Welcome Back Service at The Gate: Sept 6

We had 20 people at our "Welcome Back" service last night. I am always inspired when we hear all the great things the Lord has done in people's lives over the summer. We met some incredible students and it was wonderful to have Amy helping us out. I believe the Lord will do some unbelievable things this year.

I spoke shortly about the vision we have for The Gate this year. The test I used is one I read this summer from the story of Esther after God allowed her to beome queen and affect the lives of all the Jews. It came from Esther 4:13-14 where the Bible says:

13 Mordecai told [the messenger] to reply to Esther, "Don't think that you will escape the fate of all the Jews because you are in the king's palace. 14 If you keep silent at this time, liberation and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father's house will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this."

I believe we are poised for the Lord to use us to reach out to McKendree University and Lebanon, Illinois in an exciting way. We have been silent for too long. I believe God has brought us to a place in our lives where we, "have come to the kingdom for such a time as this." This is our time to step out and boldly proclaim the gospel to those we can affect. It is going to be a challenging, but great year at The Gate this year.

First Day of the 2007-2008 School Year at McKendree

We set up a table at McKendree today and Marilyn, Amy, and George handed out "Welcome Back" goodie bags. In about 3 hours we had handed out 450 of the bags. McKendree only has about 2400 students, so we figure we hit a good percentage of the students today and had a chance to have a conversation with quite a few of them.

We have had a lot of things going on over the summer that will help make The Gate even better. We painted two rooms upstairs that will serve as The Gate's library. We have received donations of several boxes of books, two couches, a ping pong table, a foosball table, an air hockey table and some end tables. We are planning to start a video game ministry to the local youth, and we have a desire to start a food pantry. Things are busy, but we feel the Lord's hand in everything we do.

God bless each of you as we start off with a new year.

A Busy Couple of Months

I want to apologize to all of you in the blogosphere for not being a part of your community for the last couple of months. I have been using this summer to get caught up in a few things that I had let go by the wayside lately. Here's a quick overview of what I've been up to:

1. Vacation: My family and I had a wonderful vacation to Washington, DC and Delaware in June. Our kids were born in Delaware and hadn't been back since we moved to St Louis 12 years ago. It was a great time and helped us all reconnect with one of the great places we have lived.

2. Dissertation: I was out of work for 2 months while my contract was being renegotiated. It is back in place now and I am back at work, but I used the 2 months to made huge leaps forward on my doctoral dissertation for Saint Louis University. My dissertation centers around analyzing John Steinbeck's use of landscape as the setting for The Grapes of Wrath. I am trying to marry my love of geography and American literature. I was stalled out on my research and writing when my work stoppage happened, now I believe I can have a first draft done by September 1. I am at 216 typed pages and counting. I had just about given up any hope of completing my dissertation when the work stoppage happened and I got re-energized on the project.

3. Nevis: I am leading our church's mission trip to help out Calvary Baptist Church in Nevis, a small and often overlooked island in the Caribbean Ocean about an hour flight south of Puerto Rico. We will be working with Kurvin Wallace, a good friend and alumni of our collegiate ministry (The Gate) at McKendree College. Between my dissertation and the mission trip I have spent every waking non-working moment occupied. Our trip to Nevis runs from July 21-28 and is filling up well. We'll be leaving at 3:30am on Saturday, so there will be plenty of time to sleep on the airplane, but until the trip is finished I don't think I will have much time to blog. I know I will have a lot to discuss when we return.

After the Nevis trip is over I will concentrate most of my effort on my dissertation. It will be good to get my first draft to the Saint Louis University American Studies Department to review so that I can take a week or two off to relax while they do their first review.

Are We Headed For Dramatic Global Cooling?

Here's a great article by R. timothy Patterson, in the Canadian National Post, on the global warming and cooling cycles that have affected the earth over the centuries. Is the debate over Global Warming dead, are we headed for a rapid increase on the size of the icecap? Here's the article. Link.

America's Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66

I apologize for not being on Blogger lately. I have been between contracts at work for the last month (read out of work) and have been using the downtime to frantically work on my PhD Dissertation. I've made great progress. My Dissertation is titled A Consuming View: John Steinbeck’s Cognitive Landscape Created for The Grapes of Wrath. I using a geographical perspective to analyze the landscapes created by John Steinbeck which he uses to play out the scenes of The Grapes of Wrath. A large section of The Grapes of Wrath is devoted to describing the migration route along Highway 66 (Steinbeck's version of Route 66). So, I was excited when I came across this Google Map the other day. The Map is titled "America's Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66". It is a great resource put together by Jay Crim and Shekar Davarya. Here is a link to the Google Map that includes the map and the oral histories. Link.

Thanks guys.

BASIC Worship

Last night at our Thursday Night Worship at The Gate we were visited by the University of Illinois' BASIC group. BASIC stands for Brothers and Sisters in Christ. They are one of our sister Baptist Collegiate Ministries in Illinois. The U of I is on Spring break and the BASIC group was working on a misisons project about 10 minutes from The Gate. I was a little surprised, but very happy they came by. We had Lounge Worship (music, prayer, and reading Bible passages) planned and it worked out very well for the group. Thanks Jim Smith for stopping by. It is always great to see another group of Brothers and Sisters in Christ who enjoy worshipping the Lord.

Feeling Blue

The NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is at the point of being predictable this year. Sure we had a couple of major upsets in the first round, and there are even some teams I didn't expect in the second round. But after last night normalcy is arriving quickly as we move into the Elite Eight.

In the West Bracket Kansas (number 1 seed) beat one of my Alma Maters SIU and will face my other Alma Mater UCLA (number 2 seed) in the Regional Finals.

In the South Bracket OSU (number 1 seed) barely held on to beat Tennessee and will face Memphis (number 2 seed) in the Regional Finals.

If tonight's East and Midwest Brackets hold to form we should see North Carolina (number 1 seed) and Georgetown (number 2 seed) win in the East and Florida (number 1 seed) and Oregon (number 3 seed) win in the Midwest. The only surprise so far is that Wisconsin (number 2 seed in the mid-west was eliminated by UNLV.

I have to cheer on UCLA and Oregon. I love the Pac 10, but as a UCLA fan I can't cheer on USC. So far I am feeling blue! Go Bruins!

What Goes Around Comes Around: Partisan Politics

Thanks to the Politico for this article on the Democrats not living within their own rules. Link. It isn't the Republicans or the Democrats I can't stand. It is politicians in general. They bend the rules when it makes sense for them and scream at others for bending them when it doesn't.

VIPeR - Small, Portable Reconnaissance Robot Designed to Support Combat Within Buildings

I came across an interesting announcement in the ASD Daily Report that talks about VIPeR Robots that the Israeli Defense Force have developed to use in the near future. These robots can help save lives in the war against terrorism. We will see more and more use of robots in the military as we find the force levels dropping and explore alternatives to sesnding our troops into harm's way.

The announcement is located here. Link.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

A new controversial documentary in the UK, called The Great Global Warming Swindle, is designed to show that human-made global warming is the conclusion of bad science. The documentary uses scientific evidence to show that we are in the midst of a naturally occurring pattern of global warming, not the result of humans producing a "Greenhouse Effect." Read the article here. Link.

I stick to the belief that the human-made global warming disaster is just another hoax designed by those whose political interests lie in creating sensationalism. I really don't know how all these items become the agenda of the politically correct police and gather such a following when they are based on poor science. I don't doubt that global warming is occuring, but I don't think it is a result of human introduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.