fun. But I talked to much because someone commented that I can even out talk the minister in that congregation. Anyway, it was a great time. Tonight we are going to be back at Waynesboro to listen to Mitchell. I am really excited about this. He is a great preacher. After this, we are going to sing some of the devotional songs with the congregation. I am an awful singer, but I will still go and be part of the singing. Most people sing tenor, bass, etc, I sing LOW. This is for the best. Anyway, everyone I feel cooler this weekend, and I am encouraged from hearing the gospel preached and taught.