place of nathan.

Last night I met with my brother in law Jon to help him figure out a couple problems he was having in designing a website for his church. Jon’s a really cool artist who’s got a sweet MacBook and works at a cool coffeehouse in Fort Wayne (Old Crown Coffee Roasters).

He was using one of those custom-solutions designed for churches, to make things more simple for the end-user and non-programmer. It is E-Zekiel, probably the most popular all-in-one content management and web hosting solution for churches.
I thought it would be a simple solution for me. Working with code often, i took one look and knew what the problem was. It was working fine in the Firefox browser but looked horrible in Internet Explorer. (side note: Internet Explorer is a horrible browser!)
Although I knew exactly what needed to be done, because of the program ‘to make things more simple for the end-user,’ i didn’t know how to do it.
I was used to full control. (Joomla! and Wordpress stand-alone (as opposed to hosted Wordpress.com sites) both offer full, complete line-by-line editing) E-Zekiel only gave partial control through the use of drop-down choices. I didn’t like it. It was a pretty large learning curve. We finally got it figured out after a couple hours.

So that got me thinking about how this relates to my faith in God. Something that works fine for others–even something that is very popular–may not be of any benefit to me at all. It may be a lot of work trying to figure it out. The tools a younger, more inexperienced Christian needs may be very beneficial and necessary for them, but it does nothing for you as a more mature believer, but that does not mean we can’t use the more simple tools to teach more complex truths to further their understanding.
I hope i taught Jon some details about the code (CSS), how to read it and how to assign it. I think he left with a better understanding of CSS and how to read and interpret it.
I didn’t learn much (other than about the E-Zekiel system), but it wasn’t about me learning. it was well worth my time.

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it hit me yesterday. a lot of people have a skewed idea of what it means to be authentic in our life.

-being authentic does NOT mean telling everybody everything
-being authentic more closely means being consistent
-if you claim to be authentic, you most likely aren’t.
-authenticity should be something we strive for, and never fully attain (since we suck and are sinners)

My parents taught me a lot about being authentic. Who they were while at church and/or preaching/teaching, they were at home and on weekends. My dad actually practiced what he preached. literally. he was consistent.

May we all strive to be more consistent, more authentic in our lives. I strive to be just half as consistent of my parents. I’m certainly not perfect, and i strive to be consistent in saying that. i mess up, i’m a sinner. i mess up a lot. telling you all the juicy details of my messing up isn’t necessary and sufficient for authenticity.

And, btw, if you do relate being authentic to telling everyone everything, please, feel free to leave your credit card info, bank account number and routing info and your social security number here in the comments. I’m sure no one would abuse the info, since you’re just being ‘authentic.’ (and, for the record, i do formally request you not leave that info here–there, now i’m legally not responsible for your impending identity theft.)

what are your thoughts on this?

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My wife Emily and i are in the very beginning stages of kitchen renovation. we had toyed with the idea for some time, but only recently actually checked the prices of things.
renovation is cheap.
we have purchased a dishwasher (we currently do it all by hand–yuck!). we purchased a demo model, meaning, it was the one people have looked at over and over again. but it is in great shape. we got it for almost half price, so that is cool, especially when you’re a cheapskate like myself.
we are going to add an additional 42″ base cabinets and 42″ wall cabinets. we thought doing something like that would cost us like $1500 just for the cabinets, but we can buy all those cabinets for way cheaper, so we are really excited.
renovation is cheap–it’s the labor that is so expensive! it will take me weeks and weeks of work to get our renovation project accomplished. i could pay someone and they could have it done in a day or two, i think.

the materials are cheap. the knowledge is what is so darn expensive. the knowledge is expensive because not everyone has it. it takes hard work to get such knowledge.

i think our spiritual lives are much the same. the ‘material’ is there and accessible to us all. but practicing a proper spiritual life is something that is hard to get. it takes work. hard work.

the renovation is cheap. it’s the installation that has me worried.

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Last weekend my parents went to visit my sister and her family in Nashville, Tenn., and on the way back they had a very interesting experience.
Read about it at the recently-revived blog of my dad.

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so i found my new favorite group. 123 Party is really cool.

Check out the videos for some truly fantastic dancing.

One of the guys (No. 3, Fury), has an uncanny resemblance to my friend Jordan. The funny thing is, I can see Jordan doing this…right alongside of me!

If anyone is interested in doing something like this sometime, let me know, and we’ll have to arrange something. I would find this very fun.

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