Rita Overload

Earlier I had intended to post several lessons learned from our brush with Hurricane Rita. Like most of you though I lost interest and really just wanted to move on. So my “lessons learned” started and ended with #1.

But even though we missed the destruction our friends and families to the east suffered, we still can’t seem to get away from her. How many times a day do you say or hear the words, “Rita stopped that,” or “Rita changed that,” or “we were working on that when Rita came through,” or, “that was before Rita?” When will Rita’s phantom winds finally die down?

Baseball Sun Sets on Atlanta

WHAT A GAME! 18 INNINGS! WOW!!! Actually you might say it was two games in one. The first game was a 6-6 tie. The second was won 1-0. What a finish!

For the second National League season in a row the sun has set in the east. The road to the World Series for a generation has run through Atlanta. And I mean through Atlanta, since the Braves have only managed one World Series Championship in their incredible string of NL East titles. Atlanta was always the end of the road for the Astros…until last year’s hold-your-breath-to-the-end best of five NLDS victory. The Atlanta jinx is over. We’re in the NLCS - again.

We won’t come limping in exhausted either. The boys from Houston will have a few days to relax, unlike last year when they ran out of gas. And the Stros field a much better pitching lineup this year. We’re as ready as we’ve ever been. The Cards are definitely the better team on paper. But paper doesn’t win games, heart does. The baseball sun now rises over the Central Division. Let’s hope it rises in the south and goes down in the north – over St. Louis.

Kentucky Lessons

I’m at a Pastor’s conference in Louisville this week learning lots of good stuff, especially about the priority of prayer. But the first thing I heard was this:

5 Things You’ll Never Hear in Kentucky

Duct tape won’t fix that
Those tires are too big for that truck
She’s too old to be wearing a bikini
I need to trim my sideburns
Alex, I’ll take Shakespeare for one thousand

Astros in the Playoffs!

Monday, May 9 The Astros are in a slide that will take them to a low of 15-30 in the W/L column. Let the record show, Pick’s Blog: I Still Believe...I Think.

Sunday, October 2 ASTROS WIN! It’s time to go back to Atlanta, pick up at least one win and then take the division series at home in Houston.

St. Louis will still be a rough mountain to climb in the NLCS, but this should be a different playoff experience. Our pitching is in much better shape this year with Petite on the mound, Roy O with his 20 win season and Roger, with his league leading ERA, looking nothing like the man who'd run out of gas this time last year. Even Lidge got his bad game out of the way the other night. It’s going to be a fun October!

Losses and Gains from Rita

Wow, we all lost a week of our lives to Hurricane Rita. And we spent a lot of unbudgeted money on gas and food and maybe even lodging. But I gained some things too. I had lots of time to reflect on what was happening around and to me. Over the next few days I’ll list some perspectives gained and lessons learned from this monster storm that continues to affect me. Like many of you, I now have evacuees (my sister and bro-in-law from Orange) living in my home.

Lesson One: You can’t take it with you. No longer is that a phrase reserved only for the grave. This lesson was pretty evident to all of us as we decided what we might abandon to the storm surge. Kathy, Jeff and I crammed a lot of clothes, pictures and family videos in the car and truck, but most of what we accumulated was left behind. Did you notice in the process how the value of some possessions rose while others decreased? I’m getting rid of some stuff so I’ll have less to loose the next time this happens.

Staff Retreat

Our Leadership Team just returned from Staff Retreat in the beautiful Hill Country. We went to Highland Lakes Encampment – the same place our All Stars and Jr. High Students went for summer camp this year. The heat followed us but the humidity was left behind. It’s seems a shame to waste such good weather so close to Austin. (Let’s see who takes that bait).

We had a chance to step back and look at the bigger picture. We discussed key issues like how do we get more people connected into Small Groups; where are we going to expand to when our current growth fills up the space we have; and what movie are we going to see tonight when we get tired of talking to each other? You know, important stuff.

One thing’s for sure. We don’t ever want to loose the spirit that got us where we are. Always pioneers, never settlers.

Blog Vacation Over

Okay, I’ve heard enough! The last blog was June 15th. Yeah, I know. I took a blog vacation. Ronnie took my button off the BPF home page (he promised to put it back) and has threatened to do it again if I don’t blog regularly. That’s fair enough. I plan to blog at least two times a week.

I’ve wondered what subject I’d address when I returned. It’s tempting to talk about Hurricane Katrina, but there’s enough on that for now. Since June 15th I’ve been on vacation (a Cruise to Cozumel), to BigStuf Camp with our senior high students, and made two trips to College Station to get Michael enrolled in A&M. I also hit a little work around the office in between.

The best part about the cruise, the new student conference at A&M and the bus trip to BigStuf was having downtime to read. I started with The Barbarian Way by Erwin McManus. Powerfully engaging – and short, it took just two days to read. The challenge to step away from a “comfortable faith” and take risks for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom has resonated with me and no doubt been reflected in my speaking. Next Generation Leader by Andy Stanley kicked me around some more, but the greatest challenge to my thinking about how we do church came from the controversial new book Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow. I agree with much of its premise, though I think the author overreaches on a few conclusions. It’s a must read for church leaders who wonder why the church is no longer appealing to men. Here are a few hints: risk, masculinity, purpose, adventure, opportunity.

I’ve actually read four other books too over the past 2 ½ months. I’ll just mention one of them, Escape from China by Zhang Boli. I picked it up off the sale table at the A&M Bookstore to read on the cruise. I saw it was about one of the student protest leaders at Tiananmen Square in 1989. That appealed to me since I didn’t want to read anything about church work while on vacation. It was a great book. A cool surprise was when Boli stepped over the line of faith during his two year run across China from the communist authorities.

What did I do on my blog vacation? I read.