Merry Christmas

This is one of my favorite times of the year; it's also one of the most frustrating.

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a Christian.  I'm proud of that fact.  In a time when it's not politically correct to be a Christian, let alone one proud of the fact I stand and proclaim, I am abundantly proud of my God and my faith in Him.

 

One of the things that frustrate me, in this era of political correctness, is that the words Merry Christmas have become taboo.  "Oh, you might offend someone…"  You know what, fine, if they want to be offended by my expression that they have a Merry Christmas, and then the problem is with them, not with me.  If someone wishes me a Happy Hanukkah, I don't get offended; I turn to them and wish them a Merry Christmas.

 

If you are not a Christian and want to wish me a "Happy/Merry Whatever-It-Is-You-Celebrate", that is fine, I promise not to be offended.  You wish me whatever good wishes you want for me, in anyway that you want, I'll take them.  However, in this season, I will wish you a Merry Christmas.  I'm not trying to convert you; I want you to have a good December 25^th!  It is with my deepest sincerity that I want you to have a good day. 

 

If Christmas day is just another day off of work for you and you have no intention of doing anything special, I hope that you are happy and safe doing it.  I hope that as you travel to and from where ever it is you go or whatever it is that you do that someone hasn't had too much eggnog and plows into you.

 

These wishes get embodied into the words Merry Christmas. 

 

I hate the fact that this world is getting so bound up (as in constipated) with political correctness.  I hate the terms Holiday Gift, when they mean Christmas Gift, Happy Holidays when they mean Merry Christmas and any sideways attempt at saying Merry Christmas without actually saying it.  I don't want to be hamstrung into say to everyone Happy RamaHanQuansMas.  I don't celebrate Ramadan, Hanukkah or Quanza, I celebrate Christmas, the birth of my Savior.  I most certainly don't celebrate Festivus, the new politically expedient thing to hit the waves.

 

Now that I'm done complaining; I want to explain why I love this time of the year.  Roughly 2000 years ago (probably closer to June than December) a baby was born to a mother who had never known a man.  He was the Son of God.  He came, lived a perfect life and became the fulfillment of Gods word.  That man died to become the sacrifice that was required to cover my sins, so that I wouldn't have to pay for them with my life.  He became the bridge between my Father and me.

 

My love for this season has nothing to do with anyone else.  It doesn't have to do with my family or my friends.  It doesn't have anything to do with shopping or gifts.  It has nothing to do with the government or even church.  It has to do with my relationship with my savior.

 

With that I only have one thing left to say…

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

InstallFest

A couple buddies and I had a pretty cool adventure yesterday.  We went to the Microsoft offices in Pittsburgh for the release of Visual Studio 2008, an event called InstallFest (I can hear the collective groan from all of the non-geeks that read this now.)

This was a cool event mostly because I got to hang out with my friend Rich Dudley from Armada Supply Chain Solutions.  I was contracted with them for a while before moving to Giant Eagle, Inc.

Anyway, I met up with Rich at the Armada offices where we got to hang around and talk a little, catch up on old times and what not.

We then got on the road to Microsoft.  I followed Rich over, as I had never been to the MS offices before.  If you've never been to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you must understand a few things.  It is the hardest city to get around in and is easy to get lost.  Traffic patterns make no sense and there is no grid, like in a "normal" city.  Pittsburgh is centered around the confluence of three rivers (there is a rumored fourth, underground, river, but we'll stick to the three you can see.)  This confluence of three rivers gives the city an interesting landscape, since the rivers form a Y in the middle of the city.  Along with the three rivers you have a TON of bridges (There are more bridges in Pittsburgh than any other city in the world) and mountains.

All of that being said, the trip there was pretty non-eventful, other than me almost getting run over by a 16 wheeler who was going to make that turn no matter what.  He missed me by an inch or so, and my car and I both thank the driver for being so... so... observant.

InstallFest, for all intents and purposes, was about swag.  We went into the building, signed in, took the elevator up to the offices, signed in to the event, got our little name tags.  Then we received our T-Shirt, "WhirleyThing", install disks of VS 2008 Express, our VS 2008 sticker and finally, the coup de grace, the full blown copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Version!  Yes, this was only the 60 day trial, but we got a code to get a license key that would unlock the full glory of the development environment.

Then the fun began!  We all pulled out our laptops and started to install VS 2008!  Yes, it took 1.5 hours to get it installed, but during the time it took to install we got to hang out with Dani Diaz, one of Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net Evangelists.  Dani is an awesome guy.  He got to show us some of the cool features of the IDE and talked about some of the other events that he was taking place in.

All-in-all it was a great time.  The next time they hold an event at the MS Offices, if it's a topic I'm interested in, I'll be there.  This one was well worth the $4 that it cost to park, and it saved me a bunch of money on buying VS 2008.

If you are interested in seeing VS 2008 in action, or getting some info about it check out this site.

Message

This past Sunday, I had the great honor to minister to the main congregation at Family Fellowship Christian Center, where I am the youth pastor.

I taught on Revelations 3:14-22 and had an incredible time.  If you are interested in listening to the message you can go here to listen to it.  The title of the message is Sitting on the Throne with God.  At the moment of this blog post, it is the top one on the list of podcasts.

I think it is really cool that I get the opportunity, once in a while, to act like a preacher instead of a teacher.  I talked for over an hour and it seemed like 20 minutes.  No one in the congregation was even getting figitty, which after an hour and nine minutes, I would have expected.

I also started to realize just how much work goes into a Sunday service, how much responsibility that I actually have on a normal Sunday and how much more I would have if I were also the senior pastor.

To put a normal Sunday Service in perspective, here is a list of things that have to take place to make the time between 8:30 am to 12:30 pm go smoothly.

Pastor arrives to building 8:15 am, turns on heat, sets up the first service (Bible and a Bagel).
Pastor waits for people to arrive.
Pastor ministers to the early morning bible study.  (This is the same message as the main service, even though the two messages are delivered in an entirely different manor and the two are seldom, if ever even in the same ballpark.)
Pastor ministers from 8:45 to 9:30 (or a little later.)
9:30 - 10:30 worship team starts practice/sound check for main service. (The pastor and I are both on the worship team.  He leads the worship team, but when he's out, it falls to me.)
10:30 - 11:00, worship service. 
11:00 - 11:15 - "The Pastor" - Pray over school aged children
                                         - Take offereing.
                      "Me"            - Prepare sound for recording
                                         - As youth pastor and elder, pray over the school aged children
11:15-12:30 - Main service ministry / recording.

Now, that is the overview.  These duties are normally divided between me and Pastor Rick.  However this past Sunday, all of this fell to me.  For about 4 hours I was running around like a frantic beast.  When everything works well this whole process is easy.  When things start failing though, it's crazy.  Not letting people see that things are falling apart takes skill, or luck.  On Sunday, for worship practice, my wireless guitar transmitter was flaking out.  I had to use a mic.  This is no big deal, but it limits my freedom of movement.  After we were done with worship, I went to get the wireless mic for preaching and the mic was not in its normal place.  We found it after a couple of minutes of frantic searching, then, for some reason, it wasn't being broadcast out of the main speakers.  After a quick rewiring job, we got everything going and service started, about 4 minutes later than normal, but the people in the congregation were none the wiser.  It was cool.

Anyway, that was a morning to remember, the chaos didn't crack us and the word of God was delivered.