Blogelemy

Our Tenth Anniversary

Today is my ten year wedding anniversary with my wife, Greta.  It is honestly hard to believe that it has already been 10 years.  We dated throughout college so it has been a total 14 years of being in a relationship with her.  It's really fun to think about how things were ten years ago compared to how they are now.  Ten years ago we lived at the Seminary Village at Bethel Seminary, learning how to live with each other.  Today we still have extremely adventuresome lives, our adventures are just a little different now than they were ten years ago.

For our anniversary we were going to take a cruise this next winter but with expecting a new addition to our family that plan was put on hold.  Instead we will be going to see the play "Wicked" at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis this December. We got great seats!

Ten years and 2.33 kids later I am still overjoyed for the bride that God has chosen for me. She is an excellent mother to our children, helper in ministry and still very much my best friend.  I look forward to the next ten years!

Vacation Bible School AKA VBS

We are in the midst of our Church's Vacation Bible School program.  Which I have been hearing about for the past year.  So far it has lived up to the hype of being lots of kids, lots of energy and all of our staff pitching in to help out. I have never seen a Vacation Bible School this organized and attended.  The student ministries team is responsible for all of the recreation games.  All of the grades are split into two groups and one goes outside to Pastor Travis and his group and the other comes inside to our group in the gym.  I have never seen this many young students in one area at a time.  After one day of doing this, I felt as if I had already experienced a week of it.  I'm pretty sure that I will not have a voice at the end of the week.  All this to say, it is clear already that this is an amazing form of outreach to young kids and their families.  I am really proud of my son for getting one of his classmates to join him.

Since I am blogging about VBS, I can bring up a pet peeve that I have about the initials "VBS".  Sometimes we come up with programs that everyone inside the church knows about but everyone outside the church has no idea what we are talking about.  Take VBS as the example.  There are VBS's happening all over the world right now (most of them are probably this week).  But the initials VBS by themselves do not tell a person who isn't churched what it is.  Actually the words "Vacation Bible School" are hardly descriptive of what it is.  Every so often I cringe when I hear from the stage "VBS" without the explanation of what it stands for.  I imagine that newcomers immediately feel like they can't relate to churchgoers because they don't understand the lingo that is thrown around.  Another one that gets thrown around the Church is "ABF". 

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.  I feel better now.

Return of Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap!

The National Geographic Channel is doing a special on Stonehenge this month.  To promote this scientific presentation, they have brought back Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap.  There are five videos altogether.  They are all very funny.  You can view the other four here.

What REALLY makes me want to change?

Last night in the Senior High Ministry we kicked off our "Advance" theme for the summer.  It was a push to not take this summer as a break or  kick our relationship with God into cruise control.  Rather, the challenge was actually to 'advance' in our relationship with God with the summer time afforded to us.

In the midst of thinking through this summer theme, and preparing the first installment of teaching.  I had a internal crisis as I realized the obvious fact that I could talk and motivate towards "advancing" all I want but if no one in the room really wants to advance it isn't going to happen.  I can't make someone change!  So this left me with the question, "What causes a person to want to advance?"  I came up with two major ways this happens.  The first way that I'm motivated towards change is through inspiration.  We can be inspired through movies that we see or influential people that cross our path. Another change agent is our own disappointment with self.  If we are able to take a good look at ourselves and see things that we may not like, we can be motivated towards change.

Knowing that my list probably wasn't complete, I asked the students what other things motivate them to change.  Their answers were great.  Here are a few that I could remember:

Passion
Knowing that I need to represent Christ to the lost
Pride
Jealousy
Satisfaction from being in the Word
Joy
Affirmation from Parents
Fear
Desire not to waste our lives

I don't think that I am done wrestling with this.  I think it hits a fundamental issue that Pastors and Teachers face.  They can create a compelling talk to motivate change but unless the Holy Spirit prompts a person towards change, the presentation is just words.

Random Thoughts on my Last Name...

Our six year old son just memorized how to spell our last name, "Barthelemy".  Which if you ask me is quite an accomplishment.  I'm pretty sure that I was at least 9 before I mastered it.  Hearing my son repeat the spelling over and over made me think again about this crazy last name that was given to me.  So, here are some random thoughts as they apply to my last name:

In Biblical times the prefix "Bar" was used to define the person as a son of someone else.  So Barjonah was son of Jonas, and Bartimaeus was son of Timaeus.  I should be able to conclude that Barthelemy is son of "thelemy"?  But I'm not really sure who "thelemy" is.  Okay, this thought was useless!  I promise these will get better.

A lot of people ask what nationality the name is.  To which I have no idea.  I'm not sure who it was that traveled across the pond several years ago and where they came from.  I have come to discover that there is an island in the Lesser Antilles that is a territory of the French by the name of St. Barthelemy.

When I was a little older than my son, my last name was a curse that I carried.  It was a huge target that other kids would use to make fun of me.  The classic name was "Barf-all-over-me".  Man, did that sting when I was in 3rd grade.  I have come to embrace this name and actually think it is funny, I usually share this with junior highers and give them permission to call me this.

Speaking of pronunciation, there are multiple ways I have heard this name pronounced by family members, friends, telemarketers, graduation announcers and co-workers.  I really don't get hung up on how people pronounce my last name (because I really don't know which way is correct).  Personally, I leave the first 'e' silent. So, it is pronounced  'Barth-la-me'

It wasn't until the magic of Facebook that I realized how many other people were blessed with the same last name.  Like many names, there is a Facebook group entitiled, "My last name is Barthelemy"  Currently there are '80' people in this group and I only know 3 of them!

All this to say, isn't it great that my 6-year-old can spell his last name!  I can't help to pray for him as he carries this name through the brutal elementary years!